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October 07, 2005
3 Day Weekend
There's a lot that I have been thinking about and doing and I want to make a note of it here. Plus it's almost five in the morning so why not?
I'm leaving town tomorrow after spacial design. First to New Hampshire for Josh's wedding and then to Boston to see my parents, a russian dinner for my 29th birthday. Thirty is one away. I'll probably fall a little behind on all my work but it'll be good to get out of town, to see some highway, to see some grass. I may inadvertently end up in prime leaf peeping season.
I've also tried not to jump on every opportunity that ITP affords me (there are too many) but today I mailed Res Publica about volunteering. In short they are interested in building a global, multilingual moveon.org. They are looking for a main technology strategist that will plan and either build out what they need or have access to the resources to get the work done. The more I think about it the more I may not be in the right place to take the lead in something like this but I would definitely want to help out if just at the implementation level. I think they have a great idea and people with a proven track record behind their effort.
Red's Class
My group, Lisa, Corey and Britta, did a reaction to Vito Acconchi more than several weeks ago and the ideas have drifted away since then as we have to move onto new work. It would be great to at least document the whole cell phone project and people's reactions possibility with an eye towards staging it again in the future or the possibility of exploring the virtual private space we create with cell phones.
TNO & DriveBys
My first project for physical computing with Ed and Oren was a flat screen display on floor four cheekily dubbed 'Help You Help Me' (a play on the old school CUSEEME). Ed and I finally had an audience with Clay and he green lighted our idea. The next step is for Ed to make some Flash mock ups of the designs that would appear on the flat screen in Floor 4. I also pulled Dan Phiffer into the mix because of his coding skills and the strong connection between our project and the overhaul of Floor 4. That's another project that i've signed on for, a clearinghouse of information and opportunities as they apply to ITP.
Tonight I finally went to a TNO, the first one I have gone to since the first week of school mostly because I have spacial design on friday mornings. This week I did my spacial work on Monday so I was free to go out. Before TNO though, there was a DriveBy on Wiring and Arduino, both of which are an attempt to bring processing like simplicity to physical computing. Plus you can finally program with a mac using a serial to USB adapter. Really good stuff.
Physical Computing
In physical computing, there are a number of things going on. There's my first project with the flat screen on floor 4 mentioned above and there is also the second project with which me and my group are studying breathing. This time around we are trusting the process and giving a true week to observation before we make any commitments on how we are going to alter or improve breathing through a medium. We started by analyzing and charting our breathing and comparing the results. Today we met and began discussing the possibility of an installation with a combination of a physical device. There's still a way to go.
It's 5:17am and raining hard outside. I am way too overstimulated.
Physical Computing was especially exciting this week as it was the first time I saw the physical combined with a screen based application. A breadboard was controlling a dot on the screen in a java processing applet, Tom had built a very basic joystick. I have never felt empowered enough to combine the physical world with software, my feedback and input loops have always been keyboards, mice and pop up error messages. This idea opens up a whole new world for me. I have no idea where I am going with this yet, I have to start by just doing this week's homework but it's a very exciting idea.
Comm Lab
In communications lab, we have moved onto online narrative and the graphic novel. My readings include ones from Scott McCloud and Will Eisner, books I allready own. What better way to reaffirm that I am in the right place? The assignment this week is to make some sort of narrative using comics or stills in a video (iMovie). I've been meeting with Marienne so I can figure out how to use photoshop and make narrative comics out of still photographs. This stuff doesn't come easily to me, even figuring out where to click in photoshop takes me a while because I am so command line oriented. Oren showed me comic life which would make my life much easier but it would be cheating. My comics would look like everyone else's. At the same time, if I am just using photoshop to get a 'comic effect', I may as well short circuit the process. It's a balance between having a dyi charm and just looking sloppy. I'm going to write down a short, meditative narrative this weekend, maybe about the bus trip or the wedding, or maybe about coming home and then see if I can find photos to mess with to accompany my story.
Spatial Design
I was speaking to a student in the other spatial section and we were saying how much we enjoyed Jean-Marc's insights, it's as if he sees a depth everywhere in what we consider the common, he enriches things by consider the history of things, where they come from and where they are going. The student said, to paraphrase, I realized the other day that Jean-Marc sees the world like this all the time, how incredible it must be to have that perspective, to see the beauty and potential of everything, everywhere. To be an artist by purely existing.
I concur.
This week I made my three dimensional model of an apple being cut in half. I'm excited for class (in 4 hours) when I get to see everyone else's work.
That's it for now. I'm back on the podcast kick seeing as I have a five hour bus ride. Abe also put up podcasts of Clay and Rushkoff's lectures. I'm going to listen to them on the bus.
Posted by mb2811 at October 7, 2005 09:52 AM