Excuse the mess
Final playtest during class presentation
Final playtest during class presentation
I was inspired by art as a therapeutic experience in sound and textures. With this project, I wanted to explore how I can combine these sensory experiences in a physical computing project as a challenge for myself.
Here’s my research blog.
I originally named it ‘soft sculpture’ because I planned for it to be a standing sculpture that people can walk by and interact with.
The sculpture would make a loud static noise when someone walks nearby, and when touched, it would make a softer more calming static noise.
The original proposal was to include DC motors inside a hollow structure that would make ASMR-type noises (with noisy materials i.e. plastic bags, paper) using human touch via capacitive sensors layered outside and surrounding the sculpture.
The sculpture was to be wrapped in a soft tufted rug, to compel people to want to feel and touch the sculpture.
It later (very very late) changed into a hanging sculpture because I was inspired by a line in Design as Art that challenged my idea of a standing sculpture. It never occurred to me that it didn’t need to stand and could be a hanging sculpture instead if all I wanted was for the average person to see it at eye-level and touch or hug it.
The fabrication process of this project really helped me realize how I need to be better at time management and planning out precise details ahead of time. Deciding to make a hanging sculpture so close to the deadline left me with very little time to rethink the noise component.
I did not give myself enough time to experiment with how the motors would sound with limited space while surrounded by stuffing and a very thick exterior.
As for the tufting, I really enjoyed making the tufted rug and the colors are very pleasing to me. It was nice to work with my hands again, and it reminded me of how much I used to love to knit as a kid.
Here’s a link to the GH repository I uploaded all the code I used while researching this project:
https://github.com/iguannalin/soft-sculptures
This is the final code I uploaded to the Arduino Nano for my project presentation: