This week we borrowed all the equipment needed and rehearsed together the construction and implementation of the final installation (see Video 1 and Video 2).
Video 1: A Video Showing the first rehearsal of installation.
Video 2: A Video Showing the first rehearsal of installation.
Before the rehearsal, we discussed it with Leo in the tutorial and came up with a “Things to be done” list in Week 9. This greatly helped our rehearsal process.
During the rehearsal, I discovered two problems with the sensor. The first one is that the value sent by one of the ultrasonic sensors to the Max patch changes very laggy, and sometimes even stops changing. As shown in the video, the message in the console is normally changing , but the LineDistance value in the float object which shows 38 stops did not change accordingly. In the rehearsal, I tried many methods and looked for possible faults in the equipment connection, the Arduino project and the Max patch, but it still stuck after modifications or restarts (see Video 3).
Video 3: A Video Showing the LineDistance Value Stop Changing in the Max Patch.
The second is that in the sound part of the Max patch, the x-axis and y-axis of the pictslider, which are controlled by the light sensor and ultrasonic sensor respectively, cannot change particularly smoothly, either too slowly or too jumpy. This may have an impact on the user’s experience in the moment when interacting with the installation. I tried changing the delay value in the Arduino project and the metro value in the Max patch, and temporarily found a few more moderate values, but the effect was still not the best. So for the control conditions of the x-axis and y-axis, I still need to try multiple methods to choose the best one.
These two issues are what I need to focus on next week. At the end of the rehearsal, we summarized the things in the Week 9 list that we completed today, and based on this, we listed the new “Things to be done” in Week 10. The check marks are the parts that have been completed this week, the question mark are the part that is doubtful and need to be discussed again, and the rest are the things to focus on in Week 10.
