Category Archives: Class

Nancy Hechinger

Kinetisynth

David Rios

A multi-user musical interface and physical audio visualizer. Users interact with multiple controllers to create soundscapes and realtime physical visuals.

Description

Kinetisynth is part musical interface, part physical parametric display. Participants use various controllers and sensors to make music together and simultaneously control a real-time physical visualization of that music. It uses analog circuitry and MIDI to generate soundscapes while simultaneously analyzing and quantifying audio signals to create a real time mechanical frequency spectrum that reflects the soundscape.

Gabe Barcia-Colombo

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.

Heather Greer

Fictioning, or the Confession of the Librarian

Donna Miller Watts

Fictioning, or the Confession of the Librarian is an immersive interpretation of the Jorge Luis Borges story, "The Library of Babel" via the Oculus Rift. The experiencer will move within the tale as it unfolds and comments on itself.

Description

Three-dimensional, physically interactive technologies such as the Oculus Rift are changing gaming and will change other forms of entertainment, including book publishing and theater. Fictioning, or the Confession of the Librarian utilizes numbers, letters, abstract shapes, lines, objects and animated text that change as the experiencer moves. Words and images derived from the text emerge. A reading of "The Library of Babel," will play over headphones, at times changing with the user's movements. Fictioning, or the Confession of the Librarian blends fiction, theater and physical interaction to offer a new art form for the the technological landscape of the future.

Gabe Barcia-Colombo

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.

Katherine Dillon

“Emergence Unfolding”

Edward T. Button

My thesis is a design plan and presentation for a site specific parametric sculpture that utilizes local narratives in its procedural design.

Description

Through research, I created a comprehensive framework for site specific parametric sculpture. The framework uses parametric design and location narrative to create formal possibilities within a family of possible outcomes. This process framework was used to design a parametric sculpture for fabrication and installation in the atrium of 644 Putnam Avenue, a commercial office real estate development in Greenwich Connecticut. The design uses procedural growth algorithms and parametricly designed shapes drawn from audio spectrographs as if it had been grown from the location narrative. Fabricated utilizing Transitional Light Film, the sculpture interacts with the sun and architectural lighting to create an ever changing form and reflection.

Katherine Dillon

TacTag

Andres Taraciuk

TacTag is a fast-paced, technologically enhanced physical game. It features a more direct interaction between players than traditional videogames: players have to face each other, move and try to make or avoid physical contact between them.

Description

It is a physical game, made possible by technology.
Each player wears two kneepads and gloves, and tries to make or avoid contact with the other based on a rock-paper-scissors mechanic.
The format is an installation-style game, to be played at exhibitions like Indiecade, or at children's museums. Its main audience is gamers. The goal of the project is to show gamers that a different type of games can be made with technology: games that don't necessarily rely on a screen, but instead involve direct contact between players, and make them move around instead of just pressing keys on a joystick.
The scope for thesis is a two player game, but rules and technology where thought to be playable by two teams of 2 or 3 players per team.

Nancy Hechinger

Good Care Calls

Liz Khoo

Good Care Calls is a proposal for a service that provides caring phone calls to reduce costly hospital readmissions. Volunteer callers check on the wellbeing of recently discharged patients to promote healthy behaviors and ease emotional distress.

Description

Every year, 2.6 million Medicare recipients are readmitted to hospitals at a cost of $26 billion. Using human centered design methods, I learned about the needs of patients and care providers to design a solution for reducing readmissions.

The neediest patients are often the most underserved. An effective solution must be affordable and quickly distributable, which is why Good Care Calls only requires patients to have a phone.

Patients opt-in to Good Care Calls at discharge, and their data is shared via the hospital’s electronic health record API. Students preparing for degrees in health services gain valuable experience as volunteer callers and also act as a triage service to busy clinics, flagging issues in the patient's EHR.

Nancy Hechinger

Growing The Internet of Everything

Andrew Sigler

I wanted to make a large assemblage of connected every day objects, but that was beyond my budget. So, first, I made my own homemade wireless microcontrollers.Then I designed an intuitive in-browser interface to connect my objects together.

Description

My thesis is a collection of found objects turned connected, each simple on their own, but reimagined through their links. Homemade wireless microcontrollers are built for each device, done at a fraction of the cost of ordering online . A touch interface allows users to patch links between separate objects, using any browser. Combining affordable production with easy links gives way for heightened experimentation while making the internet of everything.

Nancy Hechinger

iOre

Emily Wagenknecht

iOre- explores tech's origins, from the ground up.

Description

One of the first steps in changing our relationship with the environment and each other is awareness. iOre aims to increase awareness by creating ingredient labels for tech products that inform consumers of the materials and resources our technology relies on, starting with the iPhone. In addition each label will provide a link to a site that tells a bigger story. Who is affected? What role do i play in this cycle?

iOre, hopes to spark momentum behind understanding this cycle and its possible implications, opening the source, literally.

Katherine Dillon

We’re Still Here

Andrew Cerrito

The beginning of a series of ordinary, normally unnoticed objects that have evolved personalities and habits based on their original functions.

Description

Why should our sleek, sexy, status-symbol gadgets get all our attention?

We're Still Here is an exploration of the ordinary objects in our lives that perform their duties day in and day out without much acknowledgement or conscious thought from their users. Each object in this collection is modified to display surprising behaviors or personality traits that are derived from how it normally operates; the series begins with a neurotic, overly needy alarm clock and a dutiful-yet-exhausted coatrack that just wants to catch a short break.

By giving personalities to these objects, I'll playfully invoke a new way to look at and think about the myriad commonplace, "boring" tools that quietly contribute to our lives.