World of Nature
When audience members enter into the playful, colorful, enchanted world we have designed, the behaviors of the emotive plants expose the assemblage of humans and flora. The emotive plants respond to aggressive behavior with fear and caution, kindness with playfulness and excitement.
Our team reflected on the many ways humans and plants interact directly and indirectly, from urbanization and aggressive agricultural practices, to climate awareness and ethical consumer practices. We also considered the desired material, the ethics of emoting living beings and of using new materials instead of recycled or reused. For this prototype, we learned horticultural practices of planting to encourage a strong ecosystem. Throughout this exploration, the expression “of nature” resonated in the ways we discovered connections and solved problems.
2022
Physical Computing // Creation & Computation
Tyler Beatty
Tamika Yamamoto
Creative Coding
Physical Interactions
Emotive Objects
Arduino
01 / Design & Technical Aspects
In this prototype, light detecting resistors where used in combination with specific lighting arrangement to track when someone approaches the installation (from idle to cautious state) and when they add plants to the installation (happy state).
Aesthetically, string is used to accentuate motion and encourage the playful affect. The tree in the final product was meant to grow as large as possible within the given constraints. Weights were used to lift the tree up, and a winch system was used to pull the tree down.
While a stepper motor, or motor with encoder would have been preferable for the tree mechanism, a continuous servo is used, with a limit switch on the bottom to prevent malfunction. For the forest of trees, a shaft and cams are used to create wave-like motion.
This could easily be extended to a longer row, or duplicated for more trees. An array of servos could have also been used for a more dynamic effect, but the cam system with appropriate rotation sensing and timing could achieve excellent results. The wiring for this prototype included extra inputs and outputs so that we could push the prototype in more directions as needed, including more servos, LED lighting, more LDR sensors, or reed/limit switches.
The software running on the Arduino Nano 33 IOT progressed through six states during the interactive experience. The even states (0,2, and 4) are used for movements into each state and the odd states (1,3, and 5) are for maintaining each state. The idle state (0 and 1) is active when no one is directly in front of the world and is when the world is most playful. The forest of trees are moving through their wave as quickly as possible and the tree is in constant oscillation movement. The playfulness of the plants is meant to provide meaningful contrast to the cautious state (2 and 3).
In the cautious state, the plants portrait shyness or even fear of an ominous being (the audience member). In this state the tree lowers to its lowest possible position, and the forest's wave slows dramatically, not stopped, as to continue its playfulness and life in a smaller way. This is the foundational state of this project, alluding to the seismonastic nature of plants like touch-me-nots, the caution of the plant is for the audience to reflect on past detrimental human impacts on nature, and contrasts the final, trusting or happy state. Emphasizing that humans can have a positive effect (and do so by simply breathing), when the audience member adds a tree to the installation, the forest resumes its quicker speed and the tree rises back to the top (not oscillating for differentiation from idle state).
02 / Future Vision
Ideally, a room filled with both living plants emoting in their own ways and mechanically emotive imitation plants would respond directly to audience behavior. With more advanced sensing tools, the room could sense the ways in which people move and observe the installation, with prompts for specific interaction.
03 / Presentation
(01.) From afar, the trees on the object appear gaily and active, moving up and down of their own accord in a playful manner.
04 / User Journey
In designing the user journey, we wanted to emphasize the agency participants had in deciding what they could do with the object, from choosing which tree to plant and also where to plant it. In this way, we hope the participants would feel a sense of ownership and purpose in their actions.
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(02.) When a person approaches the object however, the lively trees switch over to a ‘cautious’ state, slowing their movement in apparent wariness.
(03.) The participant is prompted to take a tree from a pot and plant it at the sides of the object. When they do, the trees stir into motion.
(04.) The trees return to their lively state, giving the appearance of trust and elation as a result of the participant’s actions.
(05.) When the person leaves, the tree behind the automata starts to move up and down once again, returning to its original state and ready to engage with the next participant.