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Heather Greer

What’s your secret?

Tianran Qian

“What’s Your Secret” is an augmented reality installation that shares the stories of elderly woman. In the installation, the audience is presented with boxes and mementos, each with a live portrait and objects of the subject.

Description

Have you ever been touched by a beautiful smile of an older woman? It is the smiles that draws me in, making me curious about their life stories. What is it that they know that I don’t about life? What lessons can they share?
Since we live in such a busy time, can we get some wisdom from someone growing old gracefully?

My hope is that other women in similar life circumstances – young but starting to have to make adult decisions, living in cities, with the world seemingly ahead of us – can learn something from them.

The stories revealed in "What's Your Secret", share life's experiences – good and bad – and give people a choice of hearing the different parts of the story over time.

Nancy Hechinger

Roving Spectres

Wen Lei Ng

Roving Spectres is a traveling shadow theater. Taking inspiration from shadow puppetry, traveling tent shows, and physical computing, this project weaves narrative worlds out of nothing but light and shadow.

Description

In Roving Spectres, shadow and illumination serve as both performative and participatory mediums . A glowing suitcase containing kinetic paper sculptures, a performative glove, an emotive light umbrella — these re-appropriated objects transform into the performer's 'co-actors'. Each object is woven into a series of imaginary landscapes through their interactions with the performer.

With a suitcase, Roving Spectres brings the magic of live theatre to the people where they least expect it.

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.

Heather Greer

From The Dark

Surya Mattu

Anonymous data is a myth. From The Dark is a project that offers insight into the hidden mechanisms & power struggles within our current communications infrastructure. It brings to light the data we generate with our smart devices & what it reveals.

Description

Edward Snowden's NSA document leaks in 2013 ignited the public conversation around a national and global surveillance culture, verifying much of what security professionals have been saying for the past two decades. Corporations and governments have access to a previously unprecedented amount of personal data. I investigated how this data is accumulated, how it's used, and how we can better understand our current technological environment. There is inherent value in making these processes more transparent, as a way to inform people's choices and help them engage in this conversation.

Nancy Hechinger

LifeStrand: A Musical Self-Portrait

Negar Behbahani

If I were an instrument, what kind would it be? How would it be played? What are its tones? Its moods? What would I reveal to a new player or one who played me many times?

Description

My thesis project is a musical sculpture and self-portrait based on my nature, body, memory and background, told through the universal language of a music.
The instrument/sculpture's key features are the sound, the screen, and the hair, which has played an important role in all aspects of my life. My instrument connects with the intimate experience of touching my hair, and is a different and new experience, playing and hearing a poetic and feminine instrument.

It's for a general art audience for presentation in an art space.

Katherine Dillon

Pippin

Valerie Chen

Pippin is a themed hard cider bar that recreates a series of historical periods significant to the story of cider in America. As patrons navigate the space and engage in symbolic gestures, they experience being a different person in a different time.

Description

Apple trees are extreme heterozygotes: when grown from seed, instead of inheriting the characteristics of their parents, the traits of the new generation are wildly unpredictable. These capricious offspring are called pippins. Likewise, Pippin is a pop-up cider bar that takes on unpredictable forms. The entire space moves through three themes: an indoor garden paradise, a frontier log cabin, and an underground speakeasy. The themes correspond with historical moments that shaped the complicated relationship between Americans and the practice of drinking alcohol. The designs for Pippin's first iteration have been brought to life as a navigable digital environment where users can experience what such a place might look and feel like.

Heather Greer

Decode Delhi

Tarana Gupta

Decode Delhi is a crowd-sourced social platform to quantify the city of Delhi. The goal is to develop a digital assistant that can help a person navigate and discover various aspects of the city while traveling safely from one point to another.

http://taranagupta.com/#/decode-delhi/

Description

Security is supposed to come from government agencies but in countries like India, with large and crowded cities like Delhi, it is hard to ensure safety.

With the growth of Internet and access to smartphones, opportunities have arisen to harness collective efforts of citizens who can improve quality of life in cities by simply disseminating the information they already have.

Through crowdsourced data, Decode Delhi makes an attempt to improve the experience of living in Delhi – the political and cultural capital of India- especially for girls and women. It covers three major aspects of navigation: safety level of different neighborhoods, knowledge of interesting places and street smart tips from fellow Delhiiets.

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

Qaramon

Wajma Mohseni

Qaramon, which means "Champion" in Farsi, is a game aimed at future leaders of Afghanistan to increase awareness on corruption by enhancing player knowledge in a fun, interactive environment.

Description

In 2013, Afghanistan was declared the third most corrupt nation in the world. Corruption is so pervasive that paying a bribe has become part of daily life. Qaramon is a game that draws attention to the problems of corruption, which affects everyone, by increasing awareness and consciousness among future Afghan leaders, or the 15-20 year old age group. Each level tackles issues including ethics, reconstruction and economics, and allows players to control game direction while keeping the consequences of their actions clear through changing game dynamics, such as body shape and landscape. The final level utilizes collective scores to unify players to achieve a common goal, creating a cohesive system that encourages teamplay and collaboration.

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.