- How to engage community and how to get peoples interest in mapping
- How to build beetlebots
- How to construct an installation
- How to use PD patch
How to engage community and how to get peoples interest in mapping
There is no manual but guidelines that we can offer. Presentations on art projects that are using mapping will open place for discussions which will create a possibility for participant to gets involved on personal level, developing personal narration trough maps (check LINKS on left sidebar. They are good starting point to engage mapping projects). To ask participants to draw a map from their home to the place where the workshops are held, but only using forms and colors that will represent their feelings towards certain stags of the travel, can open a way for understanding maps. People can also be asked to record sounds on certain route, to record sequences of photographs that could be used as potential sideshow or stop animation, or to write a text that can be made into sound piece at the final installation.
Collaborative engagement into producing a map can be done with a board, transparent papers of the same size that participants can draw their maps on. This papers can then be layered and colored threads and pins used as connecting points.
Community interested to be part of CultureRobot process can organize their own way of how to participate and what relationships and connections they would like to present. This is best done if people are lead to talk about what they think about their surrounding. We tend to create process that involves fun, walking, talking, taking pictures, presentations and using digital media (mainly open source software) to give participant full range of options and to create place for innovation.
How to build a beetlebot
For CR installation we modified beetlebot, project done by Jerome Demers.
For CR 1.0 installation we have detailed instruction for our version of robots here >>
For CR 2.0 installation we have detailed instruction here >>
CR 1.0 and CR 2.0 robots are different only in casing: firstly we used recycled CD for the body and plastic cut from the empty 2 liter bottles for the cap. For CR 2.0 we used CD casing for 50 CDs, experimenting with the positions and hight of the antennas. We experienced difficulties finding out right way of protecting robots to get entangled into each others antennas. CD casing or other heavier casing slow down robots (sometimes you will like slower robots as it will give more time for next video to be triggered). Casing made of plastic bottles are lighter thus giving robots more speed. Experiment and find your best suited model.
Be very careful to direct IR led towards a ceiling – sometimes a drop of hot glue or a piece of see trough tape will do so the light from the led doesn’t disperse causing the WII-mote defect detecting.
How to construct an installation
Maps are projected from video beamer over/under the table, or on the floor from the ceiling. To track robots use WIImote and IR led on the robot itself. Robots and software for tracking the movement is based on free open source software Pure Data. To create frame we used wooden planks, but other ways can be used: cloth bags filled with sand, metal boards, old books, bricks, any hard recycled/found material. Installation has to be big enough to have all the collected spots presented on the map, but also small enough so that public can engage with the robots movement.
Schematic view of the installation
Installation at the SESC Sao Jose Dos Campos, Brazil and at HAIP festival, Ljubljana, Slovenia
How to use PD patch
To create interaction of the robots and the map we used Pure Data (community maintained and developed free open source software). We used PD extended.
- Instructions how to download and install on MAC, Windows and Linux (CR 1.0 and 3.0 was run on Linux, CR 2.0 was run on MAC).
- Instructions how to use bloototh and detect WII mote
CR 1.0 PD patch folder >> has a patch and a .jpg map
that you have to replace with your own map.
CR 2.0 PD patch folder (download here) >> has a patch, osc.oscd file and .jpg files you have to replace with your map jpeg file. Be sure to write in a right location of your videos in the patch. Open the patch, right click on PDvideoselector and choose Open. This will allow you to enter into subpatch, find location/crvideos/p1( p2, p3, etc). P1, p2, p3 etc represent your folders with one video inside each that are stored into crvideos folder. To change location of the folder to folder that you have put your videos in just change to location/yourfolder/your subfolder.
CR 3.0 PD patch folder (download here) >> has a PD patch and .jpg files you have to replace with your map jpeg file. Be sure to write in a right location of your videos in the patch. Open the patch, right click on PDvideoselector and choose Open. This will allow you to enter into subpatch, find object location/media/fat32/cr/f1( f2,f3, ftc). F1,f2, f3, etc represent your folders with
one video inside each that are stored into crvideos folder. To change location of the folder to folder that you have put your videos in just change to location/yourfolder/your subfolder. Opening the patch will start GEM with your map. Checking On-off point will enable different color dots to appear on the map. Move them on X and Y to put them on the right position. Put a robot on that position so IR is at the spot and calibrate in PD location.
Image of PDvideoselector where location objects can be found
culturerobot@haip from GentleJunk on Vimeo.
CultureRobot test from GentleJunk on Vimeo.
Videos of beetlebots testing.