What I’ve done
In this workshop, we explored creative hacking as a method for engaging with digital media, sensing technologies, and the human body. Using the Arduino platform, me and my group mates built a simple system that measures temperature and visualises bodily data.
Introduction to Arduino as a Creative Hacking Tool
- Learned how Arduino functions as a microcontroller platform for physical computing.
- Became familiar with the Arduino IDE (online or downloaded version).
- Practised working in the Helix facility and the library Makerspace for hands-on creative projects.
Completed the Love-O-Meter Experiment from the Arduino Classroom Pack
This project uses a temperature sensor to detect changes in human body heat and represent them through LEDs.
Hardware Tasks
- Used a TMP36 temperature sensor to measure temperature.
- Connected three LEDs and resistors to display rising temperature levels.
- Wired the sensor to Analog Input A0 and LEDs to Digital Pins 2, 3, and 4.
Understanding Sensing Principles
- Learned how the TMP36 converts temperature into voltage.
- Understood how Arduino reads analogue values and converts them into temperature using simple formulas.
Running and Modifying the Love-O-Meter Code
- We worked with the provided example code to:
- Read sensor values using temperature sensor value.
- Convert the raw sensor data into voltage and Celsius temperature.
- Print values to the Serial Monitor and Serial Plotter for visualisation.
- Control LEDs based on temperature thresholds (0, 1, 2, or 3 LEDs lighting up as temperature rises).
- This allowed us to see how your body heat changed the system’s output in real time.
More thoughts
In this Arduino sensing experiment, the way digital media intervenes in the body was presented in a concrete and distinct manner. Body temperature was transformed into voltage, numerical values and visual output within the technical system. On the surface, this process constitutes an "objective" presentation of the body's state, but in reality, it is a highly abstract re-encoding that significantly simplifies the multi-dimensionality and complexity of bodily experience. Under this conversion mechanism, the body is redefined as a quantifiable and computable object, becoming a prerequisite for the operation of the technical system. At the same time, the perception results generated by technology gradually replace the original direct perception of humans, making our understanding of our own bodies dependent on the interpretation of algorithms and sensing devices. This not only changes the medium structure of perception but also alters the meaning of "perception" itself. Thus, it can be seen that digital media is not a neutral intermediary, but rather actively constructs a knowledge system about the body in the process of measurement, interpretation and visualization. Technology not only provides us with new dimensions of perception, but also invisibly creates a distance between people and their bodies, as well as between people and the world, making perception a process of being managed, translated and even disciplined. Based on this, this experiment is not only a practical exploration of sensing technology, but also prompts us to critically reflect on the role of digital media in constructing bodily experience, regulating perception methods and shaping subjectivity.
Reading references (Forlano, 2016)
- In this essay, I deploy all three of these definitions of hacking. First, the very literal hacking into the body through the pricks, cuts, punctures and holes that I in"ict on myself on a daily basis. Second, hacking as a way of participating in (and breaking the rules and norms around) a particular system of technologies including questions of the ways in which race, class, gender and sexuality might enhance and/or inhibit that participation. This extends to discourses around tinkering, DIY and creating my own knowledge and logics about my body and the medical devices that I use. And, third, hacking as managing and coping with disease and disability (Davis, 2006, Alper, 2000) as the ways in which I reconfigure and adjust my daily routines and rituals (particularly those around eating and food but also those around exercise and extra-curricular activities).
- Thus, even with the same objective measurements and inputs, the results might still be quite different. Unlike other technological systems, the interaction with the human body itself is what produces the system’s lack of accuracy in a very observable way.
- In attaching wireless devices to the body, the skin becomes a hybridized space that is an interface between the digital and the material.
- New technologies almost always reconfigure, redistribute (and sometimes replace) the work of people, earlier technologies and artifacts (Latour, 1992).