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Escape the Cave

Topher Blair

A creature has been caught in a cave, and if you help him get out he'll give you a code to discover treasure!

https://www.topherblair.com/physcomp-blog-1/

Description

You find a poor creature trapped on a video screen. It has fallen down a cave and got stuck. To free it, you need to squeeze its feet in the correct order, at which point it jumps out of the video screen and onto the wall behind it (with the help of a projector). On the wall behind it are written 10 digits. The creature hops on three of the digits, highlighting them. Those digits help you to unlock a box filled with treasure.

Classes

Introduction to Physical Computing

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Maverick Flow

Qice Sun

A water flow is often thought-provoking and this time you will meet and interact with a maverick one.

physical-computing-final-maverick-flow

Description

Maverick Flow is an installation where users will interact, by means of eye or head movement, with a water flow that move abnormally due to the application of temporal aliasing. The users will kneel before the installation and the water flow will react to their eye movement. There will be 2 types of control built into the system. The 1st type of control will only change the frequency of the strobbing lights, but the user might be deceived and believe that he changed the way the water actually moves while they didn’t. For example, the water might stay in the air or levitate according to vertical eye movements. The 2nd type of control will genuinely change the way the water moves. They are welcomed to touch the water to witness the collision of what they see and what things really are. I don’t really want to be specific about what the piece is really about because I’ve heard some unique and yet great interpretations during user testings. For example, one of my classmates believes that nature is observing and interacting with us and she thought this what the piece is about. I really enjoy this kind of interpretation, so I want to be less explicit in the tile of description. But as an audience of my own work, I think it can serve as a comment on our excessive belief on things that we see, and the assumption of “Seeing is believing”. Although the topic is universal and even philosophical, it is becoming more relevant and popular nowadays as AI-powered video manipulation arouse public concerns. There might be a time when we can’t even trust what is happening right in front of our eyes.

Classes

Introduction to Physical Computing

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Sound of Water

Xiaotong Ma

Sound instrument

http://xiaotong.hosting.nyu.edu/physical-computing/pc-week11-final-project-process/

Description

This project is basically a sound instrument which based on a very simple principle: air resonance. The sound changes according to the movement of the person. The sound is generated by solenoids, but people can affect the water in the container to reach as same height as where their hands are. and at the same time affects the pitch of the sound. So what I want to do is a more fun instrument, and it can also be understanded as a kind of interaction between human and natural sound.

Classes

Introduction to Physical Computing

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Song Generation with Machine Learning

Zahra Khosravi

Generate a new song based on Alan Lomax Collection and 19th century song lyrics using Machine Learning techniques.

https://wp.nyu.edu/zarakitp/winter-show/

Description

My project allows the user to generate a new song title and lyrics based on the Alan Lomax collection of American folk songs and 19th century song lyrics through an interactive interface. The code works based on LSTM machine learning model. I trained an LSTM model based on the song titles and lyrics of the Alan Lomax's collection available on the Library of the Congress website. The project generates song titles and I am working on training the model with lyrics. I would like to generate images based on the text in the next steps for this project.

More on the collection: Alan Lomax and other members of the Lomax family are associated with an enormous number of “classic” folk songs and traditional tunes. This list contains some of most widely-known and frequently performed “iconic” pieces that the Lomaxes documented through their field recordings, or increased public awareness of through commercial recordings, publications, radio programs, and concerts.

Classes

Programming from A to Z, The Neural Aesthetic

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Above the Cloud

Mingna Li, Yuanyuan Wang

A magical instance to connect with outer-space creature (alien).

https://

Description

This project is inspired by our interest in magic, and we want to create a scenario that human can communicate with the unknown. Through this installation, user can connect with creature-like objects through movement. In our human world, we talk in complex languages, but sometimes, unspoken language can pull our hearts even closer, such as a smile, a hug, or a moment together. This installation is intended to recreate that beautiful connection between creatures.

User wears a simple finger glove, which is an alien communication device. Then, user lies down on a cloud (a cushion that looks like cloud). There will be about 10 aliens above user mounted on a frame. When user points his/her finger to aliens, aliens will come down to user. When users points away, aliens slowly retract.

We will use IR sensor to detect whether the user is pointing at aliens. User is wearing IR emitter on the alien communication device, and aliens have IR receivers in them. Aliens are controlled by stepper motors. Pulley is attached to the stepper. When user and alien make connection, stepper releases wires and aliens move down. When the connection is lost, stepper reverses, and aliens will move back to their home.

Classes

Introduction to Physical Computing, Introduction to Physical Computing

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Hotpot.js

Mingna Li, Zhe Wang

Making hot pot with emotion.

https://

Description

Hotpot.js is an interface that visualizes emotion for a community of people. We started this project with an interest in visualizing human emotion. Rather than generating abstract graphics from data, we wanted to create interaction that is funny and relevant to our daily life. We explored the relationship of emotion and food. Through food, we hope to introduce another dimension of sense, taste, into the experience.

The interface asks users to choose their feeling. Each feeling is relevant to a food, such as dancing chicken, hippy green onion, and sexy apple. When user clicks an emotion button, the corresponding food will drop down and sink into the hotpot. At the bottom of the interface, there is a recipe of the current flavor of the hotpot.

We imagined this project to be installed at a location that many people passes by. As the day passes by, we can see the emotion of the community through hotpot recipe of the day.

Classes

Introduction to Computational Media, Introduction to Computational Media

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Power Your Day With Sunlight

Emily Lin

"Power Your Day with Sunlight" is an educational tool that explains how solar panels work and how sunlight is converted into electricity.

https://emilylinprocess.blog/category/final-fall-2018/

Description

We all know what solar panels are but what do we know about how they work? The objectives for “Power Your Day with Sunlight” is to visualize the science of solar cells and better understand this modern technology. By providing the user with a hands on model people will be able to experiment with how solar cells correspond with the sun.

This project is composed of a physical interaction in which the change of the angle of the light, representing the sun and time of day, is reflective of the light generated inside the miniature solar house. Meanwhile, the screen below the house displays an interactive animation of a solar cell diagram that updates in real time based on the amount of light that the solar panels receive. Next to the screen are four buttons that will change to different web pages. The first button will display an intro page, the second one displays the solar cell schematic, the third will allow show the voltage generated by the light in the form of a moving bar graph, the fourth button displays information regarding battery storage.

On the right side, there is an LED powered button icon. When the light is shining on the solar panel, the battery icon will cyclically flash to show that it is storing the solar energy. When the light is turned off, which will automatically happen after the day has ended, the battery will discharge. At that time, the screen will show a page that discusses the current status and challenges with the development of cost-effective batteries.

This addresses the fact that large scale deployment of solar energy depends on effective methods to store the excess sunlight.

Ultimately, this project hopes to show that solar energy, despite its challenges, is sustainable and fascinating.
Process for this project can be seen here: https://emilylinprocess.blog/category/final-fall-2018/
Process videos can be seen here:

Solar Cell Diagram and Light

Switching Pages with Buttons

Drawing with Light

Classes

Introduction to Physical Computing

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Sky Lantern the Wish

Xinyue Li, Chenyu Sun

3D Interactive Web application about wishes.

https://

Description

Sky Lantern the Wish is a 3D Interactive Web application. Our idea comes from the traditional Chinese culture of making “Kongming lantern” where people hand-writing their wishes on a small hot air balloon that made of paper and set it up to the sky at night. In Asia and elsewhere around the world, sky lanterns have been traditionally made for centuries, to be launched for play or as part of long-established festivities. The Sky Lantern represents the holding of beautiful wishes; we want to inherit the beautiful culture and make it into the digital world that people can assess and making sky lanterns, wishes on the internet. When people go inside our application, they will see an ocean and a sky full of lanterns. After clicking the “make a wish” button, users can type their wishes that will show on the “lantern”, then they can release it up to the “sky” and restore it on the “sky”. By moving the mouse and pressing the up, down, left, right keys, the user will be able to change their views and “fly” into the “sky”, to see other's wishes as well.

Classes

Introduction to Computational Media, Introduction to Computational Media

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The Reporter

Nianqi Zhang, Yuanyuan Wang

The Reporter is a news exploration game based on true story, guiding people to form sensible attitude towards news.

https://wp.nyu.edu/nianqi/2018/11/10/final-project-proposal-space-for-news/

Description

Nowadays, news are always misunderstood and forgotten by people. And cyberbullying always occurs even though people actually don't know the whole truth. To stress these problems, the project take a news happened in 2007 as an example and use a game to demonstrate how bias were shaped and changed. Players can explore news from different perspective and unlock different tools to go deeper into the news.

Classes

Introduction to Computational Media