Physical computing — Poonam Patel

Interactive Illusions

#PhysicalComputing #Arduino #Motors #LEDs #Programming #SchoolProject

Based on the concept of an infinity mirror, Interactive Illusions is an art installation that plays with a person’s perception of reality - the infinite projection in the mirror is just an illusion. See it in action…

TEAM

Rafael Poloni, Claudia Russo and I

DURATION

10 days ( across 5 weeks)

CONCEPTS EXPLORED

Mechanics, Electronics, Programming

ROLE

This was our final project as part of Physical Computing. My team members and I worked together through all stages of the process - brainstorming ideas, prototyping, mechanics, the physical structure of the final product and documentation about our process.

My main individual contributions included programming different patterns for the LED strip, programming the workings of the actuator, putting together the controls (knobs) and finally, making the final product video.

CONCEPT & INSPIRATION

Inspired by infinity mirrors, we were drawn to the fact that they were mysterious, engaging and easy to build. However, we found that infinity mirrors were usually static works of art. We decided to use the basic science of an infinity mirror, add moving bits and make it an interactive experience for the viewer.

INTERACTION

A person can use 3 odd-shaped knobs to interact with and change things inside the mirror:

Perspective of the image: Rotating one knob changes the perspective of the image - it appears to turn as the knob rotates, when actually it’s just an illusion.
Light patterns: Sliding the second knob changes the light patterns.
Speed and direction of moving prisms: Rotating the last knob increases the speed and after a certain point, changes the direction of the 6 moving prisms.

You can learn more about our process from idea to execution on this blog we put together.

BEHIND THE SCENES

Building a small infinity mirror prototype

Our first life-size prototype for the prism mechanism. It failed.

The mechanism that we finally used for the prisms. Although with more than 10 iterations of trial and error.

Starting to build the final version.

Was pretty hard at every step. MANY unforeseen problems.

We worked really well as team members. Dividing and conquering.

Putting a reflective film on glass. Not an easy task. We did it three times until we did a decent job.

What’s always fun is finding hacks to make things work. Like here we used lego to build a case for our motor.

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Everyone engaged in the working of our final product!

REFLECTIONS

This was one of my favourite subjects and projects of the semester. While it took quite the toll on most of us, it was crazy fun and worth all the hard work we put in.

Experimenting with new concepts, the subject challenged us to go outside our comfort zones. Through the semester, we built things we didn’t think we could and the collaborative nature of the course enabled us to learn from each other. The end result was not always as predicted, but the learning was paramount. By the end of the semester, it felt great to be able think of interactions at a higher resolution having now understood a lot about how things work.