Discover and create serendipitous moments of surprise and wonder using mobile devices to control the physical world.

http://themeparkofeveryday.com

Description

Why hasnâ€t it been feasible to bring interactive physical vignettes out of engineered spaces like theme parks and into daily life? Theme Park of Everyday explores how the devices in our pockets can augment and control the physical world, for fun.

With PocketPark (the iOS companion app developed to enable the experience), users are notified when they approach installations. Simply by opening the app, users can wirelessly control installations using mobile device sensors.

Anyone can add new experiences. They automatically appear in PocketPark app when registered.

Theme Park of Everyday depicts how mobile devices can make the world more fun, and how playful physical installations can be easily built and embedded into the city around us.

Classes

Thesis

SayCel is Nicaragua's first community owned and operated cellular network that re-imagines a holistic approach to communication infrastructure.

http://www.saycel.com

Description

While living in Nicaragua I was astounded by the price of a cellular call. 1 dollar top-up is about 3 minutes of talk time. This is hefty price for people who make $2 a day.

SayCel is a social business that installs low cost cellular networks in rural, and underdeveloped communities using open source software and links customers to good quality connections to voice-over-IP (VoIP) calls to other regions and countries.

SayCel pilot was on Little Corn Island, a developing Caribbean community with a population of 1200 people. The documentation of this installation provides a toolkit for future cellular installations.

Classes

Thesis

A two-player 3D arcade game that lets you fly a whale.

Description

Whalee Whalee is a two-player arcade game that lets you fly a whale in a 3D space. Your mission is to direct the whale along a rollercoaster path and shoot as many enemies as you can to gain scores. You loose points if you fly off the track or get hit by any object. When your score goes down to 0, you die.

Classes

Digital Fabrication for Arcade Cabinet Design

Sonic Layer of Chocolate Production from Belize and Mexico to a Factory in Gowanus.

Description

“Fragile Matter” is a conversation between the sonic layers of chocolate production from Belize, Mexico to a factory in Gowanus. Chocolate is a medium laced with personal and cultural narratives; mythologized and commodified, sensual, exploitative, even perverse. The cacao bean’s growing universal and global presence and the stratification from high-end restaurants to convenience stores made it a desirable choice. All food stuffs carry hidden maps, distances traveled, empty spaces filled with noise. These are ingested, absorbed into us, mostly without our knowledge or consent.

Sound, also utilized here, is what some call “the forgotten flavor sense”. Research shows sound has a greater effect on taste perception and preferences then we currently assume. Sound also surrounds us in similar ways to food, all-encompassing, yet difficult to pin down. Hearing often gets neglected in the conversation around food. It is precisely this absence which leads me to use sound to engage momentarily with hidden markers of time and space

Classes

Food Systems: Interventions + Remediations

Square Trace

Description

“Square Trace” is a surveillance installation.
The Axis surveillance camera is installed at a wide open space on the floor (preferable the lounge area) for capturing a lot of visitors.It is connected with a projector which is projecting the video onto the wall. The camera is constantly scanning the crowd – the people – visiting the show. A processing sketch is connected that tracks the faces. Once a face got detected it zooms into it. The processing sketch is tinting the most of the screen in dark shadows and only the rectangles with the detected faces stick out in brighter colors. By moving they fade out and generate nice visual effects.
Visitors will get surprised by finding their faces in a big fashion onto the wall. The installation provokes and builds awareness about being watched. A project developed in the Surveillance Documentary class with Shawn van Every and Carol Dysinger

Classes

Surveillance Documentary

4 helps users learn more about people they frequently encounter, and say hi in real life without prejudgments based on appearance.

http://www.4app.io/

Description

4 is an app for people living in metropolitan areas or who are new to a specific space to explore and start building connections in real life.

Most other apps for meeting new people create relationships that stay online. 4 encourages casual real life conversations between strangers. 4 works by connecting strangers through gradually revealing more information with each passive encounter. If two users have crossed paths 3 times, their identities are revealed and they are prompted to connect in real life. It is up to the users to interact at the level they prefer.

4 Celsius is right above the freezing point. Breaking the ice and being nice to local strangers in real life is the goal of 4.

Classes

Thesis

Aha! is a smart camera that gives teachers the power to easily capture video of their classroom to investigate specific questions they have about their teaching practice.

http://www.aantiks.com/2015/05/aha-enabling-an-investigative-teaching-practice/

Description

Teachers are given a lot of standards and are being increasingly evaluated based on quantitative measures. Reform leaders like Bill Gates has even begun collecting thousands of hours of video to determine how teaching can be scored and best practices extracted.

I believe that the availability of inexpensive hardware and open source technologies make it possible to flip the script a bit. What if we enabled teachers to evaluate themselves, privately, without judgement, and to do so on a daily basis. An iterative and reflective approach to teaching breaks with how we typically think about teaching and stands to increase the pace of change.

Classes

Thesis, Temporary Expert: Designing for Education

A virtual reality landscape and soundscape made up of 3D scanned scars and their related stories.

https://vimeo.com/127046535

Description

Scars. No two look alike, no two stories of their origin are the same. Using a 3D scanning system that I custom designed, I’ve scanned over 100 scars and captured the unique narratives attached to them. The Things We Carry Carry Us is a virtual terrain and soundscape, at once otherworldly and ultra-terrestrial, where scars become peaks or valleys but remain true to their physical form. Inspired by the ability to scale up an object in virtual space, I wanted to create an environment built from intricate details we often overlook, to flip the nature of a habitat. The terrain in The Things We Carry Carry Us is ever evolving. The project will be ported to the web with a set of instructions for how to add your scar and story to the piece.

Classes

Thesis

CHIME.IN is a community-driven, live music search engine about the here and now. Chime.In re-imagines the way we discover concerts and shows in New York City.

https://itp.io/thesis/tan273/itp_thesis_summary/thesis-book-thesis-summary/

Description

The City is a quintessential playground for eclectic music discovery. How can we connect music lovers and concertgoers with our local scene? How adventurous can it be? How immersive can it be?

People go to concerts of musicians they already know with friends they already have. With CHIME.IN, people will go to concerts on the spot, with people they don’t know… yet. Through a bi-weekly release, the mobile app provides immediate insights and engagement with the local community. Embracing sensorial exploration, human curation and social connectivity, CHIME.IN bridges the on and offline live music experience by encouraging liberation through spontaneity.

Classes

Thesis

A holographic installation experience. Visuals, scent and sound, viewers are transported to another world, in the blink of an eye.

http://portfolio.aspaceforsound.com/

Description

Visitors are transported to timeless world through visuals, scent and sound. Holograms and illusions of light, displays an unending world, where users are thrown deeper into “Moments, Suspended” as they move a controller around the space.

An excerpt from my thesis project “Living Narratives: a meditative Exploratorium through sound, scent, sight and site,” 'Moments, Suspended' was part of my 'visual exploratorium' and created for my Nothing' final, with Andrew Lazarow. The controller was built with a repurposed android phone, with Touch OSC & Max/MSP/Jitter as part of my of my 'Digital Performance' coursework with Luke DuBois and Jamie Jewett.

Classes

Nothing: Creating Illusions, Thesis, Digital Performance, Digital Performance