Category Archives: Class

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.

Kathy Wilson

Hello Rabbit!

Ju Young Park

"Hello Rabbit!" is an interactive storytelling book for children, aged from 6 to 8, to play with programming logic. My purpose of thesis is to let every future citizen know programming by learning computer science logic at early age.

Description

"Hello Rabbit!" is an ipad book application for children, aged from 6 to 8. It is an animated interactive book that allows young users to play and learn with computer science logic including mathematics concepts such as x and y variables, if-else statements, loops, and etc. This app is designed to let users control and alter animated illustrations of the book by simply putting computer science logic inside the story. For instance, animation of a rabbit jumping once can be changed to jumping infinite times by embedding 'conditional statements' inside the story. The purpose of this activity is to create user experience with programming logic at early age, so that younger generations can grow up as future computer scientists.

Gabe Barcia-Colombo

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.

Katherine Dillon

New Circuits for Dancing with Light

Justin Lange

A study of the history of objects that extend human limbs in dance, their problematic LED corollaries in contemporary EDM ("electronic dance music") culture, and the creation of a new Light Instrument that affords dancers artistic choice.

Description

LEDs wands, poi, hoops and other "light-up" instruments and toys constitute a desired aesthetic in EDM culture, but as tools for individual movement-based expression, they are no more expressive than a flashlight. Most LED devices have only two states ("on" or "off"), or offer preprogramed sequences. Several state-of-the art POV ("persistence of vision") devices allow custom images to be uploaded, but none allow immediate control over LEDs' expressive potential, such as luminance or hue. To encourage light dancing that is not simply pretty but also expressive, I created a new hand-held kinetic instrument with onboard sensors and controls that allow dancers to spontaneously generate and display novel light patterns while dancing.

Gabe Barcia-Colombo

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.

Heather Greer

CARDIO

Kang-Ting Peng

Quantify your heartbeat. Display it on the road.

Description

"CARDIO" is a pulse detector on the steering wheel in your car to measure the driver's heartbeat. After receiving and quantifying the driver's heartbeat information, "CARDIO" sends the information to the LED strips mounted outside the car. By syncing the person and the machine, "CARDIO" makes the car a way to communicate on the road. "CARDIO" is a tool for quantifying the driver's emotions and assists other drivers in detecting situations such as road rage. In this way, "CARDIO" attempts to connect drivers and road users in a more personal visual way.

Kathy Wilson

Hack It Back

Patricia R. Zablah

A workshop mentoring program focused on teaching media literacy to teenage girls. The girls combat sexist media by creating their own, new media that "hacks it back" and portrays more accurate representations of women.

http://www.hackitback.com

Description

Hack It Back is a program that teaches women and girls to decode sexist media messages through observation and critical analysis of media, its creators and its effects. In the workshops, which range from eight hours to a month, teens are paired with mentors to create their own media. They use digital and analog tools to break stereotypical gender roles. At the end of each workshop, teens strengthen their confidence by presenting their projects to an invited audience. The projects are published online and made available for download, if applicable. Ultimately, Hack It Back fosters a better image of women, becoming a catalyst for participants to see themselves as leaders who can break through societal and cultural barriers imposed on them.

Kathy Wilson

Gowanus Creek Nature Hike

Katie Adee

A mobile web app for identifying, cataloging, and mapping the flora of the Gowanus Canal Area. By looking at current species, we can begin to imagine the future Gowanus as an ecosystem, not just an environmental disaster or real estate investment.

http://gowanusflora.herokuapp.com/

Description

Gowanus Creek Nature Hike is a web tool for scientists, students, and Gowanus enthusiasts to explore the species that have managed to survive and thrive near our local Superfund Site, the Gowanus canal. A user spots a tree, answers a few questions about its appearance, and is presented with a catalog of possible species, including hand-drawn images and interesting facts. Once a species has been identified, a user can report the plant type and location. This data is then presented as a web map, catalog, and as a GeoJSON API for others to explore or use in their own research and artistic ventures. Participation in the reporting process will hopefully increase knowledge and awareness of one's natural surroundings.

Nancy Hechinger

The Penis Wall

Peiqi Su

This kinetic sculpture consists of 81 erectable penises that respond to either a viewer's movements or to realtime movements in the stock market.

Description

The penis is so different! This is my initial motivation, to study one of the oldest and probably the most attractive thing that humans interact with.

The Penis Wall is made up of 3D printed penises that each have six segments driven by servo motors. Equipped with an ultrasonic distance sensor, each unit can respond to a viewer's movements. Moreover, the Penis Wall can also be used as a display to represent data, for instance, fluctuations in the stock market.

Katherine Dillon

Visual Sound Synthesis

Louise Foo

Visual Sound Synthesis is a series of image-sound explorations of the meeting between graphic design and a program that turns the iPhone camera into an optical synthesizer that plays what it sees.

visualsoundsynthesis.com

Description

With roots in research about historical optical sound devices like the ANS synthesizer, Oramics, Sound-On-Film techniques and the Pattern Playback Synthesizer I asked myself – how can I experience this image-sound translation myself today with the technology available to me? and how can I share this with others? Through a process of programming, interface prototype design, listening to images and looking at sounds and finally through collaboration with a graphic designer – the final outcome is a series of 'scores' played back by the viewer with the camera in the iPhone. The installation of those 'scores' explore how in many ways the visual and audible senses are related, but not necessarily synchronized.