New furniture for Café Roland.
20??. The aim of this one-week workshop with Assemble and Café Roland was to develop simple and sturdy connectors for tables, chairs and shelves.
tbd - Rather than beginning by determining through design the formal characteristics of the object and then finding the appropriate tools for its manufacture, we wanted to make objects/connector that result from a diverse range of processes and materials that embrace the potential of chance, surprise and accident through the act of making.
Credit: ???
tbd _ It works! Controlling pitch, beat and volume with our arms and legs.
Working with a Kinect & Processing was a fun & enriching challenge.
Getting the concept down on paper.
Having people from different creative fields in one team was great. We were able to approach ideas from different perspectives and merge them into one concept.
Translating the idea into code.
By watching many tutorials and tweaking some excisting open source sketches we eventually managed to write a working code of our concept in Processing.
Adjusting each parameter.
During an iterative process we tested the construct consisting of a Kinect V1 and a sketch in Processing, defined and adjusted all necessary parameters for the interaction.
Having a fun time.
After transferring our concept from paper to a physical experience we had a great time playing and being the conductor for a piano and drums. Just by moving our bodies.
What I've learned.
Working with a Kinect and Processing for the first time can be a frustrating task, especially if you consider the lack of expertise in that field and only having a few days to execute. Through the help of my team mates and watching many tutorials I was able to get a better understanding of programming and how to change existing code or ad new features. I also learned that programming is a great tool to ideate and try different versions of an application immediately on the spot by just tweaking some lines. Going from initially rather complex ideas to a simple solution helped us to eventually deliver a working prototype in a short period of time.