I’ve updated the Zoraida site. Drag the white star and place it on top of the different locations (Havana, Granmar province, & Guantanamo) on the map of Cuba. Each site returns different text and different sounds (all sounds ~ 2.5 minutes long).
I plan to flesh out the text more soon, as well as adding [...]

This week’s 2×2 turned into an exploration of those celebrities — specifically, James Dean — who live intensely and die young.  I think we take a certain grotesque pleasure when our greatest and most charismatic artists burn themselves out.  It confirms our suspicions that they were too good, too pure for this world.  They’re our [...]

TechDIY helps mothers teach their daughthers about electronics. Ji Sun Lee made Tech DIY as her theis project at ITP. Her young daughter is back in Korea with her husband while she is finishing up her studies in NYC. Her daughter and her experience in New York at ITP inspired her to make a set of Do It Yourself (DIY) projects that mothers can do with their daugthers to teach them about electronics in fun and positive ways.

As Ji Sun told TechTrek “like many other women, I was not initially interested in learning about electronics. However, I knew the enjoyment of making things. So I developed the Tech DIY to encourage women to learn about technology with their daughters in ways that are simple and fun, but have solid engineering lessons behind them.”

On my walk from Union Square to school (approx. 6 blocks) I saw 2 dozen people that I’m unsure if they dressed up for Halloween or not.

Having a truly evil time trying to find 100mm sliders, let alone their motorized counterparts.  I just keep finding the small ones.
See here:

Got leads?  Lemme know!

Edge Detection by Shiffman
I added a ball that bounces off the red pixels in the image. I am going to add lots of objects that bounce of the edges detected in the video. Then, I hope to project the bouncing objects back out onto the scene being taken in by the video. Thus, the objects [...]

New Changes:
- code more modular
- multiple items selectable
- items bounce on the conveyor belt
- energy meter below belt gives player a timed challenge, but everyone wins in the end
- cool end animation with falling boxes
Play game here.

XBee
code available on class page
based on zigbee - like midi - based on 802.15.4 based on 802.3 (ethernet) by IEEE
series one don’t use all of zigbee
series 2 use all zigbee and use mesh networking better
pro = longer range.
http://www.maxstream.net
check sparkfun.com for droids.it and all kinds of other components for connecting
different from bluetooth.
xbee: more promiscuous, since its [...]

Sinan interacts with grass. See more pictures from the show on flickr.
Download OSX application of the piece to run on your own Mac here.

Today we showed at ITP our midterm projects. Below are some pictures:This is the one I did:

just got caught in a time sink hole trying to beat the all-time scores on the miniracers racing game. ugh

A few posts back - I wrote about developing a seismic data visualizer for my ICM final. This is still the case - however, the details involving the execution of the project are now very different. The most notable change involves adding several physi…

My very talented friend MC Hyland is in the Paris Review this month with an apocalyptic, global warming inspired poem. Cheery! You can also find her this month in the Colorado Review and LIT.

So, how about them Red Sox?? Wooo! I have pics from the ALCS (Game 2 in Boston! And Game 7 at Prof Thoms in NYC) and some pics from the bender I like to call Game 2 of the…

off of ingrid’s fab comment. future crowd sourced advice (if it remains valuable to us all) will be held over at Dear Mobby :: gimme a little bit of time to customize the look of it ::

for those of you that have slacked on halloween preparedness, stefan bucher provides you with a free monster mask.

Last night Meredith and I made substantial progress on our NIME, both the actual piece and the sorting box. I started by cutting the funnels to fit the different balls (the funnels will hold the balls on the top of the arms of the structure) and fittin…

Here’s a tricky one!

“Dear Ze, I think that your recent encouragement….

I had just checked into my hotel in Daly City, CA this evening when my room started shaking. I reflected on it, and was pretty sure the hotel wasn’t above or below train tracks. I was on the phone with someone in Berkeley, and could be heard saying:
“Did you feel that? No way! Oh cool! [...]

For Softness last week the topic was ergonomics. In my definition of ergonomics is probably wrong, but it all seems to be about the human body relating to things. How do we fit or interact with space. This all made me think of handles, mice (computer), gloves… all positive spaces, or spaces we wrap around. [...]

For Softness last week the topic was ergonomics. In my definition of ergonomics is probably wrong, but it all seems to be about the human body relating to things. How do we fit or interact with space. This all made me think of handles, mice (computer), gloves… all positive spaces, or spaces we wrap around. [...]

Yet another tough assignment for me - making something with the Body in mind. I was a bit nervous because I cannot recall ever making something for the body. I had a few thoughts in mind including a miniature space for lounging in tight spaces and an ergonomic grip. All has been done before. What [...]

Vikram, Estee, and I went on an afternoon photowalk in Chelsea on Sunday. Nice to get out and see more of the city, and the weather was perfect. No complaints here.

Click To Play

The assignment was to create a work that was transmitted or broadcast. Adam Simon, Scott Varland & I put this together. Thanks Rock & Doris.

here’s another dilemma sent in, please advise::

“Well, you asked for dilemmas and I could definitely use some advice right now.

I’m a 16 year old girl, and I’m bisexual…

how generous you all were with your advice. conflicted, yes, but perhaps a better representation of the truth. let’s do it again. anyone have a dilemma? email me at ze@zefrank.com if you do.

I decided to step back from my current process of speaker/amplification circuit engineering to review my existing Speaker Synth and investigate techniques of performing with it. Playing has inspired a fresh perspective on the type of performance I may want to have.

Using Max/MSP to sample sound clips of Speaker Synth while I play live, I can improvise with different sequence patterns and tempos. The following sound clips are my initial tries using MaxMSP for live manipulation. Keep in mind, THERE ARE NO EFFECTS OR PRERECORDED SAMPLES. All sounds are directly from Speaker Synth and being manipulated only through playback in sequenced, looping patterns.

AUDIO: SpeakerSynth1.mp3
AUDIO: SpeakerSynth2.mp3

I love the compositions and sounds that are the output of this very simple process. A sound texture that would normally take hours of fussing with software and electronics is being created because of the inherent sound of the system. As a performance, I can picture each speaker of Speaker Synth being output to another speaker for amplification after being run through a loop in MaxMSP. That would make 5 separate amplification speakers which will project spacial effect I desire. I am also interested in using 2-3 live vocalists to harmonize over the top of the compositions I create, as well as having Speaker Synth play solo.

So at this point, I am stepping back from the physical building process to develop a performance.

Here’s a quick example video of the application I made for my midterm ICM. The “ghetto record” is the live recording and then the black and white is playback with music.

So it appears that we were to blog our reactions to all of our homework in all of our classes. This, it seems, puts me behind by about 10 homeworks in this regard. Feels like elementary school all over again. It’s odd doing the actual homework but not having the report. [...]

It dawned on me recently that I’d never posted the final cricket code here, so I went back, did some touch-ups, and slapped it up here.  If anyone’s going to try doing this, the line breaks may goof things up.  This is also assuming you’re using my wiring setup, with two relays (one attached to [...]