addie and lots of coffee.

I made it to oregon this afternoon in one piece. The mountains still have snow on them, enough I think I could probably hike up a few and ski.. the season is late this year. The snow is still good, I can see even from 15,000 feet above them.

I feel out of place, just like I always have, I'm not sure why I always expect this time to be different. I considered driving up to Smith just now to sit under the stars and hear the clipping of carbiners in the canyons at night but 2 hours of sleep suggest better things to be doing.

I know what you're probably thinking, I used to be so good at this lack of stability. Moving every 6 months for 10 years will do that to you. I was looking for a reason to stay, I just never found one, so I kept drifting. But we always don't say what we really want to say the most: I've found my reason to stay.

Posted by itp at 01:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I thought I discovered a new species of animal but then Tim posted this on his flickr account the next day..

anyone know what these things are called?

PS subject change: I officially survived year 1 (pending grades).
2 semesters to go!

Posted by itp at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Inspiration: The Experience of the Unsaid.
The experience of the spoken and unsaid and how dialogue shifts dynamically when both are available to the other participant. What would happen if we could hear not only the verbal but the thought that is omitted?
Im interested in the semiotics in our relationships and the misinterpretation of language, love vs fear. Or is fear and love the same, they are simply miscommunicated as different entities?

Materials: A Fingerprint of the Second Skin
From the reading, “the item which we receive often has woven into it, its own historical map of the products lifespan, much like a human, all items carry history,”.
While spring cleaning in my closet, I looked at my pile and realized how many of the garments carry memories and what happens when those memories are hacked into a single piece?
I am drawn to asymmetrically designed apparel and clothing, I like the organic aspects of unconstructed non-tailored garments so I made a conscious effort in this piece to really play with those elements during construction. I hacked 'memories' into the garmet, with the newest pieces at the bottom and older pieces towards the top. Eight pieces in total create a single jacket.

Application: A Social Experiment in Intimate Decoding
I see this being much more a performance piece then a product viable for large-scale markets or sales. This is a personal experimentation.
Im interested in the reaction of audience in both public and intimate settings. In a perfect use situation, the dialogue will be much more about what it is to be 'in my skin’: credit card numbers, passwords/user names, lies and secrets and where the line of private vs public thought is blurred.
What happens when you hear my truths, about you, about myself, what reactions do this create for me personally or the audiences, for someone who knows me on an intimate level vs. a more superficial level?

Natural Selection: What happens when we hear all truths?
Long term goal: explorations in multiple settings (private, public, academic, open spaces)
Creating even more versions (recordable, more controllable)

Here is video documentation from my first trip out experimenting with the jacket, I went into a computer area in the downstairs of Tisch, if you notice the man on my left starts to hear the sounds and slowly moves closer.

As I walked away he asked me where the voice was coming from and why I didn't say yes all those times (it was part of one of the secrets projected)

Posted by itp at 09:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Isn't it funny how the people we love the most are often the ones to dissapoint us the most?

I didn't expect much, it was my birthday, but maybe expecting at all is what gets me in trouble. I guess I'm not good at this sort of thing.

There's a man I won't talk about, not because he is a secret but because he is here. His past relationships have all been deep, I think, he doesn't say, I don't ask. It was my turn. So, I took his hand, and cautiously walked him into the depths of real. He tried to look comfortable but I could tell it was a foreign place; for us both.

Scared- nothing is black and white here, no amount of control can control the outcome of someone else.

He found himself looking at me camouflaged in grey between himself and my fears.
He is strong in his heart and I have scars that run deep with stories that would break anyones heart.

He has never written me a love letter but I imagine if he did, he would address them by anything other than my name and signs them with the first letter of his first name. I always hope for one, or even just for a moment of knowing exactly what he feels.

I hope for answers for questions I do not dare to ask.

Really though, there is only one thing to be told: On our fourth date, after the only part of him I will ever hold collapsed inside me he said, "you are so incredible." It was the closet I have ever come to touching true love.

I'm afraid what you might be thinking. That I am a certain person, and that you are the kind of person who knows more about my story than me. But you should know this: I love him, in an instant and with every piece of my heart.

And so I move between myself, on snowy highways and crowded subways...

I was there this morning and if you come close you can smell him in my hair.

Posted by itp at 12:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've decided to file for divorce from object oriented programming, citing irreconcilable differences.

Posted by itp at 07:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Things are getting there, slowly and painfully and surely.

Panic has not set in, yet. Check back in with me tonight and I might say otherwise. I've had to slim down my audio to two channels, my other 2 mp3 players have decided to stop working. so I'm down to only one functioning mp3 player and a budget that won't allow for me to repurchase two more again. As a result I'm going to be redoing my audio tracks entirely and trying to integrate a broder range of secrets.

I find I'm really drawn to asymmetrically designed apparel and clothing, I like the organic aspects of unconstructed non-talored garmets so I made a conscious effort in this piece to really play with those elements. I'm going to be doing some final alterations over the coming days but this photo illustrations a rough idea of the final product.

Posted by itp at 11:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've gotten my jacket about 75% finished at this point, the mp3 players all stopped working so I spent the better part of yesterday replacing them, the circuits also decided they weren't so fond of me and stopped working too.. so I basically had to spend most of the weekend redoing it all.

here's a detail of one of the switches.. more to come in a bit.

Posted by itp at 10:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You simply can't make someone love you if they don't. You must choose someone who already loves you. If you chose someone who does not love you, this is the sort of love you must want.

Posted by itp at 05:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by itp at 04:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For the Lower East Side Girls Club I developed a website using Flash, MySQL, PHP and Textpattern, a CMS.

We utilized some of the old copy content and created a new site architecture and GUI backend so that the employees could edit and update the website once I departed from the project. There will be trainings for the employees to understand the basic functionality of the website in the coming weeks.

website to launch any minute.

Posted by itp at 11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

two movies for digital imaging:

a motion capture of my evening in the pcomp lab

and

a story

Posted by itp at 09:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've been thinking a lot since our interview about the first question you asked, (about the most important people in my life), for me I think this is a rather dynamic question. Sure there are people who are deeply and always will be important to me: my family, my life long friends, my boyfriend etc... however I think the list is always slightly shifting after them.

There is a concept of urban tribalism and how our nuclear families are being replaced with our 'urban tribe' family, as less and less of us urban-ites have children, we have to create our own concepts of home and place. As a result, I see us all traveling in tribes. Example: I have my cycling tribe, I have my ITP tribe, I have my NYC tribe, I have my female-ITP-NYC-tribe, and so on and so fourth. Each is different yet each is totally essential to my way of living.

"Koyaanisqatsi" is a Hopi Indian word. It means "life out of balance."

I think a lot about how life is out of balance in the city, I think a lot about how we deal with living in such an unnatural environment- how many more people use substances to soothe and numb, how many more people are alone- living or literally, how many more people here are successful financially yet miserable emotionally. I think a lot about how we ignore beauty and love and fleeting moments, I think about how much time we loose not being with the people we want to really really be with because we have long hours at the office or classroom.. I don't think it has anything to do with the fact people don't have the capacity to understand those things or do them, but because it was irrelevant to them or they are all too busy to be not busy and just stop to (re)think.

If the surge of modern life so overpowers us that we are deaf and blind the most little moments in life-- then what else are we missing?

I think about how often I have my ipod on me, sometimes I keep my headphones on but don't have any music on. I listen to the sounds as I walk down the street.. car, people, birds, trash. I keep my headphones on, it offers me some sort of protection in a way- - from others. Men don't try to talk to me when I have my headphones on, they don't cat call because they assume I can't hear it. I can walk safely.

Although, I wonder if the explosion in technology has extremely limited our exposure to new experiences? Increasingly, we get our news from sources that think as we already do- blogs, friends, listserves. . . and with iPods, we hear what we already know; we program our own play lists- literally. Everything is familiar. We create a sense of familiarity and we control what we hear almost to a fault and how much of life are we losing out on as a result?

There is some sort of tragic emotional disconnect technology as bestowed upon us. .... have you ever heard that song, I think its called "just like heaven" its sort of an emo song about a man has found the woman of his dreams but can't express the depth of his feeling for her until she's gone. It's about failing to see the beauty of what's plainly in front of your eyes and I think technology does exactly that.

Posted by itp at 01:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

at it's most basic, your whole life is just a collection of moments. sweet moments, happy moments, long and bitter ones, moments in the rain, ones that you'd rather forget, moments that send a shiver down your spine, moments that never happened like blown kisses that never got caught. and those moments, those memories, they never really have any order to them. they're scattered across the vast plain that sprawls endlessly in the back your mind. but in the mess and the haze, there are always beginnings, where it all started, and it's not until you're given a little time to absorb it all that it suddenly hits you, that you can say, hey, that's it, that's where it all began.

I'm interested in semiotics in our relationships and the misinterpretation of communication especially relating to intimacy in thought, love vs fear or is fear and love the same,? They are simply miscommunicated and thus defined as different?

" In semiotics, the concept of a code is of fundamental importance. Saussure (1857–1913) emphasised that signs only acquire meaning and value when they are interpreted in relation to each other. He believed that the relationship between the signifier and the signified was arbitrary. Hence, interpreting signs requires familiarity with the sets of conventions or codes currently in use to communicate meaning."

What is the implication of communication when we can literally hear the other persons thoughts? How would the dynamics shift in our relationship if everytime someone hugged you or kissed you or made love to you, it triggered a series of secrets to be told? How would this change us? How would this change them? What happens when we essentially are exposed at our most private levels?

I created a sudo-jacket made of multiple personal garments, each with significance to a period in my life. Old items are sewn together to create a single piece in uniform. Depending on how the user wears it, the garments volume changes up or down thus 'decrypting' and playing vocal tracks of my dirty little secrets: lies, passwords, credit card numbers, stories about my life, relationships and unspoken desires.

I originally planned on having the jackets switched be activated by the 'play' button but after hacking it I realized the play/power buttons are the same, thus I had to change the dynamic within the piece to play with volumes and levels when contacted by another.

Posted by itp at 01:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Inka's used knots referred to as Khipu or quipu to communicate, often knots were viewed visually or 'read' by running their fingers across them much like Braille. Spanish chronicles suggest they were more mnemonic, like a rosaries or calculations. Not a lot seems to be known about the devices, it seems at this point most is theory or based solely on research.
The most unique aspect of these khipu's was that it is essentially the worlds only three-dimensional language which used a system of coding based on some sort of binary code which is possibly so advanced it has eluded human researchers.

I found this article interesting but a little heavy on the research failures, I want to know more about the different types of knots, visual aids would of been helpful and some sort of visual comparison.

Posted by itp at 02:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I took this image last weekend while bowling with Hatti and Amber.

The room was quite dark, no flash was used but I raised the ISO and EV.

Posted by itp at 10:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Ive got a few of the mp3 players play switches hacked, I have the rough sewn garmet done, the zigbees are all together, the garmet just needs some tailoring and some lining put in, the audio is recorded, the channels need to be defined then exported as mp3s onto the players and once I have a final idea of how the circuts need to work and test them, check for stability of the switches I can call this project done.

Hopefully I'll have it finished by Sunday night.

Posted by itp at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Its been a while, but it doesn't mean we haven't been working on it way to much.

We got the light bulb lit weeks ago, but getting the gear ratio and visual display of information all worked out has slowed us down a bit.

We started with the belt to wheel to motor, then moved to wheel/wheel ratio, this? not so good. So we're back to using the belt.

At 90-100 RPM I can generate about 12-16w constantly not bearing any load, once we hook up the DC/AC invertor I can generate about 1-2w.. on a good day.

We've also started working on refining the visual display of the energy output, thats this week's project.

to be continued.

Posted by itp at 09:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

no really, what a weird day its been.

Posted by itp at 07:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I called my friends voice mail tonight on my way back from the floor: "Hi, Its me. you're not going to believe this; I'm so homesick that I went onto the internet to check for airfare, then I realized I don't know where home is, so I just sat there looking at the screen not sure where to go...

I just wanted to hear your voice in hopes of finding something familiar for a moment. . ."

Posted by itp at 12:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)