Monday, October 26, 2009

Frustration

So over the entire weekend I was thinking about this project. Sunday night I began to wonder why the group wasn't in touch at all. Turns out I didn't get a single one of the emails this weekend, probably because we are still using the group email from my group's previous project and my name must have not added in correctly.
Today I found out from Chris that we had a meeting last night. I'm still out of the loop about what exactly will be going on now. I think everyone is frustrated and upset. I am especially frustrated and upset because I am completely disconnected from the project and the group at this point.
Hopefully I will have forwarded emails in the next hour or so to give me an idea of what is even going on at this point.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Images and brainstorming



So the thing we've been spending a significant amount of time on tonight is brainstorming uses and potential scales our surfaces can be used at.
We're also working on renderings and diagrams that we can show tomorrow.
Group work tonight has started in two separate teams. Alyssa, Brieana, and I are in the BT Lab working on computer things and Damine, Neil, and Eric are starting the assembly, which we will be joining soon.
I am really excited to see everything come together tonight.

Monday, October 12, 2009

Work this week












We've been working away at our first real smart surface.
The goal is to use water or air as a way to create an interactive surface that in- and deflates. The intent is to use this surface for many different things. It can serve as a device to store thermal energy. During the night, when there is no energy available from the sun, the pockets will be deflated. As solar energy available during the day increases, the bubbles will inflate and the fluid inside the bubbles will begin to collect energy. At this point, our intention becomes a bit blurred. There is disagreement on whether the bubbles should deflate periodically, releasing the heated up fluid to use as an energy source in a remote location, or whether the bubbles act only as a thermal mass or container to warm up a space, and deflate at night time to release heat into adjacent spaces. This disagreement spawned some arguing during a group meeting yesterday. My belief is that it doesn't really matter. The exact use of these smart surfaces should be flexible anyways and we shouldn't be commiting our projects to one specific and exact use. This may not apply to all the projects, but to me it makes a lot more sense to have a clear vision on how the surface will function, and not necessarily exactly where and when.
Tonight we will be pulling together the last pieces of the final project. There is a presentation Powerpoint that needs to be made, and final assembly has to occur.
This has been a hard week for all of us. We're tired, and I know I've been extremely cranky and unmotivated for some reason. I am hoping that finishing this project and having a long weekend to take a deep breath will refresh everyone and get us all excited about the final projects.

Friday, October 9, 2009

Little Projects

Finally a post on all the things we've done so far.
Week 3 we were already making complex things. Like a device that can track and follow a light source. It is really incredible what a group of six people is able to accomplish in one week, not having known one another at all just a short while ago.
I think the most amazing part of this class for me is the way in which we are pushed to do truly amazing things in a very short period of time by combining our skills. We have accomplished tasks I never thought we would be able to.
So after the individual lamp project we worked on this light tracking device. I had a really positive group experience, we all worked really well together. And our device ended up working, too.
However, I realized that the thing we don't plan for always take at least as long as the things that we do. We assembled our light tracking device relatively quickly but spent a lot of time testing and refining it.
This happened again in Week 3, when we had to test and refine the way our heliotropic device worked. I'm sure it will also occur again this week.
This is the reason prototyping is so important. I think what we all need to learn is to stop thinking and start building. This is something that doesn't come up in just this class for me. It's something I think all of us (maybe especially the artists and architects) struggle with. Getting past the concept and actually having something in your hands.
Week 3's device, which tracked the sun throughout the day and reflected its rays with mirrors onto a solar cell, was a really enjoyable challenge. I think my team split up the work really well. In the end, we came out with a well functioning device. Problems of mechanics were solved quickly and efficiently by all team members throwing out ideas. The code was done by the engineers, we did lasercutting and assembly, and troubleshooting together or in small teams.
I think this class is not only valuable for the knowledge we are all acquiring from one another, but for learning to interact productively with people in other disciplines. I think the most fun and interesting part for me is to learn to talk about architectural ideas so that engineers and artists can understand it, and I am sure that the others feel the same way when they have to explain to me how Arduino stuff works.