Where are things with the joke dispenser

SU asked me to send them a short description of my project so far and include photos so:

Last year I began researching what social capital is and to test it in real life by making small adjustments to the way I behave in everyday situations. The first notable change I made was with beggars on the street. If anyone asks me for money in the street I give it to them in exchange for them going on tape to say what they will do with the money. Once they do and I pay them I upload that video to Twitter and tag the council this happened in:

Traded £1 with a homeless so he'd tell me what he'll do with it #BeggingBargain @camdenTalking https://t.co/doJXyUXxXD
— Gilad Visotsky (@v_gilad) August 19, 2013

My next stage was to go go outside and beg for myself, only I begged in a way that challenges the relationship we usually have with people holding signs on the street:

It went very well, I got over 40 jokes in three days, here is an unedited sample.

The next stage was to take this all this content, or the system in which I generated that content, and apply it, or compile it in a way that makes sense. I decided to do it in the context of where I am studying Central Saint Martins college. The reason for this is my conclusion that if all the contributions were made at one location it will make sense if seen one after the other - it is a way to get to know the people of that place. 

I began to design an experience based around this system. The core idea is that if you participate in this experience in any way, you get something meaningful in return.

And so began the journey of making this thing happen. I have invested in a coin acceptor, and with the help of 4D technicians Angus and Sion, wrote a program that plays a video when a penny in put into the system.   

Programming the coin acceptor

Building the Kiosk

The kiosk has wheels!

behind the screen 

For each penny inserted into this kiosk a joke is played. If someone chooses to participate by contributing a joke (which means finding me and recording it) they will receive a 10p voucher.

Here is a demo of how it works

CSM canteen vouchers for joke contributors 

And finally, today I have painted my Joke dispenser with the first layer of paint, during this process I tweeted and was asked to share this with the SU blog.

today: watching paint dry... (!!!)

Success!!!!

I managed to print my cat jokes properly using the thermal printer!!!!

Turns out I had the Arduino plugged in all wrong. I changed the wiring according to these instructions, then continued to use the code from aidafruit. In order to print the jokes properly (previously words got broken into new lines) I am now using bitmap images at 384px wide, thus controling the font, characters, line spacing etc. I can even print images!

I am using images instead of text to control the text appearance

The correct way to wire up the Arduino (from adafruit)

In this old printout you can see spaces appear at beginning of new lines, and words broken into the next line  

Vouchers for my joke contributors

After talking to Ian yesterday I have made 10p vouchers which I will give to anyone who contributes a joke for my project.

I hope no one can fake these bad boys!

Working on Talk Over Tea Posters and Table Tents

I am redesigning the posters and table tri-folds to mirror the changed way the service will work as of tomorrow.

Posters 

tri folds

Designing the Joke dispenser + more badges

I have a list of things to get done by tomorrow:

For Talk Over Tea:

• Redesign posters for Talk Over Tea
• Redesign TOT table tents
• Make more Badges
• Print more logbooks

For the Joke dispenser:

• Design the exterior
• Make 10p vouchers
• Edit videos at 1028x768

And finally for the Science (Cat Joke) book:

• Figure out splitting printed lines
• have fun with my thermal printer!

So far today, I have made progress on two of these points. I have made more badges and began designing the Joke Dispenser.

The photos of the progress are below.

I need to make more! 

Provisional front of the dispenser

cog themed design (I need to reason it out though - not quite there yet...

The vinyl cuts are designed in Illustratur 

The supreme rule of the universe

Last night I dreamt my aunt sent me an email with the title 'The supreme rule of the universe' and this design:

I posted it to reddit where it was not appreciated, and finally settled down for creating an 8DIX version and posted it there:

Today I need to write down many things

Insert from my diary:

–  where am I with regards to the cat joke box project
– where am I with regards to a penny for your joke project
– where am I with regards to talk over tea project

I will start with the left latter as it is the freshest in my mind.

# Talk over tea
I just finished working on a third or fourth variation for the talk over tea logo. I want to play with negative space and at the moment, I am trying to make a teacup superimposed with the word talk and have that the handle serves as the capital O for ‘Over tea’.
It isn’t going very well… Tomorrow is the first day when talk over tea will be running.  I got a second number for texts, so that customers do not have to use twitter. At the moment I’m thinking that I should promote people to use what’s app.
I have printed three logbooks for tomorrow they have places to enter date, time, name, location, order and further comments.
I am fairly apprehensive, as I am aware there is a lot that can go wrong. I have made plans to do other things during the day tomorrow in case talk over tea does not prove popular. Right now the’ worst’ thing that could happen is if #TOT proved extremely popular. I would not know how to deal with too much demand. But I will cross that bridge when I get to it. I really hope that it will prove easy to enlist help from other third years (or final year MA students).
it just occurred to me that I now have time to make quick designs for a talk over tea tray. The tray will be 50 cm over 35 cm it will have the words talk over tea carved into it somewhere and will have four dips for takeaway cups.

Log book mistake printed on see through paper

My three plain and proper log books

Inside layout - plain and to the point

I am struggling with the whole logo concept - I may just stick with a logotype or my older variation of the logo

Tray design

# Penny for your joke
I have a bag with four castor wheels, I bought from screw fix yesterday.  Tomorrow I will spend the day waiting for customers to request drinks from the cafe. In the meanwhile, I told one of the technicians downstairs that I will spend the day with him building the exterior of my joke machine. Made out of MDF, it will be a 1.7 m tall device, I haven’t got it written down but I am pretty sure it will be 60 cm wide and 60 cm deep. I have recommissioned my old Toshiba and they hope to install processing on it so it can run the joke program. If all goes well, I will have the parts ready and I will be able to assemble everything over Easter Break.



# Cat joke machine
 I have in my hand, envelope which contains a USB A to B cable, there are five thermal paper rolls and an AC power adapter inside it. I bought all of these with the intention of using them to power the thermal printer which I have a university. They should allow me to  to interact with my printer with much more ease than I currently have. I still haven’t used the RFID module which worries me a bit. I don’t know how simple it will be to use it, and I doubt that I will be able to connect it to the printer by myself.

Working on the joke machine and making badges

I spent today preparing videos for my joke machine. I also made badges for TOT.

Tomorrow I have an interview at the RCA and I am stressed!!!

Working on the videos for the 'Penny for your jokes' machine

making badges

failing at making badges

nice badges for the TOT program