Here is a basic outline of the programming for "The Family" in sequencial order:
Morning:
-All three units (mother, two children) begin asleep, indicated by only a couple led's slowly flashing, perhaps some breathing sounds.
-Alarm clock like sound wakes mother unit, monitor turns on, more led's on
-Mother unit's tv shows clips of coffee and shower commercials
-Mother's tv shows children, begins flashing bright light at them, makes alarm of her own to wake the children
-children wake up in similar fashion to mother
-children's tvs show toothpaste and breakfast commercials
-mother's tv shows morning show, children's show cartoons
Noon/Afternoon:
-childrens cartoons progress with the day
-mothers tv shows soap operas
-children play with each other: they make progressively louder noises, more lights flash more rapidly, tvs stop showing cartoons and show each other. mother stops showing soaps and shows them, makes loud, agressive noise which causes the children to stop all noises and light flashing and show cartoons again.
-sound tornado siren and show lunch commercials on all units
Evening:
-"Flintstones" work whistle sounds
-show news on parent tv, cartoons on childrens, perhaps some toy commercials
-dinner commercials on all units
-children go back to sleep
-mothers tv shows late night show and alcohol commercials
-mother goes to sleep
The plan is to run through this program straight through and set up if statements for other more interactive routines to temporarily stop the program until the transient routine is complete, then the program will pick up more or less where it left off. We're going to put together the main program first, then hopefully as we have time we will create the transient programs. Some of our ideas for transient routines are as follows:
1. If a viewer approaches a child, the mother's tv will show them as if she's watching them. If they get too close she will make angry sounds and flash lights. We've thought about using a touch lamp to allow a viewer to "build trust" with the mother by petting it, then the mother would not react as defensively.
2. Assign a certain sensor to cause a toy of some sort to be knocked over as a viewer walks by. The child will respond by making noises indicative of crying. If the viewer puts it back, the child will be appeased, if not, the mother will eventually play some soothing music to soothe the child.
3. Use a microphone to record things viewers say and play it back from a child as if it's mocking a viewer.
This is what we've got to do next:
1. Lot's of coding!!!
2. Acquire all the commercial clips we need and allocate them as individual video files for Pd to reference when the code calls for it. (We thought about recording all the data onto DVD's and starting and stoping the playing of them, or even start and stop them at different tracks, but there are a couple potential problems with this approach: 1.we would need a networked DVD player for each unit and 2.we would have to be very precise in synchronizing their playtime. So we think Pd will be an easier option.) I'm told we can convert DVD files to Pd-compatable files using a little process called transcoding. The process will work a lot like John's snail mouth. As sensors activate code, the code will use Pd to reference the files we need and play them for the necessary amount of time.
3. Acquire materials and get the project built. Though most of our construct can be more or less thrown together because it fits our desired aestetic, we're going to have to put some serious thought into where we put the sensors. We still don't know if we're going to be able to do the routine with the touch lamp because we haven't found one yet, and many hardware issues such as that still exist. Some things we do know about hardware are 1.each unit will have a monitor, the mother a color, the children black and white, (not only does this have metaphorical value, it's also cost effective.) 2.because of our needs, each unit will most likely have CPU also, which will add to our overall aestetic as well as our projects complexity.
