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The Body Pillow

Jacquelyn Liu

The Body Pillow is a speculative design that explores how can an object made out of synthetic human skin can fulfill our emotional and physical needs for human touch.

https://tissu.tech/

Description

The Body Pillow is a speculative product design set in a future where we can scalable and ethically create realistic, synthetic human skin. From the speculative fiction side, the project extrapolates on recent developments in 3D printing biological tissue, like human skin, and explores (as explained in the accompanying website: https://tissu.tech/) the potential for synthetic human skin to be incorporated into product design – specifically, as therapeutic objects that can satisfy the innate, but often overlooked, need for human touch.
The concept of the pillow builds off of studies in psychology that suggest the materiality of skin-to-skin touch, i.e., warmth, softness, and the detailed texture of skin, are key for evoking the benefits of touch, like release of oxytocin, relief from stress and depression, and forming secure social bonds.
From the physical side, the Body Pillow exists as a tangible, interactive object to help an audience imagine how the speculative product can be used in day-to-day life. The pillow is covered in “synthetic human skin” (for this prototype, peach-colored latex sheeting) and uses subtle light, heat, and vibration cues to induce feelings of an actual touch interaction between the pillow and the user.

Classes

Citizen Science: Biotechnology, Citizen Science: Biotechnology, Introduction to Physical Computing

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Constant Lineation

Casey Conchinha, Mark Lam

Exploring how a simple line can be individually expressive while also acting as a segment of a communal artifact.

https://communalline.markofthelam.com/spiral-control.html

Description

Sparked by the surrealist art game exquisite corpse and the rule based drawings by Sol Lewitt, this project to explore how individuals can make something as minimal as a line while allowing for individual expression. This project uses digital tools to create a primal experience for those inside the installation and the audience outside.

This project explores how individuals are able to draw a line with tight constraints. When a line is completed it is joined with the previously drawn lines into a gestalt communal artifact that represents a history of all those who have drawn before. The shrouded environment creates a hyper-personal ritual for drawing a line but creates a collective experience. The mathematical concept behind the project considers properties of a continuous line that grows with user input.

Constant Lineation asks how a person can contribute to history given tight constraints.

// Technical aspects

Sofware: This project uses P5.JS drawing tools to save vertices to Google Firebase. Drawers are able to draw a line to connect two points on a canvas using their fingers or a vocal input. Their individual line is appended to the community line which spirals around the installation environment and ambient music notes are generated from the line data. The output resembles a constellation which is further pushed by the physical components.

Physical: The physical installation creates a cave like environment consisting of a 2.5 ft x 2.5 ft x 5 ft shrouded structure which has a spiral line projected on the top and sides of the enclosure. The material is translucent allowing for double sided projections so both the drawer and passerbys to view the drawing. Inside the structure is a tablet for people to draw a line via touch interface or audio recording and speakers to play back sounds generated from line data.

Classes

Introduction to Computational Media, Introduction to Physical Computing, Introduction to Physical Computing, Socially Engaged Art and Digital Practice

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Feeling in the Time

Khensu-Ra Love El, Raaziq Brown

America is going through a chaotic time, we want to know how YOU feel about it?

https://github.com/raaziqmasud/Feeling-in-the-Time/tree/master/FITT_Final%202

Description

America is in a strange place. Day-by-day it feels like we are falling further and further into a dark hole. Since Khensu-Ra and Raaziq have started their tenure at ITP, the media has consistently covered devastating events on a national level. This coverage is happening at such a consistent rate that negativity, catastrophe, and poor country leadership is becoming normalized. In this project, we plan on presenting the participant with audio clips of current events of the past 4 months and logging their emotional response of said events. We will then force the participant to consider their role and action in regards to the current social, cultural, and political climates of the U.S.

Classes

Introduction to Computational Media, Introduction to Computational Media, Introduction to Physical Computing, Introduction to Physical Computing

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Deep Dive

Caroline Neel

A virtual escape room using an interactive floor, wall, and Unity.

https://www.caraneel.com/itp/2018/11/29/pcomp-final-progress-report-11292018

Description

Our project is an escape room where participants are trapped in an underwater cave and must explore and interact with their environment to escape. A series of tasks– finding a light, oxygen, and a way out of the cave– must be completed before the participant runs out of time and is trapped underwater forever.

Classes

Introduction to Physical Computing

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Indiformity

Shiyu Chen

Biometric data (fingerprint) sonification, visualization and interaction

https://

Description

– This is an interactive installation that visualizes and sonifies user's fingerprint. User should put their finger on a fingerprint sensor, then they will be able to interact with it.

– No two people have exactly the same fingerprints.

– This piece is to encourage people to explore their identities and listen to and feel their own voice. By moving the cursor on the touch screen, sounds and music will be generated.

– This piece also inspire people exploring the hidden narratives in relation with others by visualizing their shape of the fingerprint to galaxy. User will be given an option about whether they want to be part of the galaxy.

– If select “yes”, user's fingerprint will be animated to star and goes to the constellation.

Classes

Introduction to Computational Media, Introduction to Physical Computing

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IMERSA

Marcela Mancino von der Osten

We are so grateful for being together here, but still, it was never this hard to connect. Every word has a thousand unspoken words behind them. We look into each other's eyes and we see the infinity that separates us. We try to find a way to reach each other, but we get lost in the moving topography. It is frightening, but its colors and textures are so fascinating that we just let go. We give up the words. We stare into our shared infinity, we dive.

https://https://mardefronteira.wordpress.com/2018/11/11/final-project-proposal/

Description

We are so grateful for being together here, but still, it was never this hard to connect. Every word has a thousand unspoken words behind them. We look into each other's eyes and we see the infinity that separates us. We try to find a way to reach each other, but we get lost in the moving topography. It is frightening, but its colors and textures are so fascinating that we just let go. We give up the words. We stare into our shared infinity, we dive.

IMERSA is an interactive sculpture that explores the implications of my experience in reterritorializing in the USA, specially considering the political situation that I have left behind in Brazil and how hard it is to create empathy in people for things that are so far from their realities. No matter how much we all try, there is something that gets lost in our living experiences and will never go through.

This piece relates to that by asking the user to dedicate attention, patience and intimacy for the experience to happen, but making it so long that no one would wait for the whole experience to happen. The sculpture – consisting of crystal strings, mirrors, light and sound – is only activated when it tracks a single person looking at it. While the person is there, the piece builds itself up slowly, using motors to bring the strings into a physical sculpture which receives increasing amounts of movement through light and sound. If another person is tracked, the system pauses, leaving the sculpture in the same place as it was. If the person leaves, the sculpture immediately resets, bringing the crystals to fall down, and the lights and sound to be turned off.

Classes

Introduction to Computational Media, Introduction to Physical Computing

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Smile, Please

Chenshan Gao, Winnie Yoe

“Smile, Please”, a speculative and dystopian system that assesses your facial expression, shocks you, and prints out a photo and grading record to train you for a perfect smile.

https://chenshangao.squarespace.com/smile-please/

Description

According to UK innovation foundation Nesta, the prevalence of AI in emotion prediction is one of the predicted trends in innovation in 2018. Companies such as Affectiva and Beyond Verbal already own huge deposit of emotion database around the world. The Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal proves the danger and impact of “psychological warfares” in tech. In the near future, as our emotion becomes an asset that is trackable and predictable, would it also be controllable and “hackable”?

Against this background, we created “Smile, Please”, a system that detects smiles and uses a thermal printer to tell users if their smile is “good” enough or not while also using electrodes to shock the person if their smile was not “good” enough. In addition, users will be given “The Manual of Smile Etiquette” after each experience. The project is a response to the prevalence of emotion AI and current coercive societal forces that manipulate our emotions. This project combines concepts from Physical Computing and Design for Discomfort (e.g. creating and closing the magic circle, use of visceral effect and taboo). Through an extreme approach, dark humor and by creating visceral discomfort, with mechanism referencing to Palvov’s classical conditioning and the Milgram experiment, we hoped to shock our audience in thinking about the implications and ownership of our emotions in the current societal and technological landscape.

*Considering the ethics of this project, we will be following IRB’s guidelines and referencing other artists who have used TENS unit/electric shock in their work.

Classes

Design for Discomfort, Introduction to Physical Computing

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Islands of Sound

Kexin Lin, Shijie Zhang

An interactive interface where users can compose their own ambient sounds.

https://www.s-j-zhang.com/islands-of-sound

Description

We aim to play with the sound of neglected daily objects, to explore the possibility of combining natural and electric synthesized sound, and to inspire people to find the neglected beauty in daily life. When we were considering what can help connect human mind and the physical world in an intuitive way, we started to think about texture, graphics and sounds. In this case, we tended to design an experience that can provoke human sense of touch, sight and hearing. In order to reintroduce those amazing combination, we chose stone, metal, wood, acrylic and fabrics, which are common natural or artificial materials that compose our living environment, as our design elements. When objects on the interface are touched, sounds and projected graphics reflecting their properties will be generated.

Classes

Introduction to Computational Media, Introduction to Physical Computing, Introduction to Physical Computing

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Space between us

Elvin Xingyu Ou

"Space between us" is a spatial boundary that allows people from two separate space to communicate and interact through light.

https://www.elvinou.info/blog/categories/physical-computing

Description

“Space between us” is an exploration of human interaction in an architectural scale that focuses on transforming the individual experience into a collaborative connection through light. The project is composed of a set of two screens suspended back to back with a light matrix embedded in between them. The lights are activated by data that is collected from two cameras on opposite sides of the screen that capture movement, which is then live processed and displayed on the respective screens. Users will be physically separated by the panels but will visually perceive the other side's movement, similar to seeing through a filtered window.

Classes

Introduction to Computational Media, Introduction to Physical Computing

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Creaturely Life

Noah Pivnick

Creaturely Life explores the winding of yarn as a tactile, tangible interface for reading electronic text.

https://creaturely-life.art

Description

Creaturely Life takes it's name from a collection of poems by Michael Joyce, written in stream of consciousness from the perspective of a woman keeping vigil over her dying husband. The final poem in the series recounts having found solace in knitting beside her husband’s deathbed.

Turning the crank of a ball winder, the poems unfold at first in fragments on a screen as a length of yarn (the poem as object) passes through the user's fingers. The poem fragments run their course and the poem is revealed in it's entirety only once the ball of yarn runs out.

Winding yarn with a ball winder is an intrinsically satisfying interaction. The crank evokes the passage of time. The wobble of the spool, spinning off-axis, conjures visions of an orrery, the cycle of life, and what it means to be immaterial.

An interface emblematic of knitting is befitting a collection of poems about death and dying. The last of the yarn slips swiftly through the user's fingers as the original ball of yarn disappears, reconstituted in identical form on the winder’s spindle. Cycles within cycles, as in life.

Classes

Introduction to Computational Media, Introduction to Physical Computing