Concept Idea: For this project I wanted to create an interactive "painting" or piece of artwork that incorporated technology and required human interaction.
Materials:
- Crepe paper (already have)
- Canvas 16x 20 (already have)
- Conductive Paint (ordered graphite powder)
- LEDs (have single LEDs)
Concept Sketches
The artwork I envision for this project is a white canvas covered with white 3D paper flowers. The paper flowers will have black conductive paint on the edges, the goal is for them to look like they are from an uncolored coloring book. The canvas will be hanging on a wall and there will be 2 or 3 paint brushes on the side. I'm still deciding whether the user should use their hand or the paint brush to interact with the flowers. When the user touches a flower (either with their hand or the brush) a light coming from the center of the flower turns on then fades after 2 seconds and the color of each light will change with each interaction. The reason I plan for the light to quickly fade is to make it very difficult for one single person to turn on all the lights by themselves. The artwork would require interaction from more than 1 person in order to see all the lights on at the same time.
Prototyping
Below is a video testing the circuit I plan to implement for this project, the main components will be the capacitive sensors and the LEDs. The conductive paint I used for this prototype is a work in progress and I will be creating a better version.