Useful links

The following is useful in our future research:


http://psychology.ucalgary.ca/CCD/child/


"The Ch.I.L.D. Research Group at the University of Calgary is made up of four developmental psychologists who are interested in how infants and children develop language, learning, and social understanding."

Developmental Stages

A brief breakdown of a child's growing stages.
Image taken from:
http://www.emergency.dsl.pipex.com/images/development.jpg

Color tones

Since none of us can decide on a tone, we have agreed to meet in the middle.

Illustration

Summary

We have finalized the decision of our wall space. Working with the environment at ACAD in using their existing elevated step-seats, we are to juxtapose pictorially a child's developmental stages vs. that to the growth of a tree.

Themes we explored:
Perspective from a “child’s point of view”.
Oversize chair and table/ Classroom setting, floating alphabets and numbers/ Whimsical ambiance. Ex) flying elephants


We need to...
1. Book ACAD Main Mall area - contact Curtis Burns / Michael at ACAD
2. Find: dimensions of the wall space/ speakers / Monitor.
others: carpet flooring / toy trunk / shoe rack.
3. Decide on wall space material: foam core, wallpaper, canvas.
Floor space is dependent on room dimensions.
4. Ethics: Ethics application
Videotape (?) to observe participants to emphasize “natural flow”. Less obtrusive(?)
Consider actions of
1) the participating party
2) researchers

This could get expensive quickly.

Musical Drawing - Note Grid

Above is the grid that will be used for the notes. We are currently using G major.

ACAD wallspace

Kara Walker

http://mamasaidshop.typepad.com/mamasaid/nursery/index.html

mocoloco.com/art/archives/002548.php
http://sikkemajenkinsco.com/karawalker_works.html
http://www.designspongeonline.com/2007/05/stationery-show-2007-part-two.html

Musical Drawing

We now have a note playing as you draw with any of the three crayons and eraser. Each of the crayons are a different instrument and the eraser is our percussion. While it has been determined that the eraser is percussion the other three instruments are still up in the air and will most likely be determined at a later date as the midi player we are using makes it simple to change these as needed.

Currently the program is moding the mouseX and mouseY and using the sum to pull a note from an array of notes. Eventually this will be updated to use an invisible grid with each note allocated a square. This will also be done using mouseX and mouseY.

Crayon Prototypes - Take 2

After some trial and error together with much thought, I've come up with a new direction for developing the crayon interfaces. I've included a schematic of what I want to pursue below.



Included in this diagram is a hybrid system of registering the movement of the crayon that uses ideas from both a trackball and an optical guided system. After running into frustration with getting the optical mouse circuit alone to relate movement (the tube had to be perfectly upright and also pressed against a sufficiently smooth surface with just the right amount of texture), I believe this more versatile hybrid approach will work much better. Not only will it allow play over any type of surface, but it also works well at slight tilt angles, something the optical system alone can not do. The only drawback I can see is the precision that'll have to go into engineering these devices and if I can do it by hand.

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Though we have essentially removed from this first draft of the project any idea of animation or object interactivity, I still think it's important to keep these things in our minds. Here is a very cool 2D drawing physics engine that can be of inspiration for the down the road. It's called 'Phun' and it's described as "the 2D physics sandbox!". Watch the video and install the program if you like. It's in BETA and free to use...just don't make profit off it.

http://phun.cs.umu.se/wiki


That's all I have for now. Thank you Nick for pointing me towards the Phun engine.

G