My roommate (and all-around good dude) Johann built a pretty amazing project called Strings last year, in collaboration with a few other sound artists at ITP. It’s essentially a giant, digital stringed instrument that can be played by one or more persons using bows. The piece was a huge hit at the 2011 ITP Winter Show and now Johann and his collaborators are trying to raise funds to take Strings to the New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME) conference in Ann Arbor next month. They’re currently running a Kickstarter campaign to this end—do please kick them a few bucks, if you can.
Spotted this recruitment flyer “on the floor” at NYU ITP yesterday. It’s a call for mobile developers that appropriates the artwork from Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion for some reason? It’s clearly intentional, since the creator of the flyer acknowledges the original source of the artwork in the text along the side (also, note to whoever designed this: stating that you do not “claim copyright or ownership of the image” does not change the fact that you are almost certainly violating the original owner’s copyright). What does it all mean? Fingers-crossed that this is a teaser for the Geologist’s new mobile startup. Either way: 9.6, Best New Flyer.
Above you’ll find a video demo for The 4D Pop-Up Book of Halloween, an augmented reality children’s book that I built as part of my research at NYU ITP. It’s a handmade pop-up book that’s embedded with a different QR code on each page. When the reader scans the codes using a webcam-equipped device and a companion Mac/Windows/Android application, it produces an animation onscreen that places the reader inside the story. My goal was to build a book that could bridge the gap between one-of-a-kind artifacts and purely digital experiences. If you’d like to see a live demo of the book in person, come on by the ITP Winter Show tomorrow from 2-6pm or Monday from 5-9pm and I’ll be happy to show you how it works!
For my final project for my Physical Computing class, I built a magnetic swipe gumball machine. In order to receive a gumball, you need to swipe a magnetic stripe card (i.e. a credit card, subway card, student ID, etc.). The idea is that you’re buying a gumball without knowing what it’s going to cost you (personal information? money? a subway ride?). If you’re interested in learning about what went in to building this thing, you can read this detailed post over at my ITP blog.
If you’re looking for something to do in NYC this Sunday and Monday, might I recommend the NYU ITP Winter Show? I’ll be showing some of my most recent work (an augmented-reality-enhanced pop-up book), alongside 100+ other interactive projects that will amaze, delight and surprise. I attended the show last year and was blown away by some of the stuff that I saw there, so I really can’t recommend it highly enough. Protip: it tends to get really crowded as the night wears on, so show up early!
If you read my interview with MGMT collaborator (and fellow ITP student!) Alejandro Crawford a few weeks back, you’ll know that Alejandro and the band had pretty ambitious plans for their performances at the Guggenheim last week. I attended the second of the two shows and am happy to report that it exceeded my expectations in nearly every way imaginable. Perhaps most impressive was the fact that the performance and accompanying light show served to highlight—rather than upstage—the unsettling details of Maurizio Cattelan’s sculpture mobile, in accordance with the band’s stated intentions. To read more of my impressions and see a slideshow of my photos from the show, head over to MTV Hive.
Previewing MGMT’s Guggenheim Performance Visuals
I interviewed Brooklyn-based video artist and fellow ITP student, Alejandro Crawford, for MTV Hive. Alejandro has been doing some really incredible video projection stuff for MGMT for a little while now—he spent most of last year touring with the band overseas and handling their live visuals—and is currently working on an “audio-reactive LED wall” that will be displayed at the Guggenheim in conjunction with their upcoming shows there. If you’ve ever asked yourself, “How do bands do all those crazy projections that seem to react to the music in real-time?” this might be the peek behind the curtain you’ve been looking for.
For an assignment for my physical computing class my partners (Chris and Olya) and I designed and built a simple musical instrument housed inside a foam ball. Basically, the device allows the user to control the pitch, octave and volume of notes by moving a ball around in three-dimensional space. While the practical applications of something like this are relatively limited (unless Björk wants to order a few of these for her next tour?), it was still a fun project to see through to fruition. For more detailed information on how the ball was constructed, head over to my ITP blog.
