The second annual, Geekdown at 92Y Tribeca opened Friday.
As you can tell by the photo above, the Autobooth made an appearance.
Checkout thefull set on flickr.
In addition to all of the great installation art and tech-savvy fashion pieces, there were some amazing performances by Eric Mika, Winslow Porter III, and Sxip Shirley. The performance vids will be online soon.
In the meantime, NY1 and GrungeCake covered the opening.
What happens when you manipulate a traditionally hard surface so that it behaves like fabric? Vito Acconci studio’s installation in the Bronx museum, “LOBBY-FOR-THE-TIME-BEING,” is a wrapping, and twisting installation that coerced Corian—a typically hard, flat surface—to behave in ways otherwise expected. In response to their call for an interactive projection in conjunction with their installation, my partner Angela Chen and I created “Skin Tight,” orchestrating a series of abstract gestural movements to be projected onto the Corian surface to render what was once inflexible as malleable.
Cut it open & slit it into strips (it can be pulled now & stretched to one-&-a-half times its length): pit it & gouge it, pock-mark it (it’s become malleable now, flexible): roll it & curve it, fold it, braid & knot it (it functions now as its own structure). Let’s take slick sleek Corian & turn it into lace: let’s take the surface of lace & mold it into structure…-Vito Acconci
The creation process involved a number of experiments with shape, form, and movement on a stretched spandex frame which were than later edited to fit specific, physical locations on the installation. The control and interaction of the video was done through Max/MSP & Jitter.
The installation has four phases that are activated by cameras placed in strategic locations within the lobby. The installation’s default state, opening, is a calming, playful movement, like someone absentmindedly playing with his or her hair. The next phase, activated by someone entering the lobby, is more focused and stylized, drawing more attention to the space. The third phase, lobby, is activated when the visitor is at the desk area, and temporarily preoccupied with activity away from the installation. Like a child trying to draw its parent’s attention, this phase is cloying and persistent. Finally, the last phase, sustain, is one that becomes initialized after the viewer has spent some time in the lobby. The video undergoes a metamorphosis into a more formalized, geometric state, acting at once mysterious and concrete.
Brooklyn based artist, Anthony Sneed, commissioned a kinetic piece for his gallery show Grand Illusion at the Shooting Gallery in San Francisco. I worked with fellow ITPers, Shahar Zaks & Luis Violante, to design, engineer and fabricate an interactive version of Anthony’s canvas or wood paintings.
Here were a few challenges along the way.
Design custom linkages to convert radial motion of a motor into the linear movement of the drawers.
As the middle-ground is static, design a mechanism to move two drawers (top and bottom) with one motor.
Ensure the drawers retain smooth travel in and out of the cabinet.
Colin Day and Anthony put this great video together. It documents the artist himself interacting with his piece.
I don’t believe he changes the cabinet’s behavior mode in the video.
Shahar programmed different modes that vary speed, responsiveness and the drawers’ relationship to each other.
If you’re in the city this weekend, stop by the Geekdown opening.
In addition to a great selection of gallery pieces, there’ll be live musical performances and interactive installations (including one of my photobooths) for one night only!
More info at Geekdown.
Poster by Elise Porter.
Hadokam is a collaborated street fighter 4 hack accomplished during the 24-hr hackathon GameHackDay NYC 2011 by Liangjie Xia, Bruno Kruse, Diego Rioja, Mustafa Bagdatli and myself.
We developed software to manipulate a frontal picture of the player’s face. It is projected onto the 3D character model extracted from the original game, generating a replacement skin texture file swapped back into the game for real gameplay. The character-model’s proportions have also been modified to create a Big Head Mode, making the players’ faces the main attraction. This makes for much more rewarding gameplay – the vicarious friend beatdown. A custom controller board was built (from a repurposed Mortal Kombat 2 arcade panel found on the street) to for an arcade experience.
Face mapping and texture generation is done with Processing. The arcade controller is read by a multi-plexed Arduino that outputs serial data to be read by joystick simulation software.
There’s tons of screen-captured game play, but in the meantime, here’s a quick teaser.
Check out the Hadokam and other projects from the hackathon on the GHD wiki.
Emily Ryan and Yimeng Bai shot and edited a great overview of our installation at H&M’s Flagship 42nd st location.
It perfectly demonstrates the user experience:
Take some photos with your friends.
View your slideshow on the heads up display.
Walk outside to find your own photos popping up throughout the NYC skyline window display.
Tweet with #hmnyc or #fashion #nyc to tell you friends to come check it out.
Watch as your real-time tweets stream across the skyline.
Go home and download your photos from HMNYC Project.
Special thanks to Emily, Liangjie, Derek, Matt, Eddie, Milena, Winslow, Adam H, Luis, Daniel, Genny, Dad, and anyone I’m forgetting. This wouldn’t have been possible without you.
My good friend Emily Ryan was selected for the Your Art Here competition. Her proposal for the 46 foot by 16 foot window was to fabricate a New York City skyline. The skyline would be embedded with 18 flatscreen displays of varied size. The content would be dynamic. Relevant tweets about NYC, H&M and Fashion would pop-up, scroll and fade in real-time. The other 9 screens would display photos from an in-store photobooth.
Although the original plan was to install a Rotobooth (a Rotary dial photobooth), I decided to build a new photobooth for the store.
On Wednesday, May 5th, I gave my thesis presentation in front of the ITP community, friends and family. I’d like to thank all of those who attended or logged on to watch the presentation.
The presentation proposes using living bamboo as a design material. I discuss benefits of bamboo as a material, both living and harvested. I also cover experiments conducted to learn how it may be best manipulated.
Grow It Yourself from mike k on Vimeo.
Here are some photos of the table in a near complete stage. Thanks to my lovely model Asli, who took the time to pose at 6am (we were all crazily working through sunrise)!
By the time I finished the table, my bamboo had grown very tall, so these photos are to demonstrate the aesthetic of a coffee table growing itself. I plan on growing new culms through the table once I graduate school.
The planter I build has already warped out of shape, leaving the table to rest on the dirt, instead of on the inside walls of the planter.
The first iteration of my full-size coffee table mold. It is about two feet tall, but once I put the planter underneath, it’ll be closer to 32 inches.
There were some mistakes in this print on the account of material thickness. Luckily, the table still bolts together fine. The mistakes lessen the structural integrity of the table, but not its utility. I should be able to fix the errors by recutting the side brackets.
When designing the table, I didn’t include a retainer for the soil and rhizome. If I packed dirt into the leg itself, harvesting the table would result in a shortened leg (the space that the dirt occupies). Wanting to stick with the right angled aesthetic, I’ve been designing a planter for the straight leg of the table to fit snugly into. I avoided plastic because I thought it may crack from rhizome growth or the weight of it’s contents. Although wood may prove to be a poor choice as well, it’s easier to work with and will take the weight of the table.
Anticipating that the bamboo will not want to grow “down” at second leg of the table, I designed the planter with open sides, allowing for watering at multiple orientations. I chose Poplar (over Oak and Cedar) for it’s nice grains and ochre hue. I’m unsure if it will warp after watering the plant, so I will apply a few coats of Polyurethane to lessen the water damage.
My third design iteration is a half-size, scale model in clear acrylic. It is intended to be a coffee table mold for bamboo to grow through. This model proved to have good structural integrity, without needing cantilevering. Here are photos of the test assembly taped together, as well as my process of glueing sides together with Weld-On. I was so excited to to assemble it that I glued it together before I routed the bamboo shoots through it. This hindered my ability to properly insert my smaller bamboo (Fargesia Robusta) into it’s cavity. Lesson learned. Time to redesign the table to incorporate disassembly!
Testing the Fit with Masking Tape
Glued with Bamboo
Frustrated with my thesis paper, I decided to empty my head. I’ve been researching conceptual projects and tree sculpting, but I couldn’t find the answers I sought. Maybe the answers are in the questions.
Would you still buy something if you knew it could be grown?
If you knew that you could grow it? What would you grow? A chair? A bicycle? A house? And how long would you wait for it to grow? Would you wait six months for a table? How about a year? Would you wait longer if it were to the proportions of your choosing? What is the relationship to that length of time and that which it would take you to earn the money to simply purchase it? Is there something you would wait for to grow, but never purchase?
Let’s take this a step further. What if you could design a product and have a machine grow it for you? Would you wait for it to grow if it required less attention? Would you buy such an apparatus? How much would you spend on such an apparatus? Would you buy multiple apparatuses to grow more at once? Would you buy items you were capable of growing in the interest of saving time? Would your items’ value be based on the length of time they took to grow? By how closely they resemble the initial plan? Would they lose value if your hand were visible in its shape?
How would you design your objects? Would you rather wield greater control or allow for innacuracies in your product? Do these inaccuracies affect its value?
Once your piece grew to its intended size, would you harvest it? Would you grow it inside or out? Would you worry someone would reap your product? Is there a specific piece you would keep alive? Would you take the time to maintain it? Would you let it grow to the ceiling? Would you let it grow thick with leaves and branches? Would you meticulously prune and primp?
If you were moving out, would you take the extra care to safely pack it? Would you give it away? Would you throw it out? Would you mulch it? Would you plant it into the ground? Would you take it to a forest? How much of your current furniture would you take with you if you had to move? Would you take more if you could change it’s dimensions? What if you could add or remove features?
Q: “This is all great, but I don’t know how to use a CAD (computer aided design) program .”
A: Fear not, the world is changing. Communities exist such as Thingiverse (www.thingiverse.com), where designers open source their two and three dimensional designs for others to use and repurpose.
Q: “But I don’t own any 3D CAD software”
A: With open source software Blender and Google Sketchup, 3D design is no longer a “pay to play” field of study.
Weary to waste acrylic, I had my first prototype laser cut out of foamcore. Not only is this material inexpensive, but it is 3/16″ thick, which gives me a better idea on how my pieces are fitting together (the plastic will be 1/4″ thick). Check out how the foam contracted from the heat of the laser. Reminds me of marshmallows. Mmm.
It was a good thing. I was so caught up learning how to properly merge and divide paths in illustrator, I made all edges homogeneous. Or maybe it was the lack of sleep.
You can judge by the photographs how far I could assemble the table with all of the mistakes that existed. The tops and bottoms were fine, but the side tabs were reversed. Doh!
Here’s a detail of one of the more troublesome pieces. All the notes made for a nice acrylic piece on my second iteration.
Excerpt from Wikipedia entry:
“Gravitropism (or geotropism) is a turning or growth movement by a plant or fungus in response to gravity. Charles Darwin was one of the first to scientifically document that roots show positive gravitropism and stems show negative gravitropism. That is, roots grow in the direction of gravitational pull (i.e., downward) and stems grow in the opposite direction (i.e., upwards). This behaviour can be easily demonstrated with a potted plant. When laid onto its side, the growing parts of the stem begin to display negative gravitropism, bending (biologists say, turning; see tropism) upwards.”
A good friend of mine and experienced carpenter, Matt Richard, helped to design and fabricate a rotating planter. I was fretting about engineering a three-axis apparatus for a weeks. Matt talked some sense into me, suggesting that I fabricate immediately, and settle for one-axis of rotation for a proof of concept. After we finished the design, we realized that we could rotate the plant inside the holder, making it a dual axis planter. Thanks Matt!
I have “before” picture on my phone. Soon to come.
In the meantime, check out the result after ~ 1 wk!
Eureka!
Grow it Yourself (or GIY) is the idea that one can grow an entire product. For my main focus, I am designing a jig for growing a table from bamboo. Case studies, such as attempting to grow a right angle, will serve as helpful data for later attempts at growing “parts” or whole objects. I believe that this could be augment future manufacturing practices. If combined with genetic modification, one could harvest designer building materials. By cultivating these super-materials, we will lessen deforestation.
I will also devise supplemental studies of how one can manipulate bamboo through various environmental stimuli that could aide in future development.
I am also developing a modular system for growing a complex shape by stacking or connecting modules. This may not be ready by the end of the semester, but it seems the next logical step in my design process.
This project will prove a challenge on many levels, as it’s harder to maintain plants in an urban environment. Also, I’m rather uninformed in cultivating flora.
Here are some sketches of table designs. The weave pattern is meant to be the table top. I am unsure how I would produce this complex pattern as a hollow container. I’m leaning toward a two part mold. Zach Smith suggested I thermoform the plastic, although that means I need a positive to form the plastic. This may not be the approach I want to take.
Sometimes when I ride the subway, I stand in the middle of the aisle with my knees bent and ride the train as if it were a less predictable ski-slope. It’s rather easy but it’s exciting when you catch an empty express train. The express trains reach higher speeds, so the feeling is much closer to riding downhill.
After a week or so of building and testing these boards indoors, Marko and I finally took ‘em for a ride on the N train to Astoria at about 2 or 3 am. Here are some pictures of the ride.
Marko wrote a Jitter patch that takes accelerometer & gyroscope data from a WiiMote and jogs through video accordingly. The idea is to have the WiiMote attached to the deck while a friend is holding a pico (mini) projector that plays content based on your subway board skills. Marko came up with some nice animations to project (he’ll post soon). I’ve been clinging to the idea of giving the user an immersive experience like surfing pipeline.
The video would be a first person surfing experience, with the accelerometer dictating your placement on the wave. Leaning forward on the deck would increase your speed, while leaning backward would slow you down. Balancing directly on the center edge of the board would trigger some visual effects (maybe a virtual hand dragging across the wave).
Board tricks would ideally generate applause, but realistically I don’t think the system should include speakers. Maybe some campy effects like sea creatures appearing when a trick is landed. This might demand a force sensing resistor to determine if the user stays on the board after the trick is executed.
Creating an embedded monitoring system to for personal health.
User may customize balance/ratio of nutrients and system vitals to fit his or her needs. For example, a body builder may need specific protein levels and electrolytes, whereas the pregnant user may want to monitor toxins, anitbodies, potential illness, minerals, etc, for heathy fetal development.
Preggers: Vitamin B-9. Synthesize and repair DNA. Cell division and cell growth.
Microarray of repurposed bacterial designed for biological feedback. Each bacterial “pixel” corresponds to a metabolic condition and and visually represents its value through color saturation. Matrix snapshots are taken at a steady rate, enabling a system-wide report over time. This type of monitoring leads to a heightened awareness that would take part in everyday choices, including but not limited to: excercise, diet, sleep, supplements, habitat, etc.
A matrix approach would lend itself as a traditional data chart similar to a QR code.
Another visual option is to use the bacteria as logic to augment the appearance of a tattooed scene. The circuit is similar to that being developed by Philips. The art is personalized, while details are represented in accordance with metabolic readings. Users may assign specific chemical cues to have more dramatic alerts on their skin. For instance, a diabetic may correlate insulin levels to a highly reactive visualization, perhaps a large tattooed region turning red.
For confidential monitoring, one may embed wireless chip into skin and couple to personal device. The transmission would be encrypted en route to user and optionally to physician.
