Category Archives: Class

Katherine Dillon

Ecstatic Computation

Michael Allison

Ecstatic Computation is the union between human and machine (when thought becomes bit) explored through a mythopoetic lens that includes virtual reality rituals, mystical infographics and other computation related artifacts.

Description

As I become a cyborg though corporeal and mental appropriations of computational tools, what then of my metaphysical relationship to these new "bodily" members?

Through my research I've encountered many religious, spiritual and scientific practices that seek to make sense of the relationships between our minds, bodies, spirits and the universe. Some practices contain the notion of ecstasy, which in existential terms means to achieve a state of being outside of one's self. Using virtual reality, my project explores the moment of Ecstatic Computation: the merging of consciousness and quantum energy in the physio-chemical registration of state within the computer's memory. The moment when thought becomes bit and electrons become ideas.

Heather Greer

Wrap Genius

Sam Slover

Wrap Genius is a personal journey into better food labeling. For 12 weeks, I carefully tracked all of my grocery purchases, recorded the data, and created a new visual framework to better make sense of it all. It's my dream food label.

Description

The food we buy matters. As our food systems become increasingly complex, the food we choose to consume affects not only our own health, but also the environment, our ethical framework, the Earth's biodiversity, and so much more. But much of the data of our food purchases remains opaque to us as end consumers. This isn’t good enough. So, I went on a mission to come up with something better. For 12 weeks, I carefully tracked all of my grocery purchases and created a new visual framework to better understand it all. Where does my food come from? What are my healthiest and unhealthiest choices? Which foods have GMOs? My dashboard shows me all of this information and more. It's my dream food label, designed for the interests of the consumer.

Gabe Barcia-Colombo

ComicDrop

Jay Zehngebot

Quickly Create Comics using Artwork From Everyone.

http://www.comicdrop.com

Description

ComicDrop fuses a simple set of drawing tools with carefully considered workflows to facilitate fast, playful, collaborative comic-making.

At ComicDrop's core is a shared library of user-contributed drawings, called stickers. These artworks are free for everyone to collage with, build on, and incorporate into their sequential stories.

Designed and developed by a printmaker with years of teaching experience, ComicDrop's streamlined processes present an opportunity to engage visitors of all ages. Whether through writing, drawing, or composing compelling narratives, ComicDrop offers creative avenues for makers of every type, and allows participants to share the components of their comics with other artists the world over.

Gabe Barcia-Colombo

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

Gabe Barcia-Colombo

Adventures of Teen Bloggers

Sam Brenner

Come face-to-face with the online identities of thousands of former teen bloggers. Choose a character from the annals of LiveJournal, an all-but-defunct blogging site, and lead them on the most epic of journeys: a walk down a high school hallway.

http://www.teenbloggers.net

Description

The Adventures of Teen Bloggers combines the aesthetic of old-school graphic adventure games with the vapid, self-obsessed musings of teenagers circa 2005. Players pick one of millions of LiveJournal users to re-animate and lead on a walk through a high school hallway. When asked to interact with another character, players discover the strengths (or weaknesses) of their character: they can only say things that the LiveJournal user actually said on their blog all those years ago. By dredging up a LiveJournal user's blog posts, once written under the semblance of privacy but now free of context and wholly public, I will draw attention to the permanence of our lives on the internet and question how we choose to share what we share online.

Heather Greer

Pleashare

Jing Zhao

Pleashare is a web application that provides sex toy reviews for Chinese users. It encourages them to share their experiences and start conversations about their sexual pleasure.

Description

Recently, Chinese women are becoming more open to sex, but their awareness of their own sexuality is still evolving. Sex toys help women’s sexual exploration, Pleashares helps them establish their sex identity and personal words in sex and sexuality discussion. With Pleashares, users can review sex toys, see other user’s exerience of body exploration with sex toy, and build conversations based on collective hashtags. Through understanding how to get pleasure from their own bodies, women get to know themselves on their own and not just from others.

Kathy Wilson

JujuBox

Mohammad Shahrooz

The Jujubox is an immersive small scale virtual theater that gives the audience control of multiple audiovisual states of a performance. Through optical illusion, the feel of an actual live performance is recreated to enhance the user experience.

Description

The Jujubox is a unique interactive musical video theater. The user is initially given the option to choose between a variety of performers. Once each performance begins, the user has the ability through a wide variety of physical controls, to manipulate various audiovisual aspects of the performance. The box itself acts as a virtual stage. A flat panel LCD screen is nested at the bottom, facing up. With two sheets of clear glass carefully placed at specific angles inside, the reflections from the screen provide the illusion of three-dimensional imagery. Additionally, the dual glass sheets provide an added sense of depth.

Nancy Hechinger

PrintO-Bot

Sanniti Pimpley

PrintO-Bot is an inkjet printer on wheels. This robot can print on almost any flat surface- no matter how large or what material it is made of. It is very cheap and you can even build it yourself!

Description

There's a lot of interest in the hobbyist & maker community regarding printing your own designs on a variety of materials for aesthetic purposes. The PrintO-Bot allows us to do this very easily on any reasonably flat surface- wood/stone/ fabric/PCB/ any floor.

The PrintO-Bot is essentially an inkjet printer hacked into, modified and put on wheels. The printer here has its nozzle on the bottom; we put the bot on the material on which we want to print and it starts printing while moving along the material. The bot moves to the next position after each print swath. Since the PrintO-Bot uses an existing printer, we send a print to it the same way as we send a print to our desk printers.

The PrintO-Bot is an open source initiative.

Katherine Dillon

Mindful Units

Jess Jiyoung Jung

Mindful Units is a visionary model of a connected home designed for a single occupant of a small living space, such as a Micro-Unit apartment. It aims to transform the many constraints of this lifestyle into a more positive and productive experience.

Description

Do you live in a city alone? Is your room smaller than a subway car?

The trend of single individuals living in micro-sized apartment units is quickly becoming commonplace in urban areas worldwide. It is necessary to rethink the very concept of a living space in order to adapt to the unique challenges that this lifestyle presents.

To do so, Mindful Units implements physical computing and network technology in order to make a connected living space with increased mindfulness of its occupant. It assumes that connected interaction between a habitat and a dweller can improve quality of life through memorizing his or her daily habits and giving tangible guidance.

Heather Greer

Dovetales

Myriam Melki

Dovetales is a mobile application that allows couples living in different timezones to share mundane details with each other in the form of a daily story.

http://dovetales.io

Description

Dovetales helps couples, as well as close friends, living in different timezones maintain strong relationships by sharing the mundane things in life. Although often overlooked, this exchange of simple details deepens intimacy.
A Dovetales story consists of several frames a day that form a single story. A frame can be composed of image, text or drawing. Like a letter, once created, the frame can't be edited. It can only be deleted. And much like a storyboard, frames are chronologically ordered and time stamped in the local time of the sender. At the end of each day, one single story is sent out. It is only received once, at a time chosen by the recipient.