Honours Project

My general idea was to use one or more mac mini’s for the ‘heart’ of the installation, the main advantage being their compact size. Although not high-powered machines, they would likely contain enough processing power for my application (i think!).

I have been doing a little research into using multiple monitors with them, which through some brief searching, isn’t as easy as hoped. I currently have an older generation (2006) mac mini loaned from University, which only has 1 DVI output. The newer generation (2009>) mac mini’s do, unfortunately for me, support 2 monitor outputs.

Seemingly the only way to connect another monitor to the older generation of devices is through the use of a VGA splitter device, as detailed here. More info here and here. The main disadvantage of this looks to be a max resolution of 1024x768 per screen, which shouldn’t be too much of an issue, as I’d prefer to use as smaller monitors as possible, to constrain the potentially large size of the structure.

Tonight I have quickly experimented with using a second monitor with a (mac OS hacked) Dell netbook, which seems to work well. This will be considered through future development as a possible combination or alternative to the mac mini.

Another advantage to using the mac mini however, was the inbuilt bluetooth. I have tested the processing app on the netbook with a bluetooth USB dongle though and it seems to work fine - I had read about issues when using dongles with the bluetoothDesktop processing library, but it seems these don’t affect my setup.

The next stage in the development of Processing was to combine the 2 code examples I had been exprrimenting with previously:

• Repeatedly search for nearby Bluetooth devices, displaying their device name(s)
• Search the internet for a given string, returning appropriate results.

In this case I used yahooWeb.getTitle to display webpage title results as previously discussed, as so far this was the simplest and most reliable code so lent itself to initial implementation with bluetooth detection.

The main issue of this stage was to pass the bluetooth device name as a variable to the yahooWeb search. Previously the resulting device names had only been displayed as text, so a variable (devName) needed to be created beforehand.

It’s value was changed each time new devices appeared/disappeared from range. This variable was then passed to the yahooWeb search, which displayed the results.

One of the larger issues was that the value of devName often included “(Unknown)” the bluetooth device’s name when first discovered, before a complete connection has been established. This meant that the yahooWeb search often resulted in webpages about this title.

The solution to this was to use an if loop with a boolean, where only if devName var did not match the noDev var (value = “(Unknown)”) would the resulting webpage data be sent to an array to be displayed.

This has proved a reasonable example of passing data from the bluetoothDesktop library to the Switchboard library, where many other web search functions can be called. The next stage of the development will be to control the results more accurately, in particular displaying single results alone or in differing positions/sizes, rather that in one long array as current.

The next aspect of Processing I was eager to experiment with is scanning the internet for data and then displaying what is found.

Switchboard link is a ‘web services library for Processing’ and on the face of it, looks to do alot of what I need. It has various ‘services’ such as google, yahoo and msn which could sufficiently provide the required data searching processes.

I started by installing the library and looking at the examples, particularly yahooImage and yahooWeb, and testing the code with my own variables and alterations. For many of the services a developer key is required for access of their API, so this had to be done first.

yahooImage uses the yahoo image search engine for the requested string and displays the top 10 results. Their x & y positions and height & width can be controlled through Pimage, standard in the Processing library.

yahooWeb uses the yahoo web search engine for the requested string and displays the top 10 results, dependant on the getter methods used such as getTitle or getSummary. These are then passed through a string variable to join them together and display using text, again standard in the Processing library, where there position and style can be controlled appropriately. There are some issues as the code repeatedly displays the text, so it becomes blurred as further instances are layered - this was remedied by adding a background fill into the loop so as to erase over the previous instances, this is likely not a long term solution though as it could interfere with other elements on screen.

The next task was to combine both of these modified examples into one ‘sketch’. This was done successfully and the results displayed side by side.

The next stage will be to consider methods of linking the bluetooth search results tested earlier to these search and display methods.

As decided, I have started experimenting with the Processing link language to discover nearby Bluetooth devices. Using Processing has many advantages, as you can be seen in the previous quote, and theoretically is perfect for my desired product style and my lack of experience with computer programming. The libraries link available have such a variety of applications they seem perfect for the project, aswell as it’s easy ability to communicate with Arduino boards.

bluetoothDesktop link is a library to allow data transfer between bluetooth devices and the processing application. I had a little difficulty setting it up as it was extracted to an incorrect directory, but it all functions well now. Included with it are some examples.

I started with the Simple_Bluetooth file and analyzed its code. Then stripped out unnecessary elements to simplify my learning. The main modification was that of the ‘discovery loop’, in that it kept looping the code to search for new devices and refresh the list, rather than just acting once at setup.

The resulting application is compact but achieves what was desired: continuos scanning for bluetooth devices and display of the found device names. One of the next steps will be to extract and process the information in a different method.

Through the previous testing of BluetoothView, I noticed that the bluetooth signal from my iPhone 3G was either very poor, intermittent, or both. Only on occasion would the software detect the presence of it, and this seemed to be when I had recently turned the device bluetooth functionality on, and was in the Bluetooth menu. When I would return to the home screen or let the phone lock/sleep, the signal would vanish.

This was also prevalent when testing with my flatmate’s iPhone 3GS, and when demoing the BluetoothView software to my lecturer who has a 3G handset.

Through some quick research it seems there are other (related?) issues with the devices bluetooth capabilites: article link

Aswell as this, the only way to change the bluetooth device name of the handset is through iTunes when plugged into a computer, rather than through the menus on the handset like most other mobile phones. Generally the naming of Apple devices is quite restrictive (mine is ‘Tom Welsh’s iPhone’) but it is not mandatory to use the full name, so as my flatmate (‘Graeme’s iPhone’) has this would not provide enough information to detect any personally specific media of his on the internet.

(NOTE: There are many issues regarding the actual name viewers would use for their handset, and that of not using their personal full name can change the nature and exhibitionism of the installation. This will be investigated and discussed later on)

Additonal testing device

Because of the aforementioned issues with the iPhone, in addition I used a slightly dated Sony Ericsson K750i to test the Bluetooth view software. It’s signal proved strong and reliable and was very effective for testing (and generally its device name was always read first by the software rather than the iPhone(s))

I will likely continue to use this device because of it’s reliability in all future Bluetooth testing.

In the initial phase of the designs I was eager to try out software for bluetooth device searching, with an aim to find an application which would continually/intermittently scan for nearby devices, and output information about those in a common file format; primarily the device name which can usually be manually changed by the user in the device’s menu.

Through some google searches I came across BluetoothView (link) It’s freeware, and claimed to do everything that was required. Unfortunately it’s PC only, and as I’m primarily a Mac user, required me to begrudginly dig out my Vista-powered HP laptop.

There were no major issues in setting the software up, and it had some interesting features which were a bonus to me such as time first/last detected, number of times detected. These could possibly be used to alter the display nature/style of media in the installation.

The output methods of BluetoothView were interesting, with it able to save the names/data as TXT, CSV, XML and more. However to do this, it required the use of the Windows command prompt, and script manually entered for each output initiation. (Though this could have been resolved at a later date through programming of an MSDOS batch file).

For more visual friendly purposes, the output XML file was read by a HTML page I created which displayed only the device name, so the results could be more easily read with speed.

Although the application seemed robust, and would effectively scan, read and display data, it’s output capabilities were flawed. Despite testing every available file format multiple times, it would only output the data of visible devices on occasion, despite them showing on the application, and often would output no data through the Command Prompt.

Through consideration of these findings and discussion with my tutor, including the wider requirements of the project, it was agreed I will investigate the language Processing (link) - more on that soon.

The idea I am developing for goes something like this:

An physical installation, almost sculpture like in impact. Scanning the surrounding area for bluetooth signals, it identifies the device names and then scans the internet for these words. A series of screens (quite possibly other/different outputs) display the different media found.

The installation flickers into life as it detects a single device name. Media is sparsely shown as it is found, in random timings and locations on the screen(s). As another additional name is detected in the vicinity, and then another, the displays become more vivid, active with life. It flickers like a lightbulb with sparks of electricity, the light of the digital media specific to the people in the surrounding space.

Take modern industrialized societies participation in social media and digital content creation.

Apply Manovich’s conclusion of this paper in particular the topic personal subjectivity.

Consider Mediamatic’s ikTag project.

Embody aspects of all of these into a physical art installation. That’s what I’m trying to achieve.

Through the last trimester the central theme of my research, reading and writings has been exploring the transformation of digital content into the public space.

What does that mean?

Investigating physical presentation methods of online media. How can the huge amounts of media available and continually generated on the web be displayed away from the traditional mediums of the home computer or laptop screen, and more recently the mobile phone?

My research evaluated the decisions of what type of media to display (rich, text or stastical) and if to display it in it’s original form, or translate the data into something else.

Without my summarizing my essay (which can be requested via email) the additonal deliverable (as it’s known) will embody the work I’ve done so far, and promote further research into the subject dependent specifically on the design of the product.

This is the journal of my thoughts, development and inspiration of my honours project, the final part of my degree in. It’s mainly about the design of the ‘additional deliverable’, an artefact to embody the project report.

This accompanying document is titled ‘Investigating the transformation of digital media into the physical domain’. So the ‘product’ should be something along those lines.

Who am I?

My name is Thomas Welsh, 22. This is my final term studying the BSc Interactive Media Design at Edinburgh Napier University, a subject I’m very enthusiastic about.

I do some freelance web/graphic design work, my site being http://thomaswelsh.com. You can find links there to my relevant channels - twitter, flickr, vimeo. My main tumblr blog is http://thomaswelsh.tumblr.com

If you want to talk to me about the project, or anything really, feel free to email :)