Sep 30

Scrapyard Challenge : Workshop

This Saturday’s Workshop was about “Scrapyard Challenge”. My group, Sophie and Helen and I made an instrument that is called ‘Rainbow Monster’. As you can see in the pictures, we made it with junks such as a fan with a board from printer(maybe?) and straws and so on. At the first time, we tried to use the fan as a wind provider to move the straws that can make connections by touching each other like a chime. However, we failed to use wind because the fan was too weak to blow the straws. Thus, we changed our usage of the fan from a wind provider to a rotating movement to cause straws’ movements. Finally, we could make a final ‘Rainbow Monster’ which has not only functional sound effects but also attractive visual effects by using colorful materials.

IMG_0939 IMG_0968 IMG_0962

 

From the workshop, I could know and understand more about machines by breaking them to pieces, also how to work in a group. When we got a problem, we could discuss about how to solve it with various point of views. It was very interesting to work in a group to make a thing very quickly.

Sep 30

Feedback Loop Project Presentation

BKM1 FeedbackLoop

Sep 30

Things I did this week

On saturday I participated in the scrapyard challenge. We essentially made a motorized flail and tried to use it to complete circuits, which consisted of square pieces of tinfoil, wired directly into the arduino board/box. Our goal was to make an instrument that leaned on the side of giving agency to the musician, instead of embracing the randomness of physically computed midi compositions. We only made one note play and that sometimes didn’t even work. I still feel like we learned something.

 

My feedback loop was designed for gesture interfaces. It hints at what gesture is currently being recognized as the user is drawing it. I thought this could be practical since so many interfaces are returning to tactile input (touch, motion). The most frustrating aspect of gesture interfaces is false positives, so I wanted to give the user a way to anticipate their input and correct it, without trial and error. I think that users of touch and natural interfaces will eventually need a language of input that is more efficient than an onscreen keyboard (while still having the same extent of vocabulary).

Sep 30

Scrapyard Challenge: Music Box

Team: Barbar, Lucy, Nour, & Crystal

Concept: Used an old type write case and parts to construct a music box. We covered the original spool form the typewriter in aluminum (foil) and created one switch with wire that would be the power source. Then we connected 15 other separate wires to the typewriter casing that rested on the spool as it turns. Each wire was connected to a separate output, and when touching the foil would complete the circuit to play the MIDI sound. In order to keep there from being a constant connection between the wire and foil, we created a cover made out of duck tape that would break the circuit. We then cut a specific patter of holes in the duck tape so that the wires would make connection to the foil on the spool only at certain times.

We actually calculated out 7 different notes in order to play the 4 chords that make up “Let itBe” But unfortunately in the and we were not able to have that much control of the input notes.

 

 

Sep 30

Scrapyard Challenge: Interactive Dance Game

 

IMG_6382IMG_6369

IMG_6370

Me, Shu Yu Lin, Melanie Bossert  found  a huge paper with lots of dots. So, we thought that maybe we could make a twister game. However, we could not figure out how to connect our feet and hands to make different sounds. Than, we decided to change our idea to make a dance game. We cut many aluminum foils as squares and connected them with wires. We put aluminum squares like same position in the dance game. After that, we made a two pairs of aluminum shoes, which also had wire connection to make sound. When you step on aluminum squares with shoes, you can have different sounds for each squares. So, we could dance on the dance paper-aluminum floor and make some sound.

Sep 29

Scrapyard Challenge: Electric Pigeon

 

 

 

IMG_6109 IMG_6123

 

My partners, Jimmy Tang and Yuchen Zhang, and I conceived the idea of creating a heavy metal pigeon.  We used a paper mache piegeon with pieces of conductive tape that will play different notes when a conductive glove “plays” them, like a keyboard.  The glove was made of mesh with wires underneath that connected the thumb, which would transfer current to all four fingers and make the sound.  Ultimately, the pigeon didn’t work likely because of poor connection in the glove.

Sep 29

Scrapyard Challenge

Daniel, Gabor and I started the scrapyard challenge by first taking apart an old VCR and an NVIDIA GPU. We decided to dismount the fan from the GPU and attach it to a part from the VCR. We were able to remove the inside ejection mechanism from the VCR and powered it up with a 9V battery. When connected to the 9V battery, the VCR part began to move as if it were ejecting a tape. We attached a charged bolt to the moving VCR part so that when the VCR was activated by the 9V battery, it moved the bolt to charge the fan which we attached on top. We made the blades of each fan conductive by adding tin foil to each blade. Once we got the fan spinning, activated by our VCR switch, we wanted to dangle metal pieces over the fan and once each piece made contact with the tin foil- wrapped fan blades they would make different sounds. Unfortunately I was not able to stick around to see the final product, but here are some photos of the work in progress:

 

20130928_140335 20130928_141524 20130928_141527 20130928_142707 IMG_20130928_150634

Sep 29

Scrapyard: Guitar Hero the Frog

 

[MUSIC I AM LISTENING TO: Nothin’ But A Good Time by POISON :P]

TEAM: Vivi Yuwen Lee/  Erin Cen/  South Cool/ Tim Xiaofeng Lin

PROJECT CONCEPT: Body As Interface/ Body As Metaphor/ Human vs Machine

PERSONAL GOAL: I want to use material that is, at some level, soft, warm, and organic, as part of a mechanism;

PROJECT OBJECTIVES:

1. Claps hands by switching back and forth “+” and “-” of the battery connected to a conveyor/ chain device (dismounted from a printer);

2. Generates sound when the two hands touches;

3. Generates different sounds by pushing the buttons on the guitar hand of the frog;

4. Blows wind from the fan at the back of the frog.

282881_581402605235584_1807073081_n 1378686_581402591902252_752645768_n 1380805_581402638568914_1458341666_n1382295_10202551390450080_280251994_n

photo credit: Erin Cen and Vivi Yuwen Lee

Sep 29

mAsHuP project

1. XLED – The Ultimate Sport Training App that connects you to your idol players.

FEATURE: Syncing you and your star player’s training schedule, strengths and skills, which allows growth of both you and your player while you are working out.

Screen Shot 2013-09-29 at 10.06.50 AM Screen Shot 2013-09-29 at 10.06.58 AM Screen Shot 2013-09-29 at 10.07.17 AM

 

2. Facebook vs Drug Effect

Screen Shot 2013-09-29 at 10.13.22 AM Screen Shot 2013-09-29 at 10.13.40 AM Screen Shot 2013-09-29 at 10.13.54 AM

Sep 25

Mashups

Digital/Digital:

onedaynytour

One day Ny tour with Most Liked Instagram Photos

I combined instagram and googlemap to create a daily Ny tour. As me, people who are out of NY can create their daily tour with instagram’s most liked photos. It’s a new adventure.

Digital/Physical:

NEWYORK DAILY MOOD
happysad

 

I combined Twitter and Brooklyn Bridge for Physical/Digital mashup. Everday, twitter #happy and #sad tags are going to count. If #happy tags use more than #sad, Brooklyn Bridge becomes more brighter. If #sad tags use more than #happy, Brooklyn Bridge becomes dark.