I finally have a full assembly of all the major components sewn with thick canvas and leather. The small scuba tank provides the air pressure, controlled by an Arduino and solenoid valves. The basic operation of pneumatic muscle works. Air pressure at about 100psi inflates the muscle, creating a contracting motion of about [...]

In class about Alternate Reality Games. I <3 this place. #
So fscking cold. #
Amazing story on Bush and Geldof - unlikely allies: http://tinyurl.com/2do5n4 #
freaking out about cons and identity again. #
@beezar1 Saw something and grunted at it? #
@beezar1 Anxiety attacks, mainly. You? #
@greatevil So true, So true. #
@mhanlon The Wall thanks you for [...]

Clay Shirky의 신간 Here comes everybody. 오늘부터 판매시작이다.
규칙없이 사람들이 모여 만들어내는 새로운 룰에 대해 얘기한다.
layman’s term으로 풀어쓴 책이다.
수업때마다 한문장씩 메모하게 하는 insight 이 뛰어난 선생님이다.
퍼포먼스를 하듯 수업을 한다.

항상 확인하게 되는 사실. 고수일수록 쉽게 말할 줄 안다.
에꿀 말마따나 기술도 없고 사기꾼같은 내가 ITP에 와서 딱히 뭘 배운건 없다. 으하하하
(1학기때는 processing으로 만화경도 만들었지만 이제 생각하는것말고는 시간투자를 많이 안한다.)
하지만 여기서 만난 선생님들은 너무나 감동이다.
Tom Igoe, Dan O’sullivan, Daniel Rozin, Clay, Shiffman, Despina, Shawn
투명하고 현명하게 학생들을 대하는 사람들을 뽑은 점에 대해 레드를 존경한다.

Another good time with coffee and a friend @ Angelique in the west village.
하느님과 대화하는 이 친구는 요즘 얼굴에서 빛이 난다!

내 맥북 스크린엔 꼬맹이들 두마리, 귀신천사 하나, 호박파이한조각, 도넛2개, 토스트2장이 산다. 그것도, 저 산꼭대기 구름이 땅을 가려주는 멋진곳에서!

하핫, 이건 수업시간에 찍은 Kunal의 신발이다. 수업보다 이 신발이 나에겐 더 감동이었다.
연두색 반짝이가 붙은 운동화이다.
Sorry Kunal, I didn’t ask for your permission. It was just so awesome.

지난주 금요일 아침에 회사를 가려고 나서는데 눈이 펑펑 내렸다.

뉴욕의 겨울은 무척이나 춥다. 마음도 시리게 한다. 배트맨이 사는 Gotham city가 바로 여기. 부츠바닥이 닳아서 쭉쭉 미끄러지는 바람에 쫄쫄쫄 슬슬슬 걸어야 했다.
지난주 나에게 뉴욕은 사막과 같았다.
사람들이 그리 많은 길을 걸어도 무표정하고 블랙코트 일색인 사람들을 보면
미이라와 다름없었다. 한국가는 비행기표를 사고 6일동안의 짧은 일정을 알차게 보내기 위해 캘린더를 만들고 있으려니 2년만에 방문하는 한국의 느낌은 어떨까 몹시 궁금하기만 하다.

현수가 해주는 밥을 이틀동안 먹고, 펀지 작업을 휘리릭 휘리릭 하고,
회사에서 클라이언트에게 전달한 데드라인이 촉박한 문서 작업을 위해 2주마다 금요일엔 버지니아로 사라지는 비밀스러운 보스와 전화를 하며 재빠르게 손을 놀리다 보니 사막은 여전히 사막이지만 나의 마음은 꽃동산이 되었다. 딱히 그 이유는 알수가 없다.
현수가 끓여준 고등어 김치 고구마 찌개의 감동때문인지,
나의 보스가 한국 혼혈이며 다니엘 헤니와 친구란 사실때문인지,
오늘 clay shirky의 here comes everybody book party 를 하며
치즈나 와인은 손도 대지 않고 ‘내밥이야 손대지마!’ 라고 소리 지르며 흰밥과 가지와 호박만 먹어서인지. 귀여운 동생이 짧은 팔을 휘두르며 애교를 떨어주어서인지.

도인들은 자주 “모두 마음에 달린것이네…” 하지만 웬걸 그 마음이 가장 어려운걸 아시면서 씨나라 까먹는 소릴 하시나.

Yesterday I presented my thesis idea in class. Even though I was nervous I felt like I got some great feedback from the guest critics. I was especially fortunate to have Usman Haque as a guest critic via Skype from London, although I made a mistake in misrepresenting one of his projects, which was pretty embarrassing.

I included this quote at the end of my presentation:

Electronic objects are not only “smart”, they “dream” – in the sense that they leak radiation into the space and objects surrounding them, including our bodies. Despite the images of control and efficiency conveyed through a beige visual language of intelligibility and smartness, electronic objects… are irrational – or at least allow their thoughts to wander. Thinking of them in terms of dreaminess rather than smartness opens them to more interesting interpretations.

- Anthony Dunne,

Hertzian Tales

I had mentioned something about the necessity of self-shielding in order to prevent feedback from the sensor and amplifier circuit. Usman felt that this could actually be an interesting element, and once he pointed this out I found it very appealing. It could add an “irrational” element to the table. It has to do with the physical properties of the amplifier, even a misuse of circuitry. There are two ways which this could be introduced: (1) the sensor near the amplifier circuit could create feedback, or (2) it is possible by incorrectly configuring an amplifier circuit to create distortion or junk, or by attaching two amplifers in series.

There needs to be a balance with the chaos though; too much chaos and it becomes meaningless. Just enough chaos to make it interesting.

If it is an irrational table, another thing to consider is how it should look. Should it still be a standard, rectangular desk table? But the fact that it has electronics might make it strange enough without an odd shape.

Considering the material, my brother suggested creating it with a somewhat soft surface, possibly something like silicone. This makes sense because (1) the table is for electronics… perhaps now you could drop you cellphone, laptop on it less gingerly than on a hard table, with less fear of damaging them. (2) with this metaphor from Dunne about how electronic devices “dream”, the table could be their soft bed. My working title for the project is now Table for Electronic Dreams.

I am a bit worried that there are only 7 weeks left in the semester! I think my next priority should be to finalize a circuit and create a small prototype, with 4-6 lights and start trying to figure out materials and construction details.

Other reference projects which have been pointed out to me recently:

Energy Fluxion Band

Sort of my idea as a wearable. They seem to be using LED bar graph drivers… I hadn’t thought of this, but I could have each coil attached to multiple LEDs, possibly for greater contrast in displaying field strength. I actually bought some of these from digikey for some reason, and I think I might try this out.

Field, Richard Box

1,301 florescent tube lights under high power lines drawing powering wirelessly! I would like to be able to recapture some of the lost energy. I need to check how much AC voltage comes along the induction coil- it is probably not very much at all. But if I run it thorough a bridge rectifier, that would be a way to store some energy.

The Bubbles of Radio

This doesn’t have much to do with my project directly, but I love it! Different hertzian frequencies imagined as Haeckel type organisms, with fake latin names. She made a beautiful old book with medical style drawings.

LEDs forever! ITP should be renamed LED. Also, I prefer LEDs to CFLs.
Conspiracy theory of the day - the cosmetics industry is behind the move away from incandescent - we all look so fugly under a fluorescent light, we’re gonna need more makeup.
The LED Illumination Revolution - Forbes.com:
What irony. Here we [...]

We where asked to make a drawing machine for our Drawing Machines class tought by David Nolen. This is my creation, a hacked hexbug from radioshack that maked the path that the little machine traveled.

Video:

It was a happy disaster.
They said the worst things that I can hear.

It’s like tamagotchi, nabastag.
now it’s mp3 player.
What is the unique thing about this?
I won’t buy this.
I don’t want to talk to my husband in person not through funji.
It’s a pet not my companion!!

I have thought about those before so nothing’s new.
However, it made me think about the project and how I present the idea again.
I was losing my original idea when the virtual part came in.

So I looked at the original presentation that I had one year ago.
I have started it as embedding someone’s identity into clothes.
The identity that can give you comfort and relaxing moment.
It can be any object. It happens to be Funji for now.
The point is humanizing an object to be around someone to give comfort. Embedding identity, the identity that you love is the key.
facebook is the tool that people can easily embed their identity for someone.

Making it fun is good but it shouldn’t be the factor changing the concept itself.
I was mumbling because I start with virtual item even though physical part is the starter. I was confusing myself starting with communication breakdown in the digital space. I felt weird talking about things that’s not mine.

Overall, it was a very good lesson.
It made me stop confusing.
Now I can stick to my thoughts.
Hooray!

Scattershots of Play - Potential of Indie Games
with Kellee Santiago, Jonathan Mak, and Pekko Koskinen
This was the first talk at the Idie Games Summit and unfortunately I came in a little late. When I sat down the panelists were discussing the difference between ‘intrinsic rewards’ and ‘extrinsic rewards’. As far as I could understand, [...]

Tom Gerhardt just walked behind me while talking on his cell phone:
“Yeah, hi, I was wondering if you sell Muriatic or Hydrochloric acid… you do? And you’re on 1st Street?… great, thanks!”
I have no idea what he’s working on.

Tell me about your about me.

**These are basicially the raw audio from these interviews. And there is alot of laughing and talking during them. I would like to keep going with this project. And now that I have done this once I think I can do a much better job with both the questions I [...]

Designing for Constraints has had me thinking specifically about different ways to place events, thoughts, feelings, etc. at the forefront of my projects that I otherwise wouldn’t have taken into account. The other day I began to think about how modeling on a final responsive outcome is actually a great way to start working [...]

NY Art Beat, a child of wildly-successful Tokyo Art Beat website, needs volunteers in order to get off the ground.
If you’re interested in art, can find your way around HTML, and want to plug in to a great network of artsy people, check out what they’re looking for.

In case any of my fellow San Diegans are planning on going to the O’Reilly ETech 2008 Conference next week (03/03/2008 - 03/06/2008) be sure to drop by and check out the work done by some of the guys here at ITP (specifically Socialbomb). It’s a great project and they’re putting a lot of [...]

Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early
Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early

I was so exhausted this week, both my body and mind are very very tired. I worried I can’t come out good projects. But I feel relief when I read this from the Bible this morning:”He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even …

The ITP community gathered last night in celebration of Clay Shirky’s new book, “Here Comes Everybody.” Clay also gave a presentation describing his intentions and summarizing the key points of his book. The overall point Clay made was that the Internet has made forming groups much easier and improving: sharing, conversation, collaboration and collective action [...]

Sound as Place

Our sense of place is constructed by what we smell, see, touch, and what we hear. Sound is perceivable in 360 degrees of space around our physical bodies. Through hearing sound we can know and/or imagine that which we can not see, touch or smell. Sound gives us distance, extends context, and expands our reference of experience. Sound is the narrator of space.

We listen to sound through the tiny tunnels of our ears. It takes only one finger to close off these tunnels, severing our sonic dimension of perception. When we wear headphones, we close our ears to the immediate space around us, but we also open our ears to new space. We change our sense of place while we remain in the same physical location. This new place has no physical construct and no latitude and longitude. Headphones are hetertopias. Foucault coined the concept to describe a site linked to other spaces, while also in contradiction to those sites to which it is linked. A heterotopia is a real space, simultaneously mythic and real.

Headphones are doorways. They close you off to the surrounding world, while opening up a new world perceivable only through sound. As doorways, headphones are place. Like airports or train stations, their “placeness” is not significant in and of itself, but as a space between places. Between destinations.

Physical destinations around the world are known by their name, size, population, landscape, latitude and longitude, and by weather. My mother looks at the weather forecast for New York City everyday although she lives in Tampa. Knowing the weather of New York City gives her a sense of my place. If you took weather data from New York City, translated it as sound, and sent that sound through headphones, you would have headphones that open a door to New York City.

Headphone Heterotopia
(A project with Gian Pablo Vilamill)

Headphone Heterotopia plays with how our sense of place is constructed by sound. With headphones, cities around the world can be heard through generative melodies based on current weather conditions (temperature, humidity, wind direction, length of day, etc).

Using a php url scrapper to parse data from online weather sources (www.pxweather.abbett.org does all the work of retrieving, parsing and organizing weather data into xml for you!), we send weather data through a Lantronix Xport (serial to Ethernet module) to Arduino. Arduino translates this numeric data into midi notes and plays back a corresponding musical sequence. Gian Pablo has done great work developing a circuit that produces musical sounds from Arduino using simple voltage-controlled oscillators and the AD5206 digital pot. With this general set up, we can map weather to music. For example, temperature values could be the frequency range of notes, length of day could be the length of melody, wind direction could effect panning, and other weather variables (humidity, heat index, uv index, etc) could effect envelope parameters (attack, sustain, decay, and release).

Technical documentation will be posted as the project develops.

This is another color drawing machine — “interactive” this time. You can draw your own quadrilaterals now and turn background blurring on and off (use the ‘B’ key).

it’s really amazing to hear critiques from my classmates and adam today, in urban computing class. i’ve been filled with too much “wow that’s a cool project”, things like that the first semester, though that sounds sweet . but this class, people are really honest and give a lot impressive ideas and critiques. also i started trying something i haven’t done before, not user centered design any more, not HCI any more, not interaction design any more, not even for solving problems any more. if keeping doing what my background is, since i’m a designer and HCIer, that’s a huge waste in ITP, with such a lot of brillant brains, so diverse, and a lot of them teaches me a lot. i have to try something new!!!

what’s new to me is actually the “people missing” project experiment. it’s, firstly, not to solve any problem which is our main thing as a designer, it’s to ask questions, but as a designer, i seldom do projects from this point of view; second, to try to push the conceptual social fact into project, i know there’s a gap how to seamlessly make two things together, like what Cai guoqiang mentioned, it’s not only an idea, but have to express what you want by its way, it’s such a try this time; thirdly, design across culture is not easy, but it’s fairly easier than art across culture, coz design is to solve problem, at least that’s the platform everyone is agreeing on, though problems may be different in different cultures and ways of solving them may be different, it’s a lot easier to explain and persuade others, and to be judged by solving problem. But art across culture may be dangerous: e.g. cai guoqiang mentioned gunpowder reminded people bad memories in US, but actually it has a lot good meaning in China. It needs conversation to let people understand what’s ur intention to use something, your reason. you can’t take it for granted coz you are in the other culture. e.g. my missing people poster may trigger new yorker’s bad memory of 911, such thing i never thought about before and thanks to amanda!! i know this project is not a design project, easy to be clear, coz as kristen and dave mentioned, there are many details to pay attention to work out the effect i intended, exaggerating the phenomenon in a humous way. i kinda ignore that. so great to hear so many good advices!!!
it’s a great class!

My presentation today did not go as well as I would’ve have wanted… I did not rehearse the flow of exactly what I was going to say so I felt a little too loose in my train of thought.With that as a motivation, I cranked out some more changes to the d…

@bryanalexander Hello iSchool from the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU! #
@tprime I wish. STUPID ME threw away the sign. #
Having another "I think they don’t like me here very much" paranoia days. These will pass eventually, yes? #
@DoryEx Err, yes, and they have beer at TNO which is good, but umm, there’s the [...]

While presenting my midterm today, and discussing the difficulties of making the content uploader work for mobile phone, Shawn suggested a lo-fi solution of using an old school html image map or table, where a user could select regions of the map to specify picture placement.  I built this mobile webpage prototype with a table [...]

The website is in the early stages. Currently just a huge logo, couple sentences, and a link. Over the next few months this will be growing into living place for user-generated maps and related media, so keep checking back!
www.livelyhood.us

This is an FBD of a hammer being held in the air (no motion).

MM…ok, this is my FBD (free body diagrams) for the drinking fountains. I’m not sure at all if it’s right or not, just my guess.The second picture is wrong. The first one is correct.

ENERGY TALK & FILM

Future Visions movie and moderated discussion series: Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash
Friday, February 29, 7 PM
6th Street Community Center 638 East 6th Street, Manhattan (between Avenues B and C) Suggested donation $5
SPONSORS: Sierra Club NYC Group http://www.nyc.sierraclub.org/
Tristate Food Not Lawns http://www.tristatefoodnotlawns.org/
Neighborhood Energy Network http://neighborhoodenergynetwork.org/
6th Street Community Center http://www.sixthstreetcenter.org/
NYC Oil Awareness Meetup [...]

This is what I did for my Mobile Media Midterm.  The local Processing applet has the user click onto the screen where they will place a photo.  The applet then calls a PHP script, which moves the image onto a server, to be loaded into a web-based applet, which is visually identical to the one [...]

a

People or pets are missing for various of reasons: lost, taken, disappeared, runaway, etc. Wall posters to look for missing people/pet is very common in Beijing. And I also saw such posters on walls in Seattle and a few in Chinatown, nyc. (questions: other parts in NY?)

flickr, under cc, bymcbarnicle

flickr, under cc, byThomas Hawk

Among various of missing people, I want to focus on runaway: there are many news about teens runaway for various reasons: broken family, obsessed into video game, etc. Basically, runaway is to escape from the existing situation and abandon his/her contacts, home, family, friends, even his/her own identity.

In cyberworld, there are probably more missing people runaway: e.g. in IM, your net buddy may disappear for no reason suddenly and never show up again; a blogger may suddenly stop posting anything… many reasons , why one may abandon one’s online identity and one’s online contacts and vaporize from the world

Illustrations by Ronald Kurniawan from LAweekly http://www.laweekly.com/news/news/the-life-and-death-of-jesse-james/17427/?page=1

Some because their identity is too false to keep. Since most of them are anonymous, and some are even fictional. They may wear too many masks to those strangers and the continuing interactions are meaningless since most of them are lies.

Some because their identity is too true to keep for strangers in their online world. e.g. The story a guy tries to delete his facebook account, he could delete the posts, pictures, but he can’t delete himself entirely.

Some of them behave as Munchausen by Internet, which is a type of factitious disorder which utilizes the Internet’s easy access to a broad audience <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Munchausen_by_Internet>

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0126,russo,25810,1.html

rocbo.chez-alice.fr/free/hoaxes/kaycee/index.htm

People gave a lot to their net pals, coz they believe they are real at least. They gave them the attentions, time, cares, gifts, phone calls, even heavily emotionally involved. They have no reason to doubt whether that’s a real person at the other end. They became victims of the game. e.g: a piece of Chinese news i read last night, about a girl tries to kill herself because of her online husband was missing; there were so many people sending gifts, caring about the faked Kaycee Nicole http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaycee_Nicole; there was also people feeling lost for their missing pals online.

In reality, if one person is missing for certain days, he could be reported as missing. For those abandoned identities in online world: aim, QQ( in china), game community, blogs…I want to do a project, i know some of the identities are not treated seriously from its birth, and people are not responsible for their online identity because they are anonymous and that’s in cyberspace, but i want to act, quite to the opposite, very serious and responsible for these identities. announcing missing people if one is missing for certain amount of time for no reason, and post “missing people” posters on the street, to look for them.

Basically i want to exaggerate the abandoned identity phenomenon in an artistic way, making people to think about how to treat online strangers, and their own online identity. i also want to collect the reasons/stories why people abandon their identities.

proposal 1: it’s more of an artistic installation, an object.

1, collect a list of “dead”internet pals from people’s IM account

2, make a machine, automatically printing out this IM account’s number, and other information searched by google about the missing identity, and provide clues who they are and where they may be.

3, If possible, get in touch with them, to collect their abandon stories. (evil!!!! Break the Law?)

Proposal 2: it’s more of a paticipatory experiment

1, collect a list of “dead”internet pals from people’s IM account

2, using different medium, a flickr group, a website, wall posters, dedicated for looking for these online missing people, pretending to be very serious and professional, publishing their identity icons, their information on the website,

3, gathering their stories about the abandoned identity.

some rearch about current seeking for missing people: There’s some flickr groups and also websites dedicated for looking for missing people from Katrina, 911, etc. Also a website for the missing 4 years old little girl: Madeleine McCann’

<http://flickr.com/photos/fernandoylet/911031846/in/pool-missingpersons>

http://www.findmadeleine.com/

need your feedbacks! thx

week I made a little program called “Gradient Judger.” To use it, you would draw a gradient, scan it in to the computer, then put it in a specific folder, run the program, and presto, it would spit back an analysis of your gradient’s smoothness; and that was all well and good… but long and [...]