Twitter is an interesting medium to me because it is a way of broadcasting individual news and like any news media it has the capacity to create and destroy reputations. I imagine that if an individual had developed a following they would grow cautious of what they posted to their account. For my arduino-twitter project I wanted  add a level of removal between user input and the content of the tweet. The objective being to transfer the power of reputation intrinsic to posting to twitter and transfer it to an object. My preference was for each individual to post a tweet thats content was defined by the position of a slider to their own individual active accounts. However, I found that this would of necessitated creating an app for each individual participating in the project. I decided instead, I would extend the idea of representation, that was already present in the notion of the positioning of the slider defining the content of the tweet, further by creating a twitter character from scratch through sensor input.  Since I was already exploring the idea of representation I thought I would take that further by exploring a political theme.The arduino interface I designed allowed the user to select the character they wanted to represent them, either “Mary Smith” or “James Smith”, then move a slider along a spectrum to the point which best represents their political views and then finally press a button to post this representation of themselves to twitter.

here is a picture of the interface I designed:

Here is a picture of Mary and James Smiths’ twitter acounts:

As humans, we love ownership and when we get attached to things–in particular things that really collectively belong to everyone–we sometimes project imagined notions of ownership that can be completely illogical. For example, in my life, I am emotionally attached to a certain couch that faces the large windows in Hunt Library. This couch has served as a refuge after many all nighters, and I also love the view of the forest it provides. So whenever I go to the library with the intention of studying or sleeping there and I see someone other than myself in that couch, I become irrationally possessive and irritated. So I decided to install an arduino with a capacitive sensor in the middle of the cushion that tweets an alert to me whenever an intruder sits down. A servo sprinkler will simultaneously sprinkle them with water as long as they continue to sit there. The sprinkler should hopefully deter them from sitting too long on my couch, and once they get up, twitter will notify me that they’ve left and the sprinkler will stop. Twitter provides the time they sit down and the time they leave, so I’ll always know when my couch is available to sit on…hahahahaha

twitter stream: https://twitter.com/#!/MrMsAdelaide

via hug-doll that tweets! – YouTube.

For this project, I wanted to use twitter and arduino to settle arguments and provide evidence that I’m right. So using a homemade capacitive sensor, I rigged the the dish washing soap so that whenever someone used it, a tweet would be sent to twitter. By keeping track of the times that I wash the dishes, I can prove to my roommate that I do that chore more and am the better roommate.

For this project I decided to try to make something that I would like to have some form of in every-day life. As explained in the video, people play and stream Starcraft online for other people to watch. This probably doesn’t sound very entertaining, but if you like Starcraft, certain streams can be very fun to watch. I created a program that would check on a popular Starcraft website called TeamLiquid to see who was streaming and then, when the button on the Arduino was pressed, post to twitter saying who was streaming. In addition, it is set up to check if one person in particular is streaming and turn on the light if they are.

Although it isn’t quite something that would be actually useful in its current form, if I updated it to work wirelessly and be very small, I could see it being something mildly useful to have, at least for a Starcraft fan.

For this project I wanted to create an unknown collaboration between many significant art Museums who are present on twitter and myself. To do this, I created a light-up “Art” sign which becomes illuminated when these institutions post a new status. I was interested in the conversation surrounding these institutions’ role in art and wanted to approach it with a kitsch aesthetic. I thought the piece touched on many factors such as the distance between the artist and institution and what value does/can an institution bring to an artwork. I was also interested in seeing the real-time stream of data from these museums as a way to observe the frequency of their activity through this means of communication.

Twitter Art Sign

See video documentation at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stc6_DQ9wLw

What my Arduino is programmed to do is take values from my twitter account which are actually Glucose values I’m submitting and telling me whether the value is Low, Normal, or High. There are LEDs attached to the breadboard that light up when the value is withing a certain range. If the values is less than 80; the yellow LED with shine, if it’s between 81 and 159, the RGB LED will light up green, and if it’s higher than 160, red  LEDs will light up.

http://youtu.be/Icr35rb-B54

My Arduino project highlights the ridiculousness of the popular phrase “no homo”; a recognizable snippet of Beethoven’s ominous 5th symphony is played (via piezo buzzer) when the phrase is tweeted from anywhere in the world. A Processing application displays the most recent tweets.

BEDROOM OBSERVED – Twitter Account

A twitter account which uploads an image of my bedroom to flickr any time anyone tweets the word ‘bedroom.’ The link to my flickr stream is then tweeted at the person who’s tweet (‘bedroom’) sparked the process. The picture is labeled with the name of the twitter user and content of the tweet.

I am interested in the way that media such as twitter shift notions of personal space and privacy. I am also interested in the idea of taking a word, which exists initially in an autonomous zone (the context of the original tweet), and shifting the context to force an interaction between the otherwise disparate elements (myself, other people tweeting the same word, etc).

flickr

First Twitter Account (Claiirreeeee)

Responses, before the accounts were suspended:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NoNAid1LKSw

My Sleeping Monitor: Arduino Tweeter receives information from a pressure sensor that is placed between the metal grate of a bed frame and a mattress, sending tweets if a certain pressure is exceeded (if I am on my bed, sleeping), and also when the pressure returns to normal (when I am up and about). It also receives tweets to me @eric_mackie which, if the word “wake” is included in them, will play a repeating, obnoxious tone (via piezo buzzer) until I am out of my bed. The idea for the project stems from recent abnormalities in my sleep pattern. Mid-day to all-day rests paired with post-midnight binges of homework and anime-watching got me thinking that it would be interesting if my unpredictable sleep periods were being kept track of and posted publicly. As a way of communicating with me, or controlling these odd patterns, fellow tweeters can literally tell me to “wake up!” via tweets, at which point I would have to get up out of bed in order to eventually fall back asleep. In a way, I guess this mimics how my recent sleeping habits have been determined by outside forces, such as classes, friends, obligations, and other activity.