ITP
Thesis: What is it?
This week Despina asked us three questions:
Write 2-3 sentences clear description of your project (imagine it is Thanksgiving and your 16 year cousin and 74 year uncle ask you to describe your thesis). I am building a display that will let you experience the magic of bioluminescent algae outside of its usual context. [...]
Thesis: Preliminary Drawings
This week I’ve been doing some preliminary sketches for what I’m starting to think of as algae pixels. The idea is to create a way for people to experience an interaction with bioluminescent algae that’s not too far off from seeing it in the ocean. For the first prototype I’m going to be testing ways [...]
Toy Design Workshop: Mood Board
For Toy Design Workshop I’m developing a building toy that will integrate well with outdoor play and natural materials. As a kid I was always frustrated by the disconnect between the aesthetics of Legos or blocks and the twigs and moss I liked to build with in my yard. So, my plan is to prototype [...]
Thesis: Timeline
Feb. 18: concept drawings, grow box, annotated bibliography, paper outline, request for space, project calendar/worksheet
Feb. 25: containers for pixels, agitation & sensor possibilities, presentation for mid-semester critique, work out low-light photos for documentation
March 4: fake interaction test (wizard of oz), order components, pixel working without sensing, documentation
March 11: module with sensing, documentation
March 18 (Spring Break), [...]
Bio & Materiality: Bioluminescence
Our first assignment in Design Frontiers in Biology and Materiality was to recreate favorite science experiments from when we were kids. I immediately thought back to summer evenings I spent on Orcas Island, skipping stones into water that sparkled with bioluminescence. After doing a little reading to see if I could actually grow bioluminescent algae [...]
Thesis: Mood Board
Thesis Mood Board
Stuff it includes:
America Windows by Marc Chagall
Bioglyphs exhibit at MSU Bozeman
Rocky Shore exhibit at Monterey Bay Aquarium
Wind Board by Leah Buechley
Funky Forest by Theo Watson
Bestiary by me and Bryan Lence
Firefly by Jason Krugman
Music:
where_have_all_my_files_gone? by Rachel’s
Rest of You: Controlling Video with Heart Rate
In working with the HRMI over the last few weeks, I’ve been intrigued by how easy it is to manipulate my own heart rate, either slowing it by sitting still and breathing deeply, or speeding it up simply by waving my arms a little. I also happened to watch some video of jellyfish, and I [...]
Cabinets Week 8: Museum Design Manifesto
Week 8: time to distill what we’ve loved and hated about all of our museum visits over the past few weeks into our own experience design manifestos. Here’s mine…
Transport and/or transform the audience, if only for a moment.
Inspire wonder, curiosity, and delight, even in the face of difficult subjects.
Expect the best from visitors; don’t limit [...]
Rest of You Week 3: Graphing Data from a File
Slowly getting there… I’m still having problems with the FileGrapherScroll sketch, but I got the plain FileGrapher working with a few small changes:
Red is the sound level, which I still need to smooth out a bit. Green is my heart rate. Note that the y values are increasing rather than decreasing as they head toward [...]
Cabinets Week 5: New York Hall of Science
My first thought upon walking into the New York Hall of Science was, “Yay! We get to play!” My second thought was, “And I won’t have to feel like I am hogging the exhibits since there are hardly any kids here.” (Third thought? “Please don’t let me get pink eye or swine flu or whatever [...]
1-in-1: Cross-Pollination Hats
For 1-in-1 during ITP30, Kate and I made some hats in an attempt to visualize the sharing of ideas that happens everyday around the 4th floor. We were glad to find some photographic evidence of people playing with them after we left for the night.
Cabinets Week 4: Museum of Natural History
The American Museum of Natural History has always been one of my favorite places in the city, but for some reason I was really grouchy when I visited this time, and my notes reflect that. So, sorry AMNH, but this will not be the love song I might have written to you had I visited [...]
Cabinets Week 3: MJH, NMAI, & Eldridge St.
For our third week of visits, Nancy asked us to explore three museums focused on the history or art of specific communities. I chose to visit the Museum of Jewish Heritage, and the National Museum of the American Indian. I had visited the Museum at Eldridge Street a few weeks ago, and my time there [...]
Rest of You Week 2: Heart Rate, meet Noise.
For Rest of You this week, Dan asked us to collect data from two sensors and send the data to a file. He suggested that one sensor be facing inward (e.g. galvanic skin response, heart rate, body temperature) and one be facing outward to detect environmental changes (e.g. light, noise, air temperature). I decided to [...]
Cabinets Week 2: Brooklyn Botanic Garden
I’ve been to Brooklyn Botanic several times, and I’m always a little surprised at how casual the entrance is. The guards are chatty, and people are sitting or standing in a relaxed way that is very different from other types of museums. I’ve noticed this at New York Botanical, too. This time I visited Brooklyn [...]
Rest of You Week 1: Analog In, Serial Out
For the first week of Rest of You, Dan asked us to brush up on our physical computing skills by reading input from two sensors through Arduino and displaying the readings in Processing. My skills were pretty rusty, so first I reviewed the Analog In and Serial Out labs. I wanted to see readings from [...]
Cabinets Week 1: The Met and The Frick
Last Saturday afternoon I visited The Frick Collection and The Metropolitan Museum of Art for Cabinets of Wonder. For each visit, Nancy has asked us to gather our first impressions of the place, observe others in the space, and write a collection of short reviews, adopting a variety of viewpoints.
The Frick always seems to me [...]
Bestiary at the ITP Spring Show
Bryan and I are having a great time showing Bestiary, our projection-based book of randomly generated animals, at the ITP Spring Show. Here’s a quick video we shot this morning during set up:
Bestiary from Caroline Brown on Vimeo.
Yesterday was day one of the show, and we got lots of great feedback on the project. Today [...]
Bestiary Sketch (aka Menagerie, Round 3)
Bryan Lence and I revisited our A to Z midterm to create another version of the creature maker. We kept our foundation of the context-free grammar, but we altered our template for the images. Instead of layering transparencies in set positions, we anchored each image to a specific variable associated with another image (i.e. the [...]
Fall Classes
Hooray! Fall course schedules are out! I’m looking forward to my classes: Design for UNICEF with Clay Shirky, Cabinets of Wonder with Nancy Hechinger, Crafting with Data with Rob Faludi, and Visual Communication with Katherine Dillon.
5000 Dogs in the Clone Lab
I chose to revisit the Animal as Object assignment for my final project in Animals, People and Those in Between. Instead of really focusing on Mira this time, however, I decided I wanted to convey how overwhelmed I was by the number of dogs supposedly used in the lab that cloned the first dog: 5000. [...]
Visualizing Arduino Survey Results with Circos
Since I used a free account with SurveyMonkey to conduct my survey of Arduino usage patterns, I’m unable to download the data and easily manipulate it. I find reviewing survey results on the site a little unwieldy, so I uploaded the results of my first question (How many Arduino boards do you own?) to Circos, [...]
Arduino Lifespan Survey
As noted on the Arduino blog, I’m gathering some usage data to support a Life Cycle Assessment of the Duemilanove. The results I receive will help me to determine functional units and usage hours for the analysis. Arduino fans, please complete this short survey (now closed– please see update below) if you have a spare [...]
LCA of Materials for Intro to Physical Computing
After some serious thought about my final project for If Products… I’ve decided to drop the modern heirlooms project. It’s just not well-defined enough to be successful during the short time span between now and the end of the semester. Instead, I’ll be performing a Life Cycle Assessment of the Arduino Duemilanove. From there, I’ll [...]