The Foolish Ship
In this workshop, the main method of movement is through vibrations. A method that produces chaotic and uncontrollable movement. The foolish ship stems from a desire to control the uncontrollable. By directing the vibration to one of its sides, it can turn to that side. The foolish ship, like a normal ship, is trying to navigate through an uncertain environment. There is a need for a captain on a ship, else it will never find land. The ship is controlled through a controller connected to Touch Designer, which then connects to the Arduino through a wifi connection. The ships feet are made of copper and are bend in a way to ensure that the ship moves forward when the vibrations are equal. The foolish ship takes unpredictable methods and executes them with precision.
The main goal of ours was to explore different forms of movement and to make something controllable. Through experimentation we found that by angeling brushes we could control the way they would move, when applying pressure to it. So we decided to use a vibrating force to apply that pressure constantly.
We had trouble to figuring out how to make it turn, we tried to move the center of mass, we tried to make a rudder behind it. But we found that putting a vibrating motor on each side of it gave the most control and was most reliable.
We used TouchDesigner to make it run on a decentralized wifi network so that it could be controlled virtually. Furthermore, we connected a controller through Bluetooth to control the inputs in TouchDesigner.
The Foolish Ship was made by:
Alex Pocsi
Lorinc Nyulasz
Noora Sommer
After testing more, we found that stability and for the eletronics to be fastened, to be the the most important aspects. So a 3d model was created to fulfill both of those requirements.