Disobedient Electronics Midterm Project Proposal

created with Ray Wang @ changeable-shock-cef

The Device is Sarcasm

The Attribute is Playful

The Mood is Relief

The working title of the project is Humans Best Friend.

The critical object is a drone on a chain. The drone will be programmed to act playfully, potentially lunging to attack the viewer, raging against its constraints. Animals, particularly dogs, are often described as man's best friend. Animal breeding used to be at the forefront of human technological progress, the age of the dog. Now, we are "breeding" innovations in technology. Quadcopters are one such technology, brought about to observe, police, and now, as machines of war.

The drone is an object of terror. You can feel that sublime alien discomfort in its presence. The title "Humans Best Friend" is a sarcastic statement. This discomfort is subverted by the playful nature the drone is programmed to display. Ideally, it will be smart enough to recognize people and operate through human interaction. The chain, the good nature of the drone, its neutering, are the elements which combine to form a mood of Relief. It is suggested that our future with these devices is up to our own imagination and usage. A drone does not care if it's dropping aid or grenades, it lives to serve. How are we going to choose to use it?

I think the piece will benefit the more the drone acts "alive." As such, we are programming an android app to give it a series of routines to roll through in an impersonation of anima.

This will be portrayed through its aerial movement, where the gimble camera "looks," and potentially even the colors displayed on its shell. Ideally, we will be able to reskin the DJI with a custom 3D printed and painted shell to push it beyond the familiar semiotics of DJI and recontextualize it between animal and technology. The stripes of a hyena are a nice example of a camouflage which is both animalistic and militaristic. I would also love to be able to do a chrome paint job. It should be able to use OpenCV SDK to find faces and hands and the DJI mobile SDK to handle the crunchy dynamics of drone control and basic subroutines like landing and gimble movement.

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