Reading through the think pieces that other students in the class provided gave some insight into other projects that are out there. One in particular that caught my attention was a discussion on Shintoism in Japan. In regards to animism, the way in which animism is perceived in Japanese culture was fascinating to me - rather than robots and advanced technology being perceived as “others” or something non-human, technology can be as nuanced, perceptive, and feeling as people.

My three objects were the lamp, proximity sensor, and relay. My project was a lamp that I deemed to be socially anxious. During the pandemic, I came to realize that I really appreciate my own personal space and solitude. When life began to return to a semblance of normalcy, I found that I had trouble engaging with people in the same ways I did in the past, and sometimes became stressed when talking with others. My lamp was a manifestation of my own anxieties - when the lamp is alone, it is functioning properly. However, when someone approaches, its behavior becomes increasingly erratic, blinking on and off and working inconsistently. Finally, within a certain proximity, the lamp is "overwhelmed" and shuts off entirely. The relay was interesting to work with in that it did not allow for a modulation of power. Consequently, in conceptualizing my project I had to think in binaries, which was hard because in general I feel like nothing is black or white.

Materials:

Lamp

Arduino BLE

Relay

Male to male jumper cables

For my project, I wanted a lamp that behaved erratically - it is unpredictability that makes humans human. I think writing a sketch that more accurately reflected that inconsistency (ie, using a random function) could have been productive. While the code was  straightforward, interestingly, nuances in the way that users interacted with the proximity sensor is actually what created a more animated personality. I also think that because of the limits of the proximity sensor, the concept of socially anxious was not straightforward - it became more an exercise in personal space and its limits, rather than casual approach in an everyday context. One critic mentioned how it could have been extended to be a fear of intimacy! 

Another one of the guests made a comment on environments - rather than just concentrating on how these machines work in relation to humans, how do these machines function as 'human-like' in relation to their surroundings? Intrinsically, and not in a dynamic with an actual human but just on their own? or how can these animated objects work in dialogue with each other? How can they behave when humans are not around to perceive or activate them? The word “spooky” is interesting in that it does not have to connote anything scary about technology - rather it can be spooky in how things act in ways we don’t understand.

I have very minimal experience in physical computing and in software/writing code as well. My personal strengths definitely lie in conceptualization and design. However, because I spent too much time trying to understand the systems I was using, I lost the conceptual rigor or design development that normally would have been a priority. For example, in designing my lamp I had trouble making the hardware succeed. I didn’t think of how the user would interact with the prototype or the user experience, rather concentrated predominantly on making the prototype work. In the discussion after the demonstration, many of the guest reviewers resonated with the concept, but the actual implementation (ie, breadboard horizontally on surface, not attached to actual lamp) lost sight of my original ideation. I think calibrating the concept and the actual project will be integral in the future.