The virtual tadpoles react to the physical lights!
|
|
I wanted to make an installation that shows an illusion of strong intercourses between virtual objects and physical objects. In this installation the virtual tadpoles and physical lights are all controlled by the same keystroke. But it is sufficient for the audiences to have illusions that tadpoles are seeking the physical lights.
 |
|
Fig.1. simple wiring
|
To integrate physical lights, I simply wired 8 LEDs to the PC¡¯s printer cable. The parallel printer port access is accomplished by utilizing C++ library through the Java¡¯s native interface implementation. I used the parallel port because it is much simpler than other higher level communication ports including serial ports and USB ports. It did not require any understandings about microprocessors or electronic devices. I just have to cut the printer cable and wire it to the LEDs.
When the audience presses a number from 1 to 8, this information is used for both directing the tadpoles and switching the LED lights. The LEDs also have different colors. Once the target light is changed, tadpoles change their directions and approach the light. Coming close to the light, they gradually change their colors feeling the light.
To make the tadpoles more realistic and vivid, I gave them flipping tails. The tail is composed of 8 nodes. Each node mimics the motion of its foregoing node with some time delay. This creates a realistic flipping motion.
This kind of tangible interfacing can be expanded to various installations. For example, several fans can be installed and controlled which dynamically blows virtual falling leaves. Or a physical water mill can react to virtual waterfalls. Actually this technique is applied to accomplish another project ¡°DrawDisk¡±.
Tadpoles (2005)
Java, Processing