The pivot mechanism: Lathe turned and milled aluminium and lathe turned nylon.
Reading Lamp
A project by Mark Selby
Reading lamp is the first in what will be a series of products that ask us to acknowledge those everyday technologies that we take for granted while they quietly and invisibly allow us to live our lives. If you don't read to it - you don't get any light.
Oct 19
CAD drawing of the pivot mechanism that will allow the lamp to rotate on it’s base.
The central aluminium pin attaches to the bottom of the lamp and sits inside the outer nylon jacket which is fixed to the base. Gears are attached to both the screw threaded end of the aluminium pin and the servo-motor.
Code samples coming soon…
Sketch of the LED set up in the head of the lamp.
Sketch of the mechanism that will allow the lamp to rotate.
Sketch of the lamp base pivot mechanism.
Oct 18
The first prototype involves an old anglepoise style lamp sitting on a square base that containing the guts.
Initial attempts at prototyping the the system using the computers built in microphone, Arduino, Processing, a super bright LED and an RC servo motor.
A sketch showing the proposed hardware set up for the Reading Lamp.
The readers voice is picked up by the computer via the microphone where Processing analyses the fluctuations in volume and feeds the data into Arduino via the serial port. Arduino then uses this information to drive the motor and LED’s which create the lamp’s ‘behaviour’.
Human(ish) Behaviour
While drawing the behaviour storyboard below, I decided that the lamp should be animated so that it had more human-like behavioural characteristics. As well as just dimming or glowing brighter it would also turn away from the reader in boredom, or appear to fall asleep by lowering itself. The mechanism and flexibility of an anglepoise lamp would allow such characteristics and behaviour.
You must read aloud in order to get enough light to read. If you read too quietly the lamp will dim and switch off. Responding to the readers voice in this way gives that lamp more human characteristics as it glows dimmer and brighter depending on how well the reader entertains it.
The Concept
I was fascinated by the notion of passive use of everyday technologies, that is to say how we use these domesticated objects without ever really noticing them.
Working with Mike Michael’s assertions that everyday technologies operate unnoticed until they break, and that the small satisfactions that come from having to work at simple have been lost due to our accumulation and use of labour saving technologies, I decided to design post optimal objects that ask for something in return for their services. In other words, objects that are not just here to serve us, but that force us to acknowledge them, but in doing so force us to better appreciate the tasks and experiences that their use allows; after all, it is not the technologies themselves, but the experiences that those technologies facilitate that are important.
Although the initial ideas were based around the radio, I decided to put that on hold and concentrate on reading instead - an extremely traditional form of data that enters the home. The bedside reading lamp is an object that allows us to read at night, without it we could not, but it is also a good example of an under appreciated, passively used object.
Charge the radio’s battery by singing to it during the advert brakes or between songs. You entertain the radio - it entertains you.
Oct 17
Brief - Dometic Thresholds
“In our electronic era, moreover, it is clear that the machines with which we crowd today’s habitat are indeed lifeless but, growing ever more responsive and interactive, increasingly resemble pets beasts which are domesticated (significant verb) into a category half-human, half-object. And just as mechanical devices increasingly seem to be extensions of our body, so our mental attention seems increasingly monopolised and penetrated by media, particularly interactive media.”
Tabor, Philip, ‘Striking Home: The Telematic Assault on Identity’
Our homes are full of holes through which media, data and influence from outside can flow. Philip Tabor describes 3 strategies for dealing with this assault upon the home:
• Sit back and enjoy the dystopia
• Create a cocoon by building thicker walls
• Build an expanded home in this broader world
Build a system to capture, process and render a source of data flowing through the home.
This could be a physical artefact whose behaviour is driven by data, or software which reacts to the physical world through sensors.
Domestic Thresholds by Tobie Kerridge and Andy Boucher
