kitschometer

This is the code behind an interactive installation wich was created for the exhibition Kunst oder Kitsch?. The exhibition runs from 13. April until 22. June 2014 in the city Bad Schussenried in the southern part of Germany.

This repository is meant as a documentation of the installation. See this blog post for further details on the project.

Status: It works, but the code is heavily cluttered and needs to be sanitized and refactored.

Setup documentation

The installation consits of two pc's:

• exposition_frontend: an ArchLinux machine displaying a frontend
• exposition_raspberry: a RaspberryPi which reads from two external hardware buttons as input devices.

exposition_fronted

The machine has be configured to use the Slim login manager and dwm as a window manger. Logging in automatically has been configured as well.

The .xinitrc looks like this:

setterm -blank 0 -powersave off -powerdown 0
xset s off

cp /home/sundata/kitschometer/exposition_frontend/redirect.html /tmp/
(cd /home/sundata/kitschometer/exposition_frontend/ && forever start kitschometer.js)


(uzbl-browser file:///tmp/redirect.html) & 
sleep 1
/home/sundata/unclutter/unclutter &
exec dwm

dwm has been compiled with these adaptions in config.h, in order to hide the colorful borders of program windows and stuff:

static const char normfgcolor[]     = "#000000";
static const char selbordercolor[]  = "#000000";
static const char selbgcolor[]      = "#000000";

exposition_raspberry

The standard raspberry image has been enhanced with a startup daemon /etc/init.d/kitschometer:

### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:             kitschometer
# Required-Start:
# Required-Stop:
# Default-Start:        2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop:         0 1 6
# Short-Description:    kitschometer hardware reading
### END INIT INFO

export PATH=$PATH:/opt/node/bin
export NODE_PATH=$NODE_PATH:/opt/node/lib/node_modules
export HOME=/home/pi

case "$1" in
  start)
    /opt/node/bin/forever start /home/pi/kitschometer/exposition_raspberry/chatServer.js
    ;;
  stop)
    exec /opt/node/bin/forever stopall
    ;;
  *)

  echo "Usage: /etc/init.d/nodeup {start|stop}"
  exit 1
  ;;
esac
exit 0

Be sure to have executed

sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/kitschometer
sudo update-rc.d kitschometer defaults

This daemon provides a simple TCP server chatServer.js on port 1337. The input from the external hardware buttons is streamed there as ints: 0, 64 or 128. The exposition_fronted stuff connects there and reads the input.

Acknowledgment

The project takes use of those awesome icons:

• Venus by MaxineVSG from The Noun Project
• Gnome by Bonnie Beach from The Noun Project
• Explosion by Jerry Wang from The Noun Project

License

This code is licensed under the MIT license:

Copyright (c) 2014

	Michael Mueller <http://micha.elmueller.net/>
	Leo Hnatek 

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining
a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the
"Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including
without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish,
distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to
permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to
the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be
included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND
NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE
LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION
OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION
WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.