Work Type : interactive window installation
Developer Tools : Python/Arduino
Designer tools : Adobe Illustrator/Oil paint/fabrication

Made in Collaboration with: Nick Wallce, Sam Chasan

“If you were given a window into the past, what would you say to yourself?”

Overview:

“Dear Younger Me” is an interactive window installation designed, built, and exhibited by Tong Wu, Sam Chasan and Nick Wallace. The piece invites people to share their joy, their love, their advices, their regrets, and their heartbreak with their younger selves via text message. Each message is printed out onto a continuous feed of paper, slowly filling the window and allowing passersby to read messages others have sent to themselves.

A live, searchable archive of every message sent to Dear Younger Me is available online at www.dearyounger.me. All code for the project is available under the MIT Creative Commons license on Github.

FABRICATION

“Dear Younger Me,” is a 8’ x 5’ frame of 2”x4” studs covered with 1/4” plywood. A space was cut for an oversized mailbox with a hand router, and the mailbox was cut to size with an electric nibbler. The children silhouettes were milled from birch plywood on a TechnoRouter CNC before being painted black, fitted with RGB LEDs, and mounted to the flat. The entire flat was primed and painted with latex paint. The lettering was laser cut from two layers of foam core and painted with latex paint.

EQUIPMENT

Primarily software development for Dear Younger Me was done in Python 3. MySQL and Arduino C++ were also used to control various elements of the installation.

“Dear Younger Me,” requires a list of hardware include: OKI MICROLINE 320 Turbo Dot Matrix Printer (x1), Mac Mini (x1), Arduino Nano (x1) and RGB led strips (ws2812b) with P95 light diffusing acrylic.