Captive Audience was inspired by President Trump and the audiences that he paid for; if he can have meaningless applause, so can you with Captive Audience!

https://itpreadymades.wordpress.com/2017/05/07/captive-audience-2/

Description

This project was inspired by the nascent presidency of Donald Trump. He bragged about his standing ovations from the FBI and other audiences, seemingly unaware that the applause was coerced or otherwise forced. If the president could express such pride for what was ultimately an empty gesture, why shouldn’t you or I feel this great? Consequentially, I created this machine.

But pride like this isn’t exclusively the territory of the president; motivational speakers, athletes, and other entertainers get similar treatment. It’s not a political piece; rather, it speaks to the human capacity to imagine reasons behind emotional events. The hands are not clapping for anything you’ve really done, but it feels like they are.

Congratulations!

Classes

Readymades

CLOSED CELLS, OPEN WOUNDS is virtual reality documentary experience that aims to address the core issue to the mass incarceration crisis that is plaguing this country.

http://itp.nyu.edu/thesis2017/project/bh376

Description

CLOSED CELLS, OPEN WOUNDS is virtual reality documentary experience that aims to address the core issue to the mass incarceration crisis that is plaguing this country. Much research shows that poor communities of color are becoming incarcerated at alarming rates for the past 30 years, and thereby resulting in a significant part of our population to be condemned to a vicious cycle of a lifetime of repeated arrests.

Many ask why is this the case? In this VR experience, we hear first hand from a young New Yorker, who was criminalized and incarcerated at age 16. By telling his story in VR, we will learn how both his community and jail are linked due to a lack of adequate help and reform from officials.

This story will be told by two siblings (a brother and a sister) who will appear in the experience and talk about their Harlem neighborhood, the older brother’s first arrest at, and how it impacted their family. This is an emotional conversation, filled with tough questions, self-reflection, and tears.

The aesthetics of this VR documentary film will appear to be of a minimalist look in black negative space. Their story will be told in deconstructed sections as the viewer travels down the hallway, creating symbolic metaphors of this damaging system.

The project is currently a work in progress, and will be completed within the coming months. The experience will eventually be enhanced by graphic effects and animations that will be added in the future. Some of the tools used to create this experience will be traditional filmmaking and photography, photogrammetry, Unreal Game Engine, Photoshop, After Effects, Premiere, and DepthKit.

CLOSED CELLS, OPEN WOUNDS is powerfully emotional experience that uses of a variety of artistic mediums to creative a living collage that communicates the destructive impact of this ongoing crisis in America.

Classes

Thesis, Worlds on a Wire: Narrative Storytelling in VR

A device that is tuning your mind down before bed

Description

WAVE is a device that helps you to sleep better using scent and light animation. It takes you to a breathing exercise so you can shift your focus from other distractions and put your phone down. It comes with a mobile application so you can adjust your preferences and record your progress for a good night sleep.

Classes

Thesis

A fern, the mta, and you : how does one affect the other?

http://lindseydoes.com/tag/root-commute

Description

Multiple recordings of above ground train rides displayed on a collection of planters outfitted with water and capacitive touch sensors. How you interact with the plants living in them affects the commute. Watering will create rain and gentle touches will slow it down, while aggressive actions will freeze the train and grab the attention of the riders

Classes

Readymades

Being able to share news with one step at a time. <br />
These shoes cycles through current news headlines, word by word with every step you take.

https://itpreadymades.wordpress.com/2017/04/03/shoe-projection-idea/

Description

This project is about using video projection to share news with a large audience.It's done in a way that it's not intrusive but more so it's surprising and delightful. As one walks with the shoes you cannot distinguish what words are being projects, but you can see flashes of light coming from the bottom of their feet. Once they stop and raise their feet you'll be able to read the new headline beaming out of their foot.

Classes

Readymades

Rat Tale is an immersive experience that aims to evoke emotions in the liminal zone of disgust and attraction. By creating physical closeness between rats and humans, it raises questions regarding the way we perceive animals who share the urban habitat with us.

galnissim.com

Description

We live in an urban environment that we designed for ourselves, but we are not the only ones living here. Often, we consider city animals as interlopers in our space. However, the urban nature is a habitat for many different animals such as pigeons, cockroaches and rats. These are synanthropic animals, live and thrive close to humans. In my thesis, I have chosen to focus on our complex relationships with the prominent of all – the rat.

Classes

Thesis

A Cloud In Blue Sky is a interactive web platform that combines digital images, computer vision, machine learning, and text analysis to re-contextualize the vast and ever increasing world-wide catalogue self created digital media.

https://youtu.be/5jfDnPm4J5Y

Description

A Cloud In Blue Sky is a interactive web platform that combines digital images, computer vision, machine learning, and text analysis to re-contextualize the vast and ever increasing world-wide catalogue self created digital media.

The web interface allows users to upload their own personal images to be analyzed and annotated by a computer vision system called Densecap. This open source software has been to hacked to allow the computer vision created annotations to be corrected, argued against and grown through additional information provided by a human participant. This process will then create new captions that have been influenced and infused with the experiences and considerations of a human viewer. By re-composing and re-rendering our digital image catalogues in this way, I hope to broaden their meaning and backstory through an intentional meditation on the various moments we capture. I believe in doing so we can broaden the scope of understanding regarding the vast spectrum of realities that exist within the context of the everyday human experience will. A Cloud In Blue Sky has been created as an experimental web platform that uses machine learning as a tool to engage our collection of personal digital images in a reflexive manner.

Classes

Thesis

Our visual decisions tend to be influenced by our personal experiences

Description

When seeing a peach, some people may think of a butt. Two different things tend to be seen as the same sometimes, which is because when we are seeing, our brains are also “seeing” and drawing things that are similar. Our visual decisions tend to be influenced by our personal experiences. If we see a part of something, we will try to “fill in the blank” of the rest with our existing experience. When media tries to depict part of something, or through post-processing, they can make it look like another thing.

Classes

Live Image Processing and Performance, Readymades

Embody the physical violence depicted in a film.

http://www.bryanhsu.com/embodied-violence-in-film

Description

Violence has been present in films for decades. The audience reactions to these violent depictions in film range from pained empathy to complete desensitization. This interactive piece aims to see if an added interaction of mimicking the violence on screen further enhances the audience's empathy towards these fictional victims. Conversely, does it unleash the hidden desires of an individual to further inflict damage on to others? Or perhaps neither.

Classes

Open Source Cinema, Readymades

An immersive adventure of nature enabled by magical paintings.

Description

“Dreamers” is an interactive art installation that dissolves the line between the virtual and dream worlds. Our aim for this project is to allow users to experience unlimited expressions of a virtual fantasy. We combine generative mapping and physical objects to create possibilities for expression and transformation to a virtual world. When users place one or multiple objects of small paintings on the table, digital animations will generate on the frosted acrylic surface as the camera detects them. Each animation will show immersive space that reflects virtual paintings. The paintings are designed based on natural elements found in this city such as grass growing between rocks or inside the cracks of stone. Thus, the elements can dream in the new virtual space. Users and painting objects become the adventurer, dreamers, and floaters in exploring the imaginative place.

Classes

Nothing: Creating Illusions, Open Source Cinema, Readymades