Art and technology. Reality and Virtual Reality. 

This 12th grade digital media student was taken ill and when she was in hospital she took this photograph. She was a strong photography student and I had been encouraging her to be more experimental in her methods. When she was recuperating in hospital she found this fish tank and she chose to play with the water while taking photographs.
She titled it Hydrocodone, this image reminded her of the uneasy feelings of being on pain medication.


Under my tutelage, the same student then built this physical computing water set-up.
She called it Hydro. It was a tank with a compressor and air valves that were activated by a proximity sensor. When you approach the work it activates the valves. She likened it to anger or agitation, the noise subsides when you move away from the tank. The piece uses Arduino and proximity sensors, various electronics. It is a simple circuit, but still required basic programming and a negotiation between code and a physical, communicative  object.