Gneumatic

The topic in last week’s pcomp class was analog output. Doing things like controlling motors or dimming LEDs requires a varying voltage. But, since you can’t actually generate a changing voltage directly from digital microcontrollers like the Arduino, it’s necessary to use “fake” an analog voltage. As Tom Igoe notes in his page on analog output, this is accomplished by producing a series of voltage pulses at regular intervals, and varying the width of the pulses. This is called pulse width modulation (PWM) (Note that this is only possible on analog pins labeled ‘PWM’ on the Arduino Diecimilla). The resulting average voltage is sometimes called a pseudo-analog voltage.

I was inspired with an idea for my project while thinking about how we are culturally obsessed with the newness of technology, and how that novelty is in many ways always just beyond our reach. As soon as we acquire the newest device or learn how to use the latest platform or language, something comes along to replace or improve upon it. I tried to literalize that condition with this little installation I set up in the workshop:

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My first assignment in Physical Computing was to create something along the lines of a “love-o-meter,” aka, one of those games that “measures” your sexiness (from ‘Cold Fish’ to ‘Hot Stuff!’, or something similar) using analog input from variable resistors. Riffing on this idea, I came up with the concept of a “massage feedback shirt.” I placed two force-sensitive resistors in the shoulders, and a row of LEDs in the front of the t-shirt. The number of LEDs that light up provide feedback on the pressure being applied by the masseuse.

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