User:Annemarie

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Annemarie Daniel
Student number: 0911183
Major: Animation year 4
Social medias: Youtube Instagram

Digital Crafts 2018: Cybernetics

Project 1: Critical Making exercise

Re-imagining technology through a set of cards

Here. we. go. I've been putting off updating this wiki for way too long. So let's make up for that, and do some documenting.

06/09/18
The first project we started was all about getting loose and comfortable in the context of Digital Crafts. We got a set of cards to choose from, and needed to pick 3 of them to form our own assignment. But first, groups needed to be made. This is our team:

- Koen Dekker
- Dieke Berkhuizen
- Lot Mars
- Karlijn den Hoedt
- And me!

We also set up a Slack-channel, which we'll be using quite a lot (I know because I'm from the future :0).

07/09/18
Time to choose our cards, we got: "Make an object designed for a tree to use Social Networking. Use folded paper to create a physical model of this new thing."
After we had picked our cards, we started brainstorming. How can a plant use a computer? How can it make choices? And how can it even give an output? Plants aren't the most lively things, the only thing they really do, is grow... So we came to the conclusion that we had to use that growth as our output. First, we wanted to let a plant grow its roots over a keyboard, and make it press keys (and interact with the computer, aka. social networking, that way). Similarly to this project, which lets birds use Twitter: Real Birds Tweet On Twitter But we thought that might be too complex for just one week. We needed a simpler system, something that didn't need a whole keyboard to function, something with way less choices to make... Tinder! In the app Tinder, you can only swipe left, or right, to indicate if you like a person or not. Just two choices! To make our plant be able to use Tinder, we came up with a system of tubes, in which the plant could either grow left (to swipe left), or right (to swipe right. Here's a small sketch to show what it would look like:

So we got to building. First, we bought a plant @STEK de stadstuinwinkel, which we quickly nicknamed 'Clovis Clematis'. He looked kind of sad at first, but after we gave him some water, he perked up.

We built our tubing-prototype around 1 branch of Clovis, so he'd still get enough light with his other branches.
While Lot, Karlijn and I worked on the prototype, Dieke created a Tinder account for Clovis, and Koen kept the Wiki up to date (which I'm referencing right now for dates and facts, thanks Koen!).

close-up of Clovis, for his Tinder profile

Sensors will pick up if our plant grows to the left or right (we're thinking of optical, infrared, sensors, that are attached inside the tube, and sense when something blocks their light-ray). If he grows left, the sensor will signal to a device that controls his Tinder-account to swipe left (aka. not interested), and if he grows right, the device will swipe right (aka. interested).