Category Archives: Class

Gabe Barcia-Colombo

Virtual Memory / Memory Memory

Sarah Rothberg

Virtual Memory/ Memory Memory is a series of artistic research projects examining the relationship between memory, media, attention, loops, attention, media, and memory.

Description

Media reflects the moment it was created. What is the effect on memory of shifting from analog, fixed in physical time and space, to digital? Does the relative mutability of digital archives leave us stuck in loops?

"Attn:Lifelog" passively indexes gopro footage with eeg attention data.

"URLoop" is a browser extension which alerts users when they navigate from website to website in a looped pattern mirroring deterministic thought processes of people with memory loss.

"Memory Place" is composed of personal memory artifacts, digital and digitized, arranged in a navigable virtual environment. The space created from my own memory-artifacts functions as a prototype: I will offer memory-virtualization services for a modest fee via the web.

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.

Kathy Wilson

Soil for the Air

Erika Hansen Miller

Soil for the Air helps regular people participate in co-developing a new approach to combat climate change by creating a platform for DIY soil biology experiments growing special carbon-sequestering fungi.

http://www.soilfortheair.org/

Description

Soil for the Air is a platform for a crowd-sourced research project, with a beautifully designed growing system and a community-building digital space for knowledge sharing. It invites citizen scientists to join me in continuing my experiments in cultivating a special kind of carbon-sequestering, soil-dwelling fungus in order to raise awareness of new solutions for climate change, and to help other people outside the science community feel empowered to make a difference. Soil for the Air is:

People harnessing the power of communal curiosity and knowledge sharing.

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Science performed at home to explore ways to combat climate change.

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Design that makes scientific inquiry beautiful.

Katherine Dillon

Woven Signals

Anne-Marie Lavigne

A textile composed of yarn treated with thermochromic pigments. When activated by interwoven conductive threads, the seamless and unified material is transformed, revealing a dynamic fiber interface.

http://emeteuz.com/Woven-Signals

Description

The project fuses new technologies with the fabrication techniques characteristic of traditional textile design to create functional fibers and integrated interactive textiles, specifically a woven display.

The textile is woven with a custom-made thermochromic cotton yarn spun with conductive copper thread. Designed patterns incorporate channels for low-power current. The generated resistive heat catalyzes the dyed fibers to change color and reveal hidden, programmatically-controlled content.

Woven Signals is inspired by the mutually informative histories of textiles and communications, and aims to investigate a fiber’s ability to transmit information and emotion through visual and tactile interactions.

www.emeteuz.com

Katherine Dillon

Growable Gown: a gown that grows with you

Erin Smith

A wedding dress is a perfect example of a non-sustainable, one-time use object. My thesis is a dress that will completely biodegrade after use, supporting new life in my garden instead of hanging in my closet for 50 years.

Description

The average cost of a wedding dress in the US is $1200 and contains nearly 8 yards of material. In addition to being cost and energy intensive, these dresses demonstrate the issues that surround so many objects that out live their intended use. This project explores using bacteria, fungi, and other biodegradable resources as building materials to create garments that are both beautiful and ecologically responsible. For my own wedding, I wanted to make decisions that I will continue to be proud of instead of having my decisions be dictated by tradition. I hope that this project will inspire others to grow their own sustainable custom gowns.

Nancy Hechinger

There Is No Place Called Away

Ben Kauffman

Responding to the challenge of keeping all of my garbage for a month, I have designed a series of "personal landfills": objects and actions that bring the impacts of waste and landfilling into the context of the body and personal space.

Description

What would happen if, instead of allowing my garbage to be taken to a landfill, I kept it close? This question is the driving force of There Is No Place Called Away. The motivations of the project are to both learn about the workings of modern landfills and re-consider a facet of our society that is often ignored. Beyond an intellectual inquiry, it is meant to bring a subject often defined by distance nearer to my body. To carry this out, I have designed an installation of "personal landfills" to contend with one month of my garbage, both practically and philosophically. It features vacuum-sealed garbage pods, a mobile landfill, photographs and video, telling a poetic narrative of what it might really mean to throw our garbage "away."

Heather Greer

TACHI

Fang-Yu Yang

Tachi is a toy bundle that combines tangible toys with a customized mobile application. Tachi creates a platform to encourage preschool children to make their own toys and to physically interact with the story.

Description

Creativity blooms in 4-6 year olds. It is also an important time to learn graphic, sound, speed identification and self-discipline. Tachi integrates the physical and virtual worlds, providing kids a new way to explore traditional tangible toys in the digital era.

Tachi consists of two parts: tangible toys and a tablet application. Kids can make animal faces with Play-Doh using a special acrylic base and customise them by decorating their faces with light pipe components. When kids move and rotate their own animal face on the Tachi tablet app, they create animal sound effects and graphic animation and also get light feedback on the animal's face. Finally, kids can generate their own animal's song with a recording and composing function.

Nancy Hechinger

The Path of the Pirate

Brett Peterson

In this exhibit children ages 2-4 embark on a quest to become a pirate. Along the way, they engage in activities that reinforce early childhood development milestones including pattern matching, sequencing, counting and motor control.

Description

This project was inspired by and created for my daughter. We love going to museums and play together. I wanted to create something fun for her but that also focused on her learning and development.

I designed and created three interactive experiences, each imagined as a portion of a larger exhibit, that are tied together by the theme of a pirate quest. Kids encounter these activities that challenge them to apply skills of pattern matching, sequencing and counting — all key skills in the cognitive development of children between the ages of 2 and 4 years. At the end of the quest is an opportunity for the children to create their own pirate flag and print out a temporary tattoo to celebrate their accomplishment.