Umbrella | Project Construction

The project, which has not been entitled yet, aims to construct a black umbrella that can be opened and closed autonomously. This umbrella opens and plays the song called “Katibim” when there is rain in Üsküdar. The song stops simultaneously with the closure of the umbrella when the rain stops. The size of the umbrella has been decided to be three times bigger than the usual personal umbrellas, since the relation between the installed object and where it has been placed has been taken into consideration, and it is meant to be a public umbrella that can cover many. The ready-made garden umbrella is bought yet its original plastic end tip will be replaced by hand made wooden one, and also a handle made of wood will be attached to that in order to present a huge version of an individual one rather than a garden umbrella. Additionally, the cloth of the umbrella will be modified accordingly.

Raspberry Pi, a small single-board computer, has been used in the project for the creation of an autonomous system. The program, which is written in Python, gets the weather data from weather API and issues a command to run a linear actuator which is placed alongside the shaft of the umbrella. The linear actuator, a piston-like motor that can go up and down at a constant speed, opens the umbrella by pushing it from its runner. There is an electronic component called a "relay" in between the Raspberry Pi output and a linear actuator, which operates the electric switches in order to make the actuator go for the intended direction, up or down. The Raspberry Pi, the speakers, the umbrella base which carries the weight will be hidden in the pedestal constructed for the umbrella.

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Umbrella | Sexual References

The interpretation of an umbrella as an erotic symbol dates back to Greco-Roman god Bacchus and his followers called bacchantes. Since Bacchus’s cult was mainly associated with pleasure, rave, and ecstasy, the usage of the umbrella in different occasions like festivals or events by cult members assigned an erotic meaning to that object. Later its associations were generally made with royalty and wealth and this aspect has been forgotten. After a long time has passed, the character named Henrietta Petowker in Nicholas Nickleby was portrayed as “[she] knows that she is admired at the theatre by the jauntily phallic appearance of a most preserving umbrella in the upper boxes” by Charles Dickens, while he was pointing out the erotic perception of the object. Sixty years later Freud explains the relationship of umbrellas with the unconscious as such “all elongated objects, sticks, tree-trunks, umbrellas (on account of the opening, which might be likened to an erection), all sharp and elonga...

Umbrella | Political References

The umbrella can protect people from various factors as well as the rain and sun. In 2014, umbrellas gained the mission of protecting the crowd from pepper spray and rubber bullets during the protests in Hong Kong regarding more transparent elections, which were later named “The Umbrella Movement”. The object, particularly the yellow ones, became a symbol for protests and in general used as a tool for passive resistance. In 2019, during the time of the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement again in Hong Kong, the object carried the importance of collective expression, privacy, and self-defense for protesters in the same manner yet umbrellas have been labeled as weapons by police forces so that the ordering of the object from e-commerce platforms like AliExpress was banned. Beyond being a symbol of resistance, umbrellas were used as camouflage to provide privacy for protesters, as a shield and defense mechanism for protection against police forces as the people from protests clai...

The Umbrella

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