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Dance Floor MPC

Adi Dahiya

A playful dance floor experience which allows anyone to make beats with their body.

https://adi.pizza/slices/dance-floor-mpc/

Description

I'm making a matrix of dance floor tiles which act as a controller for a drum rack sampler & step sequencer. The software implements some of the key ideas from an Akai MPC and modern production workstations like Ableton. Users are invited to step up to the device, express themselves with a little dance over a 2- or 4-bar phrase, and hear back the resulting rhythm produced by the “Dance floor MPC”. Successive users can choose to “collaborate” with the previous user's recorded sequence. This is not a precise production tool, but rather a playful experience which enables anyone to enjoy making beats with their body.

Classes

Introduction to Physical Computing, The Code of Music

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ChatBotany

Adrian Bautista

ChatBotany allows plants to interact with and express themselves to people through a chat interface.

https://www.chatbotany.xyz

Description

ChatBotany is the millennial gardening interface for today. The project connects a person to their plant through Facebook Messenger — allowing the plant to let their humans know when they're thirsty or lonely. The chat conversation also provides digital inputs that trigger physical events (such as watering the plant).

Plant personality traits based on the current state of the plant (e.g. “I'm thirsty!”) are represented through the images and the tone of messages sent by the plant to the human recipient. It explores our tendency to personify non-human entities and whether texting/chat interfaces are capable of communicating their personalities.

The project will be open-sourced, allowing anyone to build their own ChatBotany project at home.

Classes

Introduction to Physical Computing

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A Window in your Hometown

Eva Chen

We bring you your window from your hometown.

https://

Description

This project includes a typewriter and a window. People type their hometown's name on the typewriter, and the window will generate the realtime light environment of their hometown base on the data of time and weather.

Classes

Prototyping Electronic Devices

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Data Structures

Lydia Jessup

In a world of “big data,” what story will you choose to tell when you have the controls?

https://lydiapjessup.tumblr.com/tagged/icm2018

Description

This piece invites viewers to control data visualizations on 5in x 5in cubes representing different neighborhoods in Chicago. The viewer sees shapes, colors and patterns appear on the cubes as they move the controls and can see how neighborhoods differ from one another through these abstract representations of the data. Pulled from the Chicago Data Portal from domains such as health, the economy, education and the environment, these data tell a story – and the viewer gets to decide what that story is. In an era of “big data,” this piece invites viewers to question the multiple filters and curation that data go through in collection, analysis and presentation and how this determines the narrative we choose to tell about places and the people who live there.

This piece is an exploration of different ways of viewing and interacting with data beyond screen-based and more literal data visualizations. The viewer has a control panel with sliders that control the size or “weight” of each data type. The control panel will also have instructions for how to use it and an explanation of the type of data displayed. The color scheme is taken from data analysis software editors as a reference to the piece giving people without a coding background the ability to manipulate data. The neighborhoods will not be labeled to allow the viewer to abstract the visualizations and imagine the city or neighborhood where they live or where they are from.

Classes

Introduction to Computational Media

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Solar System Tour and Navigator

Apoorva Ramakrishnan, Sarah Peng

An educational tour of our solar system with a twist that puts a planet right in the palms of the user.

https://editor.p5js.org/sspeng/sketches/BJwA8rfJN

Description

Space is big and cool, and traditional point and click solar system tours are a short and sweet way to learn about it. But just pointing and clicking at stuff with a cursor is kinda stale, so we wanted to make it possible for a user to really get their hands in there. That's how the controller came to be. It's a 6DOF sensor encased in a sphere, allowing users to spin planets around to look at them every which way. It's educational too, with facts being displayed for each planet. Combined with a traditional solar system tour interface made in p5.js, the alternative controller is meant to subvert an expectation while creating a freshly immersive and playful experience for users.

Classes

Creative Computing

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Find Your Flow

Nuntinee Tan

‘Find Your Flow’ is a touch sensitive interactive installation that asks you to feel every pixel of its sequin surface and follow its vibration patterns until you ‘Find Your Flow’.

https://hellonun.blog/2018/12/05/find-your-flow/

Description

Our physical movement and sense of touch are a large part of our everyday perception, yet we only passively pay attention to them. By tuning into our senses, we become more perceptive of ourselves and our surroundings, and are more able to enjoy the nuances around us.

‘Find Your Flow’ is a touch sensitive interactive installation that asks you to tune into your sense of touch and movement, feel every pixel of its sequin surface and follow its vibration patterns until you ‘Find Your Flow’.

The installation tracks your movement i.e. your position and speed using a grid of FSR sensors; when you move at the right pace and in the right position for a certain period of time, the vibration stops, and the installation lets you continue on by yourself.

Mechanism: grid of 16 FSR sensors and 16 vibration motors

Material and size: sequin on soft pillow (80 sq.cm. wide, 15cm. high)

Additional elements: small LCD display displaying the status and direction for the installation

Keywords: touch sensitive, vibration, sequin, pixels, slow motion, movement, soft touch

Classes

Introduction to Physical Computing

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The Music Box

David Azar

Compose different music arrangements with and old-school computer and punch cards

https://www.davidazar.mx/blog/the-music-box

Description

The Music Box is a project about music and abstract tangible interaction.

Technology has moved into a 2D space filled with screens. Sure, VR and AR are making an effort to make hybrid spaces between the physical and digital world, but screen of some sort is needed.

I am offering an exploration on music arrangement, inspired by old-school computing elements and based heavily on tangible interaction.

There are 15 different punch cards that users can insert in one of 12 slots. Depending on where that card is and its type, a sample of sound is played. Users can stack 3 different samples at a time, and they can be rhythmic, harmonic or melodic. Each section has three different instrument sounds.

This is a tool/exploration for musical composition.

Classes

Introduction to Physical Computing, The Code of Music

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Flappy melody

Jingyi Wen, Xinyue Li

This is a physical "flappy bird" game where players control the bird to avoid the barriers by singing.

https://wp.nyu.edu/xinyueli/2018/11/14/pcom-final-updates-week-nov-7-13/

Description

This project is inspired by the game “flappy bird”, but is designed in a more physical and interactive way. The basic setting is two glass cylinder, the smaller one's diameter is 5 inches and the bigger one's diameter is around 6 inches. Between them will be some ferrofluid.

For the interaction, the users get the control over the ferrofluid dot attracted by the magnet inside and to avoid some real physical barriers between the two glass layers by singing a specific tone. If hit the barrier, the magnetic force would be erased and the ferrofluid would drop down.

While the vertical movements are controlled by the players and will reflect the frequency of their voice, the horizontal movement (rotation) is made automatically with each interaction.

Classes

Introduction to Physical Computing

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Peace Bomb

Alizarin Waissberg

An interactive experience aimed to cheer the world up with an explosion of positivity

https://editor.p5js.org/AlizarinZ/full/SkCF_3gJV

Description

Peace bomb is a simple, one-click interactive experience. Instant and surprising, lasting no longer than 30 seconds, the aftershock of Peace Bomb shall shake you to the core long after leaving the scene. Loaded with invasive audio, armed with visual shrapnels, the target of the Peace Bomb is to violently bring you joy.

Classes

Introduction to Computational Media

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Lost and Found Bots

Ashley Lewis

Like all of us at times, these bots are lost without one another, until you connect their hands and help them feel found

https://ashleyjanelewis.com/2018/10/05/lost-found-bots/

Description

This project was created in Fabrication at the beginning of the semester, just after I had moved from Canada to the US to attend ITP. Perhaps it was a manifestation of feeling out a new space, but these bots felt very therapeutic to design and make. Two comical 5″ bots, sit side by side, both similar but not congruent. Their tiny screens read as “lost” and their light are off. Connecting their hands, brings them closer together, as though they are hugging or kissing. Once connected, their screens read as “found” and their lights turn on.

The best part about this project was its ability to make others assess their feeling of lost or found. I posted it to Instagram and was able to instigate many conversations around empathy, in some cases, for my situation but, in most cases, around a situation of a stranger. A woman from Toronto whom I haven’t met showed the bots to her son immediately requested to build a pair of his own – a first for him in his exploration in electronic making. This little piece about lonely bots turned into a vessel for emotive conversations.

Classes

Intro to Fabrication, Introduction to Physical Computing