FEBRUARY 14 - 19, 2021

ONLINE, Anywhere on Earth

Pixels in the Real World

Geert Roumen

Image of the finished swatch: a black plexiglas with an Arduino nana board, connected to an USB cable; the plexiglas also features a purple shaped pixel, and a cut-out arrow

ABSTRACT

Mapping values is part of the craftmanship of tangible interaction design. It is easy to imagine but hard to put in words and even harder to code. This swatch presents ways that might allow us to move faster from idea to experience. Through direct manipulation the experience becomes some sort of ‘clay’ that we can experience and manipulate simultaneously. This is done by using pixels to control the physical world and allows the use of software in the graphical domain to be used in the physical computing domain.

The flowchart describes graphical software, processing sketch, Arduino sketch, and hardware.

MATERIALS

Neopixel module, plack plexiglass, semi transparent white plexiglass, cables, Arduino nano

TOOLS & TECHNIQUES

Soldering iron, After Effects, Arduino IDEProcessing IDE, curiousity

LINK

http://geertroumen.com/teiswatch

VIDEO

JURY STATEMENT

In the context of a swatchbook this idea is unexpectedly inspiring. Though I doubt it was the authors intent, this submission feels somewhat like an inversion/subversion of the swatchbook theme of making a tangible crafted object, rather it offers an intangible yet conceptually well crafted idea which seems to invite the reader to create the swatch themselves.