Interactive artwork based on electronic prototyping
Blink had been carried out by Ekin and Fahri as part of the Physical Computing course at Sabanci University. At that time, Ekin was a final year Visual Communication Design student and Fahri was a final year Visual Arts student.
Although the project’s working principle is inspired by Ardunio, we created our own simple circuit board from the scratch. We used Arduino’s software to code, which is an open-source programming language based on C/C++. We integrated the code using the chip integrated circuit. The circuit technically works based on two sensors. The light sensor perceives if it’s daytime or nighttime. If it’s night time, the PIR motion sensor switches on and detects the person up to 5 meters away. When a person is detected, led strips blink on a random basis with one of the possible numerous RGB colour combinations.
The idea of this project came to us when we thought of the things we overlook in our daily environments. Thinking about how we can respond to the project brief, we noticed the rainwater grate sitting right next to the sidewalk we walk on everyday on the way to our studio. It's been always there, but not until that day did we actually see it. We found it nicely hidden in the garden behaving as part of the nature of the space when in fact it presents a sharp contrast to its surroundings, nonetheless the fact that it is integrated so well with its environment led us to question wether this unlikely integration is the reason why we don't notice such everyday objects. From these ideas, we played with the concept of bringing attention to the mundane. So we created motion activated LED light strips to place underneath the grates as a way to surprise people as they pass by.
Credits Year: April 2015 Project: Ekin Isim, Fahri Isikkilinc Supervisor: Selcuk Artut Photos and Video: Ekin Isim, Fahri Isikkilinc, Mine Diri Video editing: Ekin Isim Video soundtrack: Toothwheels by Múm
