Interaction Design Interactive Object: Resin Phase

Yet another first for me with this project, and therefore probably not the wisest of moves but hey, gotta learn how to use the new sometime in life, right? As with most firsts in life, this one was unlikely to turn out right the first time. I used gloves during this phase due to the warnings on the tins and bottles (which is strange for me as I usually have a cavalier attitude in regards to safety warnings), and the incredible chemical smell that emanated from the tin of Klear-Kast when I opened it. I achieved a massive headache from this phase despite having an open window in front of me. So be warned… Resin is evil-smelling.

The ingredients for resin making

• Norski Klear-Kast Resin
• Norski MEKP1 Polyester Resin Catalyst
• Norski Colour Dye in red

Steps I took for the making of the resin heart

1. Poured 125ml of Klear-Kast ( not enough as it turned out ) into a glass measuring cup.
2. Added the red dye drop-by-drop until I achieved the depth of colour I required, and stirred until mixed to where I wanted it.
3. I added 8 drops of the catalyst per 30mls of Klear-Kast, and mixed for around two minutes until it looked thoroughly mixed.
4. I left it to stand for three minutes to get rid of the bubbles.
5. Then I poured it into the rubber mould and left it for around 12 hours to set.

The top exposed to the air the entire time set nicely, however when I took it out of the mould the other sides of the heart were still sticky.

The sides haven’t set at all and so I am going to have to make another mould and recast the heart. I’m not sure why they didn’t set, I suspect there is a few things it could be. I may need to put more of the hardener (catalyst) in to the resin, or more likely it could be the release wax wasn’t set, or I should just not use it, or the mould was still damp from the wash I gave it or somehow the rubber mould was compromised in some way. The instructions on the resin said to make sure the mould was free from dust, waxes, etc, so it is likely that it is the wax that was the problem.

Interaction Design Interactive Object: Rubber Mould 2

Rubber Mould Making

Have just cast the bottle for the second time now and I think I managed to pour it in faster than the first time but I did stop for a second because I couldn’t see it going under the bottom edge of the bottle as much as I would have liked. Guess I’ll find out how successful it was when I take it out.

This attempt was more successful and I will be using it for the casting of the resin. I tried the release wax out and I am not sure if I actually need it. The instructions say to apply several coats, buffing each one to a shine, over time and then let dry for two hours. I applied a couple of coats and couldn’t get it to shine at all. It just ended up feeling sticky and looking dull, and I also ended up with the fibres of the material I used to wax on and off with. So I have given the mould a wash in hot soapy water to remove the fabric fibres and hopefully the wax too.

I’ve driven a brass rod through the mould so that the resin heart has a core of brass to anchor the heart to the top and bottom of the box for more stability.

Rubber Mould

Interaction Design Interactive Object: Rubber Mould making

Woohoo! Finally got the gear I need to cast an object. First up is the mould making part of the process using a reusable moulding rubber. I’ve spent the last 30 odd minutes cutting up these blocks into small pieces to melt over heat. Once melted ( in approx 30 minutes ), I can pour it into the container holding the bottle I want to cast and wait for it to set. I’ve never used any of the materials I am about to use so it’s going to be interesting. Off to melt now!

So, I have learned a few lessons about the art of rubber melting:

1. Cannot melt rubber bain-marie style; it just goes sticky.
2. sticking it into an aluminium pot and melting directly over heat works a real treat. Guess that’s why they say to do it like that on the instruction sheet.
3. That rubber starts setting relatively quickly once taken off heat.
4. You do have to pour it quickly into the container with the mould otherwise you get creases.
5. If you’ve never done it before, you’d be damn lucky to get a good cast the first time. Having said that, mine wasn’t too bad, but I’m going to try again anyway.
6. And finally, I am not looking forward to cutting the rubber up again, it’s a tad repetitive. The melting wasn’t too bad when I did it according to instructions though.
7. Scissors and a craft knife are the key to cutting the rubber; not just a craft knife.

Rubber Mould Part 2

Interaction Design Interactive Object: the prototyping stage

I’m now onto my third and hopefully last prototype that I would like to have finished by tonight so that I can get some feedback for it in studio tomorrow. I am also mocking up a couple of possibilities for the walls of the boxes. I got useful feedback on my first prototype which helped to inform the second prototype and after the last studio, I now have more feedback that I can use to implement changes in my design.

The current idea is to create the boxes out of black card, though I am concerned that the only black card I have been able to find isn’t robust enough. My tutor Steve has suggested that I need to use a very robust material as the boxes are likely to be knocked around a bit with people trying to force their fingers into the holes of the hidden object box in particular and it is very likely the card won’t hold up. Steve also pointed out that corners and edges are usually weak and easily damaged, which is something I didn’t even consider, where something like a cylinder without corners would stand up better against force applied to it. I’m just not sure about a cylinder though; I can’t quite picture it and am not sure I like the aesthetics of it. I may mock one up though because a physical representation may make me change my mind.

Prototype 1 drawing

I am trying to figure out how to put the box together so that the joins are as invisible as possible and look nice and tidy. May need to have a look at join types for that. One possibility is to cover the box in a lightweight card so that all edges are covered, or as long as the lines are crisp, scoring might look okay.

Interaction Design: Catch-up on past few weeks

I found some photos today that I took to document the project and studio sessions and that I didn’t get round to uploading. So I am going to do that now.

We had to bring five objects that stimulated each one of the senses to our second studio session. For my five, I chose:

Smell: Kawakawa, red baron chai and relaxation teas from T Leaf T. I bought these because I love the smell of them. I love going into T Leaf T and smelling all the teas in there. I often buy my teas from there based on their smell. Yum!

T Leaf T Kawakawa – kawakawa, ginger & lemongrass

T Leaf T Restful – tulsi herb, green rooibos, ginger pieces, cinnamon, vervain, chamomile blossoms, lavender blossoms, flavouring & red rose buds

T Leaf T Red Baron Chai – red rooibos, cinnamon, cardamom, citrus zest, ginger pieces, pepper, star anise & cloves

 

 

 

Taste: Jelly Belly BeanBoozled jellybean game. I wondered for a bit what to do for taste, I even thought about baking…. I thought that was a bit much and not much fun. I wanted to find something a little different and a bit fun and have had Jelly Belly jellybeans before. I thought it would be fun to make up some of the taste recipes they have, where you mix up a few flavours together to make a new flavour. Then I found the BeanBoozled game, and just couldn’t resist the temptation. The aim of this game is to spin the wheel and pop in your mouth the jellybean that matches the colour the spinner lands on. The catch, there are yummy jellybeans and then there are truly revolting jellybeans in the mix ( Jelly Belly describes them as weird, an understatement, I feel ), but you can’t tell what you are going to get till you chew it for a bit. The tasty and the not tasty are in matching colour pairs… Great fun! Everyone had a go and there were a lot of laughs and a lot of spitting out jellybeans as fast as possible. I still have jellybeans left, and occasionally think about having one but frankly I am too scared to.

Jelly Belly BeanBoozled flavours

Jelly Belly BeanBoozled Wheel

Touch: I had  thought about bringing plasticine because it is malleable, but i went for a baby’s toy instead as it was specifically designed for touch for infants. It was lovely and soft and made me want to keep playing around with it. I noticed a few other people doing the same when they were holding it. I forgot to get a photo of this one. Oops.

Sight: Wide angle lens for iPhone. This wee lens is part of a set that fits over my iPhone so I can take slightly more interesting photos with my phone. The other two lenses are a fish-eye and a macro. This one allows for wider angle shots, so I get more in the frame. I chose it because there is a particularly nifty wee trick you can do with it that I discovered when surfing Instagram. The best way to explain it is with a picture.

Looking through the wide angle

Lens attachment for phone

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sound: Bebot – Robot Synth app. You can create music with this cute little app through a multi-touch interface. This a clip of Bebot in action from the makers of the app, Normalware.

I found that I was drawn to objects to do with sense of smell or touch over the other senses. I liked the smell of the fragrance that was bought along and the dried lavender pillowy  object, and as for touch, I kept playing with the wee toy I bought along.

Creative Coding Structure & Noise: form pattern

Thought I’d see what my form from the first project, Adaptable Form, looked like as a pattern in purple. It reminds me of leadlight windows.

Creative Coding Structure & Noise: pattern practice 3

Once again with the squares and varying line weights, but this time I added some lines and made the red, blue and opacity variables random within a narrow range. I changed the colour to blues and greens to see what it would look like but went back to the reds and blues as I liked the mixing of those two colours better anyway. The pattern rate was changed often and I omitted the code for some of the lines, all in the name of playing around.

Creative Coding Structure & Noise: pattern practice 2

I decided to play with layers of squares this time. I picked a set of colours from a colour palette created from a photo on my phone to use, and played around with opacity and the stroke weight. I changed the colours to red ones later on as I wasn’t keen on the pastel shades.

Creative Coding Project 2 Structure & Noise: pattern practice

Yesterday we were introduced to our next project that focuses on exploring the concepts of structure and noise. We will be exploring the concept of structure through creation of a visual pattern built from visual elements, forms or a sub-process. Questions to ask: can noise be created from this structure so the structure becomes disguised by noise, and can noise be used to create structure?

What is structure and what is noise? Structure itself implies organisation; an order to things; a pattern or relationship between a number of elements. Noise is random and usually unwanted. It distorts and disguises or blocks the message being conveyed. There is no easily discernible pattern to noise.

So in class we started to have a look at structure by using the “pattern maker” code that Ben Jack, one of the tutors wrote for our use in Processing. I started out by creating very simple shapes and therefore patterns, and even the ones I did later in the night were simple and yet by changing a couple of variables to do with how often the pattern repeated, the output looked either a bit more complex or very simple and not a pattern at all.

I played around with the colour and colour opacity and changed the shapes a few times, the ellipses look better than the ellipse and square. Some of the patterns look quite intricate.

DSDN112 Interaction Design: Storyboard

Storyboard: Closed Boxes

 

Storyboard: The inside story