The gap between posts has been a considerable one yet the development of the project is at full speed. I can state that this developing process has been preoccupied to a greater extend with the technical issues of the project. That is that must of the efforts have been put into getting the wiimote to communicate with Processing in a robust but also appealing (visually) manner. This has been achieved and now almost all the relevant buttons in the wiimote have a drawing property.
The drawings directly respond (on screen) to the movements of the wiimote and the nunchuck. Additionally the drawing properties for each button work well in an overall composition. The drawings created by the pressing of each button are geometrical and 3D in form. Different figures are preset to each button , which then are translated and moved according to the movements of the wiimote.
The next logical step is to set the wiimote in a pointer mode. That is to say that the drawing will not be preset figures and the interaction with the wiimote would be in a more traditional pencil-hand manner.
At this stage and due in part to the fact that the interaction with the wiimote is quite dynamic and the translated geometry on screen responds well. A possibility of having the final piece be a video rather than printed media as proposed earlier is unveiling itself as a feasible alternative. The video would fully illustrate the richness in movement that the wiimote allows. A fact that is not lost in its entirety in a printed image yet moving images do display this better. Furthermore, after a while of experimenting with the wiimote I’ve discovered that there needs to be some sensibility developed in order to grasp how it functions within the Processing sketches. In other words the user need to “mock around” with the wiimote for a while in order to get a sense on how to drive it within Processing.
Partly due to the above mentioned and partly because of a brainstorming chat with Mitchell Whitelaw, this project is now more at a contemplative stage than a dynamic one. That is to say that at this point there is a wider need to establish the project’s conceptual backdrop rather than further developing its technical elements. At times this the hardest part because one can get lost in a sea of endless possibilities and never truly land a project down.
This part of the creative process is one that is filled with questions. My view is that in answering these questions the profile of this project will become more evident. Here I will outline a few that popped-up during the chat with Mitchell:
-There can be two types of drawings explored within the wiimote/Processing framework. The preset button geometry and the wiimote as a pointer. Or a combination of the two.
-The preset button mode could be extended to include not only geometry but also pngs of other hand drawn figures/characters.
-Could other tools be introduced in the process? Such as rhonda the 3d drawing software.
-What are the options in the final outcomes? Prints, video or even an interactive installation.
-If the final outcome is printed images, would I interact with them in an analogical way?
-Would the images be printed with the studio’s plotter which can be customised to use a variety of marking pens and different qualities of paper.
-What is the project the drawings or the making of a tool that I will continue to use within my practice.
