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EatYou-Gathering Restaurant Recommendation App

Share food! Share joy! I am designing a food-ordering app that tailors generated order to meet customer preference.

Sihao Chen

https://not.ready.yet

Description

The app EatYou aims to integrate food and Internet technology in a new way, so that each foodie can understand their own unique features, care about the taste of friends around them, thus smoothly bring foodies back offline to dinners at the help of interesting web technology to reach the final goal: Share food. Share joy. Believing in the irreplaceable joy of face to face, the app takes the advantage of effective online information exchange and summary, in order to facilitate and generate delightful gatherings.

IMA/IMB Shanghai
Capstone Studio (Shanghai)
ToolService
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Behind The Screen

The project is a multimedia interactive installation, taken inspiration from the social media app Instagram, that aims to reveal the negative user experiences that are evoked by social media, including the pressure towards overexposure of user privacy and the anxiety towards the distancing of a social-media self and a true self.

Linjie Kang

https://youtu.be/aT0pH1rIzq8

Description

The project is a multimedia interactive installation, taken inspiration from the social media app Instagram, that aims to reveal the negative feelings that are evoked by social media, including the pressure towards overexposure of user privacy and the anxiety towards the distancing of a social-media self and a true self. Simulating the browsing of Instagram user posts, the project basically detects the existence of audiences and responds accordingly, as the more people come to visit it, the messer the installation will end up, because the infrared detection trigger system is connected to spray painters.

In our age, there’s no way for one to escape from social media. It is true that social media brings convenience to our daily life, however, with it also come various negative experiences. The vague boundary of privacy and publicity in social media which makes people feel insecure and overly exposed has long been a heated discussion, while the forming sharing and posting culture on social media has forced people to go through a self-filtration process where people gradually start to fake themselves on their personal accounts. Due to these reasons, it is common for people to live a masked life on social media where only beautiful looking things are recorded, while the true self that is behind the screen is often hidden.

Based on this life experience, the installation aims to reveal the true anxious emotions people are having that are hidden behind the screen and unseen on social media. The installation explores the exposure of privacy through social media by turning the once virtual and personal information largely public, and it physicalizes the two-folded life people are having online and offline, making the once internal emotions and pressures external and visible to all.

IMA/IMB Shanghai
Capstone Studio (Shanghai)
Art,Social Good/Activism
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Trinity

A series of electronic music composition centers on a numerological idea of the number 3.

Tong Wu

https://nyu.zoom.us/j/95950394007?pwd=dTVVVHdBWjY0cy9BbUhwOXhEV3BtQT09

Description

Trinity is an electronic music composition that I composed for my capstone project. The idea of this project initially comes from the number “three”. “Three”is a very crucial idea in the world of numerology. Besides, it has so many derivatives that have been commonly used in our daily life. The term “trinity” itself is derived from the number three, and it has a fundamental influence in the world of religions, especially the Catholic church. The term Trinity has long influenced the world and it has also appeared in some popular culture phenomenon regrading religious studies. For example, Trinity is a major female character in the Matrix franchise. Speaking of that franchise, it is seemingly to tell the story of the Bible in a brand-new way with characters that has biblical or theological references, such as Neo, Morpheus, etc. The term three is also very common in other forms of art, such as theatre, where three-act is a common form to write a play with. It also exists in the realm of other performance arts, such as magic/illusion, where the most ubiquitous way of performing a magic trick consists of three parts, i.e., firstly, revelation, which is the part you show something, secondly, vanishing, which is the part you let something disappear, and thirdly, the prestige, where the vanished object reappear in the most astonishing way. So, in response to these interesting phenomena, I composed three different compositions based on the same theme. I’m trying to put the limit of one theme and show the different moods that the variations of one theme can produce.

IMA/IMB Shanghai
Capstone Studio (Shanghai)
Performance,Art
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PetGo

An application designed to provide tailored taxi service specifically for pets and pet owners

Xinye Jiang

https://wp.nyu.edu/xinyejiang/2020/05/12/ima-capstone-video-link/

Description

In 2019, China’s market for pet-related businesses generated a revenue of 190 billion yuan or 30 billion US dollars. At present, there is estimated to be 248 million pet dogs alone across the entire country. Chinese pet owners spend approximately 5000 yuan or 700 US dollars yearly on their pets. This presents a good opportunity for a pet-related business to establish itself. The project is an app that is centered around providing transport service that is centered around the convenience and safety of pets and pet owners. At present, ride-sharing apps like Didi do not have explicit policies about pets riding in their cars. Therefore, pet owners looking to travel with their pets are often faced with the inconvenience of having to communicate with the driver first which can be a complicated, anxiety-riddling, and stressful process. Some customers are flat out rejected, while some customers are asked to pay exorbitant fees to allow their pets to ride in the car. Some owners are concerned about the safety and comfort of their pets because they often have to adjust to the size of the car, instead of the other way around. This creates a unique opportunity to provide a transport service that will fill this potentially lucrative niche. The project, since it is similar to a ride-sharing app, will serve as an intermediary between drivers and customers. The goal is to ensure that both drivers and customers are happy with the price that is set for the service. Additionally, to add to the convenience of the customers, safety and comfort features for them and their pets will be provided in the form of pet car seats and pet safety belts. Some cars may also be fitted to have a bigger space for transport of large pets. Pet owners will not necessarily have to ride with their pets as the project is looking to partner with grooming and pet shops and veterinary services and hospitals to provide pet transport service for the convenience and safety of pets and their pet owners. Customers will be assured that their pets are safe because the service is ran by pet owners and is for pet owners.

IMA/IMB Shanghai
Capstone Studio (Shanghai)
Art,Product Design
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<delete>

distortion of the self through datamoshing

Julia Ann Myers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56X5L-M8jYM&feature=youtu.be

Description

Using digital photographs with strong attachments to my sense of self, I created photoshopped collages using processes of datamoshing to distort and transform images. Digital photography represents a myriad of choices reflecting how we want to be perceived, from how we “perform” for the camera to which images we choose to keep, edit and share. These images form our sense of identity, informing us of how others view us and how we want to be viewed. Using images with strong connections to my personal identity, I was able to retake agency over the photos and reclaim the part of my identity associated with the images. This process of deleting data created additional meaning, transforming my connotations with certain photos and memories.

IMA/IMB Shanghai
Capstone Studio (Shanghai)
Art
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One Free Click

To make recycling appropriated content on Kuaishou easier for grassroots digital creative entrepreneurs, a website connected to an auto-editing service and a video database is developed to help them survive on the video platform.

Yufeng Zhao

https://studio.youtube.com/video/XAiOpUtHbV0/edit

Description

One Free Click is an interactive website that showcases trending yet replicable Kuaishou videos within selected hashtags and generates auto-edited derivative videos, ready to upload with a single click. This project is inspired by the structural practice of video reproduction on Kuaishou, the leading short video platform in China.

Kuaishou is known for the unabashed earthiness of its contents and its encouragement for mass entrepreneurship by means of monetization of digital content. On Kuaishou, in order to speed up the production and bring down the cost, there are a large group of videos that are reproductions of existing ones. Many reproduce the same plots, scenes or lines, and some are just collages or re-edits of existing videos. However, thanks to Kuaishou’s delicately curated recommendation system, the lack of content originality does not affect the publicity of the videos in attracting new audiences to the publishing accounts. Such workflows are often passed down from established Kuaishou influencers to newcomers through self-run mentorship programs.

One Free Click is a piece of web art as well as a product designed for newcomers to the Kuaishou business. The entry page presents a collection of videos under a few popular tags among the reproduction practice. Under each tag, a condensed view of the existing corpus is shown in order to quickly familiarize the user with its creative context. While unveiling the phenomenon, it also responds with an automated editing workflow for simple video reproduction, free of charge to average Kuaishou users struggling with mechanical labor and hassles in their mobile editing software. With a click of a button, it generates a random video from a database of existing ones for immediate downloading and publishing. It aims to provoke thoughts in China’s landscape of fast-entertainment, mass entrepreneurship, and the ecosystem for content creators.

IMA/IMB Shanghai
Capstone Studio (Shanghai)
Culture,Tool\\\\Service
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Bystander

Examining Forward Head Posture Prevalence Among University Students:

Introducing Kinect and Social Media Platform as Visualized and Interactive Solutions

Zexing Li

https://not.ready.yet

Description

Previous researchers have demonstrated the widespread phenomenon of forward head posture (FHP) problem among adults, teenagers, and children primarily caused by faulty posture associated with long hours of exposure to technological devices. With focused studies on university students, a result conducted in universities in Pakistan and Malaysia revealed that “67% of participants were identified with forward head posture while 58.5% were not aware of forward head posture (Ramalingam 791).” The high prevalence but low awareness revealed a need to address the FHP issue in college. The chief purpose of this project “FHP Identifier & Corrector” is to raise awareness and thus resolve the FHP problem among the target audience – university students with interactive approaches and marketing strategies.

Existing products such as posture training devices may only be advertised to the audience who have identified themselves with FHP along with other spine and hunchback problems. In such a market context, previous products could only reach the designated health-conscious consumers, while university students who are unaware of the FHP problem would remain uninformed of the prevalent circumstance of FHP. This project would fill the gap of unreached university students in the current market.

Two mediums are designed and created to achieve the project mission. A visualization installation placed on the university campus would identify students with the FHP problem. A schematic drawing conducted by Kinect would examine participants and, through calculation and algorithms, output the FHP extent (none, mild, severe) of the examinees. Moreover, A follow-up WeChat Mini Program would also be launched as an online tool to provide tutorials and reminders to testees identified with mild or severe FHP issues. It serves to correct the unhealthy FHP with proper exercises and help develop correct posture when using digital devices.

IMA/IMB Shanghai
Capstone Studio (Shanghai)
Health,Education
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台北夢Taipei Dreams

Erase for new interpretation, 台北夢Taipei Dreams is an interactive website that contains more than 50 erased stories of people who have come to Taipei, the capital of Taiwan.

s

https://vimeo.com/418902703

Description

Entering, assimilating, and then reinterpreting, the experience of accommodating to a new city is conceptually aligned with both the technical and poetic process of erasure poetry—a text being encountered, read, and eventually “erased” in forming new interpretations of an existing narrative. Taipei is like no others, but as one index city seems to entail a common metropolitan theme built up with the burdens of people’s ambitions and aspirations on a scale of different visibilities. These stories of “dreams” come from mostly university students/graduates around my age who have moved to Taipei for work or study. With a lot of comparings and imitations in the highly competitive environment, it seems like many are subconsciously living out the stereotypes of what they expected people in Taipei would be like. Perhaps, the biggest stereotype is that Taipei is an absolute place of dream-come-true as they first entered in their own processes of wayfinding, where “dreams” are in fact very much overlapped. The diverse yet homogenized complexity of these stories have to deal with the dynamic between collectivism and individualism. Each story is of one unique person, but comes together as one.

Taking the form of erasure poetry as part of the social practice of this project, I hope to explore the dynamic from a personal perspective. By translating and erasing others’ stories whose original texts were in Traditional Chinese, I have entered a virtual space of the city of embedded dreams, and finding my very own reinterpreted from others’ real life endeavors. The website not only provides a freely explorative experience, but a collection of city experiences, which does not have the magic to achieve one’s dreams, but through interactive engagements invites people to reflect on their own encounters. Through 台北夢, we could be closer to our dreams.

IMA/IMB Shanghai
INTM-SHU.401.1
Capstone Studio (Shanghai)
Culture,Narrative/Storytelling
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Remodeling the Mundane

Building a memory palace with 3D-scanning technologies

Zehua Wang

https://youtu.be/XfIIaKWmHZI

Description

This project is inspired by Fred Dretske’s theory on our ontological development and Derren Brown’s interpretation of the “memory palace”. Dretske argues that information is the core of the development of our “umwelt”, the consciousness of our “self” and the surroundings. He further defines “knowledge” and “perception” as the two main status of our acquired knowledge (Dretske). Derren Brown challenges the interpretation of the “memory palace” merely as a tool for the purpose of memorizing better. He sees the “memory palace” as a virtual space that helps with a more successful spiritual development (Brown).

Many scholars and artists have touched upon either the ontological discussion of the “self” or the various representations of a “memory palace”, but few of them have explored or discussed the privacy nature of these topics. Thus, this project attempts to challenge the long-believed privacy and self-centered nature of the ontological development and explore the possibility of building a “umwelt” shaped from both individual and collective experiences.

The project will be an interpersonal experience in which the audience can both annotating their own memory and experience in a digitalized virtual environment and actively interact with others’ annotations. The project turns physical public space into a digital environment by 3D-scanning the space and reconstructing the environment using photogrammetry. This reconstructed digital environment allows the audience to associate their own memories and experiences with different parts of the environment and annotate the related memories right on the spot. Besides annotating their own memories and experiences, they can also explore others' annotations in this digital environment, leave comments, learn other's experiences and memories, further extend their own memory palace, as well as use them as part of their own spiritual development.

IMA/IMB Shanghai
INTM-SHU.401.3
Capstone Studio (Shanghai)
VR\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\AR,Narrative/Storytelling
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Mirror

Mirror is an animated short film visualizing depressive feelings resulted from extreme self-criticism.

Chenchen Zhou

https://vimeo.com/417160347

Description

Mirror is a digitally-drawn animated film depicting the inner struggle of a person who experiences extreme self-criticism. The initial idea comes from my personal experience of doing self-criticism in an extreme way and ending up with negative feelings. Self-criticism as an objective evaluation of oneself can lead to improvements. However, based on Sigmund Freud’s theory of personality structures, while experiencing extreme self-criticism, the unbalanced psychological parts of an individual can reduce mental well-being. The way I visualize the two conflicting minds of a character over self-criticism is based on how Freud divided one’s personality into psychological parts.

In my depiction, I let my character experience harsh criticism towards his/her self to show how extreme self-criticism can lead to strong depressed feelings. When I was struck by the anguish of criticism, the inner struggle was hard to convey verbally but I perceived it in a visual form. In this project, I turned my visions into a film to convey this chaotic inner state. The black and white visual style fits in the dark tone of the story. There are two conflicting parts inside the character: one part of the character does self-criticism, while the other tries to resist it. The conflict between the two parts is translated into the action of consuming and fighting between a figure outside the mirror and his/her reflection. The figures in my film don’t have distinguished characteristics as I intend to present the self-criticism concept in a universal way. The character can be understood as every person so that audiences can project their feelings onto the film character. The usage of a mirror in the film is inspired by Jacques Lacan’s concept of the mirror stage. As a mirror can reveal the psychological state, in the film, the mirror serves as a trigger for the process of self-criticism.

IMA/IMB Shanghai
INTM-SHU.401.1
Capstone Studio (Shanghai)
Art