Category Archives: Thesis

Courtney Nadine Coleman, Heather Greer, Projects, Thesis

BriteRise for Childcare

Courtney Nadine Coleman

BriteRise for Early Childhood is a web and mobile platform that creates a more personalized learning path by allowing parents and early childhood educators to track, visualize and communicate a child's health and growth data in real-time.

http://www.briterise.us

Description

BriteRise for Early Childhood is a web and mobile platform that allows parents, educators, and health professionals to become more aware of a child's overall wellness through the ability to receive real-time observational and objective data. The system not only allows for the manual documentation of a child's growth and development, but caretakers have the ability to obtain, visualize, and analyze physical data of a child from popular consumer heart monitors and other biosensors to get more objective data in assessing a child's well-being.

Classes

Thesis

Hanbyul Jo, Nancy Hechinger, Projects, Thesis

Dat(um)A

Hanbyul Jo

Data sculpture that navigates the individual story within the scope of a big dataset.

Description

Data is getting bigger and bigger. An overview of the data gives a complete picture, but not the full story. 'Gentrification of New York City' is one example. My goal was to reveal the individual stories that make up the dataset–the datum within the data. First hand interviews about gentrification (the datum) were combined with income level change over 6 years (the data). The result is a series of sculptures that spotlights what is missing inside an averaged overview of data.

Classes

Thesis

Heather Greer, Projects, Rose Meacham, Thesis

Moving Portraits

Rose Meacham

Moving Portraits is a video series that documents the subtle facial gestures that express internal emotional states. Fusing art and scientific practices, video portraits of the six universal emotions were recorded and analyzed quantitatively.

http://thesis.itp.io/students/rsm397

Description

Psychological research has classified six facial expressions that correspond to distinct universal emotions: disgust, sadness, happiness, fear, anger, and surprise. But do we truly understand how to interpret these internal states in other people? And is it possible for a computer to use predictive algorithms to determine emotions in humans? In an effort to explore these question, I generated a series of slow motion video portraits documenting the detailed gestures and physiological states of subjects responding to emotional stimuli. A classification tool and library of quantified emotions was used to analyze the subjects' movements and train neural networks to identify the motions indicating specific internal states.

Classes

Thesis

Lei Ng, Nancy Hechinger, Projects, Thesis

Roving Spectres

Lei Ng

Roving Spectres is a traveling shadow theater. Taking inspiration from shadow puppetry, traveling tent shows, and physical computing, this project weaves narrative worlds out of nothing but light and shadow.

https://itp.nyu.edu/shows/thesis2014/wen-lei-ng/

Description

In Roving Spectres, shadow and illumination serve as both performative and participatory mediums. A glowing suitcase containing kinetic paper sculptures, a performative glove, an emotive light umbrella — these re-appropriated objects transform into the performer's 'co-actors'. Each object is woven into a series of imaginary landscapes through their interactions with the performer.

With a suitcase, Roving Spectres brings the magic of live theatre to the people where they least expect it.

Classes

Thesis

Allison Burtch, Circuit Design and Prototyping, Gabe Barcia-Colombo, Michelle Temple, Projects, Thesis

Navigating the Really Real

Allison Burtch

How do humans remain spiritually and emotionally authentic in the face of impending societal and environmental collapse? This is an invitation to be alive and present. It is liberation technology.

http://www.allisonburtch.net/

Description

Liberation technology, as I'm defining it, is technology that liberates from unjust economic, political, or social conditions.
I made two things:
A browser plugin that clarifies power structures on the internet.
A cell phone jammer that blocks signals.

Classes

Circuit Design and Prototyping, Thesis

Edward Button, Katherine Dillon, Projects, Thesis

"Emergence Unfolding"

Edward Button

A site specific parametric sculpture shaped from sound and grown algorythmicly

http://itp.nyu.edu/~etb273/wordpress/2014/05/video-documentation/

Description

Through research, I created a comprehensive framework for site specific parametric sculpture. The framework uses parametric design and location narrative to create formal possibilities within a family of possible outcomes. This process framework was used to design a parametric sculpture for fabrication and installation in the atrium of 644 Putnam Avenue, a commercial office real estate development in Greenwich Connecticut. The design uses procedural growth algorithms and parametricly designed shapes drawn from audio spectrographs as if it had been grown from the location narrative. Fabricated utilizing Transitional Light Film, the sculpture interacts with the sun and architectural lighting to create an ever changing form and reflection. For display “Emergence Unfolding” takes the form of a model and 3d rendurings built in Unity.

Classes

Thesis

Donna Miller Watts, Heather Greer, Projects, Thesis

Fictioning, or The Confession of the Librarian

Donna Miller Watts

Borges "The Library of Babel" adapted to Oculus Rift, with some critical seasoning along the way.

http://dont.have.yet

Description

3D animation for Oculus Rift of “The Library of Babel” using Three.js and WebGL. Like stereoscopes of the past, and in some ways, books, the Oculus Rift may provide a private narrative experience of the “real”, enhanced with the “feel” of 3D. I chose this Borges story because it describes an unreal landscape, and as such, provides fertile ground for me to challenge ideas of the “right” kind of content for “realifying” technologies.

Classes

Thesis

Justin Lange, Katherine Dillon, Projects, Thesis

New Circuits for Dancing with Light

Justin Lange

Gloves as a luminous dance instrument that are not simply pretty, but expressive

Description

LEDs wands, poi, hoops and other “light-up” instruments and toys constitute a desired aesthetic in EDM culture, but as tools for individual movement-based expression, they are no more expressive than a flashlight. Most LED devices have only two states (“on” or “off”), or offer preprogramed sequences. Several state-of-the art POV (“persistence of vision”) devices allow custom images to be uploaded, but none allow immediate control over LEDs' expressive potential, such as luminance or hue. To encourage light dancing that is not simply pretty but also expressive, I created a new hand-held kinetic instrument — a pair of gloves — with onboard sensors and controls that allow dancers to spontaneously generate and display novel light patterns while dancing.

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Thesis

Gal Sasson, Kathleen Wilson, Projects, Thesis

XPRSV

Gal Sasson

XPRSV is a collaborative interactive VJ drawing tool for one or more performers.

https://vimeo.com/93086028

Description

This project came out of my thesis project. It is a sketching application meant to be used in company with music, as a performance tool. This application enables one performer draw on a canvas with various strokes that can be animated. Another performer/s then can manipulate the content that was drawn.

Classes

Thesis