Newton's Cradle

Statement

The inspiration behind this project was to create a fun interactive "toy" for people to be distracted by while studying to essentially make the room "unusable" for its purpose. We wanted to make our version of the Newton's Cradle distracting enough so those who attempt to study in that room are unable to focus on what they are doing. We wanted to create this because essentially we wanted to create a fun stress relieving environment where most would consider it to be quite the opposite. We believe that most would agree that no one looks forward to going to a study room to spend hours either working on homework or cramming for an exam, so we wanted to create a whole new emotional response to this environment to help relieve some of the stress that comes with being a student at CMU.

Context

For our initial ideas, we wanted to create this version of the Newton's Cradle that incorporated sound. We wanted to have each ball make a unique sound when either the ball impacted with another ball, or when the ball was moved from its resting location. If we would have ended up taking the motion approach to sound, we looked at a unique art project that we found had very similar qualities to what we desired. This project was the Laser Harp:

Ideally, the sensors would have been set on the ground and worked similar to the laser sensor in Laser Harp (see the video above). But, the sound triggering system is opposite. That is to say, in contrast to the effect of Laser Harp where sound is generated when the laser beam is covered, there would not have been be any sound when the balls are static (completely covering the sensors).

A rough illustration is as follows:

It turned out that our intended installation as shown in the rough illustration incorporated ideas more similar to the 21 Swings exhibit in Montreal than the Laser Harp. That installation (or more accurately, "giant musical instrument") makes sound when someone swings on one of the 21 swings. When more than one viewer swings at the same time, it will create a multitude of sounds that work in harmony with each other:  

However, due to technological issues, we decided to incorporate light as a media instead of sound after getting inspired from Momentum, a project created by united visual artists:

We decided that we could create a very similar feel just using lights within the balls of the Newton's Cradle, and the natural sounds from the plastic impacting with one another. We looked at another suggested piece, United Visual Artists: Momentum. Although significantly more advanced than our idea, this one uses the natural lighting and sound from the pendulums within the work to create a unique environment that is interesting to observe:

The huge pendulums with natural lighting and sound in that project created a new "liminal space" where the viewers get fully involved, which reminds us about how the effect of lights can interact with viewers' senses. Therefore, we came up with the idea as to use LED blinking lights to attract people's attention which also look aesthetically appealing at the same time.

Process

We first decided "who was in charge of what" specifically. We had Ling be the general "leader" of our group. She was the main one who figured out what items we needed, and when we were going to all meet and work together. John and Matthew were in charge of most of the physical creation of our project. They were the ones who generated ideas and figured out how to implement all materials into our creation. I (Brandon) was mostly in charge of documenting  our experiences and the one who paid attention to the feedback we received during our process.

As previously stated, our original intention was to incorporate motion-triggered sound within our work; yet that idea had to be cut because creating specific sensors and/ or sound generators through sophisticated software is way beyond our skill sets (none of us had previous experience) and would be impossible to implement within the time frame. 

After we decided to incorporate light as a media instead, our initial plan was to achieve similar interactive effects using motion-triggered lights. However, the sensor-involved light did not work very steadily when we prepared for the first mockup as shown in the video below (the light can suddenly die out for no reason...).

Therefore, after the mockup, we decided to switch to blinking lights without sensors, which works more steadily but also have varying colors.  Moreover, in order to create a more "distracting" effect on the lights, we took Eddy's advice and "frosted" the outside of all plastic balls by sanding them to alter the direct pathway that lights coming out through the balls.  

After accomplishing this, all of our materials for project were prepared except one major aspect: we did not consider which was the mount for our Newton's Cradle.

We proposed that our best candidate for a mount would be some type of wood structure. Still, since none of us had much experience with creating wood structures, we attempted to enlist the help from a friend of Matthew who is Architecture major. Unfortunately, he became ill on the day that we needed him, so we had to create something as a mount with accessible materials. Finally, we decided that using books from the library as a mount would not only work well enough to hold the structure up, but also further push our message to the viewer: creating a distracting toy within an academic environment using items that are usually thought of with an academic mindset.  

Other materials included in the final project:

Twine (for hanging the balls), mini LED blinking lights (for the light within the balls), and tape (used to mount the Newton's Cradle). 

Product

The end product we created turned out to be almost exactly what we aspired it to be. As previously stated, the books used as the base mount turned out to be one of the best last minute decisions we made within our process. In general, we believe that our intention to distract viewers within a room of study worked very well.  The lights within the balls immediately force those within the room to look upon the Newton's Cradle. It then further compels them to wander why this project is in the room, distracting them from their original intentions of why they entered the room. They then are pushed to want to play with the toy at least once, hopefully giving them a brief break from the stress of the work that they are there to complete in the first place.

Critique

When looking at the project in a critical view, there are a few problems that we immediately thought of. The densities of the plastic balls were not heavy enough to keep the Newton's Cradle bouncing off one another more than about two times (as shown in the video above), effectively ruining the actual "toy" of our project. This error was not as bad as most would believe it to be because our intention was to get the viewer to focus on the project, not to actually spend a long time playing with it. One other minor critique we had was that the light did not reflect off of the walls and ceiling as much as we wanted them to. We wanted the project to effectively consume the entire room with its light. Overall, we feel that while there are some issues with our work, we believe that our intent is well delivered through our final project.

Reflection

We learned quite a bit from this project overall. We all agreed that it is much harder in practice to find times to work on the project together as we all had our own busy schedules that often conflicted with one another. If we were to do the project over again, we would have most likely would have spent almost all of our time figuring out how to add unique sound to the project, while we believe that the project delivered its message well without it, there is no mistaking that the project would be enhanced with the addition of sound. We also would have used different materials for the balls so they effectively work as a Newton's Cradle; or experiment on different ways to blur the surface of our plastic balls. Another change that we believe would have helped with the message would be to hang the balls higher up so that they are at the eye level to a viewer who is seated at the table, prompting them to observe the project even more. Overall, we believe that this project gave us a unique experience to think in ways that we are not used to so we could create an interesting project using something as simple as twine.