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… Drillr

Laura Bordin | Giuseppe Burdo | Lorenzo Cercelletta |
Giuseppe Cosmai | Claudia De Angelis | Valentina Venza

Drillr is an art generator based on Flickr activity about contemporary topics. Different picture tags generate different behaviours by our painting machine.

Prototype We replaced the bit in an ordinary electric drill by a wooden rod on which was hung a syringe filled with coloured ink. The more the drill rotated, the more the syringe angle was lifted by centrifugal force. This generated different ink patterns on a canvas placed around the painting machine. For safety, the machine was accurately fixed to the floor, and someone stood ready to switch off the power to the drill.

The real application should work using Flickr RSS feeds: every time a picture with a certain tag is posted (our example used ‘war’, ‘love’ and ‘party’), our software switches on the drill and communicates to it different behaviours. Our prototype simulates the RSS feed with commands from the keyboard: w for war etc.

Code We developed two codes: one for Arduino, the other for Processing. The former is directly connected to the drill while the latter shows the pictures on the screen and sends to Arduino the right instructions.

Download the Arduino and Processing code

High to Very High is a wonderful device that allows you to connect the Arduino board to a high voltage electric machine. In our project it is connected to the Arduino board (ground and 13th pin) and provides a plug for the drill.

Video prototype

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