UNO R4 Stars: Meet Monica Rikic

The launch of the Arduino UNO R4 marks an enormous leap ahead for our neighborhood. For us, it’s additionally the possibility to have fun the individuals who deliver our ecosystem to life with their vibrant concepts, radiant enthusiasm, and shining perception.

That’s how the UNO R4 Stars weblog publish sequence started: to focus on makers who haven’t solely created wonderful tasks with Arduino, however who’re giving again to the neighborhood by sharing as they go and serving to others make something they need.

We invite you to find every profile, hoping you would possibly discover a North Star to navigate round an increasing galaxy or enterprise into fully new universes.

Born and based mostly in Barcelona, Spain, Monica Rikic is an award-winning artist who has chosen coding and inventive electronics as her expressive media. At present a PhD pupil at Universitat Oberta de Catalunya’s Community and Data Applied sciences program, she first encountered Arduino in school and rapidly realized the platform would open up infinite alternatives for interactive works succesful ready of perceiving inputs from the bodily context and producing completely different actions in response.

“Being a maker means not merely consuming know-how, however taking over an lively function within the dynamic the place, each day, we’re in touch with gadgets and purposes which have grow to be our gateways to narrate to the world round us, to different individuals, and to ourselves as nicely,” she says.

Through the years, her philosophical and creative strategy have translated into tasks comparable to Hipertèlia, of which she has just lately arrange a 2023 iteration on the Sala Apolo membership in Barcelona because of a model new Arduino UNO R4 WiFi: 20 “balloons” with LEDs inside, interacting with guests because of a digicam that tracks their place and communicates it to the system through Wi-Fi. The set up will likely be on-site till early November — in case you are in Barcelona, test it out!

Rikic has additionally already developed a brand new mission leveraging the UNO R4 Minima variant: “It’s a bizarre machine that generates infinite classical music, in collaboration with Rodo. Guests on the Palau de la Musica can modify the output as they get nearer to the set up, communicate and even sing to it.” 

What’s subsequent? She is engaged on Hipèrbole, a brand new conceptual mission for her EMAP European Residency with Hexagram at Concordia College in Montreal, Canada, exploring the intersection between artwork and AI from an unique standpoint — to not check machines’ inventive potentialities, however to experiment with the traits that synthetic cognitive methods will need to have to be thought of sentient organisms. 

 We requested Rikic, “What’s your favourite a part of UNO R4?”

• The 24V tolerance: “With the ability to hook up with a single energy supply, even when controlling a number of motors, makes my work lots less complicated.”
• The built-in mechanism that detects and prevents runtime errors: avoiding brief circuits that might probably hurt the board and damage a complete mission is nice, particularly to maintain college students motivated.
• The Qwiic I2C connector: as a result of it permits you to join completely different sensors and actuators with out soldering.
• The LED matrix: having a type of direct output helps you instantly see what you possibly can create with electronics.

To seek out out extra about Rikic’s creative analysis and hold an eye fixed out for the brand new installations she is organising around the globe, bookmark her web site or observe her on Instagram.