2008 ITP Thesis » Zurkow, Marina

Adam Parrish

Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

New Interfaces for Textual Expression is a series of devices intended to create and manipulate text. Analogous to contemporary interfaces for music and image manipulation, New Interfaces for Textual Expression are intuitive but not literal: they map gestures not to characters (as with conventional writing devices, such as the keyboard and the pen), but to broader manipulations of language and layout. The devices suggest new syntaxes for composing, reading, and performing text.

Yan Yan Cao

Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

REFLECTION is a video installation which represent a feeling of dislocation, disorientation felt by people who share the experience of continously travelling, relocating from place to place for professional or personal reasons, so called modern day nomades.
It uses projected imagery to compose a narrative of visually comparing two cities, i.e.: Shanghai and New York, that are far apart and culturally distant but are architecturally similar. i.e: skylines, night scene. The aim is to create an interesting illusion of seeing the phantom image of another city,i.e.: Shanghai, in the reflection of Manhattan and vice versa.

Susan Buck

Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Currently, the Internet is rampant with user generated content and personal documentation. Users upload their pictures to online photo sharing sites such as Flickr, post their activities to the micro-blogging platform Twitter, and track their “friends” and associations on social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. This is just an abbreviated list of the kind of dynamic connections individuals are making between their own personal lives and the Internet.
What MoodJar attempts to answer, is whether there is a place or use for entering pure emotions into this technological mix. MoodJar at its most fundamental level is a Web 2.0 tool that allows users to record their emotions over time. Its purpose is to provide a way for users to better understand the evolution of their own emotions.

The core existence of MoodJar is a website home base. Here, users can quickly make a mood entry. Each entry consists of a rating that is scaled form -4 to +4 with 0 being neutral. The scale is purposefully limited to create consistency in tracking over time. The second most important portion of each mood entry are tags – a comma delimited list of keywords associated with the given mood. Using a taxonomy system serves to make input quick and succinct, while making output meaningful and simple to comprehend. The last portion of the mood entry is a field where users can leave small notes or reminders about the mood they are entering.

The data input into MoodJar is accessible via the archive portion of the site. Here users can filter their moods by year, month or day. The archive provides a way for users to look for patterns and put their mood in context by streaming in other data from applications such as Flickr or Twitter.

Scott Varland

Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

I am interested in an exploration of how data about human proximity and reputation correlates to and influences a social network, and how this information is processed from both an egocentric and sociocentric perspective. Can a social area network be constructed within a physical social sphere that understands node to node relationships and reputations?

Patricia Bandeira de Mello

Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

Polivox is an online community designed to empower the people of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to envision a better future and to create an environment for collaboration and change by encouraging a cycle based on three concepts: “imagine”, “transform”, and “celebrate”. The inhabitants of Rio de Janeiro face various deeply rooted issues that range from runaway violence and corruption to vast economic disparities. When such big problems are taken for granted in everyday life, what is necessary to break through the inertia and cause a reaction? Polivox seeks the answer to this question by flipping the problem upside down and proposes to focus on the good side of things in order to trigger a cycle of transformation. Imagining a better future, changing reality, and celebrating all accomplishments, big or small, are the philosophy on its base. Polivox is a social network with collaborative publishing tools that respects users’ comfort zones and fields of interest in order to create and sustain a positive loop of reinforcement.

James F McMahon VIII

Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

The project is a 3D game wherein the goal is to get Frosty, the titular character, to balance and eventually cross a beam over an active volcano. It attempts to merge the actions of a player on a physical beam, while using a pole for balance, directly to the virtual gameplay to create an immersive, free-form movement experience and virtual-reality simulation. The project uses the physics package of Virtools to control and constrain physics impulses, torques, and other forces that are fundamental for the game mechanic of balance. The Wii-mote will be attached to a physical pole that players will use, and will allow the translation of physical movement to virtual movement. Intro and outro animated sequences will add background and depth to the overall experience and story.

Nancy Garcia

Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

My thesis project is a dance performance that takes the form of a multi-channel video installation. As a choreographer, I am interested in emphasizing process, distance and mediation to expand definitions of choreography in an age of electronic communication and physical displacement. The studio process for this project consisted of working with dancers on improvisational scores and vocal exercises, and the evidence of our labors is the content for the installation. With this project, I ask, How is this mediated experience of dance a live performance? How is the video installation a work of choreography?

In the installation, each performer is present via a video monitor whereas the performers were never in the same room together during the composition process. The performers activate the installation/performance space through their televisual presence, attempting to encourage the audience to move through the space via sound cues. Even when the dancer leaves the frame of the camera, the sound of their voice and physical activity is audible, foregrounding the production of presence through sound despite visual absence.

The performance as a whole is comprised of looping single channels, each a different duration. With each repetition, the channels fall in and out of phase with each other; a continued exploration of repetition as a form of change. Each single channel is also a portrait of each dancer. A brass name plate affixed to each monitor is engraved with information about the corresponding dancer.

Greg Stringer

Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

\”You must always know the past, for there is no real Was, there is only Is.\”
William Faulkner

Personal and collective memory is in constant flux. Is it ever worthwhile to make any attempt to memorialize it? I wish to speak to the transitory nature of human existence and the material world by providing an avenue for a personal, impressionistic path through layers of time.

Young Cho

Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

This video installation consists of a video screen and a webcam. Virtual victims and viewer\’s face will be displayed on the screen. The camera set up on the wall will track viewer\’s blinking pattern and the blinking triggers the violent actions on the victims.

Nick Hasty

Wed, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

The vast majority of work in the field of human-computer interaction has involved programming computers to better sense and understand our inputs, yet little work has been done in terms of how we humans can better sense and understand computers. Computers, and electronics in general, reach out to us through creating fields of low and very low frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum. These ubiquitous frequencies penetrate and permeate our bodies at the molecular level, so spatially intimate experiences with electronics can be understood as a merging of physical bodies with the computer\’s electromagnetic embrace. As we humans have no natural means of sensing these frequencies, the \”EM brace\” provides a means of physically engaging with these frequencies by combining two of our natural senses, touch and hearing. As a device for exploring and navigating these hidden \”hertzian\” spaces, the EM Brace accentuates the microscopic merging of body with computer and the boundlessness of the quantum while situating the physical body in relation to consumer and communication technologies. Furthermore, the EM Brace embodies the ineluctable direction of human evolution towards the cybernetic post-human, an evolution that can be understood in terms of a Deleuzoguattarian becoming, specifically a becoming-electronic.