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Camerobot

Chengtao Yi, Huiyi Chen, Jiyao Zhang

a human camera

https://vimeo.com/246063924

Description

Camrobot is a project where I transfer my body to a picture-taking machine.

With a screen and lens mounted on my body, I will walk around and provide service to anyone. People can press my head to take pictures. The pictures will then uploaded to Instagram and displayed on a screen on my body.

“Huiyi” Camera is so far the most intelligent camera. It adjusts with you wills, automatically add filter for your pictures and upload to Instagram for you.

“Camerobot” plays with the idea that machines — camera in particular, are mediating and even dominating our senses and the way we experience the world.

Classes

Introduction to Computational Media, Introduction to Physical Computing

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Pattern and Sound Series

Katya Rozanova

This is a series of minimalist, meditative pattern and synth compositions that respond to input (in this case the movement of one's right arm, perceived by a Kinect ) by reconfiguring temporarily and generating soothing or energizing noise that matches in style the visual elements of the piece.

http://www.katyarozanova.com/blog-1/2017/11/7/pattern-and-sound-series

Description

Using P5Js I am crating a series of interactive compositions. The visual elements will create patterns on an input from a person (mouseover or in response to the movement of one's head or eyes) and generate soothing or energizing sounds that are modulated by the same input. Currently I am collaborating with Dan Oved to set up eye tracking for one of these compositions. For the rest, I plan to use p5 js face recognition as the input that triggers visual and sonic change. 

Sound

I'm uising Tone.js, written by Yotam Man.

Inspiration

The simple grid-like designs I am creating are inspired by Agnes Martin's paintings. 

Minimalist and sometimes intricate but always geometric and symmetrical, her work has been described as serene and meditative. Martin believed that abstract designs can illicit abstract emotions from the viewer, like happiness, love, freedom. Her work reminds me of music for that reason.

Classes

Introduction to Computational Media

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deFACEment

Chester Dols, Carlie Yutong Zhang

A drawing robot leaves its own marks on human portrait based on facial judgement.

http://www.chesterdols.com/category/s17/xyz/

Description

Leaving one’s mark in a place and time has been an intrinsically human act dating back for millennia.  As civilization developed, the act of leaving one’s mark became a form of defacement as other forms of creating were quickly canonized within society for their inherent utility (i.e. architecture, crafts, poetry, etc.).  Graffiti street art and tagging became a tool for leaving one’s mark and claiming territory within public space, but operated outside society’s laws of property ownership.  Graffiti, the modern form of leaving one’s mark, became a destructive taboo within inner cities.  

Many artists have looked to graffiti, street art, and materials often used to deface public space as constructive tools for reclaiming space, creating a public message, and/or questioning society’s values.  Our group wanted to explore this idea of leaving one’s mark, not as a destructive force, but as a constructive act.  How does the process of leaving one’s mark invoke new ideas or add to previous content?  What does it mean to give a robot the ability to leave its’ mark and create or deface when most robots are designed to assist or streamline human performance and ingenuity.  We hope to give a robot character and a sense of humanity through the act of leaving one’s mark.

Using computer vision, our group will make a ‘draw-bot’ that examines and then augments portraits by drawing/collaging with other materials directly on top of the images.  We chose drawing on portraits because we see it as the ultimate act of defacement and the area for a robot to exhibit the most human character as it sketches in response to our physical features.  Does the robot now have an opinion?  Do the resultant drawings provoke the idea of preference or disgust?

Classes

The Future of Sculpture

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Extra

Nicolás Peña-Escarpentier, Stephanie Hagemeister

In an era of information bombardment, do we reflect on what we’re being told?

https://github.com/nicolaspe/extra

Description

An open newspaper with four changing projected videos of different highly streamed media content (political news, advertisement, celebrities, etc) emulates the bombardment of information we’re subjected to every day. The content is too small to be seen accurately from far away, and the superposition of sounds makes it incomprehensible. But as soon as someone comes close to try to understand the presented “information”, the newspaper closes, eliminating the videos and replacing them by white noise. This state persists until we step away for a while (a few seconds), only to start again.

This project wants to create a reflection on the “click-driven” format of current news media. The focus is not on giving accurate information, but on generating traffic and revenue. Our society has become accustomed to this format, accepting the content we’re fed. But, on a closer inspection, we realize this content is non-existant.

This also incorporates a reflection on the lack of accountability of news media. Apart from feeding us with empty content, any confrontation is futile, as they go back to their usual operation as soon as the user goes away.

Classes

Introduction to Physical Computing

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The Traffic Jam

Alejandro Sanin

A routine disruptive sound performance with sounds from cars and traffic!

http://www.nicosanin.co/blog/

Description

The traffic Jam is a new project that came to life when Physical Computing class allowed different interests to join into this newborn Project. The bad traffic of my hometown Bogota, how that affects us all in a very negative way, and the love for sound and music joined to make room for a playful experimental experience. It pretends to raise awareness of our challenges regarding the transport technologies, our way of inhabiting the big cities and also about the paradox between sound as noise or as a beautiful element. The idea is that this instrument or toy, can be played by anybody and will also allow enough room to create interesting sound pieces ranging from very peaceful to stressing noisy one’s. Different car sounds can be played at the same time creating a soundscape that is always changing, as the notes in a Jazz jam session. There are different possibilities to play with this idea and the exhibition space. People could use the instrument. The experience would be customizable to the available space.

Classes

Introduction to Physical Computing

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Flappy Shadow

Kai-Che Hung, Tong Wu

A project that revivifies and sets free shadow puppets from your childhood memories

http://www.hungkaiche.com/2017/12/06/final-project/

Description

“Flappy Shadow” was inspired by Tong and Kai's memories about playing shadow puppet game before sleep as little kids. It also explores the philosophical relationship of human with their shadow. The project uses Kinect to track users' hand position, and turn the bird shadow made by an user into a flying animated “shadow bird”. It now has successfully let users control the direction and the scale of the animated bird by waving and leaning closer to or farther from the Kinect. The next step will be finishing and optimizing gestures detection to give users more freedom to create and set free the shadow bird.

Classes

Introduction to Computational Media

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Museum of Plastic Age

Carrie Wang

Museum of Plastic Age is a future museum of mysterious artifacts from the 21st century.

http://carriesijiawang.com/portfolio_page/museum-of-plastic-age/

Description

Museum of Plastic Age is an interactive exhibit of artifacts from the heyday of the Plastic Era (approximately A.D. 1950s – 2120s). Museum goers are encouraged to interact with the objects to find out more about life in the late 20th century and early 21 century. By controlling the two knobs on the box, people can toggle between artifacts, access illustrations of different views, and watch short documentaries about life in the Plastic Age.

Classes

Introduction to Computational Media, Introduction to Physical Computing

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Time

Huiyi Chen, Hee Gyung Sun

"A time that's changing all the time – it's time to go to time!" – DHMIS

http://www.alicehgsun.xyz/ipc/final-proposal/

Description

What's time? Is time a logical thing? A project “Time” started from throwing simple questions about time and its standard – eventually evolving into the combination of physical piece and digital visualization about different time zones. The physical piece is consisted of two parts: inner cylinder that represents UTC Time Zone map, and outer sphere that is rotatable and contains light source. As the user rotates the outer sphere, and it creates movement in light. While the light is moving, the inner cylinder that has 24 light sensors for each longitude reacts to the changing brightness.

The physical piece will be installed on transparent and round table that I personally own, which approximately has 40” diameter and 30” height. People should be able to walk around the table and see the cylinder time zone map inside the sphere. The digital visualization will be projected from underneath the table; due to its transparency, the table is able to directly show the visualization on is top surface. In this way, people can view both physical and digital piece without being distracted.

When the light shifts from one time zone to another, the digital visualization reflects the movement as well by changing gallery of skylines. Those skylines are from survey towards ITP community regarding which cities they came from, and organized according to the longitude location.

Classes

Intro to Fabrication, Introduction to Computational Media, Introduction to Physical Computing

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Imitation Art Installation

Hayeon / Hayley Hwang, Koji Kanao

If you were Van Gogh, what would like to draw?

https://youtu.be/PyXB0WzDw54

Description

Imitation Art Installation is a participatory art museum that can allow to collaborate with past artists and other visitors. Imitation Art Installation is an application which has 2 main functions. The first function is a drawing application. Users can draw anything they want. The other function is to apply a style to a user's drawing. For doing that, Imitation Art Installation is using style-transfer which is the technique of recomposing images in the style of other images. Then, users can get an unique experience. So this application will give opportunity to answer a question like “If I were Van Gogh, I would … .”

Imitation Art Installation has 3 phase.

Visitors can get in the museum and choose the favorite artist and art piece. And they go into the first section, “LEARN”. They start to look at the detail of the art piece and learn why the artist drew and what technic they used (where, what, what emotion, what style etc).

And visitors move to the next section, “IMITATE”. They can use a touch screen display(Tablet), they simply change or re-sketch the original pieces based on the original piece. For example, they can change the classic house into apartments and re-paint. After drawing them, they submit it to the machine learning program.

Lastly, in “EXHIBIT” section, visitors can see their drawings and the original piece together to compare them. Also, they can check the collaborative version with the past artist that machine learning generates. Also, there is an artwork that all visitors created.

Classes

Cabinets of Wonder, Programming from A to Z