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May 12, 2005
ITP Spring 2005 show fantastic!
OK, well... I wanted to see what students are up to by attending the NYU ITP program and I am happy to report that the show was absolutely fantastic. I really have my work cut out for me.
First of all the work mirrors the NYU/ITP experience. Many of the projects come out of the discipline of specific courses, like "Networked Objects"... others come straight out of experiences with Physical Computing.
The Fourth Floor of the Tisch building is a bit like mad science meets NBA finals. The wooden floors and the monitors and computer parts everywhere give the impression that most of the exibits are freshly soldered or programmed minutes before the presentations.
After entering the space I quickly found the "Quote-O-Matic", This project relies on scanning bar codes from everyday household products, visitors are were encouraged to bring non-perishable canned food -- both to help demonstrate the project, and also to help feed New York's homeless.
James G. Robinson's whimsy was evident in the functioning of this project. I scanned a can of Cambell's Chicken with Rice Soup and came up with this quote:
"Sometimes I lifted a chicken that warn't roosting comfortable, and took him along. Pap always said, take a chicken when you get a chance, because if you don't wnat him yourself you can easy find somebody that does, and a good dead ain't ever forgot. I never see papa when he didn't want the chicken himself, but that is what he used to say, anyway." - Mark Twain
OK, so that was a bit deaper that I wanted to go, but it was an interesting link between the grocery store description and a database of quotes.
I wanted to get a minute with Yarbus 1.0 author/programmer Jason Babcock. I wanted to ask him some questions about the capabilities of Yarbus in regards to sensing blinks as mouse clicks. The combination of his software, cheap camera glasses and some sort of settings for distinguishing between a simple blink and maybe a longer "wink" might allow patients with severe strokes to communicate with a mac laptop and a pair of $100. camera glasses. Talk about your interactive telecommunications!
My next stop was at the Visual Heart Music project by Mark Buccheri. Mark had what looked like a stethascope hooked up to a laptop with his program running sound from your heart to a visual display of vectors in a kind of "Spirograph" geometry that changed with the heart rate of the user. I sat in what looked like an adirondack chair and quickly found out that my heart rate was pretty pathetic... all in all it was a really interesting project: http://homepages.nyu.edu/~mb1328/thesis/
Anyway, way too may project to blog about in one night. I will be trying out many sites, cel phone apps and other things presented tonight in the following day and this conversation will be ongoing...
Cheers to the ITP folks who kicked butt tonight!
Posted by flashicon at May 12, 2005 12:46 AM