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Painting Mirror

Ellen Nickles

Move the pieces and assemble your reflections in this interactive Cubist mirror. How many ways can you put yourself together?

https://ellennickles.com

Description

In real life and in digital spaces, we offer multiple versions of ourselves for numerous reasons. Painting Mirror plays with this idea and proposes continuous ways of seeing and presenting yourself. Using dual camera angles and the open source software, Processing, video reflections are fragmented, resized, duplicated, and scattered across the surface. The pieces blend together and moving them paints the screen anew. The impulse might be to reassemble your image into a whole, but can you?

Classes

The World, Pixel By Pixel

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Kinegrams

Mithru Vigneshwara

This is a project that helps generate kinegrams, a type of paper/animation illusion.

https://mithru.github.io/Kinegrams/

Description

The idea is to introduce the idea of Kinegrams to people, along with an explanation of how they work and allow participants to make their own kinegram animations.

Kinegrams are a type of paper illusion in which a static image animates by gliding a transparent film with a particular pattern of print along it. I've written a processing sketch that helps people easily generate such kinegrams, with the hope that it becomes a form of gif-like photobooth, where people can pose, make silly gifs and take back a printout of their gifs.

The video linked shows Mario's walk cycle, but I have other experiments to showcase as well.

Here's a link to the album of early test images generated by the program.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/wVVvnNP6tJmf5hvc2

I intend to showcase my experiments and modify the current code to make it a photobooth that allows participants to generate kinegrams with their own faces / bodies.

Classes

Paper Engineering 101 and Designing for Children

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"Sygnómi"

Alexia Kyriakopoulou

Sygnómi (Greek for “I’m sorry”) is an interactive VR experience exploring the memories of a victim of domestic abuse. Sygnómi attempts to explain and educate the audience about the depth and complexities behind domestic abuse in more nuanced and unexpected ways.

http://www.alexiak.com/category/thesis/

Description

Based on my personal experience with domestic abuse, I realized that there is a big gap between people’s perceptions of domestic violence and the reality of these situations. Unfortunately, the traits of domestic abuse are so counter-intuitive that attempts to look at it through the lens of common sense can actually drive you further away from the truth.

Research has found that a lot of people still believe that domestic violence happens elsewhere. It is often believed that it only happens in families of color or lower socioeconomic status. Another common misconception is that victims that experience domestic violence won’t leave their partners because they are fiscally dependent on them.

Through my project, I attempt to combat these misconceptions by creating a VR experience which tells the familiar story of a couple who used to be really in love and how it devolves the relationship into one of abuse and violence. The experience is based on my personal story as well as stories from victims I have interviewed and researched. In this experience, I choose to focus not on the event and traumatic experience of the abuse per se (i.e. beating, violence etc.) that most VR experiences have portrayed so far, but convey what domestic violence looks like from the inside in terms of cultural expectations as well as behavioral and gender paradigms. Through this experience I am emphasizing that a major reason that victims stay in abusive relationships is because they tend to create an illusion of their relationship and they keep going back to the perfect/fairytale moments they once had out of denial with their partners instead of accepting the more painful but honest truth. Abuse victims are looked at and judged from the outside in; “Sygnómi” offers a view from the inside out.

Classes

Thesis

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Consciousness Transplant

Hau Yuan

A cinematic virtual reality project aiming to allows users to experience the process of consciousness transplant.

https://

Description

Consciousness Transplant is a cinematic VR experience with creepy, scary, and sci-fi atmosphere, seeking a possibility to let users experience the process of “consciousness transplant,” which is nearly impossible to experience in the traditional movie experience. Users would be embodied to an avatar at the beginning. Besides, they would be constrained onto a physical wheelchair at the beginning, which aims to mirror the setting in the VR scene to create “presence” immediately. Afterward, the vibe will get weirder and weirder by using sound cues and lighting changing. The main second scene uses abstract graphics to symbolize the stream of consciousness. In the end, the consciousness will be transplanted into a robot.

Classes

The Poetics of Space

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Harmony from Chaos

Sam Chasan

Use fluid motions to control what appears to be a tumultuous ecosystem.

http://www.samuelchasan.com/nature-of-code/

Description

Individuals see their bodies projected on the wall as a simple stick figure that is controlling a whirlwind of particles. As one's motion becomes more rhythmic and calm, beautiful patterns begin to emerge.

Classes

The Nature of Code

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the Crossings 渡

Siman Li

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The Crossings 渡 is a multidimensional installation that uses visual, aural and olfactory interpretation of the buddhist concept relief. Using projection, sound and human body to stimulates the audience’s imagination that is abstract, ancient, futuristic and poetic.

https://www.siman.li/#/-the-crossings/

Description

The Crossings 渡 is a sculpture that in the shape of both mountain and artist's own body, with projection of seasons changes animation that represents the changes happen in life. While the animation changes, the sculpture itself seems to change in form, and provoking the audience's different emotions.

Inspired by the ancient Chinese landscape painting style, this work is a visual, aural and olfactory interpretation of the Buddhist concept —relief. Using the technique of 3D scanning, the body of the artist was captured, broke down and deformed into the shape of landscape. The 3D model was used to generate physical simulation animation to represent four seasons, using different color, form and dynamic to stimulates the audience’s imagination that is abstract, ancient, futuristic and poetic.

This work is a continuation of the artist’s exploration into the examination of traditional Chinese aesthetic and philosophy, by extracting, exploring and extending the core elements within a contemporary discourse without being bound by the formal restraints of tradition.

Classes

Thesis

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Panopticon

Barak Chamo, Tong Wu

A surveilling installation that confronts the audience with the panopticon of digital age

http://tongwumedia.com/blog/panopticon

Description

In the age of mass surveillance and commoditized information, we are all, willingly or not, constantly watched. Our devices, online presence, transaction history and even physical presence have become an asset for social network, world governments and corporations to own.

Panopticon is an interactive media sculpture that breaks the illusion of privacy and control of our digital identity and physical presence. Multiple camera rigs monitor users throughout the exhibition space, tracking and capturing their faces, and collecting the facial data to be projected on a semi-torus sculpture. The installation is inspired by the system of control of the same name, which was designed to use the least watchman to monitor the behavior of all inmates, and is aiming to reflect the fact that, when being watched by these “Big Brothers”, we have no where to hide.

Classes

Live Image Processing and Performance, Nothing: Creating Illusions

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Living Canvas

Nathier Fernandez, Shreiya Chowdhary

Living canvas is a living sculpture. A map that explores [ITP] cohabitation and the impact of a shared microbiota. Its main purpose is to visualize the invisible organisms and recognize patterns through data, sample collection and [bio] material.

http://www.nathier.com/living-canvas-update-1/

Description

How can we make the invisible visible? How can we make our approach to microbes and bacteria more amicable and meaningful? How to spark a healthy discussion? Art could help take away the “ick” around this organisms and change the way we relate to them. Living canvas is a map that explores [ITP] cohabitation and the impact of a shared microbiota. Its main purpose is to visualize the invisible organisms and recognize patterns through data recollection, sample collection and [bio] material.

Classes

BioDesigning the Future of Food

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Five to Nine

Brandon Newberg, Kimberly Lin

Partying is a way to not only escape society’s norms but to form oneself, and a broader culture, in opposition to it. Five to Nine shows that this otherworldly place is a state of mind that can arise whenever we choose, even at our nine to five.

Description

In order to expose the illusion of social norms we live with, we aim to create a space within a space, one where a different set of norms exists. Through examining nightlife as a means of challenging our habitus, we are creating an installation that evokes that sense of fantasy and alternative reality that can come at night.

Using a parabolic umbrella, leds, a speaker, and headphones, the project carves out its own universe. All of these elements are intended to be directional and can only be fully absorbed when inside of the space.

Classes

Nothing: Creating Illusions