Saurabh Levin
From Wiki
7th july: We began with a discussion which helped us become aware of some aspects of the project,such as what we, as designers, could contribute to it,and even political aspects of it. after this we looked at some of the work of the composer(?) david dunn and how his work,though not obviously so,actually had implications in science. This helped to get us thinking about how our work would have similar implications, and how we could bridge the perceived gap between the artistic and scientific worlds. a couple of interesting questions came up in the course of these discussions, such as how, perhaps, we don't have an ingrained sense of aesthetic(or ethics,even),but rather one which is developed due to societal and cultural factors. we then began to do a little work with processing, getting the hang of the basics so we could eventually proceed to use this new medium in interesting ways,which probably haven't been explored by non-artists. Spent a few(non-class,of course) hours thinking about how perfect this course was, due to to my interest in both art and science.
Research: land art:art movement in the late 60's.landscape and art inextricably linked.
Pauline Oliveros:postwar electronic art music;"deep listening","sonic awareness" murray schaffer:soundscapes,schizophonia chomsky:generative grammar light pollution:measurable effects on human health,ecosystems air pollutants:SO2,NO2,S.P.M,Lead,CO,R.P.M
8th-9th july:'
Practising Processing:
lines,primitives,loops,loading images and files
Arduino Board: blinking led,sending commands through processing,controlling the led with keys
however,i'm still not confident working with either,as so far i've been depending a lot upon what's given to us in the reference section.
13th July:' I think i've finally made a little headway in getting the hang of processing. I no longer merely copy scripts from the reference and change a few values arbitrarily and hope for good results. i actually did,in a dramatic break with tradition,manage to get the "load image with text" exercise on the first try! did a little research on pollutants in bangalore, standards and levels. for some reason all this time i was under the impression that our whole project had already been mapped out for us, but learned that it isn't as easy as i had assumed it to be(which,as i looked at it,was a good thing. a general lack of information, though that is what we're trying to correct,is proving to be a fair bit of an annoyance. Viktor's presentation was a great help, as it showed us what all we could possibly be doing with this project, and also gave me a great deal more clarity as to what our goal actually is.
14th July Attempted finding a little information about the pollutant levels in bangalore,and the standards as set by the kspcb. Interestingly,the same website managed to provide us with conflicting information regarding the standards(link in the main page and [1]).
Getting our approximate schedule for the next 2 months sort of relieved me. Didn't really relish the thought of practising processing mindlessly for the next 8 weeks.
Began experimenting a bit with processing once i figured out how to do the given assignment. got the map exercise done and then tried whatever other random commands i could find,such as arrays and stuff.
While what i did may not necessarily deserve a place in my portfolio, at least i got a better hang of processing through this.Am enjoying myself a great deal in the process as well.has been long since i got into this mode of thinking,and kept getting reminded of my experimentations with alternate/simpler methods and solutions for our ISC-level maths problems. As I attempted to wade through the seemingly-neverending 105page long "manifesto", i returned to our thoughts from the discussion on the first day,about how we,as artists,need to "initiate a rethinking",and allow people access to information they are being denied, or being forced to overlook .This, the political aspect, in fact is the aspect of this project that i think i am most excited about. It seems thrilling to be working on something that has the potential to be touching the lives of millions of people around the planet.
15th July Attempted again to finish the 100-odd page readings give to us.did i manage? not half. though again expereinced brief periods of enlightenment as to what we were supposed to be doing. as did links provided to us like the "pigeon blog". Victor joined us to speak about his projects."in the air"etc.
16th July More work with arduino/processing.getting the hang of both now,somewhat.the fact that i still don't have a computer,is,however,hampering any process i might be making.
20th July Met Mark today,who told us about his DIY projects,and gave us an introduction to basic circuitry.Did some really amazing stuff(which i didn't know was so easy to do) with light sensors,rudimentary speakers,and a multimeter.didn't do a great deal of serious work(eg:testing the resistance of my tongue/head/beard),but while i was just playing with the tools we had i also started thinking about various(perhaps far-fetched) projects that i could be doing, including some half-baked ideas involving using the static electricity(at one point i recalled some old-wives tale about how the human body has a natural potential across it's ends,which other human beings can detect) in the human body in large-scale environmental campaigns,or simply to freak people out.
The circuit-making and messing around with electronics was a nice return to the mucking around i used to do during my physics classes(and otherwise). then,however,i never bothered thinking much about what more i could do with the tools at my disposal.it was great getting out of the closed mindset i had then.the course(not to mention the evening workshop) helped me understand a great deal better how the stuff worked as i could actually see it happening.Not to mention that there were lot of creative things i could do with my limited knowledge rather than just lecturing someone else about how a potentiometer(or whatever) works.not that i ever did that either,actually.
21st July Today was one of my periodic space-out days.something was happening regarding turning our laptops into local servers,which i couldn't do as dell's trying it's hardest to be a pain in the wrong part and deliver my laptop as late as possible. In the afternoon did more messing about with circuits and ldr's.
22nd July
Spent the day trying to upload information onto pachube.We created a rudimentary electronic "weatherman",which was basically a thinly desguised light sensor,which we kept in the open so it could detect sunlight.If it was cloudy,the numbers being uploaded would fall,and if sunny,they would rise.was pretty lost while looking at pachube as i couldn't work on it on my own,due largely to my technical ineptitidue and also as i STILL haven't got a laptop.
though i wasn't able to get the pachube working on my own,it was pretty cool seeing how the data we were collecting was being uploaded (almost) instananeously onto a forum which everyone could view.
Had a "solder party" at CEMA,which at first sounded dubiously like a geek-only affair. then realized,perhaps that was a fact i comfirmed about myself the moment i took this course.oh well....no complaints there,however. Was pretty interesting anyway...creating "musical" instruments (sound generators would probably be a safer definition,to avoid lenghty debates about what kind of noise qualifies as music)out of easily available(and cheap)parts.not to forget,there were free samosas. Also managed to understand the principles behind the circuit...for a fleeting microsecond,though.just so long as no one asks me to explain it to them. Also worked on giving a form for the container of the circuit.
23rd July Worked a bit with our sensor and pachube.tried to disguise the sensor in a massive sun-like thing made out of wire. Discussed our project with the scientists....
27th July As a part of the whole "hackteria" thing,we spent most of today on using the webcams to make microscopes,and then observing various specimens of microorganisms using these.we then mucked around a bit with the lego pieces that were lying around,and managed to make a pretty smooth focussing mechanism with them.
28th July Spent the day collecting samples from around yelahanka and then observing them under our homemade microscopes.unfortunately,perhaps as a result of the pollution in the area(first theory),there wasn't much life in the water for us to observe. although(second theory),it could just be that we weren't patient enough to hang around and observe the samples long enough to be able to find whatever we were looking for. and(third theory),our microscopes weren't nearly powerful enough.maybe. but,despite the morning heat,it was a pretty cool experience.(i just reread this.the terrible pun was unintended)
29th July again,a large amount of time was spent on doing nothing significant.wanted to do some more electronics hacking/whatever other cool ideas mark had,but instead ended up spending the whole day uploading videos and pictures of the previous day. Discussed a bit about our project.began wondering if we had enough time to finish it,and if the whole hackteria thing had been just a pointless,albeit an extremely interesting, distraction.
30th July discussed the various proposals as to what our final projects(installations with the sensors)were going to be.a number of interesting ideas were discussed. then had a sort of "jam session" with whatever instruments we had made the previous week.pointless again,but whatte fun. on reflection though,the whole hackteria thing was far from useless,or from being merely a distraction.i'm considerably less intimidated by electronics,for starters,and i guess it did open my mind to whole new world of possibilities which i'd never considered before.may not have helped directly with our project,or maybe i just haven't thought enough about that yet.
3rd-9th August Finally started with the ideating.Now ust need to get down to the actual work. but a number of really interesting ideas were discussed.like deboo's "chimeaira",and even dhruv's petroleum jelly idea,which,though not being considered at the moment,would be something interesting to work on on our own. also decided which projects we would be working on individually.initially thought of doing the general programming and circuit building for all the groups,so that i would get to work on all of the projects.But as it turned out,there wasn't actually very much for me to do,so i decided to work with the "Smoke Signal" project.
interesting sites(also in our project link):[2];link title;[3]
3rd August Rustam came and spoke to us today.Raised questions about who we want our audience to be,results we're aiming for and possible methods. I'm not sure if anything new came out of his talk,but instead seemed a sort of re-iteration of everything we'd already discussed.but that's not to say it didn't help, as it gave us a lot more clarity as to our projects,and as we tried to answer these questions(which we'd forgotten as we got caught up with the more technical spect of our project)a form seemed to appear. However,is it right for us to use the more effective methods to spread our message,if they aren't necessarily ethical? just a thought(Perhaps worth keeping in mind when considering any project),after Rustam started talking about sending little distressed kids around to make people feel guilty.
4th August
started working with the "Smoke Signal" project today.my original plan was to not join any paarticular group and just do the general programming/circuitry+other miscellaneous work for all the groups,so that i'd get to work with all the projects.then realized that there was actually very little work to do like this,and i wasn't particularly good with arduino stuff anyway.
concept:
(refer to the "Smoke Signal" link on the main page as well)
-idling at a signal results in a great deal of pollutants being released into the atmosphere,wasted fuel among other things, with no advantage whatsoever.
-restarting car engines releases less pollutants than 10seconds of idling.
therefore,convince people to switch off their engines at signals.easier said than done,i suppose,as people seem to have an inexplicable urge to exit from a signal as fast as they possibly can,and therefore keep their engines running to give them that nanosecond of an advantage.
-so,ask them,very politely to switch off their engines(which,hopefully,they'll do).
-a pollution detector placed at the signal records the pollution levels and relays the data to a large led display.
-led display shows the drop in pollutant levels in the area as a result of them performing this commonsense action.
-people feel happy about making a change,go home, hopefully think very deeply about this, and join greenpeace.
or at least,they'll stop idling.
5th+6th August Did some research for our project.a number of interesting facts came up.for eg,the timers placed at signals actually resulted in people switching their engines off until the lights changed.tried to find out on which roads our installation would be most effective at(had to keep in mind the audience,usage etc) tried figuring out our circuit...couldn't get the lcd screen to work for a long time.
11th August Put information about our project up on the wiki.Also did a little work on presentation,for this thursday.tried to do a little work on processing,as i've become slightly rusty at it now. An annoyingly large amount of time was spent on bringing this page up to date,actually. Reflection of the day? updating regularly actually isn't that much of a headache.as compared with doing it after 1 and-a-half weeks
12th August
Did a little more research for our project. it turned out that we didn't really have any reliable source of information as whether it was true or not that idling for a few seconds was more polluting than switching off your engines.turns out that it is true,but only after a 30second interval.
Made the circuit for the led board+gas sensor again,and improved on it,by cleaning it up a bit and adding the bars on the display.
13th August
worked a little on making a cover for our sensor, to hide the ugly circuitry and other nonsense.Tried to make a form out of it,just to make it seem more interesting, but decided to chuck that idea as we realized that it wouldn't really add too much to our prototype to give it a vague form not entirely related to our concept, especially since our project is really direct.
Some images:
17th-20th August
Nothing much happened this week,aside from some fine-tunings on our project.
finished hiding the prototype in a box,and made a presentation for the scientists,whom we met on thursday.the feedback was pretty good,but until now,we were under the impression that our job was to concentrate more on the device itself,rather than the interface.
though of course,we would need to,but by assuming our main goal was to finish with the sensor,this goal got sidelined a bit.ah well...we have another 3 weeks for that.
some screenshots from our presentation(made on prezi):
25th August
Spent the day running from one end of the city to the other attempting to get information/permission for our project.Obviously, we didn't really succeed at this, as there seems to be a really well thought out system to prevent anyone from receving any information whatsoever.,by making us wonder if it's worth any of the trouble.
Procedure:
Go to police station
Ask if we can check out the traffic control room, since it's "open to public".
Discover that it is open to public,but we still need a pass, and permission from 20 different people
wait for someone to bring us our passes(as he said he'd do),then realize we have to go lug it ourselves.
Go meet the public relations officer, who directs us to the main dcp.
Wait till he comes, then find out that we need to wait for the traffic dcp, who works in shivajinagar, and who'll be coming to the police station for a 2 hour meeting before he leaves for lunch,goes to shivajinagar and returns again, and yada yada yada.In short,there's an approximately 15min long window where he's free to meet us during the day, and he could be in either shivajinagar or infantry road.(I was drawing strange real-world analogies to quantum mecahnical phenomena at this point).
Go to shivajinagar,find he's not there,come back to infantry road, realize that he left "jesht 5 minutes back", feel stupid.
Ask pco if there's anyone else we can ask, get shouted at about whether the "crime lab can supply information about traffic" and how bangalore's not going to be sitting in one place waiting for us, and only he does that(the sitting around part,not the waiting).
Though we did accomplish something at the end of this....we went and tested our sensor at the signal near st mark's cathedral. It does work with traffic, it turns out.Although,not perfectly....our sensor was displaying only a narrow range of values, and was changing pretty erratically depending on the number of cars in the immediate vicinity.
So we'll definitely need more than one sensor, and we'll have to make them slightly more sensitive(little program tweaking).
Did a little surveying of the area, there's already an l.e.d board,but don't think anyone's going to let us use that. will need more than one board,also. Or vehicles right at the back won't be able to see what's happening,thanks to the trees.
we'll also have to think about the placement of the sensors.To get decent readings(by decent,i mean high enough to get people concerned),the sensor needs to be placed really close to the source. getting that close to the exhausts may be difficult.
26th-27th August Created our group on facebook,and a poll. people will join,hopefully.Probably the first step in our whole publicity thing.The questionnairre was a bit general, but i guess it'll do for now. unfortunately hadn't planned beforehand on the questions....but it's probably better that it isn't specific only to "smoke signal" can't do much other work until we get our l.e.d board,though.
1st,2nd and 4th September
Got the l.e.d board,so tried working with it. didn't get much further than taking it apart and looking at the circuit, however. Programming it with the arduino may be too difficult for us to deal with, as we aren't adept enough with programming, and even the sample programs for multiple l.e.ds online looked extremely complex.
so we satisfied ourselves with just sending some text about pollution scrolling through the display. Not sure if it's even necessary to make an other prototype though,as we'll need a much larger board anyway.
The project seems to be going really slowly,however.started wondering if we'd ever get round to finishing anything by next week's deadline.
true,we've got our prototype working somewhat, but we still need to do a lot for the event...fairly certain no one's going to want to work on this once the course is done,also.
8th September
Went to brigade road today with the t-shirt group again to promote the project and increase awareness a bit.
don't know if it was a success or a failure....we got a few opinions, email id's and some pretty valid feedback (not to mention quite a few befuddled stares), but did pretty sketchy documentation so the whole exercise seemed kind of pointless.which was really ridiculous, considering we had criticized the tshirt group for their badly-documented previous effort.
we walked around the brigade road area for awhile, dhruv and i wearing the tshirts.i covered mine after about an hour,as it didn't really seem to be adding anything to the whole event as we kept splitting up(stupidly, i thought),and ,what the hell,i was embarrassed as shit,what with me looking like an old woman.
people seemed a little reluctant to approach us though,as we were walking around in such a huge group,but it could also be that the location we picked wasn't perfect.everyone was too caught up in whatever they were doing to be bothered with another group of flyer-handing,notepad-carrying nuts(there're enough of them on church street,during the day). Perhaps a park or a mall,where people are more likely to have time to humour us.
Also,We really should have had a website running by around this time...giving other people our email id isn't actually going to achieve very much, since they have no way of knowing whether we're actually doing anything relevant.
Either way,at least people have heard of etc.bangalore now.Air pollution,anyhow.though it still seems to be as plausible as the yeti for some.
anyway...guess my fears about completing this project weren't completely unfounded. I'd want to see this through, so i actually have no issue with working on Smoke Signal alongside my other work.
9th September
No one mailed us.eurgh.
though,couldn't really expect them to. Might get some response once we've spammed them a bit.
Our "etc.bangalore" character on facebook also needs a bit of work....right now he just exists,and is making friends.well,that's a start.It's much easier to update other people,hence get their involvement,from such a space.
Was reading an interesting article in a New Scientist yesterday....it was about combating global warming (and trying to make people more environment conscious, generally), and a number of experiments that were performed to figure out the best method. Sample point: Apparently, people are more receptive when they are provided the information negatively. e.g, saying that they will lose upto 10,000$ within the next 10 years if they don't start doing something about it now was more effective than telling them that they could could gain a similar amount from performing the right action.
10th September
Uploaded more of our Smoke Signal stuff onto facebook, just so that etc.bangalore has some purpose in life. No one else's added anything though,so though whole idea seems kind of pointless. People i know have had enough of us harping about our project, and we aren't going to get much more support unless it seems like we're serious about this whole thing. Which, perhaps, not everyone is.
The reading about "an end to movements" had some pretty cool points...how effective is our,er,"movement" going to be? it's probably come to point where everyone's saturated with having to support apparently meaningful(and sometimes non-existent) causes so that, despite how sincere we might be, unless we change our method, we may not be too successful at making much of an impact.
not sure i got the point about them being functionally indistinguishable though...except perhaps at the most basic level.but is it all that difficult to determine the ideals behind a movement?if so,is there an alternative way of creating public involvement?
"Our natural ability to interact and cooperate with each other has been reduced, by design."-interesting quote,from one of the responses.not directly lnked to the project,but yeah.
Just saw some of the responses to the poll we'd created on our group:
also,some comments:
But then again...most of the people who responded to this survey are people who are pretty environmentally conscious,and young...so we may not really have got a very true picture of what the rest of bangalore thinks. Especially if the responses to us walking around on brigade road are anything to go by.
14th September
More finishing touches to our product.Had to cheat a bit as we couldn't program the L.E.D display; we just put in the sample text,acted like it was attached to our sensor, and made a highly edited video with all this. Well, not our final product, but our proposal for it anyway.
Video link:[4]
Also had to redo whatever documentation we had done of the whole brigade road exercise. redoing involved a bit of cheating,of course. just took a few clearer pictures of the tshirts,which will later be photoshopped to look like we'd been roaming around the streets in the night. Well.whatever,would be ridiculous if someone had ethical issues with this.
Reflections:
After being in this course for 2 and a half months, there would be a fair number of learnings to reflect on....here's a pretty concise list of the same:
-basic programming and electronics....other basic tools
-DIY and hacking...how amazing stuff can be done with a really basic knowledge of the sciences.also,this was of sorts an introduction for me into experimental art
-got over my fear of messing with technology,a bit :)
-Pollution: it's relevance,dealing with it;reflections on the general public, and dealing with them as well....
-References to the similarity between dealing with various bureaucratic processes, and the proverbial "talking to a wall" aren't completely unfounded,as the little episode in the police station taught us. Though talking to something inanimate is slightly less tiring,come to think of it.
-Understanding our roles as designers in projects like these(+ more "what is a designer?" kind of questions that keep cropping up now and then)
-What's ethical? When is a cause "relevant", or "good"?and what actions does it then justify,in working towards it?
-Science and art,despite their apparently polar nature, aren't completely incompatible, as my previously naive notion was.
