Projects – Page 2 – ITP Spring Show 2018

May 15, 2018May 15, 2018

it will be perfect from now on

Ziyu He

[it will be perfect from now on] is a kinetic sculpture that visually portrays the intricate relations between the individual and the power structure they live under. Individuals, with their identities and characteristics, are the product of that power that is exercised over their bodies, their multiplicities, their movements and desires.

https://documentation.ziyuhe.co/itwillbeperfectfromnowon

Description

[it will be perfect from now on] is built with custom made mechanic arms, alabaster, aluminum, dc motor, micro-controller.

[it will be perfect from now on] is a process of the artificial erosion of four stones by four identical steel files. Four alabaster stones are placed on individual stations. Over each stone, there is a steel file that glides back and forth on the surface of the stone. Four stations move in the same rhythm, the motion is slow yet constant, creating an identical imprint on the stones. The sculpture uses formation both as a physical process and as a metaphorical device to represent the effect of governmental policies on individuals. Is it reformation, is it laceration? Is there profit, is there loss?

[it will be perfect from now on] is an abstract response from an only child to the one child policy in China. It is a reflection on being the subject of a policy that was implemented for the welfare of an overpopulated society. To paraphrase Michel Foucault, governments arrogate and justify their negligence and the right to pass off human unhappiness as mere abstract profit or loss, just because the decisions they exercise claim to be concerned with the welfare of whole societies. A policy as such is portrayed in the sculpture as a force, an act that remorselessly erodes and shapes anything underneath in a slow-motion whirlpool of time, that one can not simply say the beautiful totality of the individual is amputated or repressed. The irreversible effect of the policy becomes a new complex form of individuality that has yet to be understood.

Classes

Thesis

May 15, 2018May 15, 2018

Conjure VR

Barak Chamo

A make-believe playground in virtual reality, say what you want and it will appear!

https://journey.barakchamo.com/conjure-vr

Description

Conjure VR is a3d creation and authoring environment that provides users with an intuitive voice and controller interface to create the VR environments of their dreams.

Using Daydream, Poly, Street View, Voice recognition and generation APIs, Conjure listens to your requests, transforms and creates virtual environments and looks up 3d models to load them into your scene. The intuitive interface translates across mobile devices, computer screens and VR headsets for ease of use and maximum accessibility. Want an elephant in Times Square or buses floating in space? Say “go to Times Square. Elephant please” and you got it!

Classes

Open Source Cinema, Synthetic Architectures

May 15, 2018May 15, 2018

2345

Eva Chen, Ella Chung

A VR Game experience for you to explore the space ship and try to figure out WHO YOU ARE!

https://www.thevirtualeva.com/copy-of-mrbehindyou

Description

You wake up in a space capsule, remember nothing. You have to explore the spaceship and try to figure out WHO YOU ARE.

Classes

Worlds on a Wire: Narrative Storytelling in VR

May 15, 2018May 15, 2018

Polynote

Itay Niv

â–£ polynote â–£ is a multiplayer musical AR experience generated by random notation from a web server between multiple players.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DFeReMzZ_4&feature=youtu.be

Description

polynote is a multiplayer musical AR experience generated by random notation from a web server and is being performed by multiple players. Each player in the session is randomly assigned a different digital music instrument as he begins the experience and is given a random set of instructions to build his part in the piece which is 2 minutes and 30 seconds. Since the piece notation is random, and is played by different people every time the experience and sounds played are always different and surprising.

Classes

Project Development Studio

May 15, 2018May 15, 2018

Metron Busker

Wenqi Li

Metron Busker is my strategy for intervening in the urban space as a street performer, using a networked toolkit. Metron Busker is a street performance enabled by tools, and it is also the toolkit that enables the performance.

https://www.wenqi.li/portfolio/metron-busker

Description

It was in the streets that the demonstrations took place. It was in the streets that spontaneity expressed itself. —Harriet Hawkins

—

The public arena of the street is where performers can insert new, dynamic, stirring, living experiences into a highly commercialized context. It is where moments of sociality and conviviality are created in everyday life.

In contrast to the absence of authorship that often defines graffiti or public art installations, street performance—especially busking—puts the spotlight directly on the author. A busker’s performance is shaped by their mood, their stories and their connection to the site of performance. Busking is a robust form of self-expression.

Stemming from my interest in this potential for self-expression and in acts of intervention to the public space, my thesis Metron Busker is an exploration of my creative approach toward busking. I use it to reposition myself as a busker delivering a performance as an escape from the burden of conflicting emotions.

The toolkit backpack equips me with a web application and networked electronics. The web application takes input parameters for algorithmic remixing, and the networked electronics boost the musical expression through street-ready speakers and screens. Together they broadcast the generative audio and video, live streaming straight to the audiences' smartphones.

The metal, black-framed backpack with its array of functional electronics serves as a metaphor of burden, connecting the stress of living in a tech-driven age with the physical feeling of carrying a heavy load. This toolkit can be used for all kinds of audio-visual performance seeking to utilize such a concrete expression of burden. It is the conflicting eagerness and fear, expectation and forbiddance from where my burden of anxiety arises.

To expose eagerness and fear to the public and harness them for listening pleasure is the busking way to overcome these feelings. The audiences will be subjected to an arc of intensity, experiencing the vulnerable, the overwhelming and the vital.

Classes

Thesis

May 15, 2018May 15, 2018

Perfect Housewife

Yihan Chen

A toolkit of mechanical machines designed for a fictional feminine role, Perfect Housewife is an installation that examines entrenched ideas about woman’s household labor. It offers resistance through humor and self-examination.

https://

Description

If I were a housewife, what would I need in order to fill that role flawlessly? Perfect Housewife is a toolkit customized for a fictional role I assigned onto myself. It is designed as a series of machines for this imaginary character, accompanied by a manual(performance) that explains their ‘perfect usage.’

These kinetic installations include a chopping knife that helps me avoid the strong smell of onions, a lulling hand machine that assists to calm a baby to sleep and allows me to continue to play on my phone, an iron steak cooker, and a machine that encourages me and my other machines to finish my work.

Objectively, these machines are useless, because of the nature that this perfect role does not exist. In the performance, I try to make everything perfect as a housewife and pretend that everything is under control. In this context, the role of ‘housewife’ is an over exaggerated symbol. Through the clumsy, repetitive, strange, and even violent mechanical movements of these imperfect machines, I aim to express resistance to prevalent attitudes relating to woman’s household labor. I consider this performance as an experiment of challenging the perceptions of women as housewives.

Classes

Thesis

May 15, 2018May 15, 2018

Conductive Crystallized Textiles

Sandy Hsieh

Cultivating conductive embellished textiles with electrolysis and exploring its potential for embedded electronic circuitry.

http://doc.sandyhsieh.com/category/fashiontech/

Description

Inspired by “artificilae/matter”, Hannah Croft's extensive collection of samples where crystals are grown onto woven and embroidered textiles to create mineral surfaces of ‘cultivated embellishment', I want to explore and expand the potential applications of growing conductive crystallized textiles with electrolysis. Conventional methods of crystal application typically involve hand-sewing or adhesives, which can be labor intensive and expensive. Growing crystals is an obvious and elegant alternative, and the results have an organic aesthetic. I will be focusing on integrating the crystallization of copper within textiles to generate traces for electronic circuits.

Classes

Expressive Interfaces: Introduction to Fashion Technology, Soft Robots and Other Engineered Softness

May 15, 2018May 15, 2018

SnapVR

William hallett

Composed of a design fiction short film, an avatar-rigged 360 mockup, and some service design deliverables and branding, the project (Snap VR) is a speculative social communications platform for virtual embodiment sharing, where users can record experiences and share them via avatar rigged 360 videos.

https://williamfhallett.wordpress.com/portfolio/snapvr/

Description

This project is based in humanities research into virtual embodiment, compounded with theoretical readings from Mimi Onuoha's Impossible Maps course. Largely aligned with animal studies and critical cartography, the project views technologies of embodiment as empathy machines that pose an alternative to our Western experience of an autonomous and individuated self, making possible a displacement of consciousness into different realities, or Umwelts (Uexkull, 1957). The project takes several prototyping approaches [design fiction, service design, and VR mockup] to envision a social media platform in which users share embodied experiences with one another. The service design is composed of some paper prototypes and branding materials (service blueprint, journey map, stakeholder map, posters, some UX screens). The VR prototype is a 360 video brought into unity with a 3d scan of myself rigged as an avatar with mixamo and final IK. And the design fiction is a short art film of a user experiencing one of my recorded experiences. None of these components are perfect, but together they combine to convey a possible social future in which embodiment is a mainstream medium and tool for information exchange and narrative. Theoretically, this sort of investigation is allied with a larger research inquiry into sociality and sensation and speculative technologies that make sensation recordable and shareable. What happens to our selves when we know what it is like to be someone or something else? A central component to this project is its presentation: making complex research and ideas deliverable, relatable and able to spark meaningful conversations and provocations. I want to do my absolute best to talk it out with viewers and offer my work as the start of a conversation and not a story or object with a specific beginning and end. To this end, a lot of prep will be given to my micro-pitch, trying to engage viewers in short discussions that they can take with them. I am interested in engaging discussions about the future of embodiment.

Classes

Quant Humanists: the I in the API

May 15, 2018May 15, 2018

The Handy

Adekemi Sijuwade

A soft robotic glove prosthetic to help those with neuromuscular disorders.

http://itp.blog.afrikatoday.com/handy-spring-2018

Description

The “Handy” is a glove meant to help those with weak fingers due to neuromuscular disorders. It is meant to be a tool to help with finger strength rehabilitation, as well as with functional tasks. These tasks include:

* Eating

* Dressing

* Picking up objects

* Finger strength exercises