show and write

with spring just around the corner, and the last of my exhibitions coming to an end (until april kicks off a new series of shows), i can turn my full attention to my phd.

a two-pronged attack is required:
1. thesis writing
2. exhibition planning

the thesis is the main focus for now as it has to be submitted by january 4, which gives me 4 months. the guideline is 20 - 30k words, so assuming i max out at 30k, my writing schedule should be about 7500 words a month, or about 1800 words a week. i have about 40k worth of notes, so i should be ok.

the exhibition was going to be a garden of plants trading on the stock market, but it was brought to my attention that a swedish artist made an artwork called Yucca Invest Trading Plant that hooked a yucca plant up to the stock market back in 1999.

Ola Pehrson, Yucca Invest Trading Plant, 1999

so i'm rethinking my approach. my idea was different enough to warrant pursuing it, but other technical limitations are also making it a less and less attractive proposition at the moment. 

in the spirit of keeping my options open i am still looking at exhibition ideas. i stumbled on this today and liked it a lot. it stirred ideas and reiterates my focus on the system synthesis:

A Negative Garden of Eden

the idea of a network of plants coupled with a cultural network is the driving energy of my intention.

but i must thrust my attention into my writing now, some of which will i'll be placing in here as a way or airing ideas and trying out writing style, clarity of voice etc etc.

standing at the end point looking back

nine days in the lab and i've got 3 plants that produce SHUDDER and WAVE functions at my command. that's pretty cool. there's a few little niggly things that aren't right (such as the fact they should be behaving at their own behest, not my command, and they should have more amplified actions), but it's a perfectly acceptable place to put a full stop on the work and let it stand as a basis for future development. the potential is now set to really take this work into some really engaging territory, and i've learnt so much in a the space of a week that i feel quite confident to move forward and experiment on my own.

here's an example of the sort of coding we've been concocting, and i can get some of my head around some of it. enough to play with.

and here they are, sitting out in the gallery space of the warehouse, looking innocuous but all the while ready to pounce into action.

deadends and adaptations

another long day in the lab, although much of it was waiting for tech support.

there's a couple of rather frustrating issues that are going to prune back my ambitions for the completion of the project:
 - the replacement solenoids are quite weak and don't generate a very engaging SHUDDER effect
 - we've run out of time to network the plants together

the first issue is a consequence of having too many functions for the microprocessor. in retrospect, the SHUDDER effect was far more interesting, visually and perhaps interpretively, anyway and if i replicate the project in the future i'll jettison the SWAY effect all together. there was a bloke who dropped in, another techy type, who was very excited bout the potential of lights and sounds being generated, which was always my intention and reinforces the option to use those as second and third effects to add to the mix (and i'm quite certain they'll also require less power drainage).

the possibility of bringing this project to its potential outcome (that is, properly networked plants with engaging effects) is now very much in reach. so although i won't achieve its ideal resolution tomorrow, for the final day, i will have the basic framework to cobble it together more effectively by myself in the studio.

for the purposes of putting a conclusion to the project at medialab, i'll run the plants independently, each one running random fluctuations between their SHUDDER and WAVE functions. it won't be perfect, but it'll still be an activation of the plant body which was the premise of the project at the outset.

recharged for holding pattern

with a belly full of pizza, my head has cleared a little and i'm just waiting for one of the tech gurus to free up so i can rope them into my plant network to tinker together the necessary components. just a waiting game really, as the guys are elbow deep in building for the other projects at the moment.

in the meantime i thought i should sketch out the operations more clearly so i can explain it and also even try to get a grasp on the electronics required.

all three plants will need to be 'sending' a data feed of their HUMIDITY levels to a central point for monitoring....

actually:
maybe the plants should send their datafeed to their PARTNERS in the network..?... because after all, responses are based on either of their PARTNERS' HUMIDITY data hitting numbers ending in 5 or 0. this is far more pleasing, as it feels more like a network, and without having a central nodal point of control the network is more open and responsive to each others' information.

amalgamated hybrids

ok, so i'm pretty much set to bring these plants together but it really requires some coding skills and my brain is basically fried at this point. the lack of the sunlight, the constant focus on the project and 11 days straight working are starting to take their toll. if i was in my own studio, i'd have taken a day off to recharge, but alas, it's a sprint and one must press on!

this is a pretty poor attempt at bringing the humidity sensors into the mix, by looking back at documentation of day 2 and trying to replicate the wiring from the sensor we built. the circuits are getting nice and spaghetti-like with multiple connections cross-feeding everywhere and i have to declare that i am now so desperate for lunch and sustenance that i'm floating in a void of loss. clearly i need to consult the experts, but they're all head down in the other projects and i don't think i can function until i eat something.

i've even started copying and pasting code together but frankly, it's like trying to re-write a arabic text using a japanese dictionary. priority - EAT. then - get some help!

mounted and probed

day 8 of the lab and it's the penultimate day. time to bring everything together and work towards the resolution of the project.

the image above shows the SHUDDER motor on the left there, with the blue wires coming out of it (it's a solenoid which works basically like a piston). you may be able to see the fishing line which runs parallel to that bracket but from the base of the plant and then out to pulley wheels at the edge of the pot and down to the base of the pot, and under the pot plant itself to the 'servo' motor that operates as the WAVE motor.

hopefully the last of the soldering here, with some probes for measuring humidity in the soil, and some ... um ... green thingies which do something with power, like regulate it. i think. my head is way too overloaded with new information.

here's the little guys, all lined up, all locked into place, all probed, all rigged up with wires. next step is get them to start reading the humidity levels in the soil, be able to communicate that information, and then be able to respond to it.

all potted out

today was full on. i true reflection of the idea of the lab to be a 'sprint' - i've been at it from 10am until, well now it's 930pm. but that's it for the day coz i finished off all the mechanisms for the plants, leaving tomorrow simply for programming, fine-tuning and setup for exhibition.

not a lot of documentation today as it was pretty much non-stop drilling, hacksawing, fiddling about with nuts and bolts and measuring and cutting holes and adding springs and so on and so forth. but there's nothing like a solid day at the office/workshop/studio/lab to get the juices flowing.

tomorrow - it's the last day of the lab and i gotta get everything together to show off on sunday.

parrots to guide the build

there's been a constant chirp chirp of bird noises outside the warehouse, pleasant and a very nice counterbalance to the interior industrial space of zero-natural light we're working in.

i had just assumed they'd be annoying indian mynas but much to my delight they're some sort of beautiful parrot.

well, that's kinda beside the point of the this blog, but there you go. i've always had a thing for natural omens, which i think stems from reading homer's epics when i was younger. of course, i have no basis against which to base an omen, good or bad, but there's something to be said for the simple joy of finding a bright aqua and yellow parrot singing at the doorway to an industrial workshop.

so, to the task at hand!

tim and i took a materials-run to bunnings to get my pots and braces and now i'm ready to translate the proto-pot into exhibition pots.

coding action

here's some code i actually managed to construct a small section of (which, i must confess, was mostly a cut and paste job, but i did have a vague idea of what i was doing!)

for the 3 readers who may stumble on this blog - all the code for this project is free if you want it, in the spirit of open source learning.

it's alive!

very exciting day today, as i managed to complete my proto-pot and have a fully functioning, active plant with 2 motion actions: SHUDDER and WAVE.

there was a whole bit of building, something i could get my teeth into without always asking for help (like i need to for electronics and coding, which frankly, i know pretty much nothing about). so, using the trusty milk crate and a hacksaw and screws and bolts and bits of metal and a drill and fishing wire and pulleys and springs - kapow - plant holder complete!

so now, the next step is really just fine-tuning the motions, which are actually pretty close to where i'd like them anyway. jesse's gonna help me attach potentiometers (dials) so i can adjust the speeds up or down and pick the best outcome. this could be really beneficial for adjusting each particular plant, as each one will obviously respond differently to the motors because each plant is a different size and shape.

once the fine-tuning is done, then it's build build build, to replicate the pots for all plants, which will mean finding 3 nice traditional pots from bunnings, which i saw on a recent materials-run for a low $16.67. the only problem is going to be how to drill and attach all the brackets and screws without it all poking out of the side of the pot. perhaps it will require a pot (plant) within a pot (mechanisms) within a pot (outer cover) !

proto-pot

we got a better motor and it's working pretty well.

now we have to build a pot to house all the equipment inside, as well as the plant itself.

we've commandeered a milk crate that was floating about in the warehouse as our proto-pot, so we can drill and attach things to it.

not waving, testing

this is a very basic testing of a pulley system now rigged up to 'TEST PLANT A' (the poor little guy is copping a battering as the main test subject), trying to see how well it elicits a SWAY and estimating the time needed to pull in each direction, and how much pause between each pulling motion is required.

we've tested with a motor now too and it works pretty well, so a quick materials run to jaycar gave us another motor, a quieter, smaller one to test, but it is malfunctioning for some reason. lunch has been called. jesse will swing by jaycar on this lunch run and take the motor back to be replaced.

above is the rig up for the SWAY motor. we've instructed it to spin in one direction for a set amount of time, pause, then spin back the other way. we'll do this for about 5 or 6 cycles, to set the plant into a swaying motion and then let it slowly return to a rest state.

i've rigged the plant up with some fishing line, protecting the plant trunk with a layer of gaffer, and then some extra gaffer to help hold the line in position. this will all be covered up, by a layer of soil above, so all the motors and pulleys will be hidden inside a 'basement' level between the visible top surface and the main soil level.

this image above is from a sketch on day 3, indicating the hidden basement setup. i'm thinking that the top layer could be stocking material. that way it can be adhered to the edge of the pot and to the trunk of the plant, a small layering of soil placed on top, and it can move around easily.

here we have put on a wheel to allow the nylon thread to wind around and then pull down on either side. works pretty well - just gotta get a better motor sorted out.

once this SWAY motor is done, we're back to having the 2 motion states (SWAY and SHUDDER) and all i need to do is make one of each, for each plant, and set them into a pot arrangement, all hidden away and invisible. and that'll be the mechanisms finished. once there, we can move on to coding the conditions by which they function.

thinking in pictures

i guess it's a consequence of being visual, as well as having the experience of travelling down dead-end paths because of poor planning, i always find there's an advantage in sketching out the ideas.

so, day 5, we're going to try and give the SWAY function a decent go, so we can at least have made every attempt to get 2 motion phases developed for the plants.

we'll give it our best shot and see what we can make happen. it's requiring a fair bit of pulley action, and motor activity, so hopefully we can keep all that hidden and quiet.

i think this is now hitting the mark in terms of 'the condition of the plants creating their behaviour'. way way back at the outline of the project my thoughts were that the plants would create their own light shows, their own symphonic choirs, based purely on the data of their conditions (light, temperature, voltage, motion) so this feels like it is matching that intention now.

self-directed internal network entertainment

more thinking through the issue, after some weird dreams during the night (a consequence of this focused lab intensity, no doubt):

the original concept of the project was for a network of plants to exhibit behaviours that are directed by their own condition.

at this stage of the medialab sprint we've pared down to the behaviour being movement. but we've yet to lock on to a suitable set of, or singular, condition. what i was thinking, apparently while i was sleeping, that the behaviours don't need, necessarily, a TRIGGER. the behaviours are merely reflective of CONDITION and this can be described by the actual steady states of the plants, without stimulus required at all.

for example: if we monitor the moisture levels of the plants. we could have the plants simply act if the data feed is in a particular range. on day 1 we built a moisture sensor that had a range of 0 - 1023, so we could have it that the plants SHIVER if one of them falls on a figure that's a multiple of 5. and we could have them wave, if one of them falls on a figure that ends in 0. in this way, they are reacting to the condition of their environment, but not being necessarily TRIGGERED by an active event. it allows for their own condition to be the TRIGGER.

and this could then be coupled with other sensor readings so that the collective condition is monitored and even the tiniest fluctuations in temperature, lighting or proximity could be used to elicit behaviours.

shed some light on the situation

ok, so it's important for this medialab project to find its focus and work toward an outcome.

one of the overarching limitations i have, working with plants, and especially working with the behaviours of plants, is that they have such a long-cycle of action. they take hours and hours, if not days and days, to elicit any real discernible actions.

this is totally cool in the grand scheme of things. and even in the very limited time frame of a traditional art exhibition - 3 to 6 weeks, this is also fine. in that scenario i can envisage a project going for that long, that also has a documented record of the show as it goes, which would enable the viewer to see perhaps something like a timelapse history of the plant behaviours. or, the other thing that interests me, is for the occasional plant activities to then set in motion other activities beyond themselves (for example, to have them make trades on the stock exchange).

for this project it's important to produce an outcome at the end and i would like to have a completed work that demonstrates the 'networked behaviours of technologically augmented plant bodies'.

the key is to decide what TRIGGER sets the plants in motion, literally. i have been working toward providing the plants with an ability to move (SHIVER and WAVE) but am yet to decide what it is that makes them do it. the easy answer is to have the proximity of humans do it. but that's been done a lot and isn't really pushing any new ground. for me, i'm most interested to have the plants operate so that they respond to each other. but here again we run up against the problem of their limited action range, and the context of this project being a very short time frame.

in wondering about how to shed some light on the project, and after talking to jesse today, i looked up 'environmental triggers for plants' and it was obvious the importance of light.

let there be light!

this enables the plants to react to fairly common environmental conditions, as varying light levels are easily achieved and often only ever restricted for the benefit of an art display. which means in this case, light levels will be encouraged to be more naturally fluctuating.

additionally it offers the chance for humans, should they wish to prod the plants into action, to shine something on a plant and also participate in affecting the network. they aren't being the sole effector, but they can be a component.

the natural light of the sun is the natural source of energy for the plants, why not let it be the natural source of energy for their newly augmented mobility? and humans, with their clever ways of harnessing energy and producing their own lights, can also participate.

what would be nice too, would be for that to be the trigger of the movement in the plants, and then to allow that movement to then dictate the pattern of behaviour that washes through the network afterwards, such that the network internally coordinates itself as a consequence.

shiver code

also known as SHUDDER code...

missing some of the randomness - will post later.

victoria, the shiver state

ok, so we've tried ways of getting the WAVE state to work and it's proving difficult. we used a 'servo' motor which gave us a really great effect but which is really quite noisy. check out the video below (featuring technical guru and all right nice guy, jesse) -

we made some modifications so that the servo motor stepped up in incremental degrees, rather than zipping all the way up in one direction in one hit and this helped with the noise.

but our problem is also trying to mount 2 different motors to the plant and pot. especially with one pushing the plant (to SHIVER) and one pulling it (to WAVE). this is a mega pity because having the 2 motions was very exciting. but for now we'll strip back down to the original single motion state (SHIVER).

i've refined the SHIVER state with a bit randomness for extra organic flavour.

shiver and wave and collective conditions

so we've been able to play around with the motor so that it can produce two motion effects:
1. SHIVER
2. WAVE

at least for now, hereafter referred to as SHIVER state, and WAVE state.

the SHIVER state is quite fun and pretty much set, using a solenoid producing a rapid piston motion against the base of the plant (protected by some rubber). the WAVE state works ok with the solenoid, but we think maybe using muscle memory wire will create a more organic pulling effect, which results in a more freely swaying plant (rather than the more robotic regularity of the solenoid).

i like this use of 2 states of action because it feels like it starts to increase the complexity of the network. obviously starting in a prototype build phase we're trying to keep things simple and basic, providing a foundation from which to develop. and so far we have:

 - 3 identical plants, as representative of a network
 - motion as the defined behaviour
 - no defined trigger events
 - no pattern for continued network behaviour

already with this new development i can include 2 types of motion into the network, providing options for the plant behaviours.

interestingly, as a project under the theme of 'bodies', these actions are coming across as anthropomorphic, with the shiver state eliciting a sense of discomfort (like a shuddering or cowering effect, aside from the obvious chilly shivering) and a wave state evoking relaxed swaying or attention attracting (look over here!). having these motion options will enable a broader set of patterns to be built up.

also, i'm still trying to work through what the trigger is for the action among the plants. i'm wondering if perhaps i could monitor the collective network by taking a running average of conditions (humidity/temperature/voltage/light), and then if any one member of the network falls above/below the running average by a certain factor (say, 10%), then that is the plant that becomes the 'control' plant that triggers the others. this could also define which type of motion is elicited.

sketching out the idea of a running group average above. the more plants the better for this network, and i'm still toying with whether it is exclusively one type of plant, or many. (again, these go beyond the prototype stage, but are just ways of thinking through the options).

there's holes in this theory - the biggest being how to bring the 'control' plant back into equilibrium.

pulsating plants

success!

we've just built a prototype motor that we can use to trigger the motion of a plant. there's some refinement now required, and some customisation to allow its attachment to the plant, but it's a great step.

some technical wizadry above from jesse - i'm following along to the best of ability, learning about earthed cables, running voltage converters to change 240v down to 12v, using potentiometers to allow variations in the conditions etc etc ... some of it's sticking into my head ... some is still gobble-dee-gook ... but it's pretty awesome fun! those knobs at the bottom right, one adjusts the pause time between each pulse, the other adjusts the length of the pulse.

here's the coding we wrote - well, jesse dictated and explained each line to me, and i typed it into the software (arduino) -

and here's the very first Plant Motor we've just rigger together - 

shaking it up

laying out the next steps - which consist of identifying the correct type of solenoid/actuators to attach, how to attach them and how to hide them, and how to make them function quietly and when we want them to (by setting the conditions with which they can behave without any human input).

this second image is from jesse - explaining out the process for networking the plants together, so that they can both talk to each other, and hear from each other. this can be run through the same communication line (a connection point in the arduino board can work for input and for output). so i can have one plant move, which it then tells the other plants 'hey guys, i'm moving', and they can all hear that and decide if/when they should also move.

again, jesse's tech drawing explanation for my novice little mind.

twitchy plants

have to find ways to stop the ticky noise of the actuator (that's the little motor-like machine that works kinda like a piston, pushing a pin in and out of a barrel. it's that pin we've got pushing against the plant).

more sketches

this last sketch is thinking out an idea about how to make a network of plants behave collectively, and to keep 'behaving' but also allowing them a chance to rest, or to achieve a resting state.

the general plan now is that one plant starts the process (a variety of trigger options are being considered including high or low temperature, lack of water, even presence of a human) and causes the rest of the network to twitch. then, the last plant to stop swaying and come to rest, is the plant that causes the rest of the network to twitch. and then, again, the last one to come to rest, is the one that causes the rest of the network to twitch.... and so on and so on. this way the plants are always twitching, and they set the conditions of the pattern of behaviour.

there'll need to be a resting point though, so they don't go on twitching 24/7.