Jacqueline Kory-Westlund

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Click here to see the video showing this project!

Concept: Glowing Orbs

Glorbs. Glowing orbs. Interactive balls that help you visualize and explore the dynamics of motion&mash;acceleration, velocity, rotation. Colored lights embedded in the balls give immediate visual feedback about how the balls are moving. Throw one up in the air, and watch the colors change from blue (high acceleration) to purple to red (little acceleration) and back to blue on impact as you catch it. Learn about physics!

The idea for glorbs evolved from a project I did in the Media Lab's Tangible Interfaces class the previous semester. My group came up with an idea for a wearable interface to motivate and guide collaborative, synchronous motion—i.e., pairs of wristbands containing LEDs that would change color and intensity as you move synchronously with other people wearing similar wristbands. We made a stop motion video showing off the concept, and a prototype wristband that lit up.

Why not make that class project come to life for The Other Festival? Randy, my husband, thought it'd be fun to do an electronics project, so away we went. Several brainstorming sessions later, the concept had evolved into something doable in the span of one semester—you know, not requiring a bunch of sensors and complex algorithms for measuring synchronous movement between humans...

Glorb Design

We prototyped on a breadboard. Wires, xbees, microcontrollers, LEDs... We used a triple-axis inertial measurement unit (IMU) to measure acceleration and rotation, which was streamed to an AVR microprocessor. There, it calculated average values and set the LED colors and brightness levels appropriately.

A wireless transmitter (xbee radios!) let us stream the data to a computer, so we could show a real-time graph.

Once we had settled on a design, Randy laid out a PCB. We ordered parts. We used the Media Lab's shop to machine the boards. We soldered.

We cut plastic whiffle balls in half, stuffed them with the electronics, a battery pack, and some bubble wrap, and tied them up with thin nylon rope. Bam! Glorb.

Besides the glorb that changed colors from red to purple to blue to reflect its acceleration, we also made a glorb that got brighter under high rotation, and dimmer under low rotation.

The Other Festival

We set four glorbs on a table in a dark room. We wanted to see what people did with them— play? explore physics?—so we did not provide any instructions or guidance, just four glowy balls.

People came in. While we didn't hear anyone explicitly discussing physics, people did pick up the balls, tossed and caught them, played around, and generally found them entertaining. Which was the goal!

Video

I made a video showing the development of the glorbs, featuring yours truly juggling three of them. Watch it here!

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Jonathan Speiser, Adina Roth, and the 2013 MAS.826 class for their support on earlier versions of this project!

Alive and not alive

At the core of this project is the idea that new technologies are not alive in the same way as people, plants, and animals -- but nor are they inanimate like tables, rocks, and toasters. We attribute perception, intelligence, emotion, volition, even moral standing to social robots, computers, tutoring agents, tangible media, any media that takes -- or seems to take -- a life of its own.

Sometimes, we relate to technology not as a thing or an inanimate object, but as an other, a quasi-human. We talk to our technology rather than about the technology, moving from the impersonal third-person to the personal second-person, moving into social relation with the technology.

So, given that we perceive and interact with these technologies as if they are alive... are they? At what point do they become alive?

What does it mean for a technology to be alive?

How much does whether they are “actually” alive matter, and how much is our categorization of them dependent on how they appear to us?

Maybe they will not fit into our existing ontological categories at all.

Not things.

Not living.

Something in between.

Story

I explored the question of how to encounter the "aliveness" of new technologies through a set of life-size sequential art pieces.

The story followed several robots in the human world. Life-size frames filled entire windows. The robots ask about their own aliveness, self-aware and struggling with their own identity. They try to fit in, but don't. A wheeled robot looks sadly up at a staircase. A shorter wheeled robot sits in an elevator, unable to reach the elevator buttons. A stained-glass robot draws our attention to the personal connections we have with our technology.

Social robots. Virtual humans. Tutoring agents.

They are here. They are probably not taking over the world. They are game-changers and they make us think.

Perhaps they cannot replace people or make people obsolete. Perhaps they are fundamentally different. Perhaps they will be a positive force in our world, if done right. If viewed right. If understood as what they are. As something in between.

How will we deal with them? How will we interact? How will we understand them?

Medium

The story was created as a life-story story that the reader could walk through, so reading would felt more like walking down the hall having a conversation with the character than like reading.

I read Scott McCloud's great book, Understanding Comics, around the same time as doing this project. (Perhaps you can see the influence. Perhaps.) Comic-style, sequential art to promote a dialogue. An abstract character, because if you had an actual robot tell the story, something would be lost. Outlining the robot character in less detail, as more abstract, drew more attention to the ideas being conveyed, and let viewers project more of themselves onto the art.

The low-tech nature was partially inspired by ancient Chinese cut paper methods, as well as by some comics styles. The interaction between the flat, non-technological medium through which the story is told and the content of the story -- questions about technology -- calls attention to the contrast between living and thing. What is the role of technology in our lives?

Installation

Select frames from Am I Alive? were installed at the MIT Media Lab during The Other Festival.

Video

I made a short video showing the concept, making of the pieces for the installation, and photos of the installation. Watch it here!

Relevant research

If you're curious about the topic of how robots are perceived, here are a couple research papers you might find interesting:

• Coeckelbergh, M. (2011). Talking to robots: On the linguistic construction of personal human-robot relations. Human-robot personal relationships (pp. 126-129) Springer.

• Kahn Jr, P. H., Kanda, T., Ishiguro, H., Freier, N. G., Severson, R. L., Gill, B. T., Ruckert, J. H., Shen, S. (2012). “Robovie, you'll have to go into the closet now”: Children's social and moral relationships with a humanoid robot. Developmental Psychology, 48(2), 303.

• Severson, R. L., & Carlson, S. M. (2010). Behaving as or behaving as if? Children’s conceptions of personified robots and the emergence of a new ontological category. Neural Networks, 23(8), 1099- 1103.

I've posted a decent number of photos on my blog so far. Although one could feasibly wander back through my archives to view them, I'll spare one the trouble -- here's the collection.

• Comprehensive list of my photography-focused posts
• Through the Student Lens exhibition

Sunset over Masaya Volcano, Nicaragua

Magnolias

GROVER2's first field tests on the beach.

Comprehensive list of my photography-focused posts

1. Digital Moments – from road trips, autumn, and baking in 2012
2. Indiana: Winter, Spring – photos from the end of winter and start of spring in my current corner of Indiana, in 2012
3. Watching leaves turn - a series taken through my bedroom window at Vassar my senior year, showing the seasons changing in 2010-2011
4. Trip to Wallops - photos from the NASA Goddard Engineering Boot Camp 2011 trip to NASA Wallops Flight Facility and Assateague State Park
5. Fencing, thesis, snow - several snow-themed photos from winter 2010-2011
6. Autumn Colors - a collection of autumn-themed photos at Vassar, fall 2010

I should also note that nearly all the photos that ever appear on this website or on my blog are photos I've taken.

VC women's foilists, January 2011

Winter picnic

Ingredients for a paper

Through the Student Lens exhibit

In the spring of 2011, I got an email about the upcoming Through the Student Lens exhibition that would be held in Vassar's Palmer Gallery.

I almost dismissed it offhand; after all, it was just another solicitation about some happening at Vassar, right? We get a lot of those. But I was in the middle of my last Vassar semester. I'd been thinking a lot about my time there (what close-to-graduating senior wouldn't be?), and I realized I could probably contribute something to the exhibition. This was about the same time that I decided to write a piece for the Vassar 150 memories website. My experience at Vassar was just that: my experience at Vassar. No one else would know what it as like unless I told them. Or, in this case, shared photos.

I dabble in photography. I'm not an expert; all I have is a hand-me-down digital camera that's at least six years old, probably older (for a digital camera, that's old). I've never taken a photography class. I just try to capture the feeling of particular times and places, since it's the feeling of a moment that I know I'll want to remember later.

The photos of mine in the exhibition are Lake Mirror and Circle Time.

The first is of Sunset Lake, taken during just after a Fourth of July picnic in 2009. That was my second URSI summer; it was also scant weeks before I traveled south to Australia for a semester. The photo captures both the sunshine and happiness of that summer and the quiet reflection I associate with change -- in this instance, being on the cusp of going someplace completely new, leaving my friends and family behind for four months of adventures on the other side of the globe.

Lake Mirror

The second I took just before one of the fencing team's home meets last fall. It's a calm before the storm photo; the quiet moment before an intense day of competition begins.

Circle Time

The Vassar Miscellany News posted an article titled "Student Photo Exhibit Captures Generations of Experience" on the exhibition on Oct. 27th, 2011. Alas, the article is no longer on their main site. The archived version of the article is here.

You can look through more photos from the exhibit on the Vassar archives flickr stream.

Buttons and pockets

Two years ago, I decided it would be cool to have a coat decked out in buttons.

Then I thought, wouldn't be great if it were really colorful, too?

Haven't I always wanted a coat with infinite pockets?

Coat creation

And so the Patchwork Coat Project was born. I picked up a purple suede coat from a thrift store to use as a base. My sister gave me a fantastic selection of unique buttons, and I nabbed a few more myself. I began collecting scraps of fabric: old shirt sleeves, halves of socks, leftover bits from my grandmother's quilting projects, the pocket from an ancient pair of jeans.

The base coat flared out in the front and didn't close well, so I had to add a good amount of fabric there. Still to do is a better lining. I also added buttons and loops so the front could be fastened closed.

The sleeves, similarly, weren't long enough -- like the cuffs I added?

Nearly all the sewing was hand-sewing, too, given the fabric involved. Plus, I think it looks better.

The coat doesn't quite have infinite pockets, but with twelve and counting, it's coming pretty close.

I designed and painted t-shirts as gifts for some family and friends. Each shirt's design reflected something I knew the recipient would appreciate.

Movin' right along

This one's the masterpiece. My dad appreciates The Muppets—I remember him singing along with Fozzie Bear and Kermit when I was a kid. The song Moving' Right Along was one of his favorites. And so, I present the shirt that, at first, he didn't realize was hand-painted!

I love grammar

For my sister, who had studied languages and enjoyed being a grammar nerd, I made a purple shirt proclaiming "I love grammar." Simple, effective.

I've got soul but I'm not a dualist

One of my college friends, who had studied cognitive science and was staunchly against the philosophical position of dualism, happened to be a fan of music, too. He would sing along to The Killers' song All These Things That I've Done, changing the lyric "I've got soul but I'm not a soldier," to "I've got soul but I'm not a dualist." Yup.

The airlock is ajar

After I played Mass Effect for the first time, I made this one for myself featuring the character EDI with one of the funnier lines she says in the game.

That's outside the scope of my project

Engineers frequently have to enforce constraints on the number of features that other people try to add to their projects. The phrase featured on this shirt was no stranger to my husband, Randy, who used it quite a lot... That's outside the scope of my project.