Contienda 2nd round
An art piece about confrontation
"Contienda 2nd round" is an art piece by Guadalupe Ayala (a.k.a Alaska Bird) in which seven creatures lay in a central dojo in a sort of tense silence, and then abruptly confront each other (and destroy each other over time) upon the intervention of the spectators.
This piece was exhibited in Espacio de Arte Contemporáneo in Montevideo, Uruguay, from December 2015 to March 2016.
For this piece, I contributed by creating a server application called "Little State Server" that keeps track of the current state of the piece, and is in charge of executing several tasks on state transitions such as changing soundtrack and signalling an attached Arduino to activate the creatures.
Secondly, I also crafted the hardware and software solution that enabled the creatures to be signalled and controlled wirelessly. For this I used some pretty useful RF transmitters and receivers. There is a main Arduino connected to Little State Server, and to two big red buttons. When a spectator pushes a button, the Arduino signals Little State Server to inform the state transition, and also broadcasts a wireless command to inform the new state. This wireless command is received by an Arduino placed in each creature, and in turn activates a relay to switch some electric motors on or off.
Source code for Little State Server is available here and the source for the main Arduino and Creatures' Arduinos here and here.
Contienda - 2do. Round - Avance - 2015 from alaska on Vimeo.
Pictures
Credits: