A Trace in Space is a project of IaaC, Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia developed at Master in City & Technology in 2016/2017 by:
Students: Alex Mademo, Sylvain Totaro, Peng Wang
Faculty: Angelos Chronis, Angel Muñoz

In an effort to combine the physical with the digital part of our lives, this project shows how by creating a small Arduino and Processing prototype we can on one hand sense and manually control it and on the other receive a digital feedback, through visualisation or sound.

The concept that underlines this project lies in the children’s toy, the Etch-A-Sketch a mechanical drawing toy invented by the French André Cassagnes in the 1960s.

1_sylvainpengalex-concept

The Etch-A-Sketch

Initially our goal was to recreat the Etch-A-Sketch through Processing and Arduino, by using two Potentiometers, one to control the X direction of the line and another one to control the Y direction of the line. By applying a small delay to the line we were able to create the tracing effect of the line on the black canvas.
However, working in two dimensions is not that much of a challenge and since our goal was to give this classic toy a modern twist, we decided to introduce the third dimension in the Processing script. This was of course followed by a third Potentiometer to control the Z direction of the line.
To take the twist even further, it was apparent that the script had to provide the user with a sense of transformative control over the line.Thus, we introduced three Buttons in the Arduino script: one that transforms the line into a triangulated mesh, a second one that increases the amount of tringulation and a third one that resets the whole drawing.

And of course, its all drawn in 3D.

The technique behind the 3D tranformation of our project.

The technique behind the 3D tranformation of our project.

The resulting toy gives a range of tranformative controls over the classic line that was first introduced 50 years ago with the Etch-A-Sketch.

The three layers of A Trace in Space.

The three layers of A Trace in Space.

The following short film shows the various layers of the project as well as the technical information that underlines the concept: