Category Archives: Class

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.

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.

Kathy Wilson

(m)EatLess

Vanessa Joho

(m)EatLess is a mobile application that uses gamification to influence users to lower their meat and cheese consumption in order to help avoid climate change. The less meat you eat the healthier your green companion, Rimo will be.

Description

Our diets cause more greenhouse gases carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, and nitrous oxide into the atmosphere than either transportation or industry companies. According to the UN, meat production is one of the most significant contributors to climate change. (m)EatLess is a mobile application that is tackling the issue by using gaming tactics to influence users to eat less meat and cheese. Rimo is the character in the app whose health gets affected by the user’s activity level. The more green tasks completed each day the healthier he will be.

Kathy Wilson

Making Things Beautiful / Making Beautiful Things

Scott Garner

This interactive book is a philosophical, theoretical and practical exploration of the difficulties and delights associated with the human drive to create.

http://makingthingsbeautiful.net/

Description

This is an exercise in "writing to learn" as I attempt to codify a lifetime of lessons into a working philosophy for myself, for readers dealing with similar issues and for anyone else interested in the creative process. It would be impossible to write a comprehensive book on the subject, so I focus on aspects of creative work that I have found either particularly difficult or particularly rewarding. These ideas—such as perfectionism, inspiration and resonance—are supplemented by interactive illustrations, work by other creative people and quotes and concepts from artists, philosophers and authors.

Heather Greer

IJO

Vitor Freire

IJO is a movement that inspires people to dance in public spaces and engages them as part of a larger experience. It is an experiment in connecting people in different places through movements of the body. IJO means dance in the Yoruba language.

http://ijomove.us

Description

Imagine a group of kids break dancing in a park in New York and another group dancing Capoeira in a square in Sao Paulo. A body representation of each dancer is projected in both locations where either dancer can interact with each other. A dialogue is born between the participants and the interaction of the visual translation of the dancers. Move your body to tell who you are. 
Additionally, a fully customizable dynamic web data stream of the dancers movements is provided to all those interested in building visualizations and applications with the data. The visual component is accomplished through the use of Kinect sensors and projectors while Javascript is used to handle the data stream and interactions. 

Heather Greer

DiscoverED student collaboration through interactive syllabi

Sergio Majluf Jadue

DiscoverED is a web app for higher education teachers to create interactive syllabi in a timeline format. It simplifies course resource management and creates a online collaboration space for sharing, thinking and discussing class topics.

http://www.discover-ed.com

Description

The Internet offers a plethora of collaboration and general purpose management resources. The same is true for learning resources in the academic space. Yet most teachers still outline classes in static documents or hard to follow websites. DiscoverED is a new approach; instructors can use this interactive tool for planning courses and collaborative class activities.

DiscoverED renders syllabi as timelines, allowing multiple class units, content resources and milestones to be seamlessly added and managed by instructors over time. With this, students can navigate content and class progress as they zoom in and out, connecting everyone in a space to discuss and collaboratively create and share content.

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

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.

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.

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.