I had a chance to run 2 Pewtybots at a public event where people could have their picture taken to be turned into line art to be rendered by lasers. I should have taken better pictures and videos, but I was too busy manning the station and talking to people. It’s unfortunate because it’s hard to convey the experience with words.
Ever since the first successful prototype, I kind of knew I wanted to do something for this event. And so I built 2 machines, refined the software, the math… well maybe that’ll be another post… I’m not sure I have it right just yet, I might. I have it right enough at least, let’s just say I refined the math. Finally, I spent time developing and practicing a pipeline where I can take someone’s picture and send it to either Pewtybot happens to be idle.
Esther helped man the station so we practiced at home with all her toys pretending to be the various personalities she’d encounter at such an event. From the overly curious bear to the llama in a hurry. And so the pipeline is as such: first we take your picture. A monitor is facing you to see what it is.
Then we turn that into lines to be drawn (or lasered in this case). This is supposed to be a first taste of eye candy as these algorithms are cool to see at work.
Then you go in a dark room, and see it all get zapped on the wall (I don’t have a picture of the lasered dog plush).
Because this was a first on many fronts, I was pretty anxious some things would go wrong (they did). I also didn’t know how to present it, or how people would react. So the first couple of “customers” helped me figure out how to guide them through the pipeline. And when the time comes to go in the dark room, I purposefully kind of dump people in there and vaguely tell them to wait for the wall to light up. I have the laser write their name and count down from 3 to 1, and then the laser moves much faster through their portrait.
Nicole quickly realized adding chairs in the dark room would invite people to take in the experience more. And I realized I was silly to tune my setting for single portraits, I almost exclusively had families and groups of friends in the same picture. The reactions were great, although I didn’t get any from inside the room, people coming out were full of questions and kids were smiling. As always with my silly projects, there’s also a smaller fraction of people with whom they resonate more deeply.
Overall it was a big success and pretty smooth for a first. I want to do more for sure. There’s something fireworksy about when the laser really starts moving and light shows up everywhere.