#systemic analysis

- The legal system (it addresses biases lawmakers have, which tend to be patriarchal) 

Sarah and I arrived at BCT HQ this morning fresh from the 3D lab, a new 600x600 polystyrene box in tow, only to find that someone had stolen parts from our robot! It seems like such an unlikely thing to do – to steal into Pat’s office and pick the parts off a robot, especially when there are so many tubs full of Lego bits about the place, but there was no doubt the little guy was a few pieces short. Luckily it didn’t take long for Siyu to source the bits she needed to put him back together again. In no time at all Bot was happily trundling about his new polystyrene enclosure. Meanwhile, the rest of us launched into a discussion about which materials we should line the polystyrene with. Sarah had already had a flash of inspiration to use sandpaper while we were up at the 3D lab and we’d raided the off-cuts box. We proceeded to test Siyu’s spinner on it and listened to the most beautiful scratching any of us had ever heard.

It was then time for a chat with Maggie about the direction our project has taken. After explaining how critiques and numerous setbacks have influenced the evolving nature of our concept, Maggie commented that our experience was exactly what the course coordinators intended. I can see what she means. Everyday we’ve been forced to problem solve, source advice and reinvent the parts of our concept that we couldn’t justify spending anymore fruitless hours on. At times it’s been painful, for example, working for hours on something you believe in, only to have to cut it from the project when you can’t get it working. Nevertheless, each set back has blossomed into an opportunity to explore new ideas around our core concept.

Maggie was supportive of our idea to simulate a sensory overload by stripping the audience of one of their senses (the presentation will be in the dark) so as to heighten their experience of the sound the robot creates. In the dark, the spatialized sound becomes more intense, overpowering and consuming, exploring a gut response to confinement. The robot goes unseen; to the audience it is merely something trying to escape. She also thought there was some relevance to the broader issues surrounding sensory overload in our technology reliant society. Hopefully the audience will make similar connections during the demonstration this coming Thursday.

Before Maggie left us, she asked whether we had considered that our experience on this project had in some way mirrored the theme that we are trying to explore. Apparently this is known as ‘parallel process’ in systemic analysis. I had to wonder our obsession with confinement had in some way fuelled the direction we ended up taking, pit falls and all. I can see our attachment to our conceptualization of ‘the box’ may in some ways have been irrational. Having worked on numerous projects where time has been an issue in the past, I’ve learned to be quite ruthless about cutting ideas that haven’t worked out after a set period, whether or not they were conceptually strong. However, we agreed to continue with the box for exactly that reason. Perhaps on some level we backed ourselves into a corner to create a state of mind that would aid the development process. I’ll have to read more about parallel process at some point, although I keep saying that and I haven’t managed it yet. Perhaps in the holidays?

By the end of the afternoon our pace slowed from break-neck to glacial, thanks largely to the black-hole otherwise known as NXT. The problem now was tricking out the stall-turn programme we’d downloaded to take a third motor. This turned out to be a minor issue, and we had it up and running before long. We set our bot loose in its brand new box and watched like proud parents as it whizzed about the place.

Unfortunately the spinner we’d mounted on the front of the box was getting jammed when the robot got too close to the wall. We went through a series of correctional measures. The first involved looping a ring of sandpaper around the spinner (Amos’ idea) to prevent each arm from getting jammed as it turned. Unfortunately it didn’t hold, but it may be something we come back to (with some heavy duty tape). Our next idea was simply to remove the claws attached to the end of each arm (a sacrifice we grudgingly made as they contributed fantastically to the sound effects). However, this too made little difference. Our next port of call was to alter the stall turn programme further so that it recognized when the third motor (controlling the spinner) stalled as well. This was a partial success, although and we agreed that if worse came to worse we’d stick with this programme and add in a simple light sense function. But then Ambition got the better of us, and we heard the siren call of the ultrasonic sensor. We hoped that we’d be able to programme it so that the bot would halt at exactly 23 centimetres from the wall - the distance that would enable the spinner to graze the wall without becoming jammed. This was by far the most time consuming of the potential solutions and ended with Siyu and I staring blankly at each other as we tried to remember the words for what we were trying to say. By then we’d been going for nearly nine hours.