Input/Output - Interactive Proposal

Initially, I wanted to create an installation similar to Jelly Swarm at the Vancouver Aquarium. My version of it would include paper lanterns, which would either hang from the ceiling or be dispersed on the floor, and would react to a user's body movement in a specified room. Specifically, I wanted the colors of the lanterns to change as you walked closer and further away from them. For example, if you stood under them, they would appear purple, but as you move further away, they would become red or blue.

I didn't see anything wrong with this idea, but I ended up talking to Bryan about another MADT project I was working on, and he said that it was okay to do the same one as long as it is amped up since I am doing it both with a partner, Alice, and also for two different classes. The concept behind this project is creating a cityscape (we were thinking of downtown Calgary) which would light up the more noise there is in a room. Alongside this, there would be stars above the city, which would do the opposite and glow in the absence of noise.

I had a mock-drawing made for this project before Alice and I sorted out some of the finer details of what exactly we wanted to create. (By this, I mean we had not yet settled on using Calgary as a reference). If we really wanted to be ambitious, we could attempt to create a reflection in a body of water but we could have to talk about it further because that would require dimming the lights and syncing them up to mirror the city perfectly.

I am unsure if it comes across clearly in the diagram, but the city would light up in a similar way that equalizer bars bounce in some dj music videos (example shown below). Alice compared it to when the scream canisters from Monsters Inc fill up, which is what we are also going for

One of the main inspirations for this was Jie Qi's piece, Dandelion Painting. I was particularly fascinated by the use of lights in a drawing and wanted to do something along the same lines. Alice on the other hand, was interested in doing a project that revolved around the use of sound from an audience.

For this project, some supplies I figure we may need are:

- Addressable LED's
- Cable (we're not using copper tape because we want to program the LED's to fade and change colors)
- Paper (we will likely get this at the bookstore, as they have large sheets of 40 x 60 inch)

- Ink (another bookstore item)
- Mic sensor of some sort (I want to see if we have this in our toolkit, if not, I want to check AV services then I'll look for some online)

- Battery pack (from Dollarama) so we can turn everything on without running a wire

Initially, I was visioning this work done on a canvas but after seeing how Jie Qi did her piece, we figured it might have been a big nicer to work with paper. Regarding the other supplies, I've already ordered some more LED's and cable, so I just have to wait for them to come in. I don't plan on ordering a mic quite yet, as I am unsure as to what exactly I need to search for. While doing some research on mic sensors, I came across a guide that explained some different types of sensors, but I realized pretty quickly it wasn't very in depth. In our case, we want to use a mic sensor to make sound-sensitive lights. The guide I came across had a code example, but I looked further and found another website that had an example that was set up differently. The only thing I didn't like about the examples was the fact they were both set up to react as a threshold. For our project, we were hoping that we could fade the LED's in and out by different volumes of sound rather than turn them on and off. 

(I found this image on one of the guides, but I would have to change some of the outputs to fit with the LED's)

Some concerns about this project I have so far is being able to support and hide the Arduino, as it is a bit thick. My current idea to get around this is building a frame out of wood to put behind both pieces of paper (as they would be sandwiched relatively together with paper spacers most likely). Part of this idea was maybe using velcro to secure the two pieces together, but I am not sure if that would compromise the integrity of the paper, etc. In my mind, hiding the Arduino and wiring of thicker components is going to be the hardest part of this assignment (besides the coding).