Every Vote is my contribution and proposed solution to leveraging voices and ensuring equal rights in the voter registration process.

http://every-vote.herokuapp.com

Description

Imagine a future where every voter counts. With chained technologies we don't have to wait for government infrastructure and policies to develop in order to rapidly register citizens to vote. At present only 19 states have a complete online registration cycle, with many of them requiring driver's licenses as a means to register to vote. Every Vote is a user-friendly, cross platform tool that leverages technologies in order to universalize voter registration.

Classes

Thesis

Real-time CNC control and operation using drawing as a metaphor.

http://ostk.tech

Description

The larger project, the toolkit, which consists of software, design files, and source code, enables anyone to breathe life into their digital artworks and bring them into the physical world in a dynamic way. Tools such as laser cutters, 3D printers and desktop mills are commonplace in maker spaces and workshops all around the world. However the majority of these machines only accept static files and use proprietary software that offer limited flexibility. OSTK_CNC is entirely opensource and can be accessed by anyone via its website. The website offers plans, documentation, and design files for two custom CNC machines, software to use with them, and all of the accompanying source code.

I will be demoing the project using the Wacom Cintque, which will allow users to draw directely on the interface using the software I've written. The pen plotter will recreate the user's drawing in real-time while they're drawing in the app.

Classes

Thesis

The experience aims to put you inside the kid from 'The Shining", Danny Torrance's shoes. As you bike through hallways in an arbitrary basement, YOU play the central role by pedaling your way through the sometimes realistic, sometimes eery and maybe uncomfortable experience.

http://159.203.76.109/2016/04/28/dannys-shining-hallway/

Description

This project attempts to redesign the Hallway Scene from Stanley Kubrick's 'The Shining'. I am interested in integrating a bodily activity into the experience of watching a film and investigated production scenarios that can make that happen. My project explores Virtual Reality as an inevitable forthcoming medium and questions what VR adds and changes in a film narrative. My experimental experience attempts to trick your senses, put you inside the shoes of Danny Torrance and ultimately ask –what else is possible?

Classes

Thesis

Alone With My Phone is a first-person narrative story in which the user participates with their smartphone. It is a story about loneliness that uses sensory input like location and speech as plot devices to take the user through a journey of self-reflection with humor to help express some universal truths and remind users that they are not alone.

https://itp.nyu.edu/thesis2016/project/denny-george

Description

The central premise of my story is how a communication device's inability to help the protagonist communicate effectively leads to their growing sense of loneliness. The promise of internet and smartphones is that they are meant to bring people together but ever so often they are used as an excuse to avoid acknowledging each other in public. In the story, the app makes the user participate in a series of tasks trying to connect him/her with other people but inevitably fail. My project tries to tap into common smartphone behaviors of people to facilitate a direct encounter with loneliness rather than distracting them from it. The overall tone of the story is humorous and I hope it highlights the absurdities of technology aided communication.

Classes

Thesis

My project is a garment that translates the natural rhythm of knitting into sound in order to connect the wearer more deeply to their process.

http://www.cyberknitics.com

Description

Will cyborgs knit? Cyberknitics is the study of how emerging technology can enhance – not replace – the experience of making something by hand. Crafting is calming, healing, communal, expressive and empowering. It fills a basic human desire that transcends its utility. My work explores what it means to be a crafter now, and what it will mean in the future.

My project is a harness-like vestment that translates the motion of knitting into sound. As someone who knits, I have become increasingly interested in how to capture and convey the natural rhythm of the craft. The music is meant to inspire a stronger connection between the knitter and their process, and to invite the audience to engage with the spiritual practice of creating something from nothing.

Classes

Thesis

A pair of 'Partnered' I/O's that facilitate and make tangible the simple human exchange of a long-distance 'Good Night'.

http://www.brettstiller.com/procul

Description

Technology makes promises to connect us and service human communication in a way never before possible. In theory and for example, having a long-distance relationship should now be as fulfilling as one that's face-to-face.

But what happens when the tech dries up and becomes an obstacle, and resentment toward our devices as conduits for our relationships kicks in?

Utilizing the untethered freedom of a conversational user interface (CUI), speech-to-text and the internet, these ‘coupled’ objects take the spoken last thoughts and wishes of one's ‘Good night’, giving form to and delivering them, on waking, to the other.

Individually, these physical receipts, artifacts or tokens may seem trivial as they are collected, used as bookmarks, lost, pinned to the fridge, thrown away or stored in the wallet. However, as they accumulate, they begin to represent something larger. They are a distillation of the sentiment of humans trying to communicate effectively over distance. They are also a stand against the ethereal digitization of our experiences and relationships, the automation of intimacy and our losing grip – so to speak – on things to touch and hold.

Classes

Thesis

What if I can make “clock time” an organic sense of my body, what if it eventually becomes an intuitive feeling of time adding a new sense to my perception of reality. i created a wearable device that would “feed” time data continuously through the skin (tactioception) until it becomes a part of me. Then I may try and alter the fed data and perhaps manipulate time…

http://itp.nyu.edu/thesis/thesis2016/oi294/thesis-summary/

Description

I want to know what time it is without a conscious intervention. I don’t like to wear a watch. I want it to be a 6th sense. The first stage of this goal is to embed a sense of time in my body. To do this, I created a wearable device that translates clock time into a haptic pattern language mapped to the hour of the day, using my skin as the interface. The haptic stimulus is created through tiny vibratory motors molded in silicone situated along the 24 pre-sacral vertebrae along my back. This is not meant as a consumer product, but a behavioral experiment or speculative design. A kind of Pavlovian training. Later, if time become an innate sensation, I may try to mess with my mind by changing the data and the intervals, making a minute longer or shorter (or dynamically varying!).

Classes

Thesis

How can the deliberate medium of code be used as a tool for intuitive exploration?

https://itp.nyu.edu/thesis2016/project/pat-shiu

Description

“Both + Neither” is a series of computational paintings exploring code as a medium for intuitive exploration.

The images were created using custom generative systems inspired by stochastic painting techniques, where predefined rules govern the image-making process, allowing repetition and probability to shape the outcome of the final work. As a result, the works themselves move away from the artist's control and assume the role of co-creator, and the process of itself becomes a collaborative exploration by artist and computer.

I created over 400 paintings before arriving at the final 6 selected for full-resolution display as 4 by 4 feet prints on aluminum. Through ritualistic iteration from user and system, an outcome that is both organic and hyper-procedural is gradually discovered and extracted from a sea possibilities, arising in shape and form through which intuitive convictions can be examined.

Classes

The World-Pixel by Pixel, Thesis

My Heart on My Dress is a bespoke connected garment that visualizes my daily experiences and emotions through dynamic changing colors and patterns. Real-time text analysis of my digital diary influences the design of the dress.

http://www.jingwen-zhu.com/#/my-heart-on-my-dress/

Description

Garments are diaries – different dresses say different things, some garments connect us to specific memories, we personalize our clothing the same way we personalize the pages of our journals.

My Heart on My Dress is a novel expression of these themes. It explores personal expression and a narrative version of quantified self through a combination of traditional textiles with innovative technologies.

The custom-made dress is screen printed with thermochromatic ink and wired with soft circuits and thermal patches. Its patterns and colors transform based on data analyzed from a personal diary app.

Classes

Rest of You, Thesis

In designing software to simulate physical activities we must consider how to make the experiences authentic to their real world analogs. This project attempts to recreate the sensation of working in clay in the context of a 3D modeling environment.

www.gabeweintraub.com

Description

Today, most design work is conducted using computerized tools. There are, of course, significant conveniences gained by forgoing traditional physical media, but in the transition we have severed the special connection a designer shares with their materials. Many artists and designers choose to augment their computing experiences by using tools like digital graphics tablets, but the sensation is not far removed from working with a mouse. These solutions are effective in a two dimensional workspace, but once a third dimension is involved, the tools at hand become inadequate. My project attempts to remedy those inadequacies by simulating the haptic sensations of manipulating a block of clay in the context of a 3D modeling environment.

Classes

Thesis