Input/Output: Swimming Fish
The Program
Source code: Swimming Fish Animation cube
Built with Processing
The Write Up
For our interface we selected a small box that could hold the sensors and conceal the electronics but also allowed for a clear projection onto its surface with the surface texture affecting the view of the projection. In an ideal world, this would be a lot larger scale with a huge floor space which people can move closer to the sensors or step directly on the sensors to get a reaction from the fish. According to Delusions of Dialogue our sensors are continuous as it does matter whether you are a short distance away or a full difference away to determine the effect on the program. Close proximity is used but if your hand is hovering gently it has a minor effect and if you put your whole hand on the sensor it activates it completely. There are also middle stages based on the number of fingers on the sensors or the distance away from them.
If the user is not near the sensors, the fish swim freely with no constraints or fears. The user controls whether the fish are disturbed and therefore flee the user, but also the distance in which they choose to move away. In this way our piece is controllable, seeing as it doesn’t interrupt the user and create its own responses but acts in predetermined ways based on the actions of the user. The user has complete control over the piece and much like the author of Delusions of Dialogue suggests, it is a piece where given the time the user moves from the state of magic to a state of control, where they know how to establish control and use it efficiently, ruining the magic of the piece. Our goal was not to obscure control, but to express the control we can have over an environment that is artificial but allows for more natural movements. There were some road blocks along the way, and now the fish in our installation do not behave as organically as intended, but they do still behave like fish. They swim away when a shadow forms and in their own ways flock together as fish tend to do when frightened.
This control is established by transforming the input data and mapping the data as a circular ripple that the fish are program to avoid. The data has been converted through several data types to allow it to form the mapped rippling and the distance of the user affects the ripple’s radius so that the size changes based on the user’s whim. The interaction wouldn’t allow for the raw data to interact with the user. The raw data as it exists is just recorded electromagnetic pulses from the user’s body and that data has to move through the stages to become visual in order for an interaction to occur at all. Without that process the user doesn’t interact with the piece so much as interact with themselves, which is another area to approach artistically but requires much more time.
Feedback could in ways occur with the input to output loop, as the output controls what the user understands of the piece. It allows the user to complete the circuit in a sense, enabling them to modify their interactions based on observations of the output. Of course, without the user the piece becomes a one way channel with the input leading to the output with the output failing to communicate back in any form. However, the idea of memory from Delusions of Dialogue does not apply to our piece in terms of feedback as it isn’t the data in the memory speaking to the output, but the reaction to the memory by an outside resource. Yet the piece remains completely interactive because of its ability to take in and convert the output data created by the user to another purpose.
The Documentation
