June 2008
35 posts
Ghost in the Machine necklace
I wanted to make an object with used circuit boards. I finally actually finished yesterday. I used a jewelers saw to cut out a piece from a pcb board i found on ITP’s junk shelf. Then i came across a few piecs of white plexi that sort of looked like ghosts. I drilled holes in it to make eyes and mouth shape. I attached them with some jump rings and some chain. Here’s the necklace...
Day 7: Window Ghosts
Click here for video documentation that’s sweeping the nation!
So as Kate says below…Day 7=Window Ghosts. I can’t believe I made it through all 7 days without collapsing. It took alot of patience and food delivery but I made it. And then I slept for three days and forgot to put up this video documentation. So there it is. Take it…already.
MUSIC OF THE DAY: Aphex Twin
Day 7: Window Ghosts
For my 7th and final project, I collaborated with Gabe Barcia-Colombo on a video installation called Window Ghosts. I initially got the idea for it one night when I was leaving work, walking down Waverly, and looked up at the Tisch bulding to see to two people standing in a window. There was something eerie about the way they looked because they were high within the frame of the window and there...
XBee Interface for the Mac
Programming XBees on the Mac isn’t as easy as I would like it to be because there aren’t any GUI interfaces like the Digi XCTU for Windows. I decided to build one in python using Tkinter and pyserial. Here is an initial version which I will be improving soon.
In this current version you must use a search term (above usb) to open a serial port at 9600 baud rate. Usually most XBee USB...
Day 6: The Elbow Detector
For airplanes, elevators, and other tight spaces, the Elbow Detector is a wearable device that notifies you of the presence of another elbow so you can avoid that embarrassing moment of bumping elbows with a stranger.
I have two variations in mind: the silent notifier (that signals the wearer with a small vibrating motor) and the alarm system (a more aggressive version that activates a buzzer...
Vegan Pork Martini
Let’s talk about Josh Karpf. Josh and I both went to Oberlin, where we did our undergrad. The majority of my memories of him are of his flyaway Warholesque hair and a minority are about the unusual objects he kept in a pencil cup. Anyway, a number of years after we graduated I was perusing the still-nascent web and stumbled across a “site-of-the-day” depicting martinis made...
XBee LilyPad
We work with the LilyPad open-source wearables system and the XBee radios a lot at ITP, so Kate Hartman and I decided that it was time to put the two together. My Friday 7 in 7 project was to create a XBee LilyPad board, the first draft of which is pictured above. There’s probably going to be a second draft before we have the printed circuit boards made, adding some decoupling capacitors...
Don’t Blink (In Progress) →
You look at a screen that works as a mirror reflecting your face. If you blink your eyes, a picture of me thumbing my nose at you comes up but you will never know. Just like you will never know if…
Desktop Flight Tracker
My friends and family are always coming and going. I sometimes follow their flights, especially when they are showing up at my door, or departing on a life-expanding adventure. It’s easy to do if I stay in front of the computer with a web page open. However, when I’m at the computer I’m usually working on something else that gets in the way, and away from the screen...
Day 5 (sort of): The Discommunicator
Ok, so this is sort of a cheat, but I today I finally documented a prototype I made a while back. It’s called the Discommunicator. It’s a tool for communication that blocks conversation. It buffers words and enforces eye contact.
Intended for heated discourse, the Discommunicator allows each person to say all the things outloud that shouldn’t actually be heard by the other...
Face the Web →
DAY 4.5: The Seasonal Salad Dress
I’ve been thinking about making this dress for 5 years. Maybe 6. I got the idea when I was a professional sandwich- and salad-maker at the Garden Street Cafe in Rhinebeck, New York. Our mesclun came from Little Seeds (the local farm) in huge, clear bags. When a bag was almost done, I’d hold the it up, admiring the way the delicate, green leaves arranged themselves at the bottom....
Open-source Arduino Clock Project
There’s plenty of clock projects that use the open-source Arduino microcontroller platform, but to my knowledge, none of those projects are themselves officially open-source. So as a quick one-day project for 7 in 7, I started creating clock code that anyone can use and extend for their own projects, under the GPL Creative Commons license. So far it’s simply code for tracking weekday...
WatchThe Boundary Belt is provides the wearer with the ability to produce a spontaneous boundary marker in the event of an ambiguous or misconstrued situation. With a press of the emergency release button (located on the belt), the boundary is immediately launched, clearly indicating to the approaching party where they are or are not welcome. The belt is adjustable - capable of generating boundaries...
openframeworks, 30 minutes later.
I attempted to rewrite something I made (native windows app) back in 2003:
using openFrameWorks. I didn’t get all the way there, but I can say that I am really pleased with openFrameworks performance and its quite friendly demeanor (considering it is C++)
Attention →
TUESDAY
Trading Faces (Big Screen Edition) →
MONDAY
As people stand in front of a mirror, this applications uses face detection technology to find the faces in the video and then display them with just the faces switched. Each…
Clam-flavored Gum
I really don’t know why, but in college my good friend Dan became obsessed with clam gum. An odd obsession of course because clam gum didn”t exist. I guess he just thought it would be funny if it did.
As of today, Clam Gum is real. For my 7 in 7 project I hacked a chewing gum-making kit with clam juice and created a chompable concoction with a maritime tang. It’s weird and...
Day 2: Wound Shirt
Physical computing t-shirts!
I’ve always wanted to show my love for physical computing in t-shirt form so i decided to draw up a design and print it out onto iron transfer sheets. Here are the results from the first try. I am happy and so is my LED.
Life is Cheese →
Day 2. 7 in 7. Thoughts of cheese.
Decided to learn Ruby and make my first Rails web app. Frankly, it freaks me out how it does so much for you, I think maybe I can’t handle it.
Inspired by my good friend and word of the day specialist Abram
http://cheese.shiffman.net/cheez/
WatchFor my first 7in7 project, I thought I’d try to do something I suck at: video.
Aliki and I have been taking photos of her pregnancy about once a week since November 2007. I loaded all of them up into Photoshop and scaled / centered them at the eyes to have them match. I think I might need to try another 7in7 project that does the eye detection, scaling, and centering as an automatic...
Proximity Maintenance Device
For my first 7 in 7 project I created a prototype for a proximity maintenance device. This is a radio-enabled bracelet or necklace worn by two individuals who do not want to become separated in a crowd. As long as the devices can maintain radio contact, nothing happens. However if the individuals move far enough apart or lose radio contact, their devices begin vibrating. At this point they can...
“Catty CPU Cliques”
“Catty CPU Cliques” imagines a future where the field of Computational Humor has progressed to a point where office computers no longer use humor to communicate with their users, but rather to alienate them.
Day 1: Prototypes for Relational Devices
A slow start, but here are some prototypes that emerged from Day 1…
Kiss Shield: a clear signifier for awkward embraces
Connected Soles:
Face-to-Face Mask:
May 2008
2 posts
7 (number) →
“7 (seven) is the natural number following 6 and preceding 8.”
