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The Pilgrim

Chunyi Yang

A screen-based game about the life of a faithful pilgrim.

https://github.com/EEEEEV/The-Pilgrim

Description

In the game, the players control a micro creature to move around and gather bricks. The bricks are used to build a tower, which is for these faithful creatures to reach their sovereign patron saint. The protector, or the “god,” protect the creatures from brightness, which can kill them. Players will loose health point if exposed under light, but will get healed around the tower. As players gather more bricks, the tower will become taller, thus enlarging the vision and the map. Players also get to meet more creatures dancing around the tower, worshipping the god. Some characters share stories of the god. Players may feel frustrated due to the difficulty and boredom of collecting bricks, but their sense of mission may grow as they receive stronger gratitude and adoration from other creatures, for that their dream is about to come true. As the tower is finally tall enough for them to reach their god, players have a chance to see who the god is, and what happens at last.

Classes

Comm Lab: Hypercinema, Creative Computing

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Variations on Computational Association

Bora Aydintug

A showcase of machine associations based on my artwork.

https://

Description

As a visual artist, I try to evoke curiosity of the audience in regards to their own inner universe and the common universe that we share. I hope to encourage the audience to let their mind wonder and make free associations. When we look at abstract shapes, random or natural patterns, we liken them to other things. Usually, when we are making free associations, we simply liken shapes to other shapes, if we, however, let our minds wonder and remain with the free-associative activity, we will soon start making associations that are increasingly our own. These personal associations are unique in their relationship to our world of meanings, and usually point towards memories of the past. Free associations, in this sense, are the emergence of connections to experiences of the past.

My fluid dynamic visuals are particularly inviting in this regard. I, therefore, wanted to experiment with BigbiGAN, to see what kind of associations this generative model would make, based on these visuals. Upon analyzing the features of an image, BigbiGAN makes a guess as to what it’s seeing and then generates the image of what it assumes to be seeing. By design, the network makes use of its experience of having been shown similar images. Although devoid of consciousness and therefore meaning, the network is sharing its experiences of the past with us.

The results were obtained after many experiments in Runway, which incorporates an implementation of BigbiGAN.

Classes

Open Source Cinema, The Neural Aesthetic

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Spherror

Julia Fernandez

An playful, yet unconventional mirror commenting on the absurdity of reality.

https://jftech-art.com/f/an-unconventional-mirror

Description

In our project, we invite visitors to take a seat in a chair and look at themselves in our unconventional mirror. The “mirror” is 4 feet tall and 3 feet wide and was created with 20 polystyrene spheres fixed to wooden dowels. The dowels are attached to a hollow base that conceals the power source and any wiring, including the wiring for the webcam. Across from the mirror is a chair for visitors to sit and gaze at themselves, positioned in a way that mimics a traditional vanity mirror. A projector will be fixed from the ceiling and at the bottom of the chair for full projection mapping coverage of the spheres. Since it is projection mapping, we would like to request a darker room. When a visitor is seated in the chair, PoseNet will detect specific facial features (eyes, nose, mouth) isolate them, and assign them to a sphere in the p5.js sketch. We then take the p5 sketch into MadMapper and projection map each circle onto our physical spheres. In the p5 sketch, the isolated features will jump around to different positions, which in turn will jump around from sphere to sphere via projection mapping. When there is no human present, the p5 sketch will display a TV noise animation.

The project is a commentary on the absurdity of reality. By dissecting your facial features, it is easier to see how strange we look and how much stranger we look when our eye or our nose is isolated. The project is playful because it is a fun interactive installation that anyone can use, but it is also uncanny and even uncomfortable because it dissects, exposes, and magnifies your face. Though people love looking at themselves, how will they feel when their faces are distorted in such a way?

Classes

Comm Lab: Hypercinema, Creative Computing

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We Are Breathing Lives

David Yang

Treat websites as physical environments, knowing websites impacting people both mentally and physically.

https://itp.nyu.edu/classes/cc-f19-do/we-are-breathing-lives-final-project-proposal/

Description

The project is a digital tree that grow or shrink base on the words it heard from the website. The tree will analyze the audio or reading the text from the webpage and reflect it on its growth. The project will take a digital form of a chrome extension.
The tree is for groups of people that hope to promote consciousness toward the environment they interact with. For example, The chrome extension could allow user to know visually if the website provides helpful comments and positive interaction.
The reason I want to do this is because I remembers an experiment about how environment could impact a person. The most important thing about the environment is its people. If we could be conscious about how our words could shape a place, a conversation, and a person, we might be able to create soil for each individual to growth. Similarly, if we could consciously place ourselves in nutritious environments/websites, we might be able to live a better life.

Classes

Creative Computing

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Gun Funded

Lachlan Campbell

See & understand the gun lobby's funding of the US Congress.

https://gunfunded.now.sh

Description

Gun violence is a growing epidemic across America, yet Congress refuses to pass real gun legislation. This is in large part due to the gun lobby’s direct funding: the current members of Congress have accepted $40M from the gun lobby & just $4M from gun control groups, a different of an order of magnitude. Gun Funded is a website that focuses on (neutrally) making this information readily available & easy to understand. I compiled the data myself from the Center for Responsive Politics and built the site with React/Next.js/Theme UI.

Classes

Creative Computing