A pulse sensor connects to each person’s ear and to a piece of “spaghetti” on the plate. The “spaghetti” is also attached to a motor underneath the stand that turns to the beat of each person’s heart. The speed of the heart beats affects how quickly the two people are drawn together.

The assignment for this project was to design and build a site that works similarly to The Most Awesomest Thing Ever as a way of learning MongoDB.

My group created a site that pulls photos from Instagram’s API and allows the user to vote for the most [whatever] image in certain #categories.  This site is a work-in-progress (and might be in violation of Instagram’s new Terms of Service… woops!)

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For this assignment we could do anything we wanted using plants and technology.

Everyone knows that plants like to be spoken to. After all, when we speak we breathe out C02 (which plants breathe in). But did you know that plants have a language of their own? According to an article in The Daily Mail, “New research suggests plants not only respond to sound but communicate with each other with ‘clicking’ noises.”

What might a plant say to a human? I imagine that their responses would be colored by however they were feeling at the moment. With this in mind, I created a contraption that would allow a house plant to communicate based on input from various sensors that detect temperature and humidity. If the plant were in optimal conditions, it would say something pleasant. If not, it would say something negative.

I experimented with other sensors as well: a vibration sensor that detect whether a plant was touched, a proximity sensor that would detect when you were near the plant, and a wind sensor that would detect whether you were speaking. The current iteration of this project uses a humidity/temperature sensor, a microphone (to detect when you are speaking), and an LCD screen that prints the plant’s response.

The assignment for this project was to design and build our own version of Simon.

Once you use up a friend, they are our of our arsenal, so choose wisely!

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I participated in a collaboration studio that worked with artist Angelo Vermeulen to design and install an interation of his Biomodd project at the New York Hall of Science.

Biomodd is an ecosystem of plants and electronics that take care of each other. For example, Algae is pumped through computers, keeping the hardware cool in place of traditional fans. In turn, the heat from the computer creates a greenhouse-like environment for the algae and other plants to grow in.

This particular instance of Biomodd consisted of a main tower as well as a window farm. Our class was in charge of designing hardware and small robots that would contribute to the care of the plants in the farm. The software that powered our robots was hooked up to an interactive game to create a mixed-reality where factors in the digital world influenced the functionality of the hardware (and vise-versa).

I contributed to the development of the interactive game by brianstorming with Angelo how input from the player and sensors embedded into the window farm could affect the game mechanics.

I also worked with a friend to create a tool for harvesting and pruning plants. We hacked some electric scissors to respond to input from an external button and enabled them to be triggered by the interactive game.

The contraption was to be mounted along the edge of one of the structures. As the plants got taller they would grow right between the blades, putting themselves at risk to be chopped. We wanted to play up the dystopian aspect of our robot and create an element of danger in an otherwise nurturing environment.

We used an Arduino to power the scissors. Here’s how they worked:

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After the passing of an acquaintance earlier this year, I witnessed his friends and family grieve publicly on Facebook. They posted messages that shared memories, referenced inside jokes, and told him that he was sorely missed. They were acting as if he could read their messages; that sending words into the digital cloud was somehow akin to interfacing through the clouds of heaven.

As far as we know, anyone who writes to a deceased person is having a one-sided conversation. To communicate this concept, I worked with an object that universally symbolizes conversation: a telephone.

My first instinct was to buy a telephone and clog the holes in the receiver. That way,
one could talk and talk into the phone, but never hear a response.

Although this successfully symbolized the concept that I was grappling with, I wasn’t satisfied with the altered phone as an art object. Iterating on my idea, I attempted to take the phone apart. However, I didn’t have the right tools and ended up breaking it.

Frustrated, I decided to make a paper mache mold of the phone. Doing so would give me full control over how it looked.

I layered newspaper and paste over the phone, working hard to maintain the fidelity of the armature. Hours later, I cut the dried shell off of the mold and attached the pieces back together.

I realized that the resulting object (and the process I went through to make it) was an interesting metaphor for the Facebook phenomenon I had observed. By “embalming” the phone in paper mache, I preserved some of the its qualities as I translated it into a different format. Yet, the resulting object was only a low-fidelity version of the original. It conjured a real phone, but was not an exact aesthetic nor functional replica.

Likewise, the posthumous Facebook posts were attempts to preserve a relationship with the deceased. However, it would never be the same. My acquaintance’s online profile was just a shell, a remnant of his existence that remained on the internet after his death.

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On February 1st, 2012 the Daily Mail newspaper posted an article with the following headline: ‘I finally got a gun’: Tragic last tweet of high school teen who shot herself dead after posting photo of the weapon online

The subject of the article, 17-year-old Ashley Duncan, used popular social networking tools to share her plans for suicide. As I thought about this tragedy in the context of my previous project, I realized that there was a striking similarity between the two scenarios: Both Ashley Duncan and those grieving for my deceased Facebook friend were having a one-sided conversation with the internet.

However, Ashley’s words were written for an audience of live, sentient people who could have taken action. She cried out, but no one responded. Her conversation didn’t have to be one-sided.

The following is a tribute to Ashley:

I re-created Ashley’s digital message in paper and staged it in the physical world. Treated this way, her words become harder to ignore and can’t disappear into the abyss of the internet.
 

 

Ashley’s tweet made me wonder what other famous last words were captured in 144 characters. I found a NY Times article that listed a number of last tweets by celebrities who had recently passed. Some were purposeful, thoughtful anecdotes. Others were flippant, mundane tweets that would inadvertently become a lasting legacy.
 

 

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My project on last tweets made me think more deeply about the legacy we leave online. Websites, accounts, and profiles are ever-lasting fingerprints that people leave on the internet. Unlike our bodies, our digital data is immortal; even when we attempt to erase our information, it’s rarely removed completely.

etoy.CORPORATION, a new media art group, has begun a project on this topic called “Mission Eternity.” They propose a method for archiving the evidence of one’s life into digital data packages that can be stored on servers and hard drives. These packages would include everything from photos, video, and voice recordings, to DNA samples and legal documents.

Given the speed at which our world is becoming digital, etoy.CORPORATION’s proposal doesn’t seem that far-fetched. What might our tombs and urns look like in the future? What will they be filled with?

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I collect shells. Usually they’re sea shells, but sometimes they’re the kind that wash up on urban sidewalks. Here’s one–it’s the shell of a 1998 CRT computer monitor:

A shell is a void that used to be filled with life. It’s a former home, a remnant of a creature’s existence. Can we think about computer shells in the same way?

After all, our lives are very much wrapped up in computers: they store our most important memories, contacts, documents… we use computers to connect to loved ones, conduct business, and learn about our world. For many people computers are an extension of one’s body and mind.

When people move out of their homes, things like papers, buttons, extension cords, and dust bunnies get left behind. What happens when a computer moves out of it’s shell? Is it in any way comparable to the human experience? What items would get forgotten or are purposefully left for the enjoyment of the next inhabitants? 
 

I’ve begun to answer this question by arranging physical versions of common computers screen icons inside of the monitor. I want these objects to be seen as evidence of the digital creature that used to inhabited that space.