Creative-Embedded-Systems-Portfolio
Wild Geese Rendition
This is my submission for the second project of the semester, where students were tasked with creating a generative, text-based art piece on an ESP32 TTGO T-display. We all hung our ESP32s in the Computer Science landing area in Milstein, right next to the elevators, making a battery-powered art installation that lasted for a class period.
For my text, I chose to use a portion of my favorite poem, “Wild Geese,” by Mary Oliver. I find this poem to be incredibly beautiful. It helps me to remember the important things in life, to stay grounded, to appreciate the ones I love, and to stay true to who I am. I think it goes well with the theme of my work in this class as well- spreading love through technology.
The first line of the poem goes, “You do not have to be good.” This is a powerful opening line, but I also interpret this to be a very gentle reminder to stop holding myself to arbitrary standards set by other people- such as being “good.” I think Mary Oliver purposefully used the word “good” to vaguely encompass all of the things we’re “supposed” to be; everyone has standards they feel they “should” hold themselves to when in reality, none of it is objective. This opening line has always been so liberating for me to read, and I wanted to create a soft display for it in my piece. I made the background green, in an effort to open with a peaceful and calming color. I initially made the text white, but I felt that was too harsh- so I changed it to be blue, which sort of blends in with the green, but is still visible. I thought that represented the first line well, since you have to focus a bit to read it- the line doesn’t scream out at you, but instead softly moves horizontally across the screen, almost blending into the background.
The second line reads, “You do not have to walk on your knees / for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.” Mary Oliver is elaborating on what we might think of when we think of being “good.” The image of walking through the desert “repenting,” for “a hundred miles,” though not literally something most of us aspire to do, is a symbol of a seemingly impossible standard that is liberating to let go of. For me, I read this as, “You don’t have to be a billionaire CEO by 30. You don’t have to fix all the world’s problems right now. You don’t have to be in a rush to find a husband and have kids, and start a family and be a supermom.” And, I’m sure everyone else reads it in their own way, each liberating themselves of what they “should” do. In reality, there’s not necessarily a “right” way to go about life, or a “should.” I think Mary Oliver specifically frees us from “repenting” to say that we don’t necessarily need to be apologetic for not being “good,” and meeting all the arbitrary standards and timelines that we hold ourselves to because we feel like we should. We can simply let go of all of it, and be who we are right now. I wanted this line to be little bit less soft than the first one, but still calm, so I made the background black and the text blue. I had the text float from the bottom of the screen to the top, to create contrast with the first line, but still keep the display very minimal so the audience could focus on what it is actually saying. The hardest part of creating this piece, for me, was figuring out the offset of the y position for the words in this section of the display. I had to draw out the position I wanted on an ipad, calculating step-by-step how to get to the desired coordinate, trying to follow my calculation of the coordinate at each step to see if it got me to my target location.
The third line, and the last line I used in my generative art piece, is: “You only have to let the soft animal of your body / love what it loves.” For me, this is the most powerful line in the entire poem. It is a reminder of what IS important to focus on, instead of what we “should” do or be: love. I absolutely adore the phrase “soft animal of your body;” it is a reminder of our softness, our flesh, our humanness, and feels so grounding to read. It doesn’t have to be so complicated as saving the world, or being everything for everyone around you, or looking a certain way, or making a certain amount of money, etc. We can just let ourselves love, and the rest will fall into place. I enjoy how Mary Oliver phrases “letting” ourselves love, and I interpret this as a reminder that a lot of the “shoulds” in our life really do get in the way of remembering why we are here: to love. Even loving doesn’t need to come with any particular pressures or standards or “shoulds.” Instead, we should follow what draws us naturally, letting our bodies “love what [they] love,” and going from there. I think every single word of this line is important, and I wanted each word to get its own special emphasis. So I made each word flash on the screen for 0.7 seconds, in a random color(red, orange, yellow, green, blue, pink, black, or white). This forces the audience to take their time with each word, appreciating its individual contribution to the message, highlighted by the each word having its own color. The background is purple, which I think creates a bit of a lighter, more joyous energy for this line’s display. I struggled a bit writing the code for this line of the poem, particularly with the timing and randomness. It was helpful to separate what needs to be done each time the loop function runs(setting the background, drawing the word in its color), versus what only needs to be done every 700 milliseconds(resetting the clock, going to the next word, and choosing a new random color).
To drive the point home, I had an image pop up on the screen for three seconds after the text is finished. The image is randomly selected from three images that I chose. The first option is a little cartoon of two people, with a heart. The second is a cartoon image of a goose, and the third is a cartoon image of two people hugging. I wanted all three to be cute, lighthearted, and simple, so as to bring a smile to the audience after reading the text portion, without taking away from the powerful message. The goose specifically is a reference to the wild geese later in the poem: “Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, / are heading home again.” The geese are a beautiful reminder that the world does not hinge on our execution of the “shoulds;” nature carries on, whether or not you meet the standards set by everyone else. So, you might as well have some fun with your life, show love to your loved ones, and appreciate every moment(especially poignant as a second semester senior).
Miscellaneously, I learned that you need to draw things to the background- it’s easier than always redrawing text, and can help avoid some flashing. Another note is that size 4 is generally good on a display of this size- when toying with font size, I found that anything larger was difficult to work with, so I stuck to this size in every scene since it was large enough to see, but wouldn’t mess anything up.
Here are the three images that could pop up after the text is done displaying:
Here is a video of the installation!
Mine is the green one!
Click here for a video of the display that ends with the image of the hug.
Click here for a video of the display that ends with the image of the goose.
Click here for a video of the display that ends with the image of the two people with a heart.
Click here for a video of the display, spinning around (which it did a lot at first).
For technical documentation, click here.
Hopefully this art piece brought you some joy, and you go read the full poem! :)