Armin's Weblog

Memories Of My Existence
By Armin A. Cooper

I am a New Yorker. There is no way I can refute that statement, although I have tried from time to time. I was born in New York and I have spent the overwhelming majority of my life here. It seems that no matter where I go in this city, particularly in the borough of Manhattan, I can’t escape the fact that my roots are planted in this place. It is as if memories of my existence, and those of my family’s, peak out at me from around every corner.

If someone asked me, “Who is Armin Cooper?” I could easily show them by taking a ride on one of the city buses. I could pretend to be a tour guide, like the ones on those red double-decker buses that always seem to be racing by me on the street with tourists gawking at things that are simply so commonplace for me. However, if I were giving a tour, I wouldn’t just point to the interesting places in New York, I would also point to the interesting places of my life.

I could probably choose almost any city bus in Manhattan but let’s take the M5. That bus has an interesting route, traveling uptown and downtown through many neighborhoods in the city, few of which are very similar. One might think this would be a difficult bus to use for a tour of my life, but I could make it work.

I get on the M5 where it begins on Houston Street in Greenwich Village, the place where my parents moved to in the mid-Sixties. They came to the Village from Philadelphia because it was one of the few places an African-American man married to a Jewish woman could find refuge in this country at that time. My parents were beatniks, as well, so they fit right into the anti-establishment culture of the Village.

As the bus turns off Houston and begins its ascent up Sixth Avenue, I look around the streets wondering how often my parents must have traversed these very same sidewalks, at first just walking hand-in-hand, but soon carrying my sister as an infant, since she was born not long after my parents settled here. I was born seven years later in the middle of the 1970s, and as the bus passes Greenwich Avenue, I can look off and see the exact place where both my sister and I were born: St. Vincent’s Hospital. Many times I’ve walked passed those buildings and tried to feel a connection to the spot where my life began.

Very soon, though, the M5 departs the Village and heads through Chelsea on its way to Midtown. Now the bus starts to get crowded, which makes sense since the streets outside are now filled with pedestrians. As we approach 34th Street, Herald Square, I am reminded of the days my mother took me down here to go to Macys. I liked Macys because it had a huge toy department but I hated all of the people that left little room to breath inside or outside the store. 34th Street is still as crowded as it was thirty years ago but at least there are more shopping options besides Macys.

From the thirties, the bus heads into the forties, past Bryant Park and 42nd Street. This area has changed a lot and is still changing. New buildings seem to be going up everywhere, the old ones now forgotten. At least the streets are cleaner and they look safer. As a kid, 42nd Street was not an area I ever felt comfortable going to. I used to wonder how a place so famous could end up being so seedy.

The bus now glides past Rockefeller Center on the right. Many times my father took me down here to see the giant Christmas tree in December. I always had a hard time believing that a tree could be so big. It seemed incredible to me until one day, many years later, I went with my parents into a forest in northern California to see the redwoods. Those trees were definitely unbelievable.

The M5’s tour of Sixth Avenue is now at a close as Central Park appears directly in it’s path. I know almost every inch of this park as I played here often as a kid. Later when I was in high school, I ran in the park for track and cross-country practice. My feet still yearn to grace the roadway one more time. Of course, the bus turns aside Central Park and heads over to Columbus Circle. Again I am confronted with more changes. The old Coliseum is gone, replaced by the Time Warner building and the GW building is now the Trump International Hotel. However, my connection to Columbus Circle has actually more to do with what lies a couple of blocks away.

Looking down 60th Street, I can just make out John Jay College of Criminal Justice where my father was a professor for twenty-five years. Right across the street is a campus of Fordham University where my mother got her BA in Philosophy after I was born. I passed through Columbus Circle with my father on our way to his office in John Jay more times than I can count. I miss his cozy space, packed full of books and papers.

The M5 is now traveling on Broadway and it has now entered the Upper West Side, my neighborhood. Although I was born in the Village, I was raised here. There is no other place in the world that I know so well and no other place where my memories run as deep.

Five blocks up Broadway, the M5 passes a large apartment building where a piano teacher, with the help of my mother, changed my life by introducing me to music. Across the street is the exact spot where I walked out of Alice Tully Hall, five minutes after graduating from high school, and proclaimed to all of the surrounding buildings that I was leaving New York forever. Little did I know that four years later, almost to the day, I would stand in the same spot as I prepared to walk into the Juilliard School to begin my studies of music at the encouragement of my piano teacher. What’s more, diagonally across from Juilliard is Barnes and Noble, a place my wife and I have been coming to since we met as part of our never-ending quest for books. We are bibliophiles.

Beyond this main nexus of my life, the M5 turns off Broadway at 72nd Street and heads over to Riverside Drive. I always thought this street was very interesting as it bends left and right as we go uptown. The buildings to the right are forced to mimic the curves in order to stay in step with the sidewalk and the street. To the left is Riverside Park, where I also played as a kid and where my wife and I often took walks when are relationship was in its courting phase.

Before long, though, the bus crosses over 96th Street, my true home turf. A couple of blocks later, I can just make out my apartment building several blocks away through the trees. I’ve lived there almost all of my life, a fact that sometimes seems impossible to believe. Thirty years in the same apartment is a long time, yet I don’t think I feel that old. It’s amazing how one place can entrap you and sometimes you don’t even realize it until three decades have gone by.

But the M5 doesn’t pause here, it continues on, reaching the triple digits in streets. Now I can only smile as we pass 112th street because right there on the ascending pavement is Bank Street, the school that inadvertently started my long journey to ITP. That school and my current school feel like identical bookends on the story of my life up until this point. I am grateful to have attended both institutions although I wonder now where they will lead me next.

The M5, meanwhile, reaches Harlem, crossing over a long bridge above 125th Street. Off ahead in the distance is the bus’s final destination, the George Washington Bridge. However, I only catch a glimpse of it before the bus turns to head back to Broadway. Now we’re in Washington Heights, a neighborhood I don’t actually know very well although I have come here to visit friends from time to time. It is amazing now to watch as the Dominican population, who have long called Washington Heights their home, share the streets with other ethnic groups. New York’s melting pot is ever-present.

The bus’s journey now winds down. There are a few more hills to transverse and then the final stop is reached in front of the bus station at 178th Street. I put my feet back on terra firma for the first time in over an hour and a half but before I began my return trek, I look west. There, once again, are the vast towers of the George Washington Bridge. They span the Hudson River and through their spires I can see on the far side the Palisades of New Jersey.

In an instant, one last memory comes back to me. The G.W. Bridge is actually the starting point for an Interstate Highway, I-80. This highway spans the entire North American continent, ending on the West Coast. However, three quarters of the way there, a second Interstate, I-84, breaks off from it and heads northwest. That road ends in my favorite place in this entire country. One day, I hope, not too far in the future, I will cross the George Washington Bridge, as I did once before, with my wife and we will make the three thousand mile journey to the where I-84 terminates. And when we get out of the car, our feet will stand on the ground within a different city, one that I wish to call my home once more. My body and my mind may be that of a New Yorker, but my heart belongs to Portland, Oregon, a place where I dream of planting new memories.

Posted by Armin Cooper at 10:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

2-Note Analog Synthesizers
Adam Parrish and Armin Cooper

Concept

Roughly a month before the end of the semester, Adam and I got together to discuss a final project for Physical Computing. We both wanted to do something that involved sound but at first we weren’t sure exactly what to do. After a couple of meetings, we agreed to do a project that involved constructing simple instruments that would produce tones. Adam began ordering some of the electronic components that we would need while we continued to think about what the next step would be. How many instruments would we build and once built, what would we do with them?

Ultimately, Adam came up with the idea of building one instrument for everyone in our Physical Computing Class. We would then direct the entire class in a performance with the instruments. As construction began, the details of the performance were still not set in stone, but as our deadline for the Final was approaching, we moved ahead anyway to begin constructing the instruments.

The final design was dependent on our last decision regarding how the instruments should be activated. At first, we wanted to use photocells to either change the note or the volume. However, after experimenting on a breadboard, we realized that photocells weren’t sensitive enough. They were greatly affected by the ambient light in a room and unless we used very bright lights, the instruments would be difficult to control. In the end, we settled on using two switches, one to turn on the instrument and the other to change its pitch. In addition, each instrument would pulse with a different rhythm that was dependent on the functionality of the instrument’s capacitors.

Construction

Each instrument is constructed using the following electronic components:

1 Perforated Board
1 556 Timer Chip
1 Chip Socket
1 Speaker, 2 inches in diameter
1 Battery connector
1 9-volt Battery
2 Trim Potentiometers
2 Capacitors
2 Button Switches
2 Matchboxes (2.5” by 4.5” by 1” each)
5 Resistors (various ohms)
7 Wires

Adam designed the circuit, and we used several breadboards as prototypes. However, we had problems finding a container to hold the instrument. The device wasn’t very large as we planned to use the smallest perforated boards available. Nevertheless, when we searched the Internet for a box that was the right size, we came up empty. Finally, my wife suggested using matchboxes that I had at home. When I brought one in, I saw right away that it was the perfect size. Adam then came up with the idea of using two boxes to fit around the device’s components and we were set with our construction design.

Once construction began, Adam did most of the work on the perforated boards while I soldered wires to most of the switches and speakers. It took several days to finish work on all of the devices. In the end, we had completed twenty-four working perforated boards. We then used the trim potentiometers to tune the devices. In the end, we had four groups of four to five each that were tuned to the same notes. Each group received a small sticker on its cover that identified which group it belonged to: red, green, blue or yellow.

Composition

Before construction began, Adam and I discussed the nature of the composition we would have our class perform. Adam was looking for something that sounded very modern, perhaps even atmospheric. He gave me a CD with a dozen examples. From that, I began to form some ideas in my mind. By then, we had already decided to tune the instruments to the notes of a whole tone scale that began with C.

Red Group: F# and C
Green Group: C and F#
Blue Group: D and G#
Yellow Group: E and A#

These pairs emphasized one of the most distinctive elements of a whole tone scale: the interval of the Augmented 4th. What’s more the instruments covered all the notes of the scale, with an additional two notes doubled an octave apart.

Adam thought it was best if I composed the piece for my class to play as I had a background in composition and performance. However, I had never composed a piece using a whole tone scale. My first thought was to simply improvise, following a general structure. I would make sure to use all of the intervals of each instrument group and follow my ears and instincts. The one thing that I could not anticipate was the sound of twenty-two instruments playing at the same time, particularly since each instrument had its own unique rhythm.

Interestingly enough, though, as the day of the performance got closer, I decided to actually compose a specific piece just so I could be sure I wouldn’t forget any of the intervals. However, I opted not to use my music composition program but instead to just type a series of notes on a page. Adam called this style “John Cagish.” Indeed, the composition on paper looked like an essay-outline-composition hybrid, with groups of notes being marked off into sections. For me, I felt it was the simplest way to conduct the performance, which was essentially what I was going to do.

CLICK HERE for Composition Outline

Performance

As our concept for the instruments developed, Adam came up with a clever idea for the manner in which we would conduct our classmates in the performance. He postulated that he could use programs in Processing and Max to display simple representations of the instruments on the screen, broken down by colors for each group. Within those representations there would be two circles that corresponded to the two buttons on the instruments. The illumination of the circles would tell our classmates which buttons to press. Thus, if we wanted Red Group to play a C, the left circle in the red display would light up and if we wanted Yellow Group to play an A#, both buttons in the yellow display would light up.

The final piece of this puzzle was to tie in the circles on the screen to actual keys on a MIDI keyboard that we would take out of the Equipment Room. I would sit at the keyboard and whenever I played a note, the corresponding circle would light up and my classmates would press the appropriate button. In many ways, this plan was simple and elegant. It also emphasized the straightforwardness of our analog instruments. All one needed to know was which button to press.

On the day of the performance, Adam and I were able to get twenty out of the twenty-two instruments to work. A couple devices needed some last-minute repairs but they functioned. As we learned, the one problem with the boxes we were using was that although they were the perfect size, they weren’t very sturdy. After all, they had been designed to hold 250 matches, not electronic equipment.

All the same, the performance went off almost flawlessly. Adam and I gave a tutorial to our classmates on how to work the devices and when they were ready, we all performed the piece entitled, Whole Tone Etude No. 1. I did actually improvise in one of the latter sections when I thought the piece was starting to drag, but everything else was performed as I had composed it. The great thing was that everyone really seemed to enjoy the performance. In retrospect, Adam and I both wished that we had made the devices a little louder, however, I suspect that the room were in had something to do with the lack of volume. When I tested the instruments at home, they seemed loud enough.

CLICK HERE To Listen to Performance

Conclusion

I would have to say that our project was a resounding success. The key was that the performance went off without a hitch and our classmates and teacher really enjoyed it. Constructing the instruments required a lot of hard work, but it had been well worth it. Speaking personally, it was nice to perform again, although I’m certain I never could have imagined in years past that I would one day take part in a performance where I directed musical instruments that I helped create. Adam and I worked well as a team and I think what we were able to accomplish together was amazing.

Of course, now we still have the 2-note analog synthesizers. The great thing about their construction is that they can be reused in any number of ways. The trim potentiometers allow us to retune them to a multiplicity of different notes. Thus, it would not be too difficult to put together a new performance or compose a new piece for it. The circuit, too, is not difficult to design and construct, nor would it be difficult to find new containers for the instruments.

That fact leads me to my final point, which is this: I believe that devices like these could be used in schools with children. I can imagine a bunch of First Graders wielding these instruments in a concert where all they had to do was follow directions on a screen, like our classmates. These new instruments could be more robust in construction and also have an easy tuning ability. The key, however, would still be that in order to create a pitch, all a child would have to do is press a button. Now these electronic instruments would by no means take the place of regular analog instruments, however, they could provide young children with a stepping-stone for learning how to perform music in groups.

My father once said that a great way for children to learn how to work together was to get them to play instruments and perform as part of an orchestra. This idea is by no means as advanced as that, but for a five or six-year-old, the message is the same. To verify this idea’s validity, all I have to do is remember the smile on my classmates’ faces and the smile on my own after the performance of Whole Tone Etude No. 1.

Posted by Armin Cooper at 03:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My final project, the game Courage vs. Cowardice, derives its name from the random variable that influences spaceships to either move up or down as they fly from right to left. As I described in my proposal for this project I originally used this variable with the same name in my Mid-Term project: “Jousting Spaceships.” In that program, the spaceships simply reacted to each other, now they react when they get close to the Stealth Fighter, controlled by the player.

The effect of the “CC” variable makes the spaceships hard to predict and sometimes hard to hit with a missile. Basically in the game the player flies the “Stealth Fighter”, positioned on the left side of the screen over houses while trying to shoot down and dodge alien spaceships that appear from the right. For every spaceship destroyed with a missile the player fires, the player gets one point, which is tracked on the bottom part of the screen. However, the spaceships can destroy the fighter (and end the game) if they crash into the fighter. This will happen if the “CC” variable causes the spaceships to move up or down towards the fighter and the player is unable to get out of the way.

One of the final elements I added to the game was a timer. Once again, I brought back an element from the earlier program “Sunrise Surprise” by adding the sun moving in the background. In “Sunrise Surprise,” the sun, of course, rises. However in Courage vs. Cowardice, the sun sets, moving on to the screen after the game starts from the top. The Sun then heads towards the ground and as it gets closer, the background screen starts to turn from blue to black. Finally, after the sun sets, the background goes completely black. This has the interesting effect of making the Stealth Fighter, which is almost black in color, very difficult to see, a new challenge for the player to deal with. However, after several seconds, if the player is still alive, the level ends with the text: “Level Complete.” One last addition was to add code that actually slows the sun's progress if the player reaches a score of 7.

The game is both easy and hard in terms of playability. The controls are simple: one key, “I” moves the fighter up, one key “M” moves the fighter down. “F” fires the missile. What’s hard is that it is impossible to predict what the spaceships are going to do (since the “CC” variable is random) and if there are several on the screen, which sometimes occurs, dodging them all can be very tricky, particularly since the player can only go up and down. In addition, if the player fires a missile and destroys a spaceship at very close range, the explosion of the missile’s impact can still destroy the fighter. Crashing into the houses on the ground is also another way to die. As of right now, my best score in the game, which lasts about two minutes, is fifteen.

Looking at the game from a programmer’s point of view, I would have to say that I learned quite a lot. It is definitely true that programming a game is a great way to learn how to write code. I feel very confident with my skills in Processing now as I was able to use arrays and objects very effectively while writing the code for the game. In addition, I learned several clever ways to use variables such as “gameState” and “Distance.” Looking back at my progress through the semester, I can definitely see the thread of improvement as I went along creating one program after another.

The great thing is that there is still plenty of room for improvement with the Courage vs. Cowardice game. If I were to continue to work on it, and I might over the break, I can think of several things I would like to add. The first would be a button that would restart the game. The next would be harder levels, which is the reason why I added the text, “Level Complete” at the end. It would be great to have levels in which the spaceships moved faster and/or fired objects at the fighter. I would also like to add different types of spaceships with different abilities such as greater maneuverability and a cloaking device. I also think it would be interesting to add a spaceship that, when it appears on the screen, is beaming something up from the ground, but when the Stealth Fighter gets near, it moves straight up to escape. If the player can destroy this ship, the player would receive bonus points.

So there’s a lot that I can still do, not just with this game, but with others I can invent based on what I’ve learned from this game. The fact that I know how to control objects and the collisions between them opens a lot of doors for me. All of a sudden, those Atari games that I used to play twenty-five years ago now seem to be within my programming grasp and that idea is very exciting. Once upon a time, I thought the concept of creating games was immensely exciting. I’m now beginning to feel that way again and I’ve only just started.

Click Here to Play Courage vs. Cowardice
Game Controls:
I = Up
M = Down
F = Fire missile

Note: As soon as game loads, click on the game screen to active keys. For Macs, click once, for PCs, double-click.

Posted by Armin Cooper at 06:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My idea for designing a new technological device has to do with my gas range. I do a lot of cooking and I’ve been using the range for many years. I would like to redesign the knobs on the range that control the burners. Instead of normal knobs that one has to rotate with one’s hands, I would put in circular touch pads, like the ones found on iPods. These pads could be controlled by the touch of a finger (see image below). In addition, I would add digital displays for temperature and a timer. Both of these devices have already been used with modern ovens. Adding them to the burners would give someone cooking a better feel for how long food needs to be cooked and at what burning intensity. This would give the cook greater control and greater flexibility.

The elimination of the knobs also adds greater accessibility for those who have trouble using their hands.

Posted by Armin Cooper at 01:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My Flash animation tells the story of how I went to all 50 states in eleven years. I took a map of the USA that I found online and used it as the background for most of the animation. I then drew blue lines that detailed nine of the ten trips I took with my father and my family to get to all the states. I also checked each state off as I pasted through it. For the last trip I used a photograph of a 747 that I also found online. The photo moves from New York to Hawaii on the map. I set my travels to music by Jerry Reed, “Eastbound and Down,” a song from the movie “Smokey and the Bandit,” one of my favorite films when I was young. My father and I used to sing the song as we traveled.

Flash is a very interesting program to use. I had a lot of trouble at first as some of the commands are not very intuitive. However, once I got the hang of it, I found that Flash wasn’t too difficult and I can see how it is very useful for doing animation as well as putting files up on the web. I look forward to using Flash again.

http://itp.nyu.edu/~ac2398/Fifty States.swf

Posted by Armin Cooper at 01:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)