I decided the one that I had been a part of and had some little stories around it…

The Mumbai Deluge from 26/7/05.

I was talking to a friends when both of us started discussing our experiences from that day. And the stories kept pouring (literally). I wanted to find more of these living room stories…

So that is my project…

Living room stories from that day in Mumbai

Here’s the link

http://itp.nyu.edu/~yp392/wordpress

My father usually comes back home for lunch. By 2 o’clock we would have finished our meal. He would have put his legs up on the table and would have lit his afternoon cigarette. My mom would have been preparing to go into her afternoon siesta. And I would have just been rambling about something that’s been on my mind. The servants would have retired into their quarters. And peace would descend in our household…

I feel like rambling now. But my parents aren’t around. I can’t call them cause it’s not 2 o’clock  in India. It’s late night. And they are probably asleep. I want to leave them a voicemail. I want to tell them I miss them.

Would you also like to do something like this? Maybe some of you do…So i thought of creating this audio blog where people could leave a voicemail for their parents.

This, I think works because

1.) There is something about the spoken word that gets lost when you write about it

2.) You want to do it at that moment, and not after that.

3.) It’s easier to do it on the net cause a lot of us are uncomfortable expressing ourselves on the net, then directly to our loved ones

4.) And it’s best to do it at that moment…rather 12 hours later.

How it’s work

1.) First step : A wordpress/textpattern blog which has an audio file pluggin…you upload audio files of a voicemail that you might want to leave for your parents

2.) Second step: A mobile application that let’s you record your voicemail and uploads it to the open  blog.

Mobile capability would be nice as you can then record your voicemail even when you’re out. You might want to do it when you’re having some crappy pizza some where or when you’re not getting any sleep late at night and you dont wanna reach out to your laptop…

What should I call it?

imissmyparents.com?

voicemailformymum.com?

There was added functionality of being able to pixelate the images - circles of squares - and define the amount of pixelation using arrow keys….

Here’s a video

I’d like to work with some physical interface at somepoint…to actually be able to control the orientation of the image…

Midge and I were toying with the idea of playing with images and stuff that you would do specifically with your mobile phone.And the we came up with this public installation idea - A simple Mash-up of pictures of different parts of the body contributed by the general public and displayed on a big screen. 

This is how it works — The web-page (which is a flash file) is displayed on a big screen…with all the information.So you can text Mobody to 41411 and upload a picture in the url that comes to you in the message. Label the picture as head/body or legs and then submit it…You’ll see this uploaded to the screen  in less than 30 secs.   

Here is the screen shot - click on it to go to the actual url

 This project is up for user-testing on the floor. We’ve seen people have fun with this…Also it works really well in an area where people know each other.It’ll be interesting to see how people interact with in a more public space… Would they still be interested?Some suggestions that came in during class discussions - add the functionality to scroll through archives.

It’s basically a project that runs in the big cities in India where there is a high percentage of eve-teasing on the streets. Women in these cities often come across the lack of empathy when molested/eve-teased as a lot of people think they dress ‘provacatively’ and hence ‘they had it coming’ or ‘they asked for it’

It’s a bold project that asks women to showcase what they were wearing while molestation, as there shouldn’t be anything such as ‘asking for it’

The project communicates via a blog that is updated from time to time. I saw an opportunity for mobile blogging as this was a specific case where incidents happen on streets, on the go. And it would add immediacy to the campaign if onlookers/victims could post information about such incidents - number plates/photos of the accused/ or the clothes that they were wearing!

I did build an actual blog where anyone could send post via mobile phones. However it’s still a conceptual project as some of the services that I was using, I wasn’t sure if they were available in India. And even getting user testing in that group was difficult as I lost touch with the organizers at some point!

So this is how it works (or can work)

People can send a message to 41411 (Textmarks) with blanknoise in the body.

They get subscribed to the service and get a introductory message from Blanknoise

Clicking the intro link sends you to the upload script

You can upload a picture and write the post and submit it….

It will get posted to the blog and you can view that here

Both Mooshir and I were interested in exploring more human and intuitive ways of interacting with objects. What if you could ’shush’ you music system? In the same spirit we built the robolamp….

It’s a lamp with 3-degrees of freedom and you can turn it around anywhere by using simple hand gestures…It was showcased in the ITP Winter Show 2007 and now is part of the gallery venue exhibits for Spring 2008 at the ITP floor.

Ladies and Gentlemen…Presenting the Robolamp

I have been very inspired by this one one album from Ananda Shankar “Missing You”. This album was done after the death of his father… The pieces (all instrumental) as deep and moving. Whenever I listen to the album it gives me a sense of being the “All knowing”.So i decided to give visuals to this feel…I’ve tried to create a world in this piece through flash animation…And then I take it back to what might have been the genesis of it all. The shape in the end of the piece is called a “kairee”. It reminds me of a womb. It’s a traditional Indian motif.I used that in end, where I make the world collapse into the womb of the kairee… 

Genesis - This is how it all must have begun 

For this week, I overlayed it with my dad’s version of the same story. It was interesting to see 2 different perscpective on the same story.

PS: I noticed my obsession with melodrama for the first time…I really wanted to put more powerful background scores to exaggerate certain emotions… I think this is something I inherit form the Indian film culture which is highly melodramatic!

It’s a longish piece (3-4 mins)…I’m still working on my editing skills!