What is Threading Space?

Threading Space is a kinetic sculpture that explores how spatial perception can be transformed by dynamically and geometrically reconfiguring physical lines of thread. As the threads in motion interact, they become a hypnotic medium for three-dimensional patterns. Through a physical installation and an interactive GUI, Threading Space invites the audience to explore the potential of using swarm robots and line elements to create, morph, and interact with space.

How does Threading Space Work?

The Core loop of Threading Space is:

• The Animation System calculates the posistions of the toios
• Using motorVelocityTarget, a new velocity is sent to the toios based on their current and target posistions/velocities
• The Visualization and GUI is updated based on the new expected and actual locations of the toios

Core Animation System

The core animation system accepts two kinds of sequences:

• Uninteractive sequences, which output a 2D or 3D set of points based on a time t in milliseconds. There are two types of uninteractive sequences:
  • Smooth Sequences, which continously move for a period of time
  • Discrete Sequences, which consist of a set of frames. The path-finding mechanism automatically generates a Discrete sequence to move between two sets of points.
• Interactive sequences, which output a 2D or 3D set of points based on input from the user.

Using an input function, the core animation system allows for

• Queuing animations
• Pausing and resuming animations
• If an sequence is supposed to tangle, the animation can be played in reverse to automatically untangle.

Files

• Main

  • Path_Planning: Runs the command to generate the path planning
  • keyMousePressed: Manages any key presses or mouse events, including debug mode
  • Threading_Space: Manages the main loop and defines all user-defined variables (i.e. number of toios, toggle MSI mode, etc.)

• The Animation System

  • Animation_Manager: Controls the flow between different animations; manages wait times if MSI
  • anim_interactive: Manages the Interactive animations: Each interactive animation has a set of variables that the user can change in real-time
  • Anim_Cylinder: An Interactive animation that has a cylinder at the top and on the bottom
  • Anim_Line: An Interactive animation that has a line at the top and on the bottom
  • Anim_Screensaver: Contains all the non-interactive animations, including the MSI-specific animation

• Visualization

  • visual: Manages the 3D positions of the cubes in the visualization. This allows for the visualization of threading space to be synced or independant from their physical locations.
  • display: Contains the 3d components that make up the threading space visualization
  • gui: Manages the interactive aspects of the GUI, (i.e. the buttons)

• Toio and OSC Management:

  • Cube: Stores the Cube class, which abstracts away the lower level communication with the toios
  • pair: Stores the Pair class, which manages pairs of cubes at once
  • MotorTargetVel: Stores the motorTargetVelocity command which will use PID to smoothly follow a moving target
  • oscRecieve: Manages all received OSC messages
  • oscSend: Sends OSC Messages
  • Battery_Management: Manages the battery-life record, saved as csv file (if in MSI mode)

MSI mode

Screensaver will operate at designated time-intervals (not constantly)

• Toggle MSI mode by msi=true, see Threading_Space
• Operation times defined by int[] playTimes, see also Threading_Space
• MSI screensaver behavior defined in Anim_Screensaver: msi_screensaver()
  • To alter the MSI-specific sequence, see sequences defined within
• MSI battery collection files are saved by name and date.
  • Format: YYYYMMDD_x for x files made

The Full Laptop-Toio Documnentation can be found here