Jessica Porretta, Jenny Truong & Jessica Witt's Mouse Hack

For our mouse hack project, we wanted to create a space that relaxed the user. We thought the best way to do this was create a 'spa theme', with lit candles and a massaging pillow. Once the user sat down on the chair, they would experience watching a video of a waterfall with its calming sound in the background. Once the user was relaxed, they would then lie on the pillow to find a projection of traffic and a chaos of sound. Inside the pillow we had our mouse - which was attached to wires that were taped inside two sponges that were laid on top of each other. Once the sponged were pressed - this caused the wires to touch and 'presses the button' which changes the screen from calm to chaos.

The idea of being relaxed in our lives, is sometimes unapparent as even though we can be in a very relaxed setting, there is still some stress in the back of our heads that will always be there.

If we had a huge budget, firstly, we would definitely change the chair the user sat in. A big, comfortable massage chair that would vibrate and massage the user would be ideal. Second, when the user put their head on the pillow, the sound in the background would not change, which was a problem with the code. All of us tried hard to fix the problem, and when it did work, it would ruin the video. Third, a high definition video of both the waterfall and the traffic would also be ideal as it could allow the user to immerse in the space.

Chloe M's Mouse Hack

My mouse hack concept was based on nostalgia and fleeting moments, the way humans are fixated on capturing events and feelings via a lens. I chose to approach this using the notion of light seeing as film is exposed using light and has the images taken by the photographer are 'revealed' in darkness. For this reason I chose to use a light sensitive resistor as my button in my mouse. I put the resistor inside in an old video cassette (again emphasizing the feeling of nostalgia) and when the light is blocked the projected image is a compilation of home movies from the 70's. When the light hits the sensor, the projection is of a blank exposed film reel.

The reason I chose to use older footage I found online for the home movies was because I wanted something reminiscent. I especially like super 8 film because it has a very warm feel to it which is what I wanted to get across, a sense of longing for 'simpler days'. The song choice was also to emphasize the feeling.

Here is a video of my mouse hack in action;

Untitled from Chloe Martin on Vimeo.

If I were to improve my mouse hack, I would obviously like to make the installation and mouse casing more attractive. I'd also like to have more negatives and have them control the video playing on the screen, so for example the video on the screen would correspond to the captured negative being held to the light and the default setting of the projection would be the blank reel. It would also be interesting to play with my own home videos and make the piece more personal...

Lauren Bonsell's Mouse Hack

My project is a hockey game. When you shoot the ball and it hits the target, an animation of a goal is played on the projected screen.
 The concept is taking the on ice "shooter tutor" (a wooden or plastic obstacle to shoot around) and bringing it indoors. It allows people to test their shooting ability on a smaller scale, with the reward of a goal celebration animation. The idea is to be used as a gaming device or a coaching mechanism, to help improve shooting accuracy skills.

The million dollar budget: It would be a full scale hockey net and sticks. The animation would have top-notch graphics and would be timed with the motion of the player. Additionally I would add a traditional red light behind the net and an authentic goal horn. In a gaming arcade there could be multiples of the game lined up and have a competition to the most goals.

What I tried: Originally my idea was to take the mouse apart and solder my own wires in place of the switch. I bought pin headers and alligator clips and spent hours trying to re-solder the mouse circuit board but the solder we were using was old and wouldn't stick. I experimented with thick pieces of aluminum, tin foil, and copper wire. The best plan was to have two long stripped pieces of copper wire, stretched diagonally across each piece of wood contact. Therefore the X characteristic of the wires would ensure contact no matter which direction the swinging wood piece would go.

Finished Project: In the end I had to take an entirely new mouse and drill a hole in the button and have a long screw project outward from the mouse so that the swinging piece of wood (with the target on the front) could easily hit it.

Megan Shier - Mouse Hack

I choice to do a soccer related piece for my mouse hack. I am a huge soccer fan and I love the spirit, obsession and dedication fans have.
Focusing on fandom, I decided to create a simulated penalty shot setup and when the goalkeeper catches the ball, the keeper's club theme would play as part of a celebratory response. I designed it around my favourite club, Real Madrid Club de Fútbol, so the song that played is the chorus of "Hala Madrid" (full song: http://youtu.be/dyFmXLGcZkY).

I started with the gloves. I cut a small circle from the middle of the palm. I used conductive thread and on 2 pieces of foam, I stitched a pattern the same size as the circle on the glove. I lined up one piece of foam inside the glove and glued it in place so the stitching was facing outwards and glued the other on the outside of the glove so that when the ball was in the hand, the 2 sides would meet and act like pressing a button on the mouse.




Then, I lined the conductive thread up the arm and down the back of my Real Madrid jersey, keeping in place with tape (because the jersey was expensive and I didn't want to ruin it).









I kept the actual mouse in a small pouch that was clipped to the belt loop on my pants. It would have been to have attached it directly to the shirt, but again, I didn't want to do any permanent reconstruction to the jersey.







If I had unlimited money, I would have liked to have a full boxed in room to make a more authentic simulation. I would have astroturf and an actual net. I'd like to have a constant soundtrack playing of fans cheering just as a background noise, adding to the atmosphere. I would also like it to be interactive more by having multiple jerseys, and having the participate choice which one they would like to be and again, have whichever team they choice, that teams theme would play. But for what I have right now, I am very happy with how this project turned out (other than not having a soldering iron to connect the wires to the mouse - they kept coming detached)

Lilian Hiu Wai C and Sin Yi Betty C's Bento Mouse Heck Project

Our project is called Bento, which stands for lunch box in Japanese. We created our project with really food with facial expression that would scream "Your evil", "Stay away from me", "awww" and etc when they are poked with a fork. We were trying to avoid simple button pressing, therefore Bento involves the users to apply pressure on the food to pick them up, which triggers the button to play the audio files. The reason why we decided on creating the lunch box was to test if the users will feel for the objects when it expresses emotions, even though it is not really living.
Here is the inside part of the bento. 2 buttons replaced the original mouse left and right buttons, and 8 springs to support the platform.

Samar H's and Alex J's Mouse Hack

Alex J and Samar H created a project called DO NOT OPEN, referring to the privacy stickers so often placed on journals or personal files. The project is a book that exclaims, "No! I Said no! Nooooooooooooooooooo!" and "Don't open me!" when you open its two covers. Speakers and a mouse chip are inside the fake book, and 'wires' made of aluminum foil and gold leaf form connections that activate the book to talk when one disrupts those connections by opening the flaps.

The concept was to test existing notionsof privacy and curiosity. e.g. when one finds a jounral on the ground, one is tempted to read it, but also driven by thier conscience to respect privacy and not open it. DO NOT OPEN manifests the inner thoughts of guilt that run through anyone's mind when opening a document, text or otherwise that is probably not privy to thier eyes.

Linda L & Winnie K's Final Project

It's a record player with a selection of nostalgic songs from our generation. The code was created with Processing. Each time the user presses the button, it scrolls through a list of 10 songs in order. Once the array is finished, it returns to the very first one, continuing where it was left off.

Source Code

Jonathan Seguin's Mouse Hack

Minesweep!

I had a lot of trouble deciding what I wanted to do for my mouse hack. I had a variety of ideas involving creating some sort of novelty by re-purposing the mouse as a different, but pre-existing object: a guitar, a windmill, a piano, so on and so forth. All of these ideas I felt were clever in a technical aspect, but none of them left me feeling satisfied with the end experience. So for my project I set out to develop an experience instead of a technically complex hack.

The idea I came up with was to re-purpose the mouse as a mine detector. I felt the experience of walking through a mine field, where one false step could mean your end, created a very tense and exhilarating environment for game play.

The game functioned as follows:

• Players would navigate through a space with boundaries set in the form of a rectangle.
• The goal would be to make it from one end of the space to the other end without running into any mines.
• Players however would not be given any visual cues to where the mines were planted. Originally the plan was to blind fold participants in order to have them focus on using their other senses (hearing).
• As players approached a mine with their mine detector, a beeping noise would play. The closer a player moves to a mine the fast the beeping would play.
• By using the beeping sound players should be able to navigate carefully to the other side without meeting their dooms.

Additionally I decided it would be good for those observing to be able to monitor the situation more clearly so they could see whether or not their contestant was poised for doom. This actually created another form of feedback for the player to take heed of. The level of anxiety in the audience is directly expressed to the player as they move through the field giving them another way to gauge how well they're doing.

Projected opposite the back of the player is an overview of the player's position and mine positions.

In terms of improvements there are a few obvious things I would like to address:

• Install a mouse friendly surface for contestants to play on. Tracking the player's movements on a dirty floor was one of the major elements that detracted from this experience.
• Adding a timer: If a timer was included it opens up the option for either a scoreboard, so that players can compete against each other's times; or an additional mode of difficulty such that players need to reach the end of the field within a certain time frame.
• Stronger Visuals: I felt that the visuals were more of a rough prototype and that there was much room for improvement. Perhaps a better reward screen for completing the challenge, and perhaps implementing a camera to capture the reactions of contestants when have blown themselves up.

Cristal's Mouse Hack Suspenders

For my mouse hack project, I was extremely interested in movement creating sound, particularly dance moves making beats. The idea of how that would happen changed a few times, but I knew I wanted it to be wearables. Originally I had thought of extending the buttons into shoes that could be stepped on or a belt that would create beats with the movement of hips. It took a bit of time and quite a bit of brainstorming to come up with suspenders.


 

I extended the left and right buttons, attaching a ball tilt switch to each. The ball tilt switches were sewn to the approximate location of the top of the shoulders. The board was sewn to the center of the Y of the suspenders, so that the wires wouldn't be pulled as much. Then in Processing: left-click played a snare drum sample and the right-click played a bass kick sample. Sometimes the tilt switches were very sensitive and sometimes they weren't responsive at all. If I were to redo this project, I'd probably try a different type of switch that might be more consistent or position the tilt switch differently.



In the future, I hope to expand on this project, using a keyboard hack, so that there can be more sample sounds to allow people to produce a song by moving more parts of the body.

The Kill Button (Mouse Hack) - Connors Eilersen

Have you ever been working with a computer, and no matter what you do it doesn't want to cooperate? It is from this problem that the Kill Button is born.

My previous idea for a mouse hack was to make a simulated pipe organ using multiple mice in sequence, which are then controlled by the processing library ProControl. However, after much coding being done on my desktop, i decide to test it on my laptop (the machine i was going to use to present it), and the computer refused to respond to multiple mice inputs. After many hours of banging my head against a brick wall (metaphorically of course), I decided to change my focus.

The Kill Button, the spawn of my anger and frustration towards technology that refuses to listen to me, if my project for the mouse hack. When it is plugged in, it runs some code that causes a digitized face to appear on the screen. When the big red button is pressed, it causes to computer to enter an immediate state of shutdown. However, while you are deciding to press it, the computerized face tries to convince you to not "murder" it. The voice for the computer are composed of sampled clips from the video game Portal. The piece is a commentary on how reliant we are on technology and artificial intelligence. The piece if heavily reliant on the back story, in which anger at technology caused a device to be created that essential kills the machine.

Curtis Poad's Paper and Motors

For the papers and motor project, I decided to make an origami lego man head and combine it onto a rotating platform that uses a motor and a couple led lights. I wanted this to be like a beacon or lighthouse but disguised as a lego man. It actually turned out pretty creepy than what I intended. I wanted to make this as a representation of my childhood and love of lego when I was younger. The led lights that I used act in the same way that a lighthouse would when the head rotates. The biggest challenge for me was learning how to make this origami structure.

For improvement I would add more paper body parts to complete this lego man and alsohttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif include more motors to make the arms and legs move. Video can be found here.

Melissa's Mouse Hack

What is Pretty?

My mouse hack evolved several times throughout the duration of this project. One of the evolving elements being theme, in the end the main theme for the project ended up being feminism and what is considered beautiful in today's society.

There are three projected images, one of me without make-up, one with make-up, and the final photoshopped. All of the images include my mouth being covered with a blindfold. The first image reads "Will I be pretty?", the second "Will I be smart?" and the third "When can I be both?" When the eyeliner (attached to the sheet) is touched to the projection it changes to the second image. When the mascara is touched to the projection it changes to the third image, and the blue button sets it back to the first image. There is also a track that plays that is a mix between different feminists speaking about beauty and the feminist movement. The first speaker in the track is a dub poet named Katie Makkai with the beginning of her poem called "Pretty", the second a key player in the feminist movement in the 1950's Betty Freidan speaking on CBC about Women, and the third another dub poet named Staceyann Chin speaking about equality in today's society. If I were to take this project further I would have had the track relate to the movement of the images better so there could be more of a connection.

There are different messages the viewer can take away from this piece whether it being that women can feel silenced by their lack of society's idea of beauty, or that they feel silenced by fitting into society's idea of beauty. My hope is that the piece relates to the viewer based on their experiences.

I think that this interface works much better than my original one where the viewer touched the mascara and eyeliner to a mirror placed on a box. This connects the images and objects much better.

Click here to play the audio from the piece.

Kalytta's TOUCH & IMMERSIVE reading light

Watch my working (!) project in action [here]

This is a redo of my failed hack of the mouse's sensor. I found out that the optical sensor would not be able to sense being covered and uncovered (light and dark) since it senses when there has been movement across a surface.

PS. from previous problems of not being able to log into this blog, my PAPER & MOTORS and OBJECT & AUDIO projects were blogged [here]

Kathryn Barrett's Mouse Hack Final Project

Based on the quote by Andy Warhol: "In the future, everyone will be world famous for 15 minutes" I decided to emphasize the effect of time and the idea of fame. Using a 15 minute sand hour glass, I wanted to create an environment where someone had the ability to prove their identity to the world - coming into the whole thing completely unprepared. The idea that fame comes in all forms (talent, embarrassment, who you know, what you say, etc.) I had intended for people to choose their words, therefore grasping that they held complete control (opposed to doing something by accident and getting caught on film, for example). The hour glass proved to be a pressuring object; watching the sand quickly fall through and creating a "nail biting" experience.

For the actual installation, I wanted to have both physical and digital aspects. The hour glass sat on the table, and once flipped over, would start a video (via Processing) on one projector. On a second projector, and empty word processing document stayed open, allowing the person who flipped the hour glass, to begin typing anything that they thought would make them famous. Ideally, the person would be writing for 15 minutes (until the hour glass was empty). I was on the fence about whether or not to have the writing aspect public or not. I eventually decided to use the projection so everyone could see - since it best represented the quote and it would be interesting in a gallery full of strangers.

For the actual mouse hack, I used a mercury tilt switch to initiate the video via mouse click on Processing.

Here is the video it played:

Here is the setup of the two projections - The word processing document on the left, and the video playing at the same time (for the duration of the 15 minutes, and corresponding with the physical hour glass on the table) on the right.

If I were to improve this project, I would love for people to show their talents in more forms than just writing. It would be interesting to see what people decided to draw in 15 minutes, or offer to say in 15 minutes (a speech?). It would create a neat bond between complete strangers.

Phuong D and Konstantino K’s Mouse Hack

Our mouse hack, which we’ve entitled “LightWeight,” attempts to bring the property of mass to light itself. Recalling a short passage by Yoko Ono read to us in the beginning of the semester, which asked participants to capture sunlight in a bag, we explored how we could bring a more tangible manifestation to the movement of light and how a person could manipulate its direction.

In our initial brainstorming, we envisioned a cube where users could shake and rotate it as they please, causing embedded lights to move with the cube as though they were a bottled liquid. For aesthetic reasons, we tweaked the idea for a pyramid (pictured lower left), and eventually into a short triangular prism for technical reasons. We realized that to have two separate axis for users to control, there would be some difficulties in the circuit design. Namely, each LED would be linked to two separate circuits and there would need to be two mice (for X motions and Y motions respectively).

Deciding that three-dimensional manipulation would be a bit too ambitious for this project, we worked with motion on a purely two-dimensional arena. On the first layer of our prism, a mouse shifts by the way the user tilts the piece.

We purchased a miniature mouse to maximize the motion on our relatively limited surface. The top enclosure of the mouse was removed, and its sides were hacked off from the bottom of the enclosure to maintain a low profile. This was important for the next layer of our piece, where we introduced a ceiling for the mouse.

The majority of the structure is built with foam core.

The ceiling is a separate triangular piece that we insert into the middle of LightWeight. Its first function is to prevent the mouse from jumping upward: we found that once the mice coordinates were read on the software side, jumps caused erratic and unusable readings (more on the software in a bit). Its second use was to separate it from the LED array we built, as the mouse’s laser introduced an undesirable light source of its own. We made sure that the ceiling was easily removable so that we could access the mouse without destroying the top layer in testing and for future use.

The top layer comprised of 10 white LEDs that we purchased from Active Surplus (for $1.00 each, which is irregularly expensive for an LED). Each LED was equipped with a standard 1K resistor, and each had its positive side fed into a pin on our Arduino dedicated to the individual LED. The negative sides were daisy chained and fed into one of the ground terminals in the Arduino. Like the mouse’s ceiling piece, we made sure that the top layer was also easily removable by implementing pull-up straps on its sides.

To interface the mouse with our LEDs, we used a USB Host Shield designed by sparkfun.com, purchased at Creatron. Like any Arduino shield, the USB Host Shield conveniently sits atop the Arduino through stackable connector pins. A single USB port sits at the edge of the board where the mouse is plugged in. In our picture above, you can also see the tangle of wires, each of which comes from one of our LEDs (with the exception of the blue ground wire, which comes from all of them).

On the software side, we had to install three libraries for the USB Host Shield to function correctly. These were Spi (Serial Peripheral Interface), Max3421e (which is named after the main microchip on the Host Shield), as well as a USB library.

While testing the information the mouse gave us, we learned that the raw coordinate values provided were fairly sensitive, circumstantial, and mostly unpredictable. To resolve these issues, we created a simple algorithm that read the raw coordinates and made them more “readable.” Among other things, we made the values add or subtract to themselves as the mouse moved so we could envision its point in space (here we created an actual X and Y coordinate – before, the mouse values compared themselves to the previous moment). Finally, we created a set of statements that determined which lights would turn on based on where the mouse was shifted.

To finish the physical design, we covered the LED array with parchment paper (to diffuse the glow of the lights) and a blue sheet of plastic transparency. The end result is an object that can be held and played with by the user to manipulate the flow of light. In future iterations, we would like to work on a three-dimensional plane as previously stated, and include several more LEDs to create a more organic and naturalistic aesthetic.

Curtis Poad's Mouse Hack

For my mouse hack project, I decided I wanted to play with the idea of combining a musical instrument with visuals that respond based on what the person is playing. I ended up using my own snare drum and made a program that would create ripples of coloured rings each time you hit the drum.

The mouse is located underneath the drum and has two wires coming up the side with one attatched to the drum skin surface and the other attatched to the underside of the drum silencer pad. Both wires have tin foil connected to them so when the player hits the drum, the two pieces of tin foil connect and trigger the rings to appear on screen.

To take this project further, I would make an entire drum kit trigger different visuals depending on what piece of the drum kit you hit. Also I would make it more dynamic by changing the triggering devices and allow for different visuals depending on how hard you hit the drums.

Jessica Ren's Mouse Hack Project

Melting Glacier - For this project I've created a time lapse based on the effects of global warming and climate change in rapid speed, as it is recorded by camera. The glacier travels half a meter per day, according to this there would be very little ice in the North Pole in less than a few decades. The Time Machine allows you to fast forward in time to see the movement of the ice melt into the ocean by pushing the lever in one direction. If given more time and money to create the project, I would use more expensive materials like metal casing and power switch to control the actual time machine. Enhancement on the appearance of the machine as well as on the illusion of a real piece of mechanic that enables you to travel in time.

Mouse Hack - Sherilyn Fernandes & Jenny Ramroop

For our mouse hack, we created a television remote control that had the up and down function of a normal control to change channels. We created a tv in scratch, and added images, that change as you click up and down. Right click controlled the "down" button, and left click controlled "up". Our concept was to show how the things on t.v. impact people. We tried to cover issues like violence, sex, drugs, nature, life, love etc..

If we had more time and the money to enhance our project we would create video instead of images and have an actual remote instead of cardboard box. We will also do more work to enhance the concept so that the issue becomes more clear.

RE-Do of Audio and Object

Here are some photos of the new interface for my Twitter Birds project, it works exactly the same with the speakers inside the birdcage.

I will have to add documentation of my mouse hack later as it broke on the way home and I'll have to get more solder to fix it :(

Here are the photos!

Samar's Audio Project

For the audio part of my project I used an arabic drum beat to express the culture I grew up in throughout my life (I created one of the drum layers myself). A north American song and a french song flow in and out of the song to express the other cultures that were in and out of my life until this point. For my object I used an old arabic drum that I have had in my bedroom my whole life, in whatever country I lived in. The drum broke during one of my moves and was taped back together with moving tape, I chose to leave the tape on the drum to emphasize my moving a lot when growing up. If I had a million dollars to make this project I would fill a big room with drums, drums sticking out of the walls, on the ground, and a much bigger central drum in the middle of the room. My audio would be playing in the background and viewers would be able to interact with the piece by playing their own pieces on the available drums.

Megan S - Audio and Object

I decided to use the one aspect of my life that has influenced so much of my personality - the fact that I never felt like I had a place to call home. While growing up, I moved every other year to a new town, school, even country sometimes. This lack of stability and consistency has formed a lot of my personality. My readiness to travel, my detachment to people, my inability to relate to others are (what I believe) to be a result of not having a single place to live. For me, home is about a feeling. Home is a place you can feel safe and comfortable with people who love you and when the surroundings change, the feeling changes or never actually solidifies. Home helps create who you are and for me, not having a home has created the person I am.
I choose to modify a dollhouse for my object. I wanted to keep the outside exactly the same. So looking from the outside, it looks like the picture perfect type of home that every little girl had. One the inside, I spray painted it white. It is completely empty of any colour showing how this idea of home being a safe, comfortable place doesn't actually exist.
I was thinking about what types of 'home' audio I could use. I choose audio from setting a table, people talking, and kids laughing. This would give the atmosphere of a cozy home with people and happiness. I also needed the other part to this, the 'non-home' sounds which was a bit harder. Every time I try to describe how not having a consistent home has affected me, the word air kept popping up. I feel aloof and an airy detachment. From this I decided to use audio of artic air to blow the sounds of home out and then have it come back. It represents the tug-of-war if me trying to find a place to call home and feel comfortable but never fully being there and staying.
This project turned out exactly how I wanted it to. I never thought of doing this any other way even if I did have more money. However, I think it might be cool to have a full size house pure white on the inside and have the audio as an invisible surround sound as the audience walks through.

Jessica R's Audio and Object Self Portrait

I chose to do the rubix cube to represent many different personas, and roles in society. Each colour depicts a side that’s both unique and could also be associated to other sides as well. The mixing of the audio track is an amalgamation of different cultures and events, which is something I’m very interested in, it’s the idea of exploring differences and individuality. I think the cube is the perfect object to showcase this idea because you can easily twist it and it turns/becomes a complete chaos, it reflects on our surroundings and especially with artists and their works. i feel like we are individual beings with complex desires and emotions, a cube with 6 different sides in a variety of colours can really reflect this idea. I chose this along with its audios to represent chaos as well as unity.

Audio Track: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o81zMyZUWKk