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Ephemera

Thea Rae, Quest Kennelly

Ephemera is a device that illuminates the chaotic turbulent flow created in air by human gestures.

http://www.questkennelly.com/index.php/pro-dev-2/

Description

We are all living under an ocean of air. Every movement we make sends out a cacophony of ripples, eddies, waves and wavelets. We displace our own personal volumes, and leave trails in our wake wherever we go. All of this chaotic beauty goes unseen, and unrecognized. What if it could be made visible? What if our gestures could reveal their own turbulent echoes in space? Our hands are our best tools for generating meaning through gesture, and our instinct to touch things with our hands is universal.
Ephemera is a wearable device that generates a fog of light scattering vapor. This vapor is pushed to the hands through flexible tubing, and illuminated by powerful, flexible LED arrays on lycra gloves. In operation Ephemera allows the user to create magical, fleeting clouds of turbulence with every gesture, and movement. In the video, Thea Rae performs with the device on a darkened stage. The only illumination is from the gloves, and the fog scatters the light in clouds of turbulent flow.

Classes

Project Development Studio

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Mastermind for science

Hugo Lucena

Mastermind for science is a free digital game that help scientists to better understand human cognition.

Description

By working in collaboration with the psychology department at NYU, the game was developed as a easy and cost efficient way to capture data on human cognition and decision making. The game recreates the classic Mastermind board game from the 70's in which the player needs to break a code by making guesses about it. By using the internet and some game and design strategies the project hopes to aid scientist to collect more and better data on human cognition. After logging in the guesses made by the player while using the application will be tracked in order to determine which strategies are more commonly used for each specific game difficulty. The data would also be compared to algorithms developed to play the game in an optimal way.

Classes

Project Development Studio

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Funeral of Horses

Joao Costa

Sound installation using motors and horsehair to play forty strings.

http://blog.joaocosta.co/category/subs/pds/

Description

Twenty wooden beams with two guitar strings each are played by a wheel with Mongolian horsehair. Mongolian horses were of extreme importance during the era of Genghis Khan to the extent that forty horses were reputedly sacrificed at his tomb – his steeds would be needed in his afterlife, and their gallops can be heard on this forty-string soundscape.

The horsehair itself is hard to tame – it is constantly attempting to break free from the wheel. It craves for wildness and freedom while simultaneously issuing cries of pain.

Classes

New Interfaces for Musical Expression, Project Development Studio