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.
Year
2022
Team
Tyler Beatty
Tamika Yamamoto
Scope of Work
Physical Computing
Tools
Creative Coding
Physical Interactions
Emotive Objects
Arduino
+ 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.
+ 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.
(01.) From afar, the trees on the object appear gaily and active, moving up and down of their own accord in a playful manner.
(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.
+ 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.
