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The last 5 days I've been through a progression of ideas. I started with the idea doing something with Morse code. I thought it would be cool to be able to write a text message by means of Morse code, read a text message by Morse code vibrations or 'hear' who is ringing/texting you in Morse code (vibrations). I was quit enthusiastic about this idea and started to try stuff with processing. Then I found out that a lot of this is already done and lots of Morse apps are already on the market... boe.. so I dropped this idea..
Next on my list was the microtome, a device used in biology to make extremely thin slices of biological material so it can be studied under a microscope. I am in the possession of a really old microtome and it has always fascinated me. The fineness and precision of it.. The heavy machinery in contrast with the fine material. The mechanical translating of movement. The microtome is a dimension reducer, transforming something 3D into 2D. The microtome also gives the abili
ty to look into something that was previously hidden. With these metaphors in mind I tried to mix this with new technology. It could be used to cut digital pictures into small lines or to show sequental pictures of slides of real biological material such as: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPPjUtiAGYs&feature=youtube_gdata_playerHowever, the old mechanical microtome isn't aesthetically compatible with a arduino and/or laptop unless it would be completely hidden.
I then thought of using the name and the fine tuning properties of the microtome and make a microtone. A machine that would produce different sine waves or radio frequencies according how far you have 'cut'. I worked on this for half a day. I found a radio and a box to put the radio equipment in,
disassembled the radio and tried to find a way to make the slight forward movement of the microtome adjust the radio frequency. This was unfortunately harder than I expected. Also, I would then only make use of the forward movement while the up and down movement would be lost. I thought and thought... but I was getting all stuck with the idea that i have to use this microtome.. Since already some days had gone by without any real inspiration or production, it was time to abandon this concept and think of something radically different.
When i was a small boy I secretly played with the Ouija board (or talking board/ spirit board) a couple of times. Although I didn't believe in ghosts or spirits, the outcome of playing Ouija kind of freaked me out.. I couldn't explain it. Somehow, we were getting names and words through like we were really in contact with some entity! Now I know how it actually works, it's even more fascinating to me. I'm a real skeptic on everything paranormal and the Ouija board seems such a powerful display of something paranormal. It's one of the weirdest media i know of. Pretending to be a medium of spirits, its actually a medium of the collective unconsciousness of the players, their ideomotor responses. It's a beautiful example of wishful thinking that works even on atheists who would like to debunk it! Funny enough, in the beginning of the 20th century many people played the Ouija board as a fun past time curiosity before it got it's more (marketed) occult reputation. Although generally not seen as a (family) game because of its perceived dark nature, for a long time the Ouija board was a registered trademark under Parker Brothers before board game giant Hasbro Inc. took it over in 2011.
I decided I would like to explore this old and weird medium. Now I'm making a digital version of the game which can be played with the 'ghost in the machine'. Unfortunately I'm not a great programmer so I'll just have to see how far i can get. The game will be played with a (wireless) mouse hidden inside the planchette (the pointer). I thought of using a tablet, the one you can digitally draw with, but then movements of the program are not translated to the position on the tablet. The general idea is that either the program is slightly moving the virtual planchette and that the player(s) follow and adjust this movement unconsciously with the physical planchette and/or that the player(s) initialize the direction of the movement and the program enhances this movement on the virtual planchette. Ideally I want the program to actually produce directions that lead to (meaningful) words from a database, but I'll try step by step to make the program better and better.
The program that I finally wrote holds all the index numbers, and x and y positions of letters in a double array of floats e.g. [54][2]. A string array is used for the corresponding displayed text.
I made the function checkTarget () which uses a for-loop to check if the planchette is within the boundaries of one of the letters. If so, it makes a Boolean targetHit true and registers that particular letter. After this function is called in draw, the program askes if we are searching for a target controlled with the Boolean targetSearch. This Boolean is there so that if we stay on a letter we don’t get repeated hits. So, if we’re in targetSearch mode and targetHit is true we let a timer count, if we are in search mode but targetHit is false, then we reset the timer.
If our timer has counted to a certain threshold the letter will be displayed and targetSearch and targetHit will be put back on false. Also a new random target will be created. This ‘target’ is a position the program ‘wants’ to steer to. Eventually three things determine the direction of the planchette. First of all, the ghost in the machine, which is the angle of the planchette to the target position the computer wants to go to. Secondly, the angle of mouse movement. With a whole bunch of geometry these two are described into vectors and averaged with different weights so the mouse movement is stronger. What is left is a new angle the planchette will follow. Finally, the speed of the mouse movements determines how much of this course is followed. Of course, there is a lot more to it, but then you might as well look at the code which of course I included below together with the game.
And.. do not be afraid.. it's only a game..
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