Category: Flog

When it came to crafting our Makey-Makey Etch-a-Sketch, Lillian and I ran into the most trouble figuring out how to make the buttons true to a real Etch-a-Sketch. We wanted to find a way to make only two buttons that would turn and move the pen left/right for the left button and one that made the pen move up and down on the right side. Unfortunately, we failed to find a way to make that happen because it would require splitting the button in half so that it could be controlled by two different clamps of the Makey-Makey, but then that would not be able to turn like a dial. We tried to make the buttons out of stacked mirror circles we found at DACE, but we’d have to find a way to cut them in half. We did not have the proper tools to safely cut glass in half, so we couldn’t do that. It would also look really odd to have a button split in half on both sides. Either way, that’s still technically four buttons so we decided to skip all those extra steps and have four buttons. Another problem we had during the class demonstration (and never before that) was that the pen was skipping random spots while we were controlling it. I’m not sure why that is, and Lillian couldn’t figure out why either. My only guess is the clamps were connected better when we tested them or something.

Another fail is that we never considered using the controls to navigate to the top of the Microsoft paint menu and pick different pen colors. I guess we didn’t think about that because it is not a feature of the Etch-a-Sketch. So if we wanted to make it an authentic experience, we’d probably make sure that users aren’t afforded the chance to pick colors other than black. Or we could highlight that feature as a modern take on the Etch-a-Sketch and keep it available. If we did that, though, we’d want to create a button or color wheel that can do that on the box interface.

By Julia S.

Unfortunately, this week, my flog upload is about the fact that I fell ill with an upper respiratory virus that left me sick for most of the week and left me unable to do much of my work. This means I was unable to work on hack #1 because I couldn’t even muster up the energy to work on it because I had fever and more. I also forgot to upload the flog for this week because I was feeling so sick, but better late than never…

It can be tricky getting started with Makey Makey – as some people experienced during the in-class present session, the kit is not easy to set up and you have to find certain ways to trigger it. It took me some time to find out the way that works in my project. At first I don’t know how to connect the panel, earth(me) and the object, I tried several times and finally realized the best way is to hold the Earth by my fingers. I also tried to connect a wire to a foil wrist band I tied to myself, but it didn’t seem to work as good as the hand. When it comes to the idea of my project, I did brainstormed a couple of ideas and the way to make them, but I have had problem choosing between those so I ended up turn to a new idea that is not one of the former and got to work. The physical part of my project is a doll, so the material of the doll became substantial. Electric can’t conduct via the traditional heat-resist wig, the only worked material is Alpaca wig after multi experiments(thanks to my friend aka the doll’s owner for providing all the product I need).

The rest part is relatively easy but I still stuck when I was deciding what conversation I’m going to design. One thing inspired me is the video game Talking Tom Cat. In the game when you touch some part of the cat he’ll have some really funny reactions and I found that so interesting when I was young. It made me feel like he was alive and was actually responding to you. Thus I chose to do those short but lively sentences that can show the personality of the doll. However, the limited amount of sentences make me feel bored quickly, I changed one of the sentences into a question so we can interact with the doll. I hope I could make it more functional, but I’m not super good with Snap! so I believe there’s a huge space of improvement to consummate.

This week I really struggled with the Makey Makey. While making our hack, my partner and I ran into numerous problems with the ‘click’ feature glitching out. Sometimes it was helpful, like with selecting colors which was a surprise feature even to us, but for the most part it just caused problems. The only way to fix it was to unclamp the alligator clip and then reclamp it, and I wish I knew more about what was actually going on internally. If I had more time to investigate the issue, I would have used a keylogger to see what the Makey Makey was sending to the computer. I don’t know if that would have actually helped, but since we were dealing with a clicking issue it may have been useful information.  

Another problem we ran into was coding the key input sequence for the clear function. We tried a few methods before eventually using AutoHotKey. This program created an executable that was running in the background to send the additional keystrokes and it seemed to contribute towards the clicking issue. It definitely wasn’t the sole contributor, as the ‘skipping’ the clicking was doing was present with and without the script running. 

We also struggled a lot with coming up with a feasible idea for our first hack. There were definitely a few phases of ideation that happened and it took quite a while to actually settle on our final idea. It was hard to get a good grasp on what was possible when we were having issues with the Makey Makey itself and also weren’t sure of its full potential. I’m glad I found the AutoHotKey program, because otherwise we probably wouldn’t have done the Etch A Sketch and I think the Etch A Sketch turned out really well and any alternatives would have been less polished.

With my first hack I really tried to embrace the many failures. Initially, I had a good plan on how I would write the code in Python, but I no longer had the Python language on my computer or a reader. Instead, I tried to code using an online python reader, but quickly ran into the problem that it was not able to compute when computer keys were pressed because it was an internet browser version.

I then realized I could probably accomplish the same goal in scratch, so I coded most of the program in scratch. However, I ran into the problem that while I was able to develop a poem that combined Silverstein and Poe, the program could not effectively broadcast the poem onto the screen. I could only figure out how to display the poem line by line on the display screen. Even after watching some tutorials and consulting the internet I could not make it work.

After consulting some advanced computer science students, I learned that replit would probably compute the key clicks and also would work with an internet browser. This eventually proved to be the most successful and I was finally able to make a poetry mash-up bot that looked good and functioned as intended.

Even once I had the code functioning correctly with the assistance of the replit AI bot, I still had to build the enclosure for the physical device. I decided on using bottle caps because I thought this was a good conductor and when I first tested it it worked well. However, once I built the box to put the button inside, I noticed that the buttons became much less responsive. I also had a really hard time cutting holes for the buttons that were an appropriate size so the buttons would fit without falling through. Eventually, I felt like the buttons fit well in the enclosure, but I quickly noticed some sort of problem where the bottle caps were no longer super responsive when I touched them.

In order to fix this “fail”, I had a lot of theories on different materials that were causing problems with the conductivity. I tried to scrape off some hot glue and tried adjusting the clasps attached to the makey-makey. However, even after a lot of tries in fixing the conductivity problems, ultimately my device was super finicky with the way the electrical current functioned. If I were to redo this device in the future, I would be more thoughtful about the enclosure and how to keep conductivity. I realized it would’ve been smart to use tinfoil potentially after seeing the different class projects.

This week was met with excitement and failures regarding the creation of Hack #1. It was super overwhelming at first to choose an idea. There are so many different games and forms of technological play that a Makey Makey could be used to control. However, Marie and I decided to comment on the idea of games with a juxtaposition similar to what we saw in class on Tuesday. This is when things started to go south a bit. We knew we wanted to use stuffed animals to control the arrow keys to play the creepy, horror-character version of 2048. Simply connecting the stuffed animals to the Makey Makey cables did not work because it did not conduct electricity. We tried a few different variations, but ultimately, there was no feasible way to produce enough electricity while keeping it aesthetically pleasing because we would have had to cut open the stuffed animals in order to put two pieces of tinfoil inside. Sadly, we had to land on taping electricity to the back of the stuffed animals, so when the user picked up the stuffed animals, they each took the place of the arrow keys.

Another fail: I have been trying to upload a photo to my artist statement for the last 20 minutes and it is not working even though last semester I made an entire digital art portfolio on this platform and never had an issue! I am still having some trouble navigating this website to try and get everything formatted correctly.

Initially, I wanted to create a quiz game similar to Kahoot, but reconfiguring the arrow keys as selection buttons proved too challenging for the time given. After reading Sicart and Benjamin, I explored creating a subversive game incorporating competitive aspects of modern play. I realized that for this project’s scope, my game didn’t need to be conventionally “fun” to effectively reflect the toxic aspects in different cultures of play.

Regarding physical challenges, I struggled to create something that was simultaneously cute, functional, and conductive. I had hoped to seamlessly integrate conductive materials into the clay components, but this proved impossible. After experimenting with several controller designs, I ultimately settled on aluminum foil as a reliable solution.

Creating the clay components was enjoyable, though not without its challenges. Working in a cramped apartment without proper tools meant the pieces didn’t turn out exactly as envisioned. Still, the creative process reminded me of childhood crafting sessions and reinforced how vital “play” is for mental well-being.

LF

This week, I set out to complete Hack #1, using the MakeyMakey. At first, I had some grand ideas of remapping the input on the MakeyMakey, setting up some programming to prompt ChatGPT to generate some code, and have the code be displayed… however this all fell short when I was unable to remap the keys on my MakeyMakey! It turns out that the version was too old for remapping. I first spent some time getting accustomed to the MakeyMakey and how it actually worked. I quickly figured out what “completing the circuit” actually meant, and how you could attach smaller pins on the back to control the mouse, and a few button presses. Although I had figured out how it actually worked, I was still lacking an idea… so naturally I took out my phone and immediately went to TikTok to procrastinate!

And so that’s how the idea was born, to create something that could let you scroll.

The first iteration consisted of a cup and a straw, where I had a alligator clip attached to the bottom of the straw and filled the cup with water. One the water touched my mouth, the circuit was completed, and the keyboard arrow down was input, so the next video appeared. I fashioned some aluminum foil to the rim of the cup to allow for scrolling back up, but it looked a bit odd. I wanted to make the cup look relatively normal, and I managed to find a solution. I pierced the bottom of one cup, and stuck the alligator clip in. I then put that cup into another one, and let the other end of the alligator clip out of the cup. This way, water wouldn’t leak out of the cup, and the alligator clip would stick out to connect to the MakeyMakey.

I didn’t have many issues from here on, other than figuring out how to make grounding myself much more “complete.” I wanted to complete the circuit just by holding the cup, and I did so by wrapping a copper strip around the cup and connected it to the MakeyMakey with an alligator clip. Now, I could just hold the cup instead of holding onto the alligator clip and the cup.

During my presentation of the hack, I was asked on the spot to name my hack. I didn’t have anything in mind, but I decided on “Liquid Scroll” based on the water brand Liquid Death.

This week, I worked on my Makey Makey project. I had a difficult time going through with ideas as certain things that I wanted to do didn’t work out quite right. For instance, one of my ideas was to map a piano keyboard to play drum sounds. I had to forgo this idea as my keyboard was entirely made of plastic and would not conduct any electricity. Additionally, the bulkiness of the keyboard made it extremely difficult (and nearly impossible) to attach an alligator clip on. Thus, I decided it was more manageable to use stringed instruments, as conducting electricity and clipping the alligator clips was much easier and feasible. Because most of my stringed instruments are electric, however, the multiple strings of both the guitar and bass acted as “one.” This was due to the metal bridge that held each string, it connected the flow of each string, making one big current. As a result, if I connected an alligator clip to each string, no matter what string was plucked, each alligator clip activated. In the context of my project, this resulted in the simultaneous playing of different sounds (which I did not want). I tried to work around this issue, but I couldn’t make them activate individually without completely taking apart the instruments (which of course I did not want to do). At this point, I decided to use this feature to be able to play chords. Since I could map multiple sounds to be played at once, I figured playing chords was the best workaround to making this roadblock an ally. Thus, by strumming the bass guitar, the user was able to play a piano chord, creating playful juxtapositions. I then proceeded to map a kick sound to my electric guitar. Finally, I mapped a metal ring to transpose the sounds of piano and kick, allowing the user to play different chords and tones. While the product of Hack #1 wasn’t quite how I envisioned it, I was satisfied with how the user was able to compose and play music using entirely different instruments as their inputs.

if only it worked in class

This week the biggest challenge that I faced was creating my project with the Makey, Makey board. For our project with the Makey, Makey board, we decided to create a dance board similar to those that are in arcades. At first, we were really struggling to figure out how we were going to make our idea come to life. We wanted to cut out aluminum foil arrow keys, put those on the floor, and then have those serve as the arrow keys on the keyboard when we step on them. This would essentially create our own dance floor. At first we were not sure how to make it to where we could continue the circuit while stepping on our make-shift dance floor. The only way we found that would work was if we were to step on them barefoot, and we obviously did not want to be barefoot while presenting our project to the whole class. To work around this dilemma, we ended up taping aluminum foil to the bottoms of our shoes. This made it to where we were grounded with the Makey, Makey and could still move around freely enough to be able to dance well. Once we figured that out, we tested it out and it worked great. We would hit the arrows with the corresponding arrows on the computer screen. We got the circuit to run smoothly with the game, but we were not very good at playing the game. All-in-all it was a super fun project to work on, but also very frustrating. We would think we were getting somewhere and then hit a roadblock, but we worked through them every time.

This Hack #1 has been a little difficult. It’s been a little hard to encompass unexpectedness, craft, intention, theme, and argument. Especially since the only controls we can change are the arrow keys, space bar, and the pointer clicker, we have had to find games that fit that criteria. When we have found games that fit that criteria, they have not fit one of the 5 criteria provided in the assignment. We did some experimenting with the Makey Makey on simple games, and it has been really cool and fun to transform things into the arrow keys.

Flog #1

1. I am struggling with WordPress and I feel frustrated! I created a really nice website in Professor Dietrick’s Intro to Digital Art class, but it has been five semesters since I took it, so I have forgotten most of what I learned. I want my website to look clean and include a Home page, but I’ve forgotten how to add buttons and make it more aesthetically pleasing.
2. When working on the Makey Makey hack, I’m not entirely sure how my partner and I can determine if we’ve achieved the “right amount of play.” I understand the concepts discussed in class, but I’m still a bit unclear about what defines a “playful” Makey Makey.