Digital Naturalism

Subway

2012-01-30T08:36:00.000-08:00

One of my semi-secret projects got picked up to be in the Activist Technology Demoday at Eyebeam in NYC ( http://demo-day.org/ http://www.eyebeam.org/events/activist-technology-demo-day )

You can learn more about our project at:

http://dwig.lcc.gatech.edu/projects/Quitmeyer/subway/main.php

Tortoise Tracker (Analogue Version)

2012-01-03T09:17:00.000-08:00

I created an Instructable for the best means that I have found for keeping track of mischievous pet tortoises. It also includes an overview of fun, weird alternate methods that I have attempted in the past.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Tortoise-Tracker-Analogue-Version/

Laser Cutting Test Tubes

2011-11-03T13:58:00.001-07:00

I had to make even cylindrical obstacles for ant experiments and decided to try out laser cutting test tubes into small chunks.

If i got on a lower power setting and keep going around and around, it will actually cleanly cut through, but i got bored and opted for a technique of just etching the glass with the laser, and using its built up heat to bring it under a cold tap water and the two parts just pop off rather cleanly.

I'll be adding fluon to these so the ants don't crawl up and into them.

__

Sincerely,

Andrew James Quitmeyer
Digital Media PhD Student/Researcher, Georgia Institute of Technology

www.andrewquitmeyer.com

Mark Your Territory: Release!

2011-10-31T18:51:00.001-07:00

As I am prepping its paper for submission to TEI 2012, i have officially released Mark Your Territory.

check it all out at

www.markyourterritory.org

Explanatory video is here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRdfeb7vDWg

My instructable for the project also got featured!

http://www.instructables.com/id/Pee-to-Check-In-to-Foursquare-Mark-Your-Territor/

Iranian Subversive Performance Proposals

2011-10-05T08:04:00.001-07:00

MYT additions

2011-09-29T15:32:00.001-07:00

Earlier, for the MYT project, i talked about encoding personal messages into the plants grown from one's marker and finding cheap effective means of reading this information. This article from boingboing shows that this sort of tech is not too far off.

http://boingboing.net/2011/09/29/encoding-text-with-gm-bacteria.html

"a steganographic text-encoding scheme that uses bacteria to encode messages and selective antibiotics to reveal them. It was conceived of in response to a DARPA challenge to devise non-electrical text-encoding, but its applications include adding text-based information to GM crops that can be read in the field (or in the market) to determine what's being grown."

MYT Design Phase 1

2011-09-18T19:53:00.001-07:00

The first step was to prototype the purely physical stage of the product. This means prototyping and designing a marker with several intersecting qualities related to taking ownership of a particular locale. The key features that I initially needed to design for come down to the following:

1) Visibility - Bright, eye catching, indicative of a user's goals and actions.

2) Resilience - especially to being soaked with water/urine

3) Conductivity - To measure the power of your pee with the arduino

4) Mutability - to provide a bit more engagement and feelings of accomplishment for the interactor, the device should react and change in accord with the user's actions (peeing on it makes it different)

5) Semi-Permanence - Littering sucks, and also this increasing the dynamics of claiming spaces; once your marks bio-degrade you need to maintain your trips and markings of a place to retain leadership.

At first, I wanted to deal primarily with points 1 and 2 (and a little bit of 4).

My very first goal was to create a little marker that, when peed on, would reveal a secret message.

A nice discussion of possibilities for doing this was held here:

http://www.instructables.com/community/Secret-Message-Revealed-After-Wet/

My beginning attempts focused on methods of imprinting an invisible message onto supposedly ordinary looking paper which would reveal itself once soaked in water or a mildly acidic or basic solution (urine). This was the tricky part- there are lots of methods for making invisible ink that reveals itself when activated by heat or UV, but liquid alone proved to be challenging.

I experimented with those crayola color changing markers, and tried to located that special crayola water color paper used by very young children, where the colors are activated by a paintbrush with ordinary water.

The color changing markers failed to respond to water or urine in order to reveal the secret message. I tried various other chemicals too.

Another difficulty to this problem was that the method should be mechanically repoducable (i wanted to print it) and the message was of high visual complexity (a QR code), and I needed high contrast for it to be machine readable.

Newest DWIG project

2011-09-14T20:06:00.000-07:00

I love my newest project for the Digital World and Image Group. The original goal was simply to satire Foursquare, by creating an app where people urinated onto their phones at a specific location in order to "check-in." This idea soon captivated me though and I ended up researching and exploring various methods of staking claim to a physical location in the real and digital world.

For now I have dubbed the project, "Mark Your Territory."

More documentation about the development and process leading to this product will soon follow.

New Ants

2011-09-14T19:35:00.001-07:00

We just recieved a two new colonies of Temnothorax ants for our lab. These pose new problems for us as they are only about a tenth the size of the ants in our Aphaenogaster colony. Entire colonies of this sort of ant can live inside an acorn. To image them properly, we are using a new Canon 100mm L series Macro lens and, on the recommendation of amazing ant photographer, Alex Wild, decided on using fiber optic microscope lighting (lighting not shown below).

Charicature from Stupid Fun Club Artists

2011-09-09T19:39:00.001-07:00

It's me! I do hate 12 oz mouse!

Clam Cannon for Sea Otter Fun

2011-09-09T19:33:00.001-07:00

The Georgia Aquarium apparently uses Clam Cannons to add some excitement for their Otters.

Cells and Organelles Rap / Animation

2011-09-08T21:52:00.001-07:00

I worked with my sister who is a 7th/8th grade science teacher to provide animated visuals to go along with her educational rap song about cells. She is freely distributing this to science classrooms and students around the world to foster interest in the life sciences. She is also taking suggestions for more topics for her youtube channel, Tunes2Teach.

Visit to the Gordon Lab

2011-06-26T15:35:00.000-07:00

Last Friday I was excited to get to visit Myrmecologist Deborah Gordon and her Ant lab at Stanford. I scoped out their research and computer vision techniques and shared what we have been doing at Georgia Tech. This fall, we'll be getting in better touch and do more thorough collaborations with them.

Man, Stanford has such a gorgeous (and expensive) campus!

Stupid Fun Club Summer

2011-06-01T22:42:00.000-07:00

This summer I am working as a designer at the Stupid Fun Club. This is Will Wright (creator of "The Sims," "SimCity," and "Spore")'s crazy think tank for Toys, TV, and Games. Most of what I do here is TOP SECRET, but here are some examples of things that have come out of the SFC

http://unclemilton.com/news/press_releases/

http://www.wired.com/underwire/2011/02/bar-karma-will-wright/

Digital Naturalism Beginnings

2011-06-01T21:48:00.000-07:00

This is Andy and I am starting a new blog to chronicle adventures in developing new digital tools and technology for science, art, and adventure!

Here's my bio:

Andrew Quitmeyer is a polymath adventurer interested in discovering new means of exploring and sharing our world. A fascination with science, nature, and the unknown lead him to his current work, designing and implementing computer-vision based animal behavioral research and documentaries. As a Digital Media PhD student, he also develops techniques and tools for expressing ideas in engaging and powerful new ways. His trans-disciplinary, multimedia works have been featured in outlets such as PBS, Cartoon Network, and BoingBoing.

Here's a nice little picture of me to get this started:

Aquatic Santa at the Georgia Aquarium

2010-11-19T19:20:00.000-08:00

While I was installing a computer vision setup for the Accessible Aquarium project at the Georgia Aquarium, I ran across a Kris Kringlian Tank cleaner. Fun!