In order to decide if we want and can use conductive paint for our project we clearly had to test it first. So we bought 10ml of paint and Clive provided the electronic components. Since non of us have ever used the paint before we created the simplest circuit possible.

(insert sketch)

making the board is quite easy. Essentially one replaces the wires with the paint. The dryer the pain, the better it works. As you can (hopefully) see on the picture we left three gaps in the circuit: one for the battery, one for the LED and one to be able to place a switch/button for later modifications.

The paint had to dry for about 15min. To see if it work in the first place we connected the gap for the button with some wire to close the circuit. It did work. We then replaced the wire with a button and sure enough it also worked with the button. Clive not only provided the equipment but also guided us through the basics of electronics.

We also built other circuits that theoretically should have worked but did not (except for powering LED’s again which you can see below). This could be for two reasons. 1. The paint was sill to wet, because we were impatient and did not let it dry long enough or 2. The paint had too much resistance in it so that it was to week to send a signal.

Video Examples

First Circuit; By simply replacing the wires with the paint, it meant that a circuit could be competed. Therefore we can see the light working when battery power is applied. 

Second Circuit; We created a new circuit that used the Ardino board, paint and 2 LED lights. By creating shorter wire replacements with the paint it meant the circuit was more powerful. Therefore we were able to light up to 2 lights. 

As inspiration for out piece we looked at a matrix sound system:

It is a simple grid of squares, there are no instructions. Whilst this might be confusing at first it makes you intuitively click the squares.

Each horizontal row is made out of a sound, the grid gets played in vertical order ranging from high notes to low ones. The sound loops around so that it creates a beat to the clicked boxes. By activating or deactivating squares you can change the rythm and creat cool sound patterns. The clicked boxes light up when they are played so that you can se where it is playing.

Try it out yourself:

http://www.sembeo.com/media/Matrix.swf

As suggested by John we looked at artists called Kimchi and Chips.

Kimchi and Chips is a Seoul based art studio founded by Elliot Woods (UK) and Mimi Son (South Korea). They are known for discovering novel interactions involving people and media materials, discovering new technical and artistic paradigms.

They create an emulsion of imagined reality within our physical world, in order to develop natural interactions between people, nature and the possibilities of the digital network.

These are some projects they have been working on:

Especially the second video has inspired us to consider something similar for our project. We like the idea that people can become part of the piece by taking a picture of themselves or film a short sequence of 3-4 seconds. This would work especially well for the end of the year degreeshow.