Volcandy
Art installation, Arduino
About
Volcandy is a sweet explosion of collaborative exploration in the form of an interactive digital installation.
Challenge and Brief
Thirteen hyper island student teams were briefed to create an interactive art exhibition in 3 weeks. The theme was “radiant equilibrium”. The focus was to creatively explore the marriage of technology, experience and event planning and host our installations during a one night event at Summit Sthlm.
Process
The entire team was involved with our ideation process to choose a direction for such a wide open brief. We knew we wanted all our team members to agree on the concept before we went into the tech heavy production phase. Through mash-up ideation sessions and dot voting our favorite choices we agreed to go forward with an installation that would include “cooperative gaming”, “nature and of course “glitter”. We then subdivided our group into a visual team, tech development team and a construction team. We worked simultaneously with daily stand-ups and kept tasks flowing with a kanban board.
Solution
We created a larger than human size volcano that had 4 pressure sensor pads. Individually the sensor pads were designed to light up proportionally to the amount of weight applied to them. If all the pads were triggered simultaneously the volcano would then light up and project candies out of its mouth. The visual and physical interaction was also paired with sound effects and music that reacted to the sensors.
My role
My main role was creative technologist which meant I developed and prototyped the arduino based interactions. I was required to turn our creative ideas into tangible outcomes. I had to learn C programming language and learn how to use sensor data to trigger led pixel lights, hack and trigger an electrical appliance. I also had to learn Max software to pair sounds created in ableton live with the arduino interactions.
