Check out the ITP's (Interactive Telecommunication Program) Creative Space. I especially like the Shop Room.

This is a social game created by Summer Bedhard at ITP at NYU and her group for game design. I couldn't resist taking a photo. It looks fun and funny. Btw, Steve Jackson smells fresh, like pecans, denoted by his name "Pecan Jackson."

This is truly a beautiful information visualization illustrated by James N. Sears. It was published in the New York Times Magazine (December 3, 2006), as the cover.

Processing was developed by M.I.T. grads Casey Reas and Ben Fry, and it's free to try. It is part of ITP foundation courses because the language is similar to Java, except the interface is easier to understand than Eclipse. Also, it's a good introduction for Arduino, which is also another free software that similarly functions as Pic Basic Pro.

"Now, finally, a lot of people are beginning to see how machines might in fact learn to fit into their lives as well as humans do. People are increasingly choosing their books and music by the algorithmic recommendations of Amazon instead of those of their friends, planning dates with mates they find in textfields instead of local bars or social clubs."

—Christian Croft

This machine will fill out scantron bubbles for you if you drop a coin in any of its slots. Christian Croft designed the gears and kinetic system from scratch (i.e. using the laser cutter to cut Plexiglas). I know he's going to be insulted, but I have to say that the design of this machine is beautiful.

His commentary of moving forward to a world of automation is humorous. I always appreciate Christian Croft's and Andrew Schneider's conceptual art projects. I'm not sure if it's because they have a background in theater, but their work is never too abstract for me to understand.

This machine is going to be attached to a desk.

This code means something, translated from binary to English.

For more information about this project, click here to visit his site.

PART o1:

Ambient Lighting Design

Are we in a time warp? Typewriter outputs digital? Typewriter crosses computer.

Twister Game networked? There are hundreds of solutions to win this game. A new approach to Twister, but you need to find the right combination. To do so, it requires you to touch other players.

These fingerless gloves warm your hands ups when you hold your partner's hand.

Powder and Ferrofluid Interesting texture when it pulses. Pretty mesmerizing.

Hat Mutterer

This project is called "Hair" by Carolina Pino

Kyungmi's "Kenny" digital paint brush

Networked Shoes as a performance tool. This was indeed a treat to watch.

Lara and Myra worked on a chair that functions as a musical interest for assistive tech.

PART o2

Chris and Juri's Mega Phone Game. This is fun and immersive. I can see it at a movie theater. You call a number and play these short games that are projected on a screen. The games are short and satisfying. One example is blowing into your cellphone to digitally blow a balloon fastest. Maybe the theater can give you a free tub of popcorn if you win. "Don't forget to turn off your cellphones for the movie!"

Andy, Kate and Che worked on this demo. You can turn off appliances and make your home smart using your cellphone. So if you forgot to turn off your light or forgot to turn on your air conditioner for your cat, this would be a great tool.

Christin Roman's Telebunny calls your child and comforts it when you're away.

Chris Parretti's car race allow you to control the speed of the car by yelling into your mobile phone. New game consoles a mobile device? Watch out Sony and Nintendo!

Preston Noon's Puzzle Poetry

Mike Bukhin and Michael DelGaudio's mobile phone is video tracking every second and minute of the wearer's day and meta tagging activities.

Ilteris Kaplan's Mood Box allows you to anonymously input your emotions in one space, which is processed and displayed in a different space. I see a lot of potential. It is beautiful as well.

Fun cell phone game with archaic cell/cordless phone controller>

Judson's video tracking flea simulation. What a hoot!

Jeff LeBlanc's art works.

Che's tree personality test translated to music using Max/MSP and Jitter.

Jenny Chowdhury's email art.

Animalia Chordata. Gabe's humorous exploration of personal space. He puts people in bottles. Okay, this project was in one of those blogs I listed above.

Tales of Grim. While you read this book, the rooms in the play house interact.

Low tech art by Heather, Charles and Tristan. It's pretty satisfying swaying these blocks

I didn't get to interact with this project, but it looks engaging.

Tikva's Sonic Body Pong. This was on the Make blog too.

Steve Jackson's project allows you to channel surf YouTube according to subject matter. If you type in "basketball," it mine all videos related to this sport for the day and play it for you. I'm not even a big YouTube fan, but I found this project pretty cool.

Concept for Pimp'd-Out-Braille Ring:

I just found this site, Knover. A site that practices the "Six Degrees" theory. It basically maps and keeps a database of famous people and their affiliations. I believe this site scapes the Internet for articles with the specific names, and compiles it in a database, so you can cross-reference people with people, affiliation with affiliation, or people with affiliation. I just searched for Oprah, and her profile alone, came up with 15 pages of people, and has 973 web associations. Warren Buffet has 63 web associations, Bill Gates has 462 web associations, George Soros has just 213. Wait! I found someone who beat Oprah with 1,798 web associations, Bill Clinton. I'm not counting George Bush (2,149 web associations) because it seems like most of it is related to what he's doing with the war, i.e. his connection with Adolf Hitler? I also like how they have separate categories like business, music, fashion, news and politics.

The pitfalls, don't type someone not famous, or it will crash, and it tracks just the mainstream/popular "notables." Although, a profile came up for John Zorn. A search for Clay Shirky came up with a profile as well, but I couldn't find Red Burns.

Mark and Toru, our profs, arranged this field trip to visit 4-pli (a studio) that has a 3-axis CNC milling machine. Basically it can mill just about anything.

The smallest drill-bit used on this machine.

Serious vaccuums to suck excess dust and debris from this machine.

This is Mastercam, an application, that simulates the machine milling your 3-D design before it mills. I wish this was a screensaver.

The blue material on the bed is styrofoam. When the milling machine is turned on, the bed sucks the air out so that the styrofoam can not move during the process.

Drill bits that are primarily used for undercutting.

This is the interface for this machine. You can see the X, Y, and Z values on this screen.

It goes through two passes. The first pass is rough because it uses a larger drill bit. The second pass is smoother because if uses a smaller drill bit. This is the finished design. If you look at the Mastercam photo, you will see this design on the screen.

Our assignment is to create a surface that can be milled in Maya using dynamics and applying different force fields to manipulate the plane.

4-pli
72 North 15th Street
Brooklyn, NY 11222
info@4-pli.com

Here are some surfaces that were milled. It mills masonite, wood, Plexiglas, and lighter metals, like aluminum (it takes longer).

Last year, my friend Jay Moorthy told me about TED, and I've heard about it here and there. Lisa Strausfeld also mentioned TED when she lectured about Richard Saul Wurman (known for his book Understanding USA, where famous designers created information graphics about statistical data in the U.S.). For those of you who don't know about it, TED is the acronym for Technology, Entertainment, Design. Some notable speakers and performers have been Al Gore, Malcolm Gladwell, Cameron Sinclair, Nicholas Negroponte, Jeff Han, Tracy Chapman, Sirena Huang, an 11-year-old concert violinist, and even our own ZeFrank (who taught Creative Acts at ITP). It costs about 5g's to go, and you have to be invited, but all of the money goes to charitable organizations. Anyway, they have free podcasts of past speakers, under TED TALKS, which I try to listen to.

This year, I was really interested in Theo Jansen's works (I first heard about him in Living Art). He does these amazing kinetic sculptures, and he's one of the speakers at TED this year. Also, Hod Lipson, who is doing some work in robotics. His robot like of looks like a starfish, which can be seen in the BusinessWeek slide show about TED. I think he's also created a DIY Desktop fabricator for less than 2g's. And also, Nick Sears, from ITP, will be talking about his thesis, the newer 3D orb, and presenting the initial iteration (shown at the 2006 ITP Winter Show).

Bill Clinton, Lawrence Lessig, Paola Antonelli, Zaha Hadid, Richard Branson, and They Might Be Giants will also speak and perform this year.

Here are some recommended links, some are repeated from above:

Podcasts of TEDTalks

TEDBlogs

BusinessWeek's Slide Show on some speakers [which include Theo Jansen, Hod Lipson, and Nick Sears]

BusinessWeek's story about TED

For Fabricating Information, we used an open source software applications, Isosurf and Blender, to convert RAW grayscale images to x, y, z coordinates. I took an experimental video, and played with dropping frames, blurring, and cutting segments. To learn more about the process, click here.

Here are the 3D structures that I came up with:

Rapid Prototyping Fabrication is a process that prints resin on x, y, and z axes. So from this video (screenshots below), each shot is a cross section of the artifact.

Here is the process:

Here are some colleagues pieces:

James N. Sears [derived from Mathematica]

Che Mangat

Stefan Hechenberger [derived using motion capture]

Production process and first peek of his new Pixel Mirror.

Notes on Group Analysis) by Clay Shirky

1. How many people?
XS ~ 6
S ~ 12
M ~ 50
L ~ 100
XL ~ 1000

2. How was it founded?
happened --- external/internal ---planned

3. What constitutes membership?

4. How tightly bound are the tools?

5. What is the boundary condition?
center --- edge --- horizon

6. What keeps people coming back?

7. Do People in the group transact?

8. Does the group act?

9. How much "real world" is there?

10. How synchronized are the interactions?

I decided to type this in verbatim on my blog just in case I lose this assignment.

Final Paper

For next week, pick a topic to write your final paper about. This will be due on the last day of class.

Your topic should have the following three characteristics:

1. It should involve some aspect of a group that communicates with one another partly or wholly using social media.

2. The group should have some shared goal other than the pleasure of one another's company (Linux Kernel developers and My.Barak.Obama yes, ITP mailing list and Stickam no.)

3. The group should be observable by you.

The paper can be analytic -- how does or did this group come together, and how does it work today? -- or it can be projective -- how could this group be changed for the better? (Including the possibility of designing a way for latent groups to come together around some external activity.)

There is no fixed set of analytic models (users/goals/tools, logic of collective action, etc) and no standard set of questions (as with the 'proposed change' question from the midterm.) Instead, the design of the questions you want to ask yourself is part of choosing the subject.