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Facebox

Hayk Mikayelyan, Tanic Nakpresha

When a service is free, you are not the customer. You are the product!

https://

Description

Facebook is currently one of the most valuable companies in the world. We may ask, is that value derived? In fact, billions of daily active users pay nothing to access the platform, moreover, no matter how much they use it. It’s completely free. Although, the money comes from ads. Facebook sells ads based on info it knows about you. That is core of the business. To think otherwise is insane. The primary point is this: When a service is free, you are not the customer. You are the product. If you don’t want to be the product, do not sign up in the first place, or do not load a bunch of personal data in the expectations that it will be kept private. Nick Tanic and I come up with an idea of representing the notion of “You are the product” using the actual product box with hidden camera and user data collection.

Classes

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Breath We Live

Ella Chung

Breathe We Live is an interactive meditation experience that awakens the reflection of the human relationship with nature through breathing.

http://www.ellachung.com/breathwelive

Description

Breathe We Live is an interactive installation that presents the invisible connection between human and natural environment through shedding lights on the activity of breathing. The invisible exchange of oxygen is brought into the projection of the natural world and human connection. The breathing sensors track the user in real time of their breathing frequency, and the interaction with the plants will help the user to meditate and slow down their breathing. The goal of this installation is to encourage us to rethink our connection and responsibility towards nature. The installation invites people to pay close attention to their body through a session of breathing meditation practice. I created a meditative space, with embedded interactive components, that enables intimate experience between viewers and the natural environment. Only one or two people can enter the space at a time. The installation uses human breath as an input to produce corresponding visuals in real-time. A Kinect camera mounted inside the space will detect the user’s movement to provide a false feedback loop for breathing, when the user is moving and breathing too fast, the visual and music will slow down to give the user feedback to breathe slower. According to my research about mediation, walking through nature is one of the best ways to relieve stress. I wanted to create a meditative space for people to understand their breathing activity and their close relationship to nature. I hope the experience helps the users to reflect their relationship with the current state of nature.

Classes

Thesis

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The Waiting Room

Lydia Jessup

A rare VR artifact dated around 2025 from one of the underground virtual “waiting speakeasies” that popped up when waiting was eliminated for society’s elites.

https://www.lydiajessup.me/synthetic-architectures/2019/4/27/final-presentation-and-feedback

Description

The Waiting Room is a speculative VR piece about a future without waiting. It is presented to the immersent as an artifact from 2025 when waiting was eliminated for society’s elites, and in response, people began to design underground waiting experiences. Immersents are placed in an absurd waiting room that evokes a doctor’s office where they can interact with the most mundane and repetitive parts of waiting experiences.

This piece is motivated by the fact that as a society we are surrounded by more and stimuli and less frequently “do nothing.” Even waiting, which used to be filled with daydreaming is now filled with scrolling through our smartphones. It imagines a world in which automation and AI have become so extreme that the wealthier social classes no longer have to wait for anything.

This piece is based on research on the psychology of slowing down and boredom, the psychology of waiting in lines, waiting design (formally known as service design) and waiting narratives in art. Neuroscientists have found that when we are “doing nothing” our brain goes into what is called the “default network,” which plays an important part in connecting ideas and experiences in our brain. This piece asks what we stand to lose and what we gain from advances in technology and what the unintended consequences could be.

Classes

Synthetic Architectures

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Introduction to Surveillance Technology & How to Avoid It

Anna Gudnason, Jiwon Shin

A easy to read zine that covers surveillance technologies for the general audience.

https://

Description

Privacy and security are important issues that many (the general public in particular) fail to fully comprehend mostly because the terminology can be too complicated, technical or just sound dry. Our aim with Introduction to Surveillance Series is to educate the mass public about these surveillance systems in order to allow people to protect their privacy better. We do this with simple diagrams and pictures to illustrate topics that can be complicated in nature. We provide analogies to encourage better understanding.

This zine series was done for our final project for Veillance class. While we understand ITP’s reasonings behind not putting similar projects in the same room, we believe in the case of these class projects for Veillance, each project from the class would go well together in the same room as each project compliments each other, building it up into a bigger whole (composed of separate parts). So we would like to request to be put in the same space as the other veillance projects. Thank You!

Classes

Veillance

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Wander Compass

David Azar

Wander Compass is a wearable that takes you to streets where you've never been before.

https://wander-compass.herokuapp.com/

Description

We are creatures of habit. Our everyday commute is the same, and we tend not to take a longer, more scenic route in order to prioritize efficiency and time. In that process, we don't see beautiful, unpredictable things that contribute to our creative subconscious.

But what if there was something to nudge us to make a change, even for a few minutes, and help us discover unique spots and places around the city?

Wander Compass is a wearable that goes around the back of your neck. It connects to your phone via Bluetooth and tracks your GPS location. Whenever you reach an intersection, the compass will vibrate on the back of your head or on either sides of your neck to indicate you where to go next. It keeps a record of the streets that you've visited, so it will always take you to a new location.

Classes

Homemade Hardware, Playful Experiences, Quantified Humanists: Designing Personal Data

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White Mountain, Black Water

Chenhe Zhang, Yves Pokakunkanon

An installation that explores the characteristics of water and utilizes them to create interactive music experiences.

https://http://chenhezhangnickitp.hosting.nyu.edu/music-interaction-design/music-interaction-design-10th-week/

Description

Inspired by 'Water Pachinko' by Hara Kenya, 'White Mountain, Black Water' is an attempt on brining regular everyday substance to life.

In this project, we study the characteristics of water movement and its potential to create sound. By letting water drops traveling down through a white canvas that has small pins attached to it as obstacles, the water drops can either change direction, multiply into several drops or combine with other drops each time they hit the pins. This allows the water drops to move around vividly, putting life into it.

A microphone is installed next to the bowl below the canvas to collect the sound of the water dropping and use it as one of the sound sources. A camera will track the pace and positions of each water drops, turn them into numbers which will be translated into Midi notes. Each time water is being dropped to the canvas, it will make different sounds, emphasizing the uniqueness in movement of each water drop.

User will be able to use water as a musical instrument and perform with it while enjoying organic sounds created by water, mixed with electronic melodies that represent far-east style instrumental music.

Classes

Music Interaction Design

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After Life

Chenshan Gao, Rui An

A VR experience about after life

https://www.frankshammer42.me/after-life

Description

After Life is a VR experience, a progression that depicts a person’s journey from death to reincarnation. For all the things we meditate about reincarnation or even death itself, memory is the one concept we can’t escape. Where does a person’s memory go, when he or she is dead? Does it die with the person, or continues to exist to help him or her navigate to the next life? And if reincarnation is real, where is the memory of our previous lives? After Life is the manifestation of our speculations about death and reincarnation and their relationships with our memory, in the medium of virtual reality.

Classes

Synthetic Architectures

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Haptic Watch

Antonio Guimaraes

Tell time through your sense of touch by feeling the vibration patterns of a haptic motor.

https://

Description

This wearable device is a haptics-only watch powered by a small battery, and a Gema microcontroler. The case is 3D printed and holds the electronics inside. When a button is pushed, a haptics motor will vibrate in a pattern to tell the wearer the time in hours and minutes.

Classes

Intro to Wearables

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You Are Not Broken

Raaziq Brown

You Are Not Broken is a virtual environment and physical display showcasing select pieces of digital artwork and paintings that I made during my 100 Days of Broken Fluidity.

https://https://vimeo.com/334464350

Description

We are one and one is us. We live our lives selfishly – as if we are the only entity that exists. Lost in our own isolation and narcissism, we often forget that we are mere specks in a larger system and environment that we cannot nearly fathom. This reality is true for all other things around us, as well. I have created the visual concept of ‘Broken Fluidity’ to serve as a metaphor for this phenomenon. I use cylindrical figures, also referred to as ‘pieces’ or ‘pipes’, to create and recreate wholes that exist within society. These wholes can range from words to blatant abstractions to cartoon characters, but each work is representative of the idea that many distinct pieces, aspects, and qualities come together to create what we perceive as complete entities.

In You Are Not Broken, I use the medium of virtual reality to create an interactive experience that takes users on an adventure through an environment completely inspired by Broken Fluidity. With pathways created out of BF pieces and 3 gallery rooms presenting Masud’s digital artwork, this experience will serve as a showroom for the emerging artist. Tapping into abstraction, nostalgia, and representation of oppressed groups, Brown’s work displayed in You Are Not Broken takes a step into his mind and discipline during a time in which he studied Broken Fluidity for 100 straight days. The declaration that ‘You Are Not Broken’ is intended to reinforce the idea that no individual is shattered, defeated, or fragmented, but instead, each individual is an essential piece of the larger whole which we consider the universe.

Classes

100 Days of Making, The Poetics of Space

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Color Crazy

Cameron Partee

iOS augmented reality application aimed at familiarizing people with AR also while having fun.

https://www.cammyp.com/color-crazy

Description

The concept of this game is to prompt a user to tap on specific things placed around them in their environment. Ideally a user would play this when ever they get bored or whenever they want to see something cool.

Classes

The Poetics of Space