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Interactive Installation/2016

Have you ever imagined a folding paper moving by itself? Folding Blooming is an installation with 28 units which are folding papers. You could interact with it through physical movement and the use of Twitter. Folding Blooming creates different movements based on your distance. Some hidden movements can be triggered by special keyword in twitter.

Interactive Installation

 

Skills

  • Arduino Programming

  • Electronics Assembly

  • Machine Design

  • Paper Folding

  • Processing Programming

  • Laser Cut

  • Visual Design

 

Softwares

  • Adobe Illustrator 

  • Adobe Photoshop

  • Processing 2.0

  • Arduino IDE

  • Rhino 3d

 

 

​FOLDING BLOOMING

Introduction

My professor challenged us to create an interactive installation I wanted.After two weeks of group meetings, we developed a concept of paper folding.We planned to build an "interactive paper folding wall: which can be controlled by user actions." We managed to use knowledge from a variety of fields to accomplish this team project, like 3-D printing, programming, and mechanism.

References

Making paper folding was a part of our childhood memory.However, rather than some child toys, my teammates and I preferred to consider paper folding as a distracting art form in our project. We wanted to use this art form to convey some concepts or emotions to the audiences.

We found a lot of origami references and tried to figure out which one has a better visualization which would be easy to accomplish. In order to make this installation in nine weeks, we made an organized schedule to push us.

Schedule

"Only nine weeks ，we need to hurry up!"

Prototype

Prototype testing

Test One: woodworks installation

The wood prototype was an alternative plan for us, because we thought, as an interactive installation, the paper might be too vulnerable to fold thousands of times.We believed to use wood pieces instead of paper in this installation.Unfortunately, it would make the whole installation too heavy, and the motors might not have enough power to drive it. 

Two: Paper folding 3-D patterns

To avoid the paper being broken, we folded it many times. With the inspiration from the "pop-up books", we designed a linkage mechanism to control the paper prototype to open and close. Without folding the paper, each part of the origami can be controlled by the power from the connection with other parts.However, based on artist perspective, this prototype doesn't look delicate. what is worse, after some prototype testing, We found it was a problem to fix it on the wall.

Three: Colorful origami

After experiencing several failures, we figured out that we need to get back to our original idea which makes the prototype as simple as possible. so we came up an idea which has a simple but delicate structure.We layered different colored paper to create the prototype.What is more significant is that we purchased more than 20 varieties of paper to figure out which has the best quality to fit our needs.

 Mechanism

DC motors

Initially, in order to generate the movement we want, we planned to use DC motors and worm gear sets to generate the movement we want.Soon we figured out Dc motors are hard to control because they can only be controlled by electricity, not programming, which means we can not use the motor to do some delicate movements.

Mini servo motors

With help from our professor Josephine, we found a mini servo motor is a good option for us. Because with the help of the chips inside of the motor, we can program the motor to control its speed and moving direction. For the next few week, we began to learn the code to control these tiny motors, but there was another problem we realized we need 96 motors to control the whole installation!

Programming

Although all of us had already built some foundation of programming, it was still far more difficult than what we expected. First, we programmed the Arduino to control 96 mini servo motors. Second, we used the Kinect tracker library in Processing to make this installation interact with users actions.It was a challenge for us, but with help from

Prof.Josephine, we spent three weeks to achieve our goals.

Assembling

USER FLOW

After we solved some theoretical problems, we started to access the installation based on our plan.I had to say it was the most exhausting process we ever had. The closer to the goal, the more difficulty we had. We spent three days making 28 paper foldings and the woodworks to support them.Most parts of this installation were concerning because they were handmade.To make sure every part was flawless, we had to remake some parts again, and again.What was more significant, we needed to use Adfruit boards to control the fifty-six motors behind these paper foldings. Therefore, it was a challenge for us to hide hundreds of wires behind the paper foldings neatly and simply.The majority of my focus was soldering seven Adfruit boards together which can help us to organize these wires.Finally, after nine weeks of experienced numerous failures, we were so proud we made this amazing and interesting interactive installation- Folding Blooming.  

Final Look

Takeaways

Trial & Error

From this project, I learned some incredible experience which teaches me how to face my challenges.Since I started to be a UI/UX designer, it was my first time to work with my fellows to design an experimental project which barely considers the user needs, yet we realized it was far harder than the project we did before.Without user needs guide us how to conduct and research，we had to argue with each other because of different personal preferences.In order to resolve differences quickly,  I learned it is very necessary to listen to your teammate first.It was not only showing respect to my teammates, but it made me have enough time to organize my thoughts to disprove his/her argument.If it sounds compelling, I needed to work with my teammates quickly to prove the validity of his/her argument.If it didn't work, I needed to turn around and try to find another solution with my teammates.Thought this project, I truly understood that"trial & error " is an instrumental strategy which leads us in the field we never stepped in before.

Given more time, I would also have to add more paper foldings to this installation which makes it more stunning visually.I understood, because of the numerical limits of the team members and the time schedule, it was hard to achieve this goal, but if I could get some help from external sources, this installation would look better.

 

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