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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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Sharifa's Workstation

Lauren Race, Simon Jensen

A custom workstation, built with Human-Centered Design, for a client who has Muscular Dystrophy, that allows her to work from home.

https://

Description

Custom, assistive workstation that allows for supported elbows and wrists while using laptop and having meals in bed. It eliminates need for heat-producing blankets as elbow props.

Classes

Developing Assistive Technologies

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The Exquisite Corpse

Itay Niv, Sof?a Suazo

The Exquisite Corpse is a multiplayer VR piece where participants use each other's avatar body parts as the form and material for creating sculptural pieces.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1inJyI59jKdBUqX53Kp7xy2FV6PFbqcgQ?usp=sharing

Description

The story is centered on the sculpting practice in a 3D environment. The two participants will be placed inside a sculpting studio/gallery space, where both of them are playing the part of a sculptor and also the part of the sculpture, as they will be using their respective partners virtual body as the material for sculpting.

The participant playing as the sculptor will have the opportunity to create a virtual 3D sculpture out of it’s partner body. The sculptor will have the chance to choose body parts form their partner to start their creation. The body parts can be molded and transform into different materialities and textures. They will be used as molding blocks that can be add on as wish to create the sculpture. The body parts being used will not be torned apart from the user’s virtual body, rather be cloned to be used as an sculptural object. The avatar being used for this projects are the 3d body scans of the creators (Itay and Sofia) to also reinforce the idea of the artist's body and identity as a prime matter for creative work (the artist as an art object himself/herself).

Classes

Desert of the Real: Deep Dive into Social VR

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Type to erase. Repeat to forget.

Carrie Wang

We type to make text appear on screen or paper. We repeat things to remember them. What if we invert the process—type sentences out to erase them, and repeat words to make them disappear?

http://carriesijiawang.com/type-to-erase-repeat-to-forget/

Description

The project consists of two parts. In part one— “Type to erase”—short sentences, Markov-chain-generated from the lyrics of the world’s 204 national anthems, appear on screen, and your only goal is to erase them one by one by typing them out. In part two—“Repeat to forget”— you are asked to read sentences from the same text source as part one. The words will be erased if you say them correctly. In the process of going back and forth with a speech recognition system that judges your pronunciation, meanings of some words are questioned and redefined.

Classes

Computational Approaches to Typography

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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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This is not a theremin

Guillermo Montecinos, Sof?a Suazo

This is not a theremin: this is an AR and interactive representation of a theremin.

https://sofiaitp.wordpress.com/2018/12/04/this-is-not-a-theremin/

Description

With the use of spatial sensing and AR technologies, we created a digital representation of a theremin that participants can play, but can't actually see. The piece stands as a hinged instance that presents participants to the duality of the real and the unreal at the same time. The theremin, as a 3d virtual object, is at the same time present and absent, as it is “real” by generating sound, but also is “unreal” by being invisible. The dynamic is also reinforced by the installation setting. Even thought the main participant or player can't see the instrument, there will be a screen set near the installation where other participants will be able to see the theremin, and therefor, interact between each other.

Classes

Generative Music

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Breaking News 24/7

Nathier Fernandez, Hau Yuan, Jiyao Zhang, Marco Wylie

An interactive news cycle makes you question what is real and what is fake

https://vimeo.com/303213172

Description

Breaking news 24/7 is an interactive installation to give people reflections of the problematic fake news issue nowadays. We created a physical news channel and a humanoid puppet – Pinnochio as the newscaster.

Classes

Pop Up Window Displays

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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