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ColorField

Elizabeth Chiappini, Sydney Meyers

ColorField is an interactive, collaborative light experience.

https://

Description

ColorField is a collaborative, interactive light experience where two people are asked to use color and light to evoke a word. One person acts as The Controller, and the other as The Viewer. Before taking their seats, both people will approach a panel of words and select a word to represent visually. The Controller and The Viewer sit on opposite sides of a table with a 24” by 24” light wall between them so that they cannot see each other. The Controller has an unlabeled control panel and cannot see the light field. The Viewer sees the light field but cannot see the control panel. Through communication, the team designs a composition that represents the feeling of their chosen word. Through necessary collaboration, this project is meant to give a team the agency to work creatively to reflect on the emotional and aesthetic quality of a word.

Classes

Introduction to Physical Computing, Introduction to Physical Computing

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Interactive Fetal Movement

Zachariah Kobrinsky

Fetal movement sensor that visualizes a baby's kicks in an ethereal, meditative .p5 sketch, and it also tracks fetal movement over time as an indicator of fetal health.

http://zachariahkobrinsky.com/intro-to-physical-computing/2019/12/5/week-13-sensor-success-and-next-steps

Description

I believe this is the first digital interactive platform for a fetus in history. In addition to a video and audio experience for an audience, I can broadcast back to my wife's belly via headphones, providing audio feedback to my son-to-be in utero. It'll be interesting to see how he reacts.

For the show, the experience will be the visualization of baby kicks with audio, and visualization of baby movement over time that I will be data logging to an SD card.

Classes

Introduction to Physical Computing

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mountain on the ridge of your hand

Lu Lyu

an installation of a mountain that is correspond to the ridge of your hand.

https://jiaolyuluwebsite.netlify.com/course/pcom/

Description

Human’s firm and gentle can be told with clenched fists and open inclusinve plam. In this way, the ridge of the hand can be fluctuated hardly or smoothly. These can shape a mountain of human character.

Human can be firm and gentle, so do a mountain to be hard and soft. I want to metaphor a human being as a mountain.

There is a mountain on everybody's hand. By inserting your hand into a stone and pushing up your hand, the mountain is sensing you and fluctuate with your gentle hand movement.

When an ordinary person like Lulu is here at the installation, she saw a flat surface. When she put her fist firm into the mountain surface, then she would see the mountain arise.

Classes

Introduction to Physical Computing

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Racing Thoughts

Emily Zhao

If your positive and negative thoughts had to race, which one would win?

https://emilyzhaoblog.wordpress.com/category/intro-to-physical-computing/

Description

Racing Thoughts is an interactive experience that aims to bring awareness to one’s relationship with themself and their thoughts. The project prompts users to write one positive sentence and one negative sentence about themselves. At the end, their response times for each thought will be printed on a receipt, as well as their actual responses, for them to take.

Did it take longer to say a positive or negative thought? Are the two sentences equal in severity? Was the experience taken seriously? These are all questions I want the user to reflect on.

While it might be tempting to compare one's response times with other's, I want to stress that this experience is meant to spark SELF-reflection. It is also important to remind people to accept all their thoughts, both positive and negative, for we are not our thoughts.

Classes

Introduction to Computational Media: Media, Introduction to Physical Computing

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Beste

Beste Saylar, Zack Lee

Beste, an intuitive hardware synthesizer and music sequencer for live electronic music performance.

https://www.bestesaylar.com/pcomp-blog

Description

Our project Beste is a hardware synthesizer and music sequencer, which allows users to create music more intuitively by combining the Ableton Live’s session view with the Elektron’s well known step sequencer unit. The idea is to create a more user friendly and easy to use concept of live electronic music performance for musicians.
Although the session view is useful, it allows you to arrange pattern with session, it’s not enough for musicians during live performance because of the mouse use. Keyboard on the other hand, doesn’t have the display which allows you to see where to put the trigger notes.
Suitable approach is to combine these two features in one hardware platform.
Beste has easy to use concept of live music performance for musicians with 8-by-8 matrix buttons, a 25-key keyboards and 16 rotary encoders. On the 3.5 inch display, there are 4 pages that consist of Song, Clip, Sound and Sequencer mode on the left side of the screen which indicates how 64 matrix buttons work and on the bottom of the screen, there are 7 pages that are Sequencer, Oscillator, Filter, Amp, LFO, Mix and Effects features to determine how the 16 rotary encoders work.
The Software development is accomplished by 60% with programming languages and tools such as Pd, Lua, JSON and openframeworks.Fabrication of hardware is on going and will be finished within a week. The users will be able to interact with our instrument to play sound and create music at the Winter Show.

Classes

Introduction to Physical Computing

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Garden of Voices

KJ Ha, Kuan-Wen Chen

Garden of Voices is an interactive micro-environment, which emphasizes the power of people’s words.

https://www.kyungjooha.com/post/final-progress

Description

Inspired by the movements throughout history, Garden of Voices is an interactive micro-environment based on Arduino Uno, Raspberry pi and p5.js. There are a total of twenty words in the library we built, which will trigger the activation of the components in the garden (a light bulb, water pump, and fan) in a unique way. In the manual for commands, we arrange the words in alphabetical order to eliminate any notion of hierarchy. The words may have multiple meanings but none of them are innately good or bad.

The installation makes use of the connection between the p5.js sketch and Arduino, which is enabled by serial communication based on Raspberry Pi. Allowing people to give corresponding output, this installation lets people change the humidity and temperature, the two major factors affecting the growing process of plants. At the same time, the environmental data from the humidity/temperature sensor will be displayed on the wall as a reference for people’s decisions.

Through this project, we aim to shed light on the limits and unreliability of human language and want to remind people of the power and influence of words they say. We are living in a society where freedom of speech is guaranteed; thus people readily forget the weight of the words they say. Moreover, people sometimes hastily rely on the convenience that language offers them. However, human languages, which involve a more or less social contract, are not as reliable as one might believe. As everyone has a different perception of reality, we all have different meanings for every word. Those innate differences may lead to larger debates or conflicts. By simulating the society as micro-environment, Garden of Voices provides a visible way for people to realize the issues that we often overlook: there is no single solution that can magically solve the innate differences, but we can at least be mindful of such differences and should bear the responsibility for the words we say.

Classes

Introduction to Physical Computing

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Life Vending Machine

Stacy Yuan, Tianxu Zhou, Xinyue (Monni) Qian

An installation that aims to raise people's awareness of protecting endangered animals.

https://xinyueq.wordpress.com/portfolio/pcom-final-project-concept/

Description

This is an installation that represents the process from animal-hunting to animal product production. We found that the decrement of the animal's population is closely related to human consumption. Through experiencing our installation, we hope it can raise people's awareness of this problem and reduce the need for animal products.

Classes

Introduction to Physical Computing, Introduction to Physical Computing, Social Innovation Design

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ClimateScape

Jake Sherwood

ClimateScape is a kinetic art installation using sound and movement

https://jakesherwood.com/climatescape

Description

ClimateScape is a kinetic art installation using sound and movement.

Climate change is happening. Some think we've already gone too far.

We need to make a concentrated effort to about face immediately. A dramatic shift on current climate policy and swift action is no longer an option, it is mandatory. The time is now and it may be running out, if it hasn't already.

ClimateScape is about bringing awareness to the human effect and how we are affecting climate change. The four soundscape sculptures represent 4 potential climate change scenarios known as Representative Concentration Pathways, or RCPs.

They are scenario models for forecasters to use when modeling certain climate related metrics.

As the sculptures are approached they engage with the viewer and create a sometimes uneasy soundscape representing one of these scenarios. Illustrating the human effect and how we are influencing these changes.

The sculptures also have a representative material, representing a current and / or future sector that is or will be playing a role in climate change.

We are the human effect and we cause the ClimateScape.

It is up to us to right the ship. We as artists must bring continued awareness. We as humans must act.

Classes

Introduction to Physical Computing

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Bouncing Ball Karaoke

Erik van Zummeren

Bouncing Ball Karaoke is a Bluetooth enabled bouncing ball slash karaoke machine

https://

Description

Bouncing Ball Karaoke is a combination between a Bluetooth enabled bouncing ball and a karaoke machine. This specific installation is both a sample use case of how Bluetooth enabled bouncing balls can have a positive impact on our lives, as well as a way to have fun.

The concept for the karaoke machine is a modern interpretation of the bouncing ball device that was invented by Max Fleischer in 1924. Every time the user bounces the physical bouncing ball the 'lyric ball' heads to the next part of the song. The closer the user is to the original timing of the song, the more points the user gets.

However, a big part of this installation is also about empowering these voices that have long been neglected and unheard of in the karaoke scene. This installation enables everyone to perform karaoke. For instance, this installation will feature A-ha's Take on me, which can be considered as one of Europe's biggest treasures in its rich musical history. This song is notoriously difficult to sing in real life due to A-ha's Morten Harket majestic voice which reaches five different octaves. However, with Bouncing Ball Karaoke everyone can be Morten Harket and world-famous for 5 minutes in their life.

Classes

Introduction to Physical Computing

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Death is imminent, but let's have fun!

, Mingxi Xu, Nicholas Grant, Paulami Roychoudhury, Tirta Rachman

In this post-apocalyptic four-player co-op communication-based game, players must save themselves by fixing a spaceship to leave the Earth.

http://nickbgrant.com/2019/11/07/final-project-description/

Description

“Death is imminent, but let's have fun!” is a four-player co-op communication-based game where players attempt to save themselves from a post-global warming apocalyptic world. The Earth is breaking apart and all of the humans have left except for the four people playing the game. Players will be given individual instructions that they will need to pass on to their team members to execute in order to fix the ship.

– Built by Nicholas B Grant, Mingxi Xu, Paulami Roychoudhury & Tirta W Rachman.

– Mentored by David Rios

Classes

Introduction to Physical Computing