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Pull The Plug

Matthew Ross

Pull the Plug is a outlet, that when the plug is pulled out of deletes all data the user has in Google Drive that hasn't been touched in over 18 months.

https://www.notion.so/Pulling-The-Plug-a91c8e0486aa4b99b2281b52966657e4

Description

Pull The Plug is an intervention to our collective habit of Data Hoarding. We are constantly generating and producing data about ourselves, and in a world where we increasingly out of control of what happens to that data, Pull the Plug allows a user to take back control. When users are introduced to the project, they are explained how it works, and if they accept the terms and are interested in “pulling the plug” on their data, they will sign a waiver consenting to the data deletion. After that point they will authenticate via Google and be able to personally pull the plug.

Classes

Socially Engaged Art and Digital Practice

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Control

Andri Kumar

Control is a VR experience that explores human kind’s false self of control of oneself and the strange form memory takes on when posed as a flashback in our minds.

https://www.andrikumar.com/control

Description

Control is a VR experience that takes users on a poetic journey. In this journey, users will get to explore what it means to have control of one's life and actions.

As you will see in the video link, users begin the journey by walking around a public space. However, once they turn a corner, they encounter a horrific humanoid figure. Immediately, they find themselves back where they started their journey. Yet, this time, as they walk around something different is happening: time only moves when they move. Nevertheless, whenever they turn the corner they once again encounter the horrific figure and begin the looping journey all over again.

I created this experience because I was inspired by my own experience with memory, control, and flashbacks. The horrific humanoid figure represents trauma. The looping experience in which the user controls time represents the experience of flashback.

Control is another one of my projects that explores the use of abstract for empathetic story-telling. According to Gestalt’s principle of closure, the brains make sense of the world by “closing up” visual gaps.

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I designed this piece to be abstract so that users would only be given pieces of the story, resulting in them needing to put in “brain work” to understand the narrative. For example, the environment is a public space but it is unclear exactly what kind of public space– instead the user's mind makes that decision. Since the story really is only created once the users build it by filling it with their own memories, my theory is that this results in more empathetic storytelling.

When presenting this piece at the show, I will add elements around the headset. There large screen showing what users are seeing and physical objects surrounding the installation to bridge experience from VR to actual reality. These physical objects will be items from the experience, such as mannequins and miniature buildings, but will not take up much space.

Classes

Immersive Experiences (UG)

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24/7 On Call Time Tellers

Chenhe Zhang

Who owns the time?What determines the ownership of time?

http://chenhezhangnickitp.hosting.nyu.edu/category/time/

Description

996 system was a controversial topic and being hugely protested earlier this year, many companies in China tend to adopt this working hour system of 9 am to 9 pm of work, 6 days a week. Many public figures, company owners accuse young people of being slack not committing to the hard-working spirit. I am accusing this issue by making a group of virtual avatars casually walking and relaxing around until someone picking up a phone to ask them what time it is, they will run into the middle of the field in a hurry and form the current time using their bodies, after this intense performance, they went back to life. This installation asks the question of who owns the time and what determines the ownership of time?

Classes

Time

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40X

Caroline Neel, Maya Pruitt

We use augmented reality to showcase the lack of afforable housing in the Lower East Side

https://www.caraneel.com/itp/2019/11/11/data-art-data-amp-publics

Description

New York is becoming progressively more unaffordable, with more than half of New Yorkers considered rent-burdened (spending 30% or more on rent alone) and rental prices rising while median household income remains stagnant. Neighborhoods considered “affordable” are often those in affluent areas, where the rents are still high, but the median income is comparatively higher, and so people in those neighborhoods can easily make rent payments. A bit of renter’s trivia we found especially interesting is the 40 times rule, which states you must make forty times the monthly rent per year in order to qualify to rent an apartment. The only way to subvert that rule is to have vast, provable savings, or a guarantor who makes 80 times your monthly rent. The 40x rule leads to a stark comparison between neighborhood rents and the median household incomes of the neighborhood’s inhabitants.Maya and I were interested in intervening in a public space, but wanted to make sure that our intervention was legal, unobtrusive to the people who lived in the neighborhood, and not easily destroyed. Taking these issues into consideration, we decided that the medium we wanted to work with was augmented reality.

Classes

Data Art

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Wind, Rocks, and Women

Katie Han, Sue Roh

Wind, Rocks, and Women is an interactive sound exhibit that tells the stories of two mothers in Korea: a mother in Seoul, where the traditional female role of domesticity prevails, and a haenyeo in Jeju Island, where women have greater freedom and status atypical of Korean society.

https://www.katiewhan.com/itp-blog?category=haenyeo

Description

South Korea, despite being one of the largest economic powerhouses in the world, is consistently ranked as one of the highest countries in gender pay gaps in the OECD. With economic disadvantages undoubtedly come social implications of sexism that is deeply entrenched in all strata of Korean society. Particularly, women are expected to quit the workforce as full-time mothers due to societal pressures or sometimes outright discrimination by their employers.

This is why we are particularly drawn to the haenyeo of Jeju Island who seem to defy the classic patriarchy that dominates mainland Korea. Haenyeo are divers in Jeju Island who submerge up to thirty meters underwater without the help of oxygen masks to gather abalone, octopus, and other delicious deep sea treasures. Though their occupation is dangerous, it is also lucrative, often designating them as breadwinners of their family. Their historical importance has contributed to Jeju’s characteristic semi-matriarchal attitude and the island’s three proud abundances (samda): wind, rocks, and women. They are the epitome of eco-feminism with their strong, tight-knit group of haenyeo who care for each other’s safety and wellbeing, while simultaneously ensuring the preservation of the ecosystem to which they owe their livelihood.

Our project serves as an homage to the haenyeo of Jeju Island, whose population is largely dwindling as expert haenyeo age and their daughters choose safer jobs on land. The installation is set in Jeju Island with the Hallasan volcano where gods and spirits oversee the island and the surrounding Korean Strait. Peppered in the water and on the volcano lie various objects narrating two parallel stories, one of haenyeo and another of a mother in Seoul.

Classes

Introduction to Physical Computing

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Open Up

Sohaila Mosbeh

Playing with the representation of vulnerability and illusion of “controlled emotions”

https://https://www.sohailamosbeh.com/post/open-up

Description

Why is vulnerability looked at as a sign of weakness? where did this association come from? what happens if one truly embraces it and exposes themselves?

Vulnerability I believe has nothing to do with telling all of the secrets, but more about accepting ones own emotions and expressing that to those who have earned the right to hear it out. That openness can be quit a dynamic situation, it’s as if it plays with the notion of either you submit to the overwhelming state of that emotional expression or you convince yourself that you have it all under control. That image brought to mind the art of Shibari.

Shibari originated in Japan around the 1600s it was a rope tying technique used on prisoners so they can not escape, just with everything else humans have taken it and transformed it into a form of sexual play in the realm of BDSM. Creativity in all the strange ways, it’s now known as Kinbaku. Aside from the sexual bondage aspect of Shibari, the intricate ways of the how rope can be tied together to form eye catching patterns is awing. How within the rope patterns every knot plays an important role to give balance and support. It goes the same for human emotional state as well, we crave balance and support.

The art of shibari plays alot of notes of vulnerability even if it's not that clear upon first sight, with massive and chunky rope forms that might look intimidating to how painful the notes might seem. On the contrary if one would look closely within what happens between the ropes there is almost a sober like look of letting go and embracing the sense of getting

tucked away out of sight.

Classes

Introduction to Physical Computing

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Dialogue

Wei Kang

wearable tech project: use color sensor to sense colors of surrounding, and change the patterns of the garment.

https://wp.nyu.edu/weikang/dialogue-1st-semester-final-project/

Description

Dialogue is a wearable project that try to use technique to generate fashion. In definition, fashion is a social conception which means aesthetic expression in a certain time and context, combines with garments or something else. In the world formed of numbers and data, our aesthetic expressions are changed based on the interactions between we and surrounding, numbers flows behind as well. So in this project, I try to use number communication to generate fashion. Using color sensor to return surrounding RGB values, and control servos to change the pattern of the garments and colors as well.

Classes

Introduction to Physical Computing

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Noise

Ada Jiang

Noise is an audio-enhanced optical illusion installation that, through changes in the viewer's perspective, reveals patterns within the chaos by establishing connections between auditory white noise and visual static noise.

https://www.adajcc.com/noise

Description

Noise is an audio-enhanced optical illusion installation that, through changes in the viewer's perspective, reveals patterns within the chaos by establishing connections between auditory white noise and visual static noise.

As the viewer moves around in space to observe the piece from 4 directions(up, down, left, right), the body motion also modulates frequency and panning in auditory noise in directions that directly corresponds to the changes in the optical illusion.

Classes

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The Forgotten Footprint

Eva Philips

The Forgotten Footprint is a web overlay that aims to highlight a source of CO2 emissions that is often overlooked and not considered.

https://www.evaphilips.com/the-uses-of-discomfort/2019/12/13/final-project-documentation-the-forgotten-footprint

Description

In the age of big data, our privacy is not the only factor being compromised, so is our planet. Despite it often being overlooked, information storage and transfer over the internet comes at a huge environmental cost. We must stop thinking about the internet as a virtual product that only implicates society on a social level. The internet can have real, physical ramifications on carbon emissions.

The overwhelming amount of emissions from internet use comes from data centers. Data centers are facilities where servers, data storage devices, network devices, and monitors are use to store, manage, process, and exchange digital data and information (2). In order for the internet to be maintained, these supercomputers must constantly run, which can dissipate a great deal of heat. Data centers have to cool the computers in order to ensure that they do not overheat. The combination of dissipated heat and constant cooling produces an obscene amount of carbon emissions. While these emission are difficult to quantify, it is estimated that one Google search produces about 7g of CO2 emissions and in 2019 the internet will pollute more than civil aviation (1).

The Forgotten Footprint is a chrome extension that aims to build awareness toward this issue and expand the conversation on how we can mitigate these impacts. When a user downloads the chrome extension and begins to browse the internet, a symbol (footprint) overlays each webpage. Throughout the browsing session, with each page load, the footprint grows with respect to the amount of estimated emissions produced. This experience is meant to bring awareness to user about this issue and put the size of the internets impact on the environment into prospective.

References:

https://cleanfox.io/blog/cleanfox-news-en/10-scary-facts-internet/

http://www.sfu.ca/~smilosav/FinalProject/#:~:targetText=E%2DPollution%20is%20the%20environmental,tend%20to%20get%20very%20hot.

Classes

The Uses of Discomfort

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Immersive Meditation with Lights / Space

Tundi Szasz

Light installation controlled by sound and your brainwaves. It will be modulated by sound and light, with pillows on the ground where people can relax in the space. They put on headphones, and see the lights change.

http://www.tundiszasz.com/itp/category/Physical+Computing

Description

Brainwaves (MUSE headset) is connected of a projector running a p5 sketch, which immersively fills the room with COLOR to indicate progress in relaxation. In addition, there will be an LED halo hanging above people's heads which will also be controlling COLOR by your brainwaves, to confirm that yes you have fully relaxed. So both pieces are reflected by the headset.

Classes

Introduction to Physical Computing