Final Project

 

 

I chose to do my final project utilizing the Arduino boards demonstrated in class. Knowing the capabilities of the technology I was curious to see how I could work the boards to better convey my ideas

I wanted to work with a topic very close to me; anxiety. It is a feeling that guides a lot of lives around the world and is very personal to a lot of people not just myself. Knowing this I asked myself, what causes anxiety? A universal culprit I assumed was time. Humans are driven in every moment by some aspect of time, it is the only constant. So now with two drives, a desire to create something with the Arduino boards and anxiety in relation to time, I set about creating my piece. Aesthetically there were numerous choices to be made. I originally intended on making the piece very cluttered and confusing to the eye with a tangle of wires and two clock hands nestled in the mix. The clutter and messy technological display I intended to evoke those beginning feelings of anxiety crucial to the understanding of this piece. However as I thought about it and realized there was a different way to convey these feelings I started thinking of old clocks as a juxtaposition to the overt use of technology in mine. I hoped to utilize this contradiction between old-world and new technology by combining a rich woodwork backdrop with cluttered technology peeking through.

The coding for the motors became quite a difficulty along the way. As a beginning coder I did not have a lot of knowledge under my belt, and even with numerous sources of expertise sometimes the boards would not encode, parts would not work, or other functions would be bugged. However, eventually we were able to get the coding to randomize motor RPMs, duration, and duration between RPM initialization by switching the motor output to PMW pin no. ~3. After a quick instance of celebration I realized the significance of such an easy fix to pin 3. For me it symbolized the simple fact that no matter how anxious, stressful, or overworked one gets in life, there is always a blatant and undeniably simple fix to a purely emotional overreaction. Bear in mind that the 3 intends to send the message that such fixes are often blatant, this does not mean however that they are easy though. As a sort of meta-example, dealing with this project, and the issues before switching to pin 3, caused me a measurable amount of anxiety and the struggle I underwent with the aid of my coding sources caused this reaction fixed by a blatant and simple move of a wire to pin 3. This is why I chose to display the number engraved into the dark wood so boldly.

The clockhands themselves I intended to be small and rapid to account for the rapid speeds of the motors and aesthetic preference. I chose to make them out of matchsticks burnt down to different lengths from each other representing the two predominant hands on a clock; the hour and minute. They symbolized the fleeting and consuming nature of time. Fire in itself, given enough fuel, burns stronger and fiercer with more time and in the process consumes the fuel it is driven from. I chose to leave any determinacy of actual time out of the equation such as tick marks or numbers indicating specific times. The message I intended to convey in doing so was the uncontrollable nature of time itself and the anxiety resulting from recognizing this truth aided by the anxiety from not knowing the time the hand landed on after the randomized RPM and randomized intervals ran their course. A side-effect of the motors in the varnished wooden casing was a piercing humming coming from the motors while they were running. Unintentionally I believe this aided the message of my piece, a randomized and uncontrollable annoying sound contributing to the anxiety of the furiously spinning and stopping clockhands.

Anxiety for most people around the world is an emotional overreaction fueled by things to be done dragged down by fleeting time in the growing shadow of impending deadlines. This piece was intended to evoke those familiar feelings in its viewers through various means such as the juxtaposition between old-world clocks and the disorder of new technology, uncontrollable spinning clockhands giving no sense of time, and the matchsticks used as an allegory to time itself. However, there is a fragment of hope. Sometimes the most complex and frustrating tasks in life leading to great emotional overreactions of anxiety can have simple fixes. So just remember, pin 3 is always an option.