Category Archives: Gabe Barcia-Colombo

Jewliebots: open-source programmable jewelry

Maria Paula Saba

Jewliebots introduce software education to teenaged girls in a way that is appealing to them. It is a set of neat jewelry and wearables that girls can program to change their appearance and behavior while they seamlessly learn programming.

Description

Jewliebots is an open source library of wearables that allows users to customize their own electronic jewelry through a graphical interface. The main goal is to engage and increase teenaged girls' interest in the workings of technology by showing them that programming can be also beautiful.
Jewliebots is fashionable and attractive for the target group of 13+. The hardware include LEDs, buttons and sensors that might significantly change aesthetics of the jewel according to the code. The jewel can be customized by generating the algorithms through a block-programming style language, like Scratch, that should be uploaded to the jewel. Circuits are embedded in 3D printed cases, baked polymer clay and laser-cut parts.
http://jewliebots.com

log(me) : vibe calculator

Michelle Cortese

The average human selects 15,000 words to speak each day and lacks a clear concept of their cumulative value; log(me) is a discrete wearable that scans and archives daily speech patterns to visually codify spirit, truth and power.

Description

log(me) falls somewhere between a Nike+ FuelBand for words and a diary for a generation without pens. It's a necklace, small and abstract in design, and an iOS app, discrete and stylish. A reconsideration of the defunct digital diary, log(me) does not wait for written input; instead, it listens for function word patterns and uses their ratios to determine spirit (mood), power (confidence), and truth (honesty). The results live in the app, via three in-app displays: an abstract vibe graph, a stark stats page and an archive. Constantly running, log(me) provides a logarithmic, automated, and chic approach to self reflection.

language #thequalitativeself #fashiontech #privacy #objectivity #reflection #empowerment

Dream Mirror

Norah Solorzano

Physically manifesting my dreams so that others may interact with them.

Description

Dream Mirror is an art installation consisting of a series of animated dioramas depicting different dreamscapes with which the viewer may interact and explore. It is a curiosity cabinet filled with a collection of dream memories. The viewer plays the part of voyeur stealing glances into the dreamworld I have created as the drawers are explored, then ultimately becomes co-architect of this world as their presence affects these dreamscapes. The viewer is given the power of connecting these tableaus into a narrative by exploring them with a tiny camera, each visitor creating their own surreal story out of these dream worlds. The very private experience of dreaming is thereby turned into a public and collaborative experience.

Horizon: A 3D game in 4D space

Omer Shapira

E. Killing lives in a 4D simulation of the 3D world.
It's a recording – everything has already happened.
Her device, The Horizon, reconstructs her world in time slices, like a slit-scan camera.
She needs to find her way out of the simulator.

Description

Horizon is a 4D puzzle game. Every scene in it is a pre-recorded 3D physical reality over a period of time. As Killing moves through the game, she uses the Horizon to select a shift in time to solve her problem – From her perspective it just looks like slit imaging, but she's actually forming a 3D physical space.
When she spots a brick falling from an abandoned building, E. Killing stretches that point in time, extending her perspective from the brick's drop until impact. She has just created a staircase she can climb.
Construction of Horizon required building a new game engine, called the Unruh Engine, which allows rapid recollection of pre-recorded geometry in 4 dimensions onto a coherent 3D scene with all of the usual game mechanics.

Transience

Oscar Klingspor

A multi-channel generative music system controlled by vital statistics of New York.

Description

Transience is a generative composition using statistics of births and deaths in NYC to tell a musical narrative of the city. A multi-channel system of speakers plays musical sounds as a child is born or as a death occurs, representing each borough's data. Variables such as gender, birth, death, and location trigger notes to create a soundscape.

Archetype

Aaron Sherwood

Archetype is an immersive audio/visual installation that explores basic patterns I see in the world.

Description

I find myself (and the world) in a constant, continuous state of change, comprised of ricocheting, interdependent phenomena, that are ultimately beyond my control. My thesis is an expression of this, realized in a generative audio/visual installation. Images are projected onto three vertical 6' x 3.5' pieces of translucent paper hanging from the ceiling, arranged in a circle. Depending on where people stand, the alignment of the screens will be different and different combinations of images between the three screens will emerge. Four audio speakers are placed in a larger circle surrounding the screens.

The Art of Living

Alexandra Coym

A smart remote scheduling device for setting daily reminders to make life more comfortable for people living at home with early-stage Alzheimer's.

Description

There is no cure for Alzheimer's, and most available devices that aim at making daily tasks easier are intrusive for the daily routine and a constant reminder of the disease the person lives with. 'The Art of Living' seamlessly integrates this technology into people's everyday lives. Family caregivers can set up reminders through the web and upload images and sounds that, in line with recent medical research, can subconsciously trigger memories and thus enable the person to remember things on there own (e.g. make a phone call), leaving them feeling empowered and independent. Environmental sensors in the home tell the system if the reminders have been completed and otherwise trigger a more proactive prompting should this not be the case.

Navigating the Really Real

Allison Burtch

How do humans remain spiritually and emotionally authentic in the face of impending societal and environmental collapse? My thesis is an invitation to be alive and present. It is liberation technology.

Description

A browser plugin that deprecates your internet experience.
A cell phone jammer that blocks signals.
A browser plugin that clarifies power structures on the internet.
A receptacle for all signals.

I find that many solutions using technology are accomplished through destruction rather than creation.
As such, one Firefox add-on slowly deprecates the internet, removing images, links and text until there is nothing left. The cellphone jammer used in the woods provides a gap in space, a place where people might eventually find something to say. The other Firefox add-on clarifies; it appends corporate sponsors to brands and politicians, providing complex information about power.
You can view my work at www.allisonburtch.net.

OkCarl

Carl Jamilkowski

How would you build a better dating site/app? OkCarl is a research study that tests out how different demographics interact with certain dating site features.

http://www.okcarl.com/

Description

OkCarl is research into how people interact with online dating websites. The success of Tinder demonstrates that smaller, niche dating sites/apps use methods and features that can successfully be applied to the general population.
OkCarl started with researching what these unique features are, then ran experiments to see how participants react and use the features. The experiments collect many data points, serve up surveys to get participant feedback, and allow for participants to run them on their own. It is no frills design-wise, as to not introduce a bias.

Restart Motion

Christina Carter

Restart Motion explores the possibilities for creatively repurposing images abandoned in the digital world. Using images with common objects found on the web, Restart Motion is a tool for creating dynamic animations.

Description

We take pictures to capture a moment but when we upload them to the web, the moment is lost as the picture becomes one of many in a massive catalog of similar images. How can meaning and motion be restored to these abandoned assets? Restart Motion, currently based in openFrameworks, is a software tool for creating animations using common objects in found imagery. Inspired by the process of stop-motion and aperiodic pattern formation, Restart Motion applies the process of repetition to generate a visual form that is far more complex and interesting than its constituent parts.