The initial projections tests of the animated / sonified output of my Borges markup generator.

[continued ...]

The continuation, in physical + interactive form, of these earlier material explorations [01] [02] [03]

This is an exploration of interactions rooted in the results of the physical manifestations of emotional outburst initially inspired by a material intended for use in situations where protection and shock absorption are required. The explorations moved into a space that begins to ask questions about how we interact with technology and the ways that we treat the digital things around us with care. The visual forms are influenced by the forms of the material, developed for function but formally, are very engaging. The sounds are displayed live from within the object that is being smashed. The signal is affected and amplified in real time to create a more engaging sense of the internal results of the action inflicted upon the object.

The resulting interactions was found to be pleasing by many of the users. Some described it as fun and others said that the action and response was therapeutic for them.

All text from "Three Versions of Judas," broken by pauses, organized by length.

Beginning with the stories from Borges’ Labyrinths, I am going to investigate ways in which the digital version of the text can be represented in order to create new reads. In order to this, I am using a mark up structure that takes advantage of the Timed Text (TT) schema, which is  used for adding closed captioning to digital video. The XML was generated as a valid “TT” using the punctuation as the divisor the text. This is a direct correlation to my interest in not only the content of the stories that Borges writes but also the structure he uses.

I automated the markup process by writing some code to look at the digital texts of the stories and generate marked-up versions as valid TT XML files. The code basically performs these steps in order to create a marked up version of the text that aligns with my interest in not only Borges writing structure, but also the vast references that he utilizes in order to develop seemingly endlessly deep narratives.

1) Split the entire text into chunks based on punctuation for pauses, stops and inserts: , ; . ( )

2) Compare text to the list of references (curated by me) and highlight the words/phrases identified in the look-up list

3) Assign each piece of text a start time and a duration (as required by the TT schema) based on the length of text in each segment

4) Save results as XML file for use in a Closed Captioning for Digital Video system.

[continued ...]

The Informed Kitchen (a useless prototype)

This project looks at how unhelpful a great deal of information will be when associated with mundane objects as corporations look to infuse every act with a chance for communication. Consider this inline with the today’s quality of search results and data aggregation. If unchecked or under-considered by designers, it is easy to imagine how our world will continue to present us with information that is of little or no value.

Daniel Lara and I decided to pair our projects together in order to explore how the ridiculous could become even more so. By taping into my sensor data, his system could know what he was touching. By accessing his sensors, I used the information from a person in the space to determine scale and audio volume of the videos so that closer meant larger and louder.

Event Details

Monday, February 8, 2010 5:30pm
On the roof of the Art Center’s Wind Tunnel

Coordinators: Haejin Lee, Jiha Hwang, Mikey “Mikey T” Tnasuttimonkol, Alex Braidwood

Event Outline

1. People text one of 5 moods into the system. Instructions for this were located on the website pointed to by the event promotional materials (poster, FaceBook event, and promo video).
2. The system collects the text message submissions and builds the queue in real time.
3. This queue of moods is then used, in the order they were received, to determine playback of a series of video.
4. When a video plays, the goal of the real space participants is to perform as if the presented video where their conductor.
5. The instruments used are up to the participant. Questioning the definition of “instrument” is also encouraged.
6. After a video finishes playing, the next video from the list of text messaged moods is selected.

Different moods text messaged into the system result in the playback of different conductor videos

Different moods text messaged into the system result in the playback of different conductor videos

The video summary of the process for controlling and utilizing  the performance space can be viewed here.

The Event

Total Number of Participants: 23 Real Space, 14 Online

Total Number of text messages received and used to direct performance: 34 over the course of the 23 minute event

Live Event: Audio

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Download MP3

[continued ...]

This exploration that I’ve created for the New Ecology of Things (NET) looks at ways in which normal use and gesture can become interface. The parameters of the project are to create a useless network that pokes fun at the idea of the information cloud in some clever or interesting way. This is not that project. This is simply my initial technical sketch to get my wiring correct so that it properly senses the individual touching of multiple objects.

The audio loops being controlled in this demo are some results from my bent keyboard experiment.

The earlier, fruitless version of my sensing setup:

Avatar Name: Gordon Wiskee

My favorite places to visit in Second Life (SL) are known as infohubs. I realized since I hadn’t defined a “Home” within the world yet, clicking the “Home” button would teleport me to various infohubs seemingly at random. These places ended up being where I met the people that I had the most conversations with. I would teleport in, look around for a moment and then eventually type “Hello” into the group chat. Every time, someone answered. Most times it was an experienced user who was willing to help and share their favorite things about the world. Sometimes there were jerks. So that’s the same in real life (RL) as it is in SL. But, in SL there is the ability to mute individual people which saved a couple good public conversations during my time in-world. Project Idea #1: Real Life Jerk Muting.

[continued ...]

Given a piece of writing rendered in scriptio continua, we were then asked to explore 2 different layouts. The first was to use punctuation to give structure to the reading. The second was to treat the text as a “bag of words” and interpret the text as a spacial arrangement of words, phrases, ideas, or whatever else we found to be of interest from the text.

My bag of words all cut up and ready for the glue stick

Punctuated for Structure

[continued ...]

My probed and altered keyboard circuit

Here are some of the audio results of my bent keyboard:

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Final Presentation

Project Demonstration

Project Statement

Final Installation in the MDP Wind Tunnel Gallery. 12/01/2009

In his essay “The Art of Noises: A Futurist Manifesto,” Luigi Russolo states that “In the 19th Century, with the invention of machines, Noise was born.” He goes on to reinforce this theory that before the industrial revolution there was not noise, but only sound. It wasn’t until the invention and proliferation of the machine age that we as a culture became bombarded with noise form all types of man made mechanical sources.

With the introduction of digital technology, a new type of noise immersion was created. As I am writing this form my living room table I am “hearing” the laptop in front of me, 2 or 3 hums coming form the kitchen, and thebuzz of the monitor and tower several feet to my left that I can’t even see. (Which I forgot were on and just turned off after having written that sentence.) We barely even notice this anymore. Now that we are not only surrounded by digital technology but the advancements have been such that it has become increasingly portable, an entirely new type of noise has become so pervasive that it is commonplace. But there have also been interesting side affects of these occurrences. One of which is the common nature to encounter one half of a private telephone conversation in public.

Sure, its annoying when a lack of phone etiquette holds up the line at the grocery store or causes confusion in determining just who someone is talking to (thanks small hands-free headsets). But at other times, the voyeuristic temptations to listen in and fill in the other half of the narrative are just too great to avoid.

The reworked rotary phone explores both of these characteristics of digital public noise through the use of a familiar single-user device that caries a sense of direct connection to the communication experience along with a certain nostalgia or celebration for not being assumed to be “always available.” There are 2 aspects to the audio experience created. Both of these experiences are controlled and manipulated through the use of the single rotary dial.

The first is the public display of the performance. Parts of conversations are mixed with ambient, mostly digital, sounds collected from public spaces to create textural compositions reflective of public spaces invaded by these sonic washes and injections. The ambient sounds are given priority in the composition and through the continued manipulation of the rotary dial, the sounds have the ability to deteriorate over time in a manor consistent with the ways that mobile phone conversations break-up and cut-out.

The second is the individual experience of listening to the audio performed through the handset. The original handset speaker was utilized to provide the appropriate texture for the sounds relevant to the device used. The material for the individual display is provided in a way that composes the conversational language and digital ambiance with more priority given to the voice-based narratives. The composition is also reminiscent of attempting to listen to someone who insists on using their phone in a public place.

Through the use and manipulation of the rotary dial of the phone, not only is the user affecting the sounds that they hear through the handset, they are also affecting and manipulating the compositions performed publicly which they are able to hear as well. The individual experience is intended to include both the intimate handset audio performance along with the public composition so that they can build upon each other to create new moments of silence and chaos, depending on how the user is interacting with the device.

Project Statement

Ubiquitous Street Bureau: A design research project to study the thresholds of walking in a driving culture.

Developed and explored by Daniel Lara, Ana Ramos, and Alex Braidwood

Final Presentation

(Click on the images to view them full size)

Sole Scans

Every sole tells a story. By collecting images of the bottom of people’s shoes along with some additional information collected form the provided survey, this inquiry looks to investigate the roll that footwear plays in our determining when and where to walk.

[continued ...]

Multi-Amphitheater – Collective Performance.

I’m proposing a space where the performance is no longer a one-way transmission passively absorbed by a gang of viewers. Instead, each person becomes a participant, even if just by their presence, in the creation of an audio/visual experience. In this sense, the performer should be considered to be the algorithm – the system behind the scenes that is collecting, trimming, modifying and presented the content for output. The output, however, is determined by the decisions and actions of the participants within the space.

[continued ...]

Using an Arduino, a proximity sensor, and an infared LED, I created this remote trigger to fire off my camera whenever the sensor determined that an object was within a few feet of the box.

Version 1: Maxbotix Ultrasonic Rangefinder

This one worked well indoors and gave a good long range however once outside, there seemed to be a lot of environment interference. The first on location test that we did for threshold investigation, the sensor was firing at not only proximity detection but also loud noises and vibrations.

Version 2: Sharp Infrared Proximity Sensor

Although the range of this sensor was much shorter, the results outdoors where much more accurate providing a greater amount of flexibility for the location in which we could use it. I was also able to get it to fire off both of my Nikon camera’s with the same burst using a small tripod and a mirror to deflect the IR LED’s signal.

Testing outside The Wind Tunnel

On location use during a reaerch outing.

Movement 1: Questions / Disorientation

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Movement 2:  Investigatory Framework / Thinking Through Making

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Movement 3: Critical Analysis / Dissemination

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Download all 3 tracks as MP3s

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Track Artwork: Movement 1

Track Artwork: Movement 2

Track Artwork: Movement 3

Project Statement

Alhazen: The 10th century scientist considered to be the pioneer of the scientific method and the “father of modern optics.” [Source]

Cycle: In musical organization, a cycle is considered to be the grandest level of organization. it concerns the arrangement of several more or less self-contained pieces into a large-scale composition. [Source]

The scientific method is one valuable model for designers to look to when assessing useful methods for process, exploration and the development of new ways of thinking or working. On September 18th, 2009, as part of the Design Dialog Series at the Graduate Media Design Program (MDP) of Art Center, Seth Ruffins, Ph.D. presented the work that he and his group have been doing in the development of atlases that visually map embryonic development. Along with the work of his group, he also laid the foundations for where his interests developed from as well as where his group’s work could potentially go in the future. His interests and the creative output of his group show us as designers that the analytical approach of scientific processes can integrate with aesthetically stunning representations in ways that create new relationships between people from a variety of backgrounds and dense sets of information.

The scientific method traditionally contains 6 steps. These 6 steps were divided into groupings of 2 in order to inspire and inform the formal, structural, and material decisions made in the creation of of a compositional cycle containing 3 movements with 2 parts each. Each movement is composed using only the audio documentation of the spoken lecture as material. The outcome provides the listener with a sequence of 3 different views of the lecture given by slicing and composing the presentation in 3 very particular ways.

Movement 1: Wandering, amorphous, unsure, undefined, potential, lacking structure, theory
Movement 2: Experimentation, exploration, discord, unsettling, hands-on
Movement 3: Refined, resolute, towards definition, communication, concrete, reproducible

Lecture EP Packaging: Front with CD

Lecture EP Packaging: Back - Track titles as Process

The original process begin by investigating the manipulation, scanning and slicing of time visually in a manor influenced by the embryo visuals developed by SethRuffins. With the early introduction of audio manipulation to extract succinct and isolated meanings from the lecture, the visuals become less relevant to the sequence being explored.

In the final form, the visual exploration process was utilized to design the packaging of the audio compositions. The case as well as the disc contain sequenced frames of all of the visual time manipulations and audio visualization studies explored during the process.