Progress!

When I started on the programming for the lights, our professor told me to describe the actions of my program in plain English and translate that into coding. So here is what I want my program to do:

1. The user walks up to the computer. Each main pump is already lit up on screen.

2. The user presses the physical pump to navigate from pump to pump.

3. At each pump, the cholera cases light up one at a time.

4. Once all the cases have lit up, a sound clip starts playing, or it can play over the lights turning on; I haven’t decided yet.

5. The lights stay on until the user moves to the next pump.

6. The program ends at Broad Street.

It took a little while (and a lot of questions), but I figured out how to make all this work in Max. There are settings to turn the main lights on when the program loads; settings to delay the lights so they turn on one after another; settings to link the physical pump (I haven’t made this yet) to the computer; and settings to link the sound clips to the lights. Over the last two classes, I made a basic patch and connected it to the Makey Makey circuit I mentioned in my last post.

Screenshot of max patch

Now that I have a basic patch, I have to repeat this set up for all five of the pumps on the map, so that the lights shine underneath my copy of the map. I hit a stumbling block with figuring out how to turn off the lights when the user moved to the next pump. However, I realized it would actually look better if all the lights stayed on, because it gives the impression of the disease spreading over time.

  

Now that I have the mechanics of the exhibit, I need to work on the content. I have to do some research to find information for the introduction and conclusion that will frame the exhibit. To find editorials for the sound clips, I will go through a British newspaper database and pull interesting articles. Then, I’ll get some of my friends to read them out for me, and upload it to the program. And I still have to make the physical pump for the interface.

Apart from the mechanics of the project, I also learned more about the map. It's a lot smaller then I originally thought. I thought it covered all of London, but its actually only a small section covering a few blocks around the diseased pump, or at least that’s what published.

Maps and Screens: The New Plan

Plans for this project are coming into focus. We’ve reached the part of the class where we’ve finished learning Max programming and now we’re just going to work on our projects. I came out of our consultations with a much firmer idea of what I want to do for the project. One cool discovery was that the Map and Data Centre at the Weldon library has a copy of Snow’s cholera map that I can use for my project. I’m going to see if I can get a large transparency of the map from the library and attach it to the screen of my computer. Then I could program the screen to light up underneath different parts of the map; highlighting whatever point I want to show. This idea works way better then my original plan. Originally, I was going to connect a physical map with lights punched through it to a computer and program the lights to light up specific pumps. Separate from the map, the computer would show images and play sound clips. Using a transparency against a screen eliminates the need for extra lights, and makes the display simpler. I can use the computer to light up the map, and get the sound to play from the same device, which is closer to the effect I wanted to achieve then with the other version. This effect, voices from behind images and lights, was inspired by something I saw in Scotland at the Culloden Battlefield Visitor’s Centre. Part of their exhibit had screens with silhouettes, and speakers in the ceiling that would tell their stories. 

 

A very cool way to exhibit stories.

I have no where near enough experience or room to do something like that, but I can still use sound clips and images. For my project, I’ll have someone read editorials about the effects of cholera that are linked to different pumps. I’m also going to use different coloured lights for the healthy and diseased pumps. Then, if I figure it out, I could maybe even put images behind the map, although that might be hard to see behind the lines of the map.

Once I have the screen figured out, I’ll make the interface. I’m going to use Makey Makey, a recyclable play set and circuit board, to build a physical pump that will be used to navigate the map. Each time someone pumps the handle; the program will take them to a different pump on the map. I still haven’t decided if I want to put a bottle of murky water underneath the pump to add to the display. The bottle would only be for display, because making an actual pump would be too ambitious, so it might not be useful, but I’ll think about that at a later stage.

Besides the programming aspect of the project, (which I’m going to have to learn how to do) I think the hardest part will be not going overboard on content. The focus of this project is geared toward the interactive activity, not the content. I’ll have to take care not to spend too much time on research, and avoid ignoring the programming part of the project. This might actually be a blessing in disguise. I think a lot of the content I wanted to include might not be available online. For each pump, I wanted to include a neighbourhood profile, the status of the pump, and a sound clip describing the experience of the disease. Now reviewing this idea, it was probably a little ambitious. I still want to include some of this information, but I think I’ll restrict it to certain pumps over others. How I choose which pumps will depend on what information I can find. Using the school’s newspaper database, I’ll be able to find editorials on the disease, but whether I’ll be able to tie it to a neighbourhood is doubtful. It’s more likely that I’ll find editorials for the city in general. I still want to turn the editorials into sound clips, but I’ll have to figure out a way to tie them to the different pumps. On top of this, I’d like to include an introduction to the epidemic, including how it was spread, the effect and the treatments doctors used to combat the disease. This will be basic though, to avoid going too deep into content.

            So now that I have a plan, my first step is to contact the Map and Data Centre and find out if I can get a transparency of the Snow map made.