ITP Spring Show

Monday night I went to NYU for the ITP Spring Show. It was an exhibition held by the Graduate Students in NYU's ITP program and MOUSE was invited to go and watch the presentations. When we got there the exhibit was the entire floor with the students projects scattered about. All of the visitors were given a map of which projects were where and were then allowed to go where ever the wind took them. I must say that I had a great time - walking about the place with no real aim other than checking out other people's work is quite relaxing and intriguing. I should do things like that more often.

And now here are some of my favorite exhibits:
The online flowers - This project was of a plastic model of a plant that was connected online. The basic premise is that you can go online and take care of your friends plants and they can take care of yours - it's a part of the whole social networking craze. During the demonstration I was shown how when you water a plant, it lights up with blue lights and happily announces the fact that it's being watered. Afterwards though, the presenter decided to show what happens when someone kicks your plant. The plant then lights ups but this time it complains about the pain.

Wheelchair art - This one was made for wheelchair bound students. A wheelchair is loaded up with motion sensors and so when you move around in it, you end up drawing on a paint-type program. This was so much fun. I sat down in the chair and at first it was a bit weird to move around - I've never been in a wheelchair before.
But after a while I got use to it and was able to make more detailed artwork (I wrote RA instead of just making random lines all across the screen.) The selection of colors was nice and basic, but the really cool thing was how to change back and forth between them. There is a lever to the right of your head and you have to move your head to press it. The first press gets the cursor moving and then you just have to wait for the cursor to come to the color you want at which you then press the lever once more to select it.
Just being able to run (can I really use this word?) around in a wheelchair was fun. Not to mention that project itself was a great idea.

Karaoke
This was fun. You take any phone that connects to the internet, go the to the site, and then you can your friends can sign along to random songs. Just like in a real karaoke bar. As you sing, the animations on the screen get more and more dramatic and colorful, depending on how loud you get. The real distinct thing about this project was that if your phone has a camera, you can then make your own music videos of yourself signing and upload them for others to see.

Anyways, here are some pictures from it:



The creepy wooden mirror - as cool as it was, it still messed with me. A computer senses movement and positioning to "reflect" shapes of whats in front of it with the little chips of wood. I'm still not sure how it does what it does, but I feel like I've seen one of these before.



Had no idea what this was when I first saw it and I still don't get it. Lets just call it "art" and move on please.



Screenshot of the game "Frosty goes to Hell". People have some odd imaginations....