Scratching the Surface

2018

using an episode from "Scratching the Surface" podcast as inspiration, i created a small booklet and an accompanying digital installation.

booklet

digital installation

inspired by the work of Dynamic Land in Oakland and thanks to the open-sourced version by paper programs, i built a small digital installation using just a projector, a webcam, and a color printer that displayed the levels of abstraction of a modern day computer.

how dynamic land and paper programs work:

  1. first, you write a short javascript program in your browser, that will display some elemnt on your projected surface.
  2. next, you print out the program on a piece of paper with a sequence of dots along the corners, which help the program identify which script to read and execute.
  3. then, you place the piece of paper with dots on it within the field of your webcam. after calibration, your webcam will be able to recognize the dots, and your code will be executed on the canvas of another screen
  4. finally, you will set up your projector so that it is aligned with your camera's field of vision. this way, everytime you changed your paper scripts, the camera will be able to adjust and re-project onto your projection surface.

level 1: transistors

level 3: asembly

level 2: machine language

level 4: high-level programming language