Category Archives: Class

Heather Greer

Passlet

Shilpan Bhagat

Passlet puts the world at your fingertips. It tracks the things you interact with physically on a daily basis allowing you to create reactive, self aware objects and build intuitive and interesting applications with it.

Description

Our body speaks a language of touch. We hold things we want to use, hug the people we love and feel the things we are curious about. Passlet is a technology that understands this language and assists you. Imagine your toothbrush tracking its own use, or your milk carton aware it's empty. What if the sandwich you picked up knew you and paid for itself without you going to the counter? With Passlet comes an era of self aware objects which act based on your touch. It works on the principle of capacitive coupling allowing data to be transferred seamlessly through your body onto objects and vice versa. Passlet is a wearable which hides in the background allowing for smarter and more meaningful interactions with our physical world.

Nancy Hechinger

Maker SynBio: Empowering Biodevelopers with Automation

Will Canine

I have developed a new open, automated, and easy way of creating novel genetic constructs using the OpenTrons robotic lab platform. My goal is to bring synthetic biology to the maker movement and accelerate the development of biotechnology.

Description

Today, it is much easier to design genetic pathways than to prototype and test them. Complicated, finicky, time consuming lab work is one of the biggest barriers to more rapid biotech innovation. An affordable, open synthetic biology automation system is the solution to this problem.

By combining the OpenTrons automation platform, Genomikon DNA prototyping protocol, and Synbiota open science hub, I was able to create such a system. This stack of technologies allows users to design DNA in software, run an automated assembly protocol to produce their plasmid design, and then share it with others. The whole thing costs less than $3000. We are poised to empower biodevelopers everywhere with the power of digitally controlled lab automation!

Gabe Barcia-Colombo

Whale

Sonia Li

Interactive multichannel sound installation strongly rooted in humanity. An environment where one experiences oneself, heavily influenced by the user’s own psychology. User lays in darkness, experiences bodily vibrations and immersive sound field.

Description

User enters an enclosed space in complete darkness with vibrating bed to lay on, surrounded by four speakers, experiences waves of vibration through the body. A microphone attached to bed. When speaking into microphone, user’s voice triggers different whale sounds.
Sound: material in context of sculpture. In using techniques to sculpt and spatialize sound, it creates a sonic sound field, one feels “enveloped” & “immersed”.
Using scientific properties of whale, I'm making a direct & metaphoric correlation bt. the physical mass & strength, longevity & complexity of songs & the ocean, their natural habitat, to my deeper self & inner strength.
Since the user doesn't know me nor how I feel, one ultimately experiences oneself through me.

Nancy Hechinger

Tunnel Vision

William Lindmeier

Tunnel Vision turns any NYC subway subway map into an interactive experience. Point your phone at an official MTA map and bring it to life with data about the subway, the city, and the people who live here.

http://tunnelvisionapp.com

Description

The image of the MTA subway map is distinctive and ubiquitous throughout New York. Tunnel Vision uses the map as a platform to explore the city through data-visualization. The app pulls data from a variety of sources and seamlessly integrates them into the map by drawing over the camera feed.

When a rider is waiting for the subway, she points her phone at the map to activate Tunnel Vision. The map comes to life with animations that add context to the ridership experience. By simply moving the phone around the map, she can explore many kinds of data including turnstile activity, rent prices, income, etc..

Tunnel Vision adds a layer of insight to a familiar image.

Heather Greer

TACTUS

Steve Cordova

Tactus is a wearable device that gives the user the ability to identify, feel, and touch color.

Description

Tactus is a wearable device worn on the wrist that interprets color and sends the user a tactile response. Think of it as braille for color. Using either a smartphone or the embedded sensors on the device, color values are translated to a electromagnetic wave that creates a sensation on the users finger. The device can be used by both visually impaired people and those looking to augment their own senses. It creates a new sensory modality for the user and more importantly the ability to not only see art, but feel it.

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.

Katherine Dillon

Tiya

Su Hyun Kim

Tiya is my experimentation towards finding physical manifestation of the emoji language usually seen only on screens. It's a mobile app paired with robotic ears that are programmed to deliver physical interaction when somebody sends you a message.

http://www.mytiya.com

Description

Tiya, the messenger, works hard to deliver emotions between you and your close ones. Tiya utilizes graphic expression in conjunction with physical expression. My goal is to create a different interface other than verbal to find out if we can communicate emotions effectively. I was influenced by the common use of emoticons over social media. Tiya is a mobile app that comes with built-in robotic ears with a messaging mobile app. Once you open the application, your smart phone becomes this creature, Tiya. You can pet it or give different kind of gesture to communicate with the other person who is using this app. Tiya will become a shared pet between two users and start to develop a relationship with people who are taking care of her.

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.

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

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.