Environmental study/ Contextual study

We decided that for our project we should use some indoor environment. Considering all the little parts which would create our domino we must avoid all side effect like wind and so on.

We are going to use a big room/house of one of use. The room must be big, I mean there should be a lot of space on a floor, because all the installation will be place there. We will be also filming it so the space is really essential. Optimally there shouldn't be any carpet to avoid disturbances on the floor, but some non-shaggy carpet is acceptable as well. Windows should be closed, because of the wind. As for the filming we should be interested in lighting as well. With poor lights we won't see much on the video so the lighting should be really good to make the room bright.

Mostly, we will be using just a flat space on the floor, but we would like to make it in more "dimensions". Some things might go more into height, some things might be flying, some dropping and so on.

As for the Digital part of our project we wants to make it really rich. When our domino hits a computer it stars being really interesting. First of all we decided what OS we are going to use and we decided for Mac OSX. The question you are asking probably is "How are we going to connect the 'real world' domino with computer"? The answer is Arduino. We are going to use mostly sensors. Light sensors and relay switches.

Internet, software and pages we wants to involve:

• Our website
• BBC
• Facebook
• Google
• Ebay
• Youtube
• Read it
• Email
• Processing
• Flash

Google:

Google is considered to be the most well-known website on the internet. It works as an internet search engine. We intend to use it for what it is meant to be used for. That means searching. It could be connect with other pages we want to use in a way of searching them...

Youtube:

Youtube is the biggest website with videos. It's meant to work as a place where people are able to upload their videos and comment and rate other videos. Basically it is just a huge database of videos. We intend to play some specific videos on this site.

Email:

The oldest and still massively used form of digital communication. Everybody should know it. It's pointless to describe what it is for and how it works. We want to use arduino and processing to send some emails and that could activate another arduino and switch something on. It might also have some influence on the user, ask them some questions and depending on their answer it would choose from a variety of continuation of our real-world/virtual domino.

Facebook

Facebook is a social networking site. It is used to communicate with friends and family across the globe. People create events, upload photos, create groups, play games and find out what’s going on in your friends day to day lives.

Ebay

Ebay is a site used to sell goods across the internet. User sign up to an account and then they have the ability to buy and sell items. The website is set up as an auction website where people bid on items and the highest bit wins. It also provides a buy it now option, which is down to the seller whether or not they want to use this. On Ebay you can buy anything from toys to cars.

Reddit

Reddit is a website used to upload everyday news stories, that wouldn’t normally make the news. People can upload videos, photos and text. Depending on what other user thought about the story is depending on how many votes the story gets. The more votes the stories get the higher up the rating they moves, the most popular one are on the homepage. Reddit also gives people the chance to comment on the stories and express their options.

BBC

The BBC website is a portal to services and websites available from the BBC, which includes:
1. News/Weather/Sports
2. iPlayer/TV
3. Radio

Visitors can change the main page around so that the subject matter that is the most interesting to them is viewed at the top, while anything that they aren't interested in can be removed from the page altogether. Visitors can also go from the main page to other pages such as iPlayer OR go directly to the site they are interesting in by typing in the right directory.

The BBC site has tons of up to date information, and with the user interactivity the site allows makes it a good site to use for our "Waterfall" effect.

Yahoo

What it is? Yahoo provides a web search service along with other Yahoo services including:
1. Dating
2. Maps
3. Games
4. Mail

Visitors can either use the home page to search the internet for anything of interest, or use one of the services that Yahoo provides by clicking the links down the left hand side of the web page.

With the services that Yahoo provides (stuff like dating and chatrooms) the page has a wealth of information and stuff people can get involved with, making the site very popular.

Processing

Processing is a programming language and development environment used within Digital Art to make artistic representations with code. Users can use things like RSS feeds to feed data into their programs, which in turn can change certain aspects of their visual design.

Users code into a "Sketch" using similar scripting styles as Javascript and ActionScript, following the style shown in the screenshot.

Processing is a very interesting program to work with, being that it can be used with arduino fairly easily. With easy configuration, sketches can be developed and implemented into websites for greater interaction.