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Nancy Hechinger

FLOW

Zhenzhen Qi

FLOW is a biofeedback-based 3D Virtual Reality game. Employing a VR headset, wearable sensor, and interactive gaming design, it creates a journey, through self-reflection, to detach from the physicality surrounding us.

Description

FLOW's VR headset and breath sensor system temporarily transports a participant into an alternative virtual world in the hustle and bustle of city traffic, human voices talking, laughing, arguing. Gradually, as the participant’s breath starts to deepen, the city noises are replaced by a soothing binaural sound-wave. The entire city is slowly submerged under an endless ocean gently coming to shore. The opaque sky of stress is washed away by the mild glow of sunset. Through deepened breathing, the participant manifests his or her inner calmness into a virtual sanctuary sustained by wondrous aesthetic harmony.

Nancy Hechinger

Where Animals Live

Yuliya Parshina

A portable exhibit that gets kids ages 4 to 7 excited about geography and wildlife, through physical exploration of a giant world map.

http://www.whereanimalslive.com/

Description

Where Animals Live is a roaming experience that pops up in parks, playgrounds, schoolyards, and block parties, to bring delight and spark curiosity about the natural world.

Participants explore a 20 ' x 12 ' world map and use clues to help lost animals return home, while becoming familiar with continents, oceans, and habitats. Electronics embedded in the animals provide real-time feedback when the creature is placed correctly. Young explorers walk away with booklets about their favorite animals, which can be used for further learning online.

An accompanying website prepares kids for the adventure through practice exercises and encourages deeper learning after the in-person activity.

Gabe Barcia-Colombo

Push For Fame

Yu-Ting Feng

Push for Fame collects stories about people in the form of a snapshot. The installation consists of a button, a camera and a screen. People take pictures of themselves, capturing and broadcasting their own stories at that time and place.

Description

"In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes," said Andy Warhol.
Push For Fame is an interactive window display inspired by Warhol's quote.
It uses three basic elements – a button, a screen, and a camera –
to engage people to take pictures in five different public locations,
with the goal of encouraging people from diverse backgrounds to actively engage with their surrounding environments.
Push For Fame shows the egalitarian nature of public art and self-portraits in different public spaces.
I am using these four local design projects to explore different methods of encouraging people to express themselves and contribute to local discourse across languages, through their own self-portraits.

Kathy Wilson

AQUA-BRIDGE

Youjin Shin

AQUA-BRIDGE is a web-based Information Communication Technology platform to help solve drinking water purification problems in Kiwalani, Tanzania by allowing effective communication with well water filter users and monitoring filter performance.

http://www.aqua-bridge.org/

Description

Tackling drinking water issues in developing countries with well filters has largely failed due to the limited field data on how successful the filters have been in reducing disease. Part of the problem has been ineffective communication between filter users in local villages and the project managers monitoring the filters. AQUA-BRIDGE will develop a streamlined system for logging water quality and communicating results between filter users and project managers via text messaging. In addition, a system of data visualization will be developed for project managers to use in data analysis and the public to view on the web.

Heather Greer

White Box Emergency Communications

Pilar Zaragoza

White Box Emergency Communications is a radio-based emergency communications system that is accessible, affordable, and easy to use that can be deployed when modern communication methods are down during a disaster.

Description

Modern communication methods rely heavily on cell phone towers and internet connections, which, during disasters are either offline or reserved for emergency response and disaster management. How can survivors communicate their location and get the supplies they need? White Box Emergency Communications aims to solve this problem by repurposing an existing protocol, automatic packet reporting system (APRS), developed by the amateur radio community for emergency communications. By making APRS more accessible, affordable, and easy to use, it allows responders to see status updates, view GPS coordinates, and communicate independently with survivors via this long-established wireless technology.

Nancy Hechinger

Twinkle’s Vacation

Yang Jiang

Twinkle is a whimsical camera that has left his owner to start his very own vacation – a journey to discover himself in this big world. As he travels, he invites others to help him discover the duality of moments both transient and enduring.

Description

For me, photography is more than a hobby or a career. My camera travels with me always, helping to get at the essence of others at particular moments in time..not a cold machine or emotionless object. But I am so busy at ITP, I can't travel. My camera was restless. I thought: what if my camera could go on a journey alone and experience the world in its own unique way? I created Twinkle, a cute hand-made, programmable camera built with a Raspberry Pi. Twinkle travels the world, meets people, and invites them to help him document moments of life, both transient and enduring. Twinkle sends me photos of his journey and the moments he's encountered while I'm stuck at work. In this way, my camera becomes an extension of my vision once again.

Gabe Barcia-Colombo

Sukhavati

Yang Wang

An art installation that creates a virtual reality world for people to encounter and become spectators of themselves.

http://sukhavati.be/

Description

Using an Oculus Rift headset, Kinect and EEG sensor, Sukhavati creates a virtual world that allows the viewer to observe her/himself from an alternate angle. The viewer is immersed in a parallel reality that resembles the same physical room the viewer sits in, quietly observing his/her own image composed from thousands of pixel particles. When the viewer loses the state of deep relaxation, his/her self-image transforms into numerous particles that flows freely in the room.

Sukhavati is an exploration about the question "What is the true-self? Is that possible for people to live without ego?"

Nancy Hechinger

x.pose

Xuedi Chen

In the realm of data, we are naked all the time. x.pose is a wearable data-driven sculpture that reveals a person's skin as a real-time reflection of the data emissions that they are producing.

Description

As a generation, we are tethered to connected data-producing devices which are in a constant cycle of production and consumption of data. My electronic devices make me an implicit participant in this cycle while I'm largely unaware of how my metadata is being consumed. Could someone construct a clear image of me from my data emissions? How would that look? x.pose explores the vulnerable nature of the relationship we share with our data. I have collected my own geolocation data over time to use as the basis for a personalized generative couture mesh armature that reacts to the trails of information that I produce. As data emissions are collected, the more transparent and exposed I will become.

Katherine Dillon

Markdown Graphics

Xinran Wang

A Markdown extension, in the form of a web-based editor, that enables users to create both text and graphics for the web, in a single platform.

http://markdown.graphics/

Description

Currently, off-the-shelf Markdown editors support plain text editing only. Markdown Graphics enables users to create and edit graphics right at the location where they are inserted, which provides a much more cohesive composing experience for creating content for the web. In addition, Markdown Graphics supports diagram component tagging, allowing diagram and text to be styled by a single stylesheet. Also, diagrams created and stored in SVG will be web-publishing-friendly and light-weight. Thus, content creators, journalists and notetakers can communicate ideas on the web much more efficiently.

Katherine Dillon

Fluid Geometry

Wyna Liu

A set of sculptures that explore the interconnectedness of two-dimensional polygonal shapes, and the qualities that emerge through repetition and behavior of material in three-dimensional space.

Description

These sculptures are my personal meditation on geometry and form. When the rules governing the symmetry and perfection of polygons and polyhedra are subject to extrinsic factors such as gravity and material properties, they lose their rigidity and begin to display a diversity of movement and behavior that resemble those found in the natural world. These simple shapes are essential to the creation of forms in nature at every scale. Fluid Geometry is my attempt to build from these elements and explore their intrinsic possibilities. Inspired by traditions of craft and learning through physical practice, each sculpture consists of hundreds to thousands of “two-dimensional” pieces, hand assembled to create an object in three dimensions.