FLOATING MATERIALITY
JAN 2015 - MAY 2015 / Semester 2, MA: Design Informatics
Groupwork (4 people)- Group Leader
Floating Materiality is a project that works with NMS (National Museum of Scotland). Project lasts for nearly five months. The project is from a course "Design With Data" and the aim for this course is to design with the data that NMS provides to us.
The artefact we final develop is a moving sculpture that can float according to the data in the database of the NMS.
FINAL OUTPUT
Dimensions of Artefact: length 1m, width 0.5m, height 2m.
ARTEFACT
VIDEOS
One intro video and two working videos.
More detailed information about the artefact.
REPORT
Chinese visitors please use this link :) http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XOTUxMzI0MzE2.html?from=y1.7-1.2
Artwork: Floating Materiality Intro Video
1/ THEORY
We are interested in the relationship between tangible data and intangible data, the relationship between material and immaterial.
When we first design an object in the world, such as in the Stone Age, it’s all about the material, people use different materials to make cup, pot and implements. Then the IoT (Internet of Things) comes along, all the thing is become more and more about data, and less about material. What we want to do is to cover this data back into material, back in a tangible way, to balance the seesaw between the material and immaterial.
2/ IDEA
What We Made
Material is the most basic attribute for physical object. However for most of time, materials are ignored on account of other attractive object properties, such as colour, shapes and sizes. We try to dig out the material information of the objects in the NMS and highlight it, to give people another understanding of the physical objects.
We try to transfer the abstract number or text in the NMS database into the artefact we design. We use the database in NMS museum to control this dynamic sculpture, each object in the database would have different moving pattern. The information in the database would be presented through the movement of the artwork.
We use different size cubes as information carrier. When the cubes are floating according to the changes of data, some optical illusion and art effect would be created. Instead of displaying each unique object in the database, we put more emphasis on the changes between object to object.
Full Working Video (eight objects)
Why We Made
The most important reason we made this sculpture is to find another representation of showing the dry but useful data in the database. NMS database has lots of data about the exhibits, however general visitors actually have no access to this database.
Since most of the information in the NMS database is not crucial for the visitors to know a exhibit, therefore directly displaying the information in the database is might less attractive to visitors. However itself does have some representative information to represent an object, such as the accession number, date (the object was last located at a particular location), entry date, material and dimension sizes. Therefore if we use some kinds of ways to transfer these information, re-present it into a newer and richer way, and make the transformation itself to become a artefact would be more appealing to visitor.
The raw materials of the artwork are a roll of steel mesh and three 3 meters cooper tubes.
The manufacture process are cutting (cut a stripe from a roll of steel mesh first, and then use metal cutter to cut it into different sizes.), flattening (Put a wood block on the surface of steel mesh first, and then flattened a piece of metal by hammering it.), folding (We use 4 different sizes molds for metal folding. Metals are easy to get bent when we try to fold them, therefore the molds are important to use to avoid metals getting bent.), soldering (solder six pieces of steel mesh into a cube), connecting (use fishing line to connect different cubes together), stand making and hanging.
How We Made
3/ DATA
3.1 Data Source
The data source for the artwork is the databases of National Museum of Scotland, which contains the accession number, date, name, dimensions, materials and other detailed information of the objects in the museum.
3.2 Data Filtering
Data filtering will involve taking out information that is useless to a reader or information that can be confusing. Redundant or impartial pieces of data can confuse or disorient a user. Filtering data can also make results more efficient.
We filtered the objects in databases have no material value since we focus on the material data of the object and want to use it to control the artwork.
3.3 Data Transformation
Four servo motors via four Arduino boards are used to control the movement of four groups of steel mesh cubes.
Parameters corresponds to servo:
Servo speed ---- Date-period (time the object produced)
Servo moving distance ---friction factors of the object in the database
Servo stop times --- hardness value of the material in the database
Servo moving direction (four servos) --- Materials pattern of the material in the database
3.3.1 Moving Distance of Servos --- Coefficient of Friction (COF) / friction factor
Friction factors of each object are corresponded to the moving distances of the servos. The frication factor we choose is the static friction of the materials against steel (because the cubes are made from steel).
The rougher the surface, the higher the friction factor and the longer the moving distances.
In other word, If an object have a relatively longer moving distance, it means this object have rougher surface.
3.3.2 Moving Directions of Servos --- Surface Texture
The moving directions of servo are controlled by the surface texture of the objects. All materials have different kinds of texture and the selected materials in the database were categorized into 4 textures. According to the different texture, we designed different moving patterns for the cubes. The movements of each object has 4 steps, go up/down, back to original point, go down/up, back to original point.
For example, silk has criss-cross texture, which is the third pattern in our category. So the moving directions for the cubes are two go up and two go down, which is similar to the criss cross.
3.3.3 Stop Times of Servos --- Hardness
Hardness value of different materials is used to control the stop times of each servo. We categorized all the materials in database into 3 categories: no stop, stop four times and stop eight times (why four times and eight times: the movement of each object would have four steps, go up/down twice and back to original point; Therefore the stop times should begin on a multiple of 4.
For example, silk is defined to never stop since it is soft material. However for the plastic is defined to stop four times since it is harder than silk.
3.3.4 Speed of Servos --- Date (year)
Motor speed is controlled by the date of the object (the object was last located at a particular location).
The date of the object is closer to today, the faster the motor speed would be.
The circle below shows different motor speeds. All the numbers are the value in microseconds to the servo. Red point is start point; Black number represents motor rotates clockwise in one second, and the blue number represents the motor rotate anticlockwise in one second.
The slowest speed of servo is from start point to 1555 (black) in one second; the fastest speed is from the start point to 1650 (black) in one second.
3.3.5 Algorithm
The algorithm blow is used to decide the time duration for moving.
Friction factors multiple 100 = time duration multiply circumference multiply fraction
Fraction (which is decided by the speed): for example, if we use the 1650 (motor turn 225 degree clockwise), the friction is ¾.
3.3.6 Comparison Examples
There are two groups of comparing. The first group compares different materials in the same year --- 1933 silk and 1933 plastic. They have different moving distance but same moving speed.
The second group compares same materials in different years --- 1933 plastic and 1999 plastic. They would have different moving speed but same moving distance.
Comparison Video
4/ EVULATION
“ In particular, we believe that a useful data sculpture requires a strong design rationale underlying its perceived physical qualities, including: embodiment, metaphorical distance, multi-modality, interaction, affordance and physicality. ”
----Moere, Andrew Vande, and Stephanie Patel.
"The physical visualization of information: Designing data sculptures in an educational context."
Metaphorical distance: Cubes is the metaphor we choose to represent the object in the database, it quite abstract to let people directly links the cubes with the object in the database, but since the diversity of the objects, it’s not easy to find a “perfect fit” metaphor to represent all the object in the database.
Interaction: We lack some interactive functions in our artefacts, it would be better if we add some interactions into it. Such as developing a website for the database, and let people to choose the object which they are interested in and let the sculpture to move according to the object they chose.
Affordance: The data can be distinguished from the moving of artefact, it’s perceivable but not obvious. We are not intended to design it into a object monitor, we still want itself to be an artwork and has its moving continuity in it.
Servo Limitation
Every servo is different, not all servos can perfectly turn the degrees we want but near values (e.g.If the program sets at 180 degrees, 4 servos could turn to different values: 179 degrees or 181 degrees). There is little difference between them, but the gap becomes huge when the moving time increase.
Since the cubes are quite heavy, the motors would go down even we don’t program it to do, as long as there is a force to push it (no matter how big the force is).
Also, for the same movement, the time used to go up is much more than the time used to go down. (e.g. the wheel turns a circle will cost 6.6s to go up while going down will only need 3s).
