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

from the Bioglyphs exhibit at MSU Bozeman

Last semester I developed an interest in using brief moments of delight to open up opportunities for people to contemplate or create a little space of mental clarity for themselves. I’d like to pursue this idea further with my thesis. This week our thesis group, led by Despina Papadopoulos, began with some brainstorming. Here’s a rough sketch of where I’m headed…

What is it that you want to make?

I want to build a piece that uses small points of light and gentle interaction (most likely touch or proximity, but possibly breath?) to create a sense of wonder and delight. By offering this brief interaction, I hope to provide people with a small moment of clarity or contemplation. My first vision of this is as a large scale panel piece. After struggling to complete a large panel last semester, though, I’m worried about running into some of the same problems (space, material size and cost, difficulty in troubleshooting large, complicated circuits, the stress that comes with putting all of your eggs in one basket). So, I would like to build it in modules, if not as a suite of objects. I’m currently experimenting with bioluminescent algae for Design Frontiers in Biology and Materiality, and I would love to incorporate it into this project, but I’m not sure yet if I can find a way to do that with any sort of stability. So, while I am doing tests with the algae, I’m also thinking about ways to mimic bioluminescence with fiberoptics or backlit perforations. Playing with the algae has made me wonder if there is a way to use water as a material for this project (and possibly change it from a vertical piece to horizontal), although I was originally vacillating between wood and fabric.
Why build it?

Too often we move through our days without stepping outside of our entrenched thought patterns. By experiencing a brief moment of delight, we open up the possibility of approaching problems more creatively and increase the likelihood that we will be patient with others. By sharing a moment of delight or contemplation, a community’s members may strengthen their sense of connection.
Who is it for?

This project is meant to be used by individuals or small groups, although it makes sense to stiuate it within a larger community. Anyone from children to adults may enjoy it.
Where?

Ideally, this piece would be placed in a semi-public site such as a school, museum, library, or hospital.

Some inspiration:

Bioglyphs exhibit of paintings with bioluminescent bacteria

Leah Buechley’s Wind Board

Jason Krugman’s Firefly

Jellyfish movie controlled by heart rate from Caroline Brown on Vimeo.

HRMI + video playback code

A few favorite museum experiences

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 engagement with the public to the level of the lowest common denominator. Provide for multiple points of entry to material.

Exclude gratuitously interactive exhibits. Any interaction should support a clear purpose.

Have a sense of humor– about the materials, about the museum itself.

User test at least at the prototype stage, preferably more.

Invite people who genuinely care about the materials to share their passion for those materials with others.

Be flexible and self-aware, adjusting and reframing museum contents appropriately, and addressing mistakes.

Offer an opportunity to read, but don’t require it or rely on it as the only method of explanation.

Compel a sense of “flow” in visitors (i.e. help them feel engaged and challenged, but not overwhelmed).

Convey a mood relevant to presented materials and inspire appropriate behavior in visitors.

Avoid using signage as a crutch.

Provide surprises and mental treats.

Stick to the main idea for any given exhibit.

Furnish adequate space for reflection.

Use people’s emotions to help them identify with stories and engage with materials, but don’t abuse this power.

Be a gracious host.

Do not employ security methods that intimidate visitors.

Provide opportunities for visitors to pursue further learning about the material presented.

Food, if offered, should be delicious and reasonably healthy. Otherwise, provide recommendations for dining nearby.

Be an integral member of the neighborhood (whether virtual or physical). Be ready to provide directions, suggest itineraries, and pass the time of day, like any good neighbor.

Ignore any of the above tenets, but only with well-considered intention and purpose.

Images:
Jellyfish at the Monterey Bay Aquarium
Tell the Bees at the Museum of Jurassic Technology
Joseph Beuys: Multiples at San Jose Museum of Art
Miss Rockaway Armada at Mass MoCA
The old Getty (now the Getty Villa)

Sound Level and Heart Rate

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 the bottom of the image. This image is taken from a file I recorded while I was waiting for my sweetheart, who had been away all weekend. The sound level increased when he walked through the door and we said hello. As you can see, my heart rate went through the roof, too. Mushy, right?

Code is here.

Stentor (a microbe I saw under a microscope at NYHS)

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 else is likely to be hanging out on all this stuff– I can tell by the fingerprints that none of it has been cleaned too recently. Just don’t touch your face, ok? Do. Not. Scratch. Your. Nose.”) Despite the fact that the Hall of Science bills itself as a museum for all ages, kids are definitely the focus here, and the children I did encounter a little later in the day were very aware of that fact. They were clearly perplexed to see adults interacting with the exhibits without another kid nearby, and they grew frustrated quickly if we were taking to long reading instructions or, in the words of one little boy in the Mathematica exhibit, “making it go.” Unlike other museums, where I’ve seen adults interpreting exhibits for their children, most parents at the Hall of Science were hanging back, letting their children interact with exhibits on their own. I think this is in part due to the fact that the exhibits actually look like they’re meant for kids, and it’s usually possible to operate them and get something fun to happen without actually understanding what is happening (e.g. kids can press a button over and over to drop a ball into a vortex, finding it fascinating to see how many they can get going at once, without ever finding out a bit about what is happening, scientifically). I also noticed that the visitors at this museum seemed more ethnically and economically diverse than at several of the other museums I’ve visited recently. Many of them seemed to be from the city, rather than visiting from out of town, and I overheard lots of bilingual kids. The majority of adults were there with children, but I did notice two groups of people in their early twenties who were visiting with friends and playing every bit as much as the kids were.

Although I was immediately engaged by the exhibits, just like the children around me, I realized after about 15 minutes that I was not actually retaining much information. I wonder if the benefit of a visit to a museum like the Hall of Science isn’t just an improved view of science overall and an increased curiosity, rather than the takeaway of any particular bits of knowledge. To me, the most successful exhibits were where something was actually happening right then (e.g. the microbes moving under a microscope or the sound or light exhibits). In the face of so many things to manipulate, I found myself completely avoiding any exhibit that only contained video. While plain video might be seen as the most easily accessible exhibit in some museums, in this context it felt boring. That said, the dial interface used in several exhibits, allowing users to navigate through video forwards and backwards at varying speeds, was completely addictive.

Photo via PROYECTO AGUA

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.

People (with cross-pollinating brains)

Dodo Skeleton from AMNH

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 a different day.

My visit started off well; I felt the usual excitement that’s inspired by walking up the steps of the Met or the AMNH. I felt like part of a Tradition of The City, I was excited to see my old friends (the big horn diorama! the whale!), I was curious if I would see something new, and I was looking forward to the pleasure of being fascinated. The staff at the entrance was extraordinarily friendly. They even reminded me that I didn’t actually have to pay the full suggested donation for admission. They gave me a map. They told me to enjoy myself and smiled at me.  I could hardly wait to get into the Hall of Biodiversity. I turned to my left, and headed toward the darkened room…

And then what happened? Suddenly my mood turned from excitement and anticipation to gloominess and frustration. I still can’t quite figure out why. Where the taxidermy had just seemed bittersweet and charmingly anachronistic before, it felt oppressive and sad. Where the darkened exhibition rooms had felt like a kind of special sanctuary on previous visits, they just felt cold and forgotten this time. I tried moving on to the Hall of Ocean Life– who doesn’t love the giant whale?– but it felt disappointing to me, too. It just left me wishing I could magically transport myself to the Monterey Bay Aquarium instead. I halfheartedly pressed a few buttons on an exhibit to learn a little bit about water bears, but I immediately forgot what I had read. I tried sitting on a bench and people watching for a while, but even the visitors today seemed a little lifeless.

Since some of my favorite exhibits were feeling a little tired, I decided to visit some of the exhibits I knew hadn’t been updated for a really long time (or ever?). I wanted to see if the museum made more sense as a relic than as something that was trying to stay current. I wandered into a few halls that repelled me with an oddly chemical smell (hello, Hall of Planet Earth!) but eventually found my way into the Hall of New York State Environment. This exhibit seems hopelessly quaint, with its coverage of Dutchess County apple farming and its amazing use of typography. I felt like I’d walked into a time capsule.

It’s this time capsule side of the AMNH that I think a lot of New Yorkers love it for– it’s soothing to know that there are parts of the city that never change. On the other hand, it’s sad that this amazing treasure trove of scientific research resides in the heart of the city but doesn’t manage to convey the excitement of contemporary science very well.

My visit to the AMNH on my own was deeply contrasted by my visit with our class the next day. We went behind the scenes to see the ichthyology department and hear about how the museum’s researchers gather and study samples all over the world. Listening to this scientist talk about her work was infinitely more exciting than my visit to the Hall of Ocean Life had been the day before, despite the fact that she was showing us fish that I never would have thought I’d be excited about. Her enthusiasm for the subject was completely contagious, and I walked away from the experience wanting to go home and read as much about coelacanths as I could. From ichthyology, we continued on behind the scenes to the exhibits department, where we saw plans and models for various stages of exhibits, and we met people who were building camels and ship interiors for the upcoming Traveling the Silk Road. This was easily one of the very best museum experiences I’ve ever had. Listening to the process by which they are researching, developing, and building exhibits made the material of the exhibits come alive in a way that seeing a finished project doesn’t always do.

My two very different days at the AMNH provided me with so much food for thought, and so many questions that it’s been difficult to organize and reflect on all of it. I still have some miscellaneous notes that don’t seem to belong anywhere specific…

Being able to walk all the way around a tiger and see the details of its enormous paws is amazing. This is one of the things museums are best at– providing up close three dimensional experiences.

Feeling like you’re being let in on a secret or seeing something that not everyone gets to see is very powerful. It can make an audience really sit up and pay attention.

The AMNH’s interactive floor map is pretty cool. I wouldn’t mind having access to that while I was actually in the museum.

Meeting a real person who is absolutely passionate about their work is far more powerful and effective in conveying information than almost any sort of exhibit, no matter how interactive it is.

Nez Perce dress, ca. 1920, on exhibit at the NMAI

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 is still fresh in my mind, so I’m including that as my third.

These three museums are geared toward fairly different audiences. The Museum of Jewish Heritage, I think, is geared toward a general adult audience, but assumes that the majority of its visitors may have some knowledge of Jewish culture. The National Museum of the American Indian is geared toward a broader audience of casual visitors, including children, and it assumes no prior knowledge of Native American culture. Eldridge St. is a very small, very specialized museum that assumes a specific interest in local Jewish history or in the history of the Lower East Side; docents accompany visitors, so there’s an opportunity for the material presented to be geared toward different knowledge levels (e.g. tourists, school groups, genealogists).

Visiting the Museum of Jewish Heritage, I was first struck by how big it is and by how amazing its setting is, looking out over Battery Park and beyond to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. The building feels monumental, keeping in line with the museum’s mission as a living memorial to the Holocaust. Entering the museum is a little intimidating– the foyer is large and echoing, and there were no other visible visitors when I arrived. The staff at the admissions desk inspected my student ID far more closely than any museum I’ve ever been to, which made me laugh, which in turn somehow broke the ice a little, and suddenly the staff were much friendlier than they had appeared at first. MJH is a very linear museum; there is essentially one way through the core exhibit, which is arranged chronologically. The entrance to the exhibit is very impressive and overwhelming. It gave me a sense of history and culture flooding the space, which, I think is a good way to prepare people for the exhibits ahead. This entrance piece does a great job of framing the exhibit, and its use of technology definitely helped to make me feel immersed in the content. The use of multimedia in the following rooms, however, felt confusing, as sound bled from different exhibits into each other. The first two floors felt packed and crowded with too much information for me to take in, although it helped to have it all framed in a linear way. An interesting choice was made to break up the floors into three sections: the first floor covers history and culture before the Holocaust, the second covers the Holocaust, and the third covers more recent history. In a way, I loved that it was broken up this way, as riding the escalator between floors gave me a very specifically allotted time to contemplate what I had been viewing or would be viewing, and it gave a great weight to the second floor. However, after reading Frisch’s The Memory of History, I can’t help but wonder if this way of organizing the exhibits doesn’t place the Holocaust outside of the continuum of history, isolating it as something so different from ourselves that we can’t apply our learning from the exhibit to our own present. The thing that most impressed me about the MJH is how well the people there have considered the need for contemplation after taking in so much information, much of which is very difficult to process. The inclusion of meditative spaces like Andy Goldsworthy’s Garden of Stones seems absolutely necessary in this context.

In contrast to the MJH, where everything seemed so thoughtfully laid out and so well-planned, the National Museum of the American Indian felt a little like someone’s afterthought. The museum  is housed in an incredibly stately old place, but I felt like I’d wandered in to the wrong building when I first entered. The layout made no sense to me, down to the orientation of the security tables. I also found that I couldn’t tell what much of the signage in the exhibits was actually referring to (e.g. a pillar with information on the Ghost Dance dresses was standing on the other side of the room from where the dressed were being shown). I also found some of the children’s exhibits to be annoying busywork where the activities were not actually associated with the content they seemed to be presenting. For example, at one table the text asked, “Can beads be used to tell a story?” but the interaction was simply a jigsaw puzzle with an image taken from a beaded dress. A number of the interactive pieces provided very little user feedback, which was also frustrating. I was frustrated by some of the museum’s lack of organization, and I was disappointed that there wasn’t more general historical context given to the exhibits. However, I did really appreciate some of the content, particularly the use of oral history and video interviews.

I visited the Museum at Eldridge St. for a project at work, so I got a more specialized experience than I would have as a more casual visitor, but the tour was fascinating. I am often reluctant to sign up for tours at museums and historical sites, but whenever I do actually participate in them, I’m often surprisingly engaged by the docents’ enthusiasm. Eldridge St. was no exception to this. Although I could tell that the staff had told some of these stories many times, they still had a contagious spark and excitement about the material, and they provided a level of detail that made the history of the place palpable. There is something very special about being able to talk about the history of a place when you are actually in that space, and the docents here took very good advantage of that by doing things like having us reach down and feel the grooves in the wooden floor made by so many years of men praying. The use of technology at Eldridge St. is very specialized in that it is meant to assist the docents as a storytelling tool, as well as an interactive piece for visitors to explore. Interactive tables of the sort here are often used to simply provide an option of more information than can fit on a print sign or to provide a thin layer of participation; I really appreciated that one of the tables here was used to provide views of the space that would be impossible to achieve in person.

SparkFun Polar Heart Rate Monitor Interface

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 monitor my heart rate while sleeping and combine that with sensing noise in the room. Often, around three in the morning or later, very loud voices float up from the street and through our open window. I rarely wake up, but my fiancé does. I wanted to see if I notice the noise on some level.

I borrowed a Polar Heart Rate Monitor and Heart Rate Monitor Interface (HRMI) from Dan. The monitor and interface couldn’t be easier to use– the HRMI is set up to detect the heart rate monitor right out of the box,  and SparkFun has great documentation on their HRMI, as well as sample software, so I walked through the steps to get set up fairly quickly. I combined the basics of Dan Julio’s hrmi_simple Processing sketch (included in the hrmi_demos.zip file) with the sample createWriter sketch on the Processing site to send my heart rate values to a text file. Once I had the heart rate side of things working, I used Dan Shiffman’s Sound Threshold with Sonia sketch from Learning Processing to figure out how to detect sound levels. I combined the sound sensing code with my heart rate code, and eventually wound up with this sketch.

I set up my laptop and the HRMI next to my bed, put on the heart rate sensor, and went to bed. There were a few times during the night that signal dropped out, so I lost my heart rate reading, but I was able to get some pretty good results. Here’s a snapshot of what the output file looks like:

HRMI Plus Sound Readings

The lowest rate I observed for my heart while I was awake was about 64, but while I was sleeping, it dropped down into the low fifties. As you can see in the snapshot above, however, when the noise level increased to .2 instead of the .1 where it seemed to hover most of the night, my heart rate increased back up to the low sixties. There’s no way to know, though, whether I was reacting to noise, or if the noise and increase in heart rate were due to my own shifting around in my sleep.

Here’s a snapshot of another parallel spike in values:

HRMI Plus Sound-- parallel spike in values

This spike in values occurred right before I woke up and stopped the program, around 4:30 in the morning, so I wonder if in this case it was a noise that raised my heart rate and woke me.

There are a few improvements I’d like to make to this sketch. First, I’d like to add a time stamp to the output. Secondly, I’d like to graph the values together. I’d also like to find a way to secure the heart rate sensor a little bit better so that it doesn’t shift in my sleep and risk sending false readings.