RF technology

tristan and I successfully set up a wireless rf link today. The transmitter/receiver pair that we used were purchased at sparkfun:

http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=383

here's a pic of the two boards:

protocol

I'm reading alex galloway's protocol right now. It's really quite fantastic..."examining how control exists after decentralization, that is, in specific places where decentralization is done and gone and distribution has set in as the dominant network diagram..." He's discussing ways in which the internet is at once highly decentralized or distributed, allowing for an incredible amount of freedom and openness, but is at the same time tightly controlled and centralized. The concept of Protocol illustrates the ways in which the net exists in the way that it does through its 'tactical standardization' (i.e. DNS, HTTP, HTML, TCP/IP).

In 1969, the first Request For Comment (RFC) was written by Steve Crocker. All of these RFCs are basically the history of the internet, written by the very people who were involved in its creation and, more importantly, its standardization. Number 822, for example, illustrates the Standard for ARPA Internet Text Messages. RFC 1 by Crocker entitled "Host Software" defines the basic structure from which the entire internet has developed. RFC 675 defines TCP for the first time, 1122 and 1123 describe the standards that must be followed for computers to connect to the Internet. Galloway looks at these RFCs and asks some very important questions about the basic political structure of the internet, positing that "the founding principle of the Net is control, not freedom. Control has existed from the beginning

The implications of this discourse go very deep. Galloway discusses the responses to protocol (i.e. hacking) and considers their significance. Cory Archangel's Super Mario Clouds and works by the Critical Art Ensemble illustrate a response to protocol that considers "negative politics" to be useless, rather working from within the structure of protocol to repurpose the structure from control into critical response.

Considering all this, I'd like to focus my final around these issues and create a networked project that considers the political implications of the work we've looked at in class.

redtaction

here's an interesting company that plans to use the human body as a hightspeed network transmission path.

http://www.redtacton.com/en/info/index.html

- RedTacton uses the minute electric fieldemitted on the surface of the human body. Technically, it is completely distinct from wireless and infrared.
- A transmission path is formed at the moment a part of the human body comes in contact with a RedTacton transceiver. Physically separating ends the contact and thus ends communication.
- Using RedTacton, communication starts when terminals carried by the user or embedded in devices are linked in various combinations according to the user's natural, physical movements.
- Communication is possible using any body surfaces, such as the hands, fingers, arms, feet, face, legs or torso. RedTacton works through shoes and clothing as well.

mini itx

looking into building a complete computer project using a mini itx box. There are some amazing applications possible with this technology...I started looking into some of the devices running linux on this page. I think I'd like to do something integrating video, maybe creating a complete video synthesizer in a box or somehting even more exciting.

neuromuscular stimulus

Tristan and I successfully completed the networked neuromuscular stimulus application. Ben Margolis is bringing his EMS 4000 electronic muscle stimulus device for an in class demo.

we set up a processing application that acts as the controller. Clicking on the left side of the applet sends a pulse to the left bicep, letting go of the mouse turns the pulse off. Clicking on the right side sends a pulse to the right bicep.

(see code).

pic basic code is here

Basically, we decided to use the processing app as the means of sending a signal to the EMS 4000. We wrote a relatively simple piece of code for the PIC 18F252 chip that takes a serial in and sends a digital out, i.e. the 5 volts needed for the EMS 4000.

voila.

here's a video of the in-class presentation

midterm project idea

thoughts about the networked object project:

1) RFID enabled interactive art exhibitions.

Visitors could come to the MOMA, for instance, holding a PDA with a RFID reader in it and see information related to a particular painting they want more information about. The PDA would be connected via wifi to a large database of text, image and video material related to the content in the exhibition. Art critics could explain the confusing paintings and allegorical themes could be cross referenced with a link to relevant entries in the Grove's Dictionary of Art. Museum patrons could listen to music relevfant to the time period the painting was created...shoenberg's music with a kandinsky painting...Debussy and Monet. The tags would be embedded under the adjacent plaques. This is an advantage, in my opinion, over the prescribed route created via audio-tours.

I started thinking about this project last summer, actually. After doing some research, it seems like there have been some advances in this area. The Okayama City Digital Museum for example. Also, the Danish Natural History Museum had a bird exhibit featuring rfids. Looks like I might have waited a bit too long. Maybe it's still investigating, though.

Alice and I discussed the idea of hacking an ipod using rf technology...there are a lot of projects out there using podcasting in a museum context....integrating these would be quite interesting.

http://mod.blogs.com/art_mobs/
http://www.sfmoma.org/education/edu_podcasts.html
http://www.nhm.org/sonicscenery

perhaps working with these two technologies:

rf transmitter

ipod rf receiver

and a network connection between the RF and a museum's wifi this project would be feasable.



2) there's also this amazing piece that has absolutely nothing to do with what I've written above but is fantastic, nonetheless.

http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/006882.php

What I like about a piece like this is its relation to human skin. The wall is a kind of magnification of a porous membrane. The relationship between the biological and the architectural has a strangely attractive quality that's worth exploring much more.

xport woes

I had a great deal of troulbe configuring my xport for some reason. I can't exactly understand why. Patrick and I sat down together to work out the bugs and checked evedry solder point with a multimeter and still couldn't figure out what was happening. The pic didn't seem to be running through its code...I was able to configure the xport but the pic wouldn't send a get request to the server. After awhile we concluded that it must be voodoo. Thankfully, tristan's board does work so we'll be able to accomplish the assignment for class next week (fingers crossed).

Our plan is to use the xport to remotely send electrical signals to a friend of tristan's who works with neuromuscular stimulation to activate and move body parts. It's basically a rehabilitation technique involving low-level electrical current to the nerves that control muscles, to stimulate functional movements. More detail soon...

Today Min helped me go through her version of the code she worked on with Gilad...which can be found here. We reprogrammed the pic basic code so the requests would be sent to my account on the itp server...unfortunately, though...the program wasn't receiving any data from our potentiometers...very odd.

the good news, though is that I've been successful in my sensor workshop datalogging assignment sending data to a webpage. See this for more detail.

Serial is good to me. Xport has, sadly, not been so good to me.