So we had a meeting early this week with the Fivers in New York City to brainstorm possible project ideas. I personally like the idea of coming up with ideas the day of, but Rob Faludi who worked on the 7-in-7 project recommended to come up a few ideas beforehand. So here are a few ideas I’ve come up with that would be interesting to work on next week. The TeleForensic Art with Stella is the only definite project since I had to schedule with her in advanced. Stella and I are collaborating on a project but we are in two different countries, 12-hour time zone apart, so it was crucial to work out a tenative place to meet online. The description to the projects and the rest of my ideas are listed below.
TeleForensic Art (with Stella): “Forensic art is a law enforcement artistic technique used in the identification, apprehension, or conviction of wanted persons.” Stella and I will choose a person, take a photo of them (for documentation) and then describe the person’s facial features through instant message chat for the other person to draw. If time permits, I’m interested in creating a time-lapse of the drawing with the messages appearing as subtitles.
Tape Art: Create a 3D “wire frame” using tape and found materials. I will also create a time-lapse video for documentation. This project is an exploration of spacial design.
East Fort Greene T-shirts: Gentrifying BedStuy Movement: Design and create East Fort Greene silk-screened T-shirts to promote gentrification in the BedStuy area. This project was inspired from the re-branding of neighborhoods to gentrify poor and unsafe neighborhoods by associating the area to another prospering area (i.e. East Williamsburg is the rebranding of Bushwick). Effects of such re-branding of neighborhoods can be found on Craigslist’s apartment section where listings are purposely miscategorized in the hope to get ignorant apartment hunters to come visit the location. I want to create awareness t-shirts to see BedStuy re-branded to East Fort Greene. T-shirts will be silk-screened and given to BedStuy proper residents.
Performance: I Need Music Lessons: Possible idea. I am interested in the idea of “begging for music lessons” as a performance. I don’t know if I should have a sign asking for money for lessons or just asking for music lessons. I will be trying to play the guitar (never played in my life.) in the hopes that someone would stop and teach me how to play a simple song.
I have been creatively drained and quite unmotivated to start on any personal projects so far. The job hunt is the only major thing on my plate so time is not really an issue. Luckily, my ITP mate, Vikram decided to setup a group project called 5-in-5, where each member will produce 1 project each day for 5 days. 5-in-5 was initially inspired by 7-in-7 started by ITP resident researchers. They setup a 7-in-7 blog to document there process throughout the week and showcase their creative endeavors.
I’m excited to work with 10 other ITPers and see how they deal with the creative process in such a tight time constraint. I have no idea how I will approach this project but not too concerned since I often have to deal with tight timelines at work. Another interesting creative project is the ongoing Create-A-Day blog. Although kind of on the craft-side of things, I find it quite motivating with the idea to make something on regularly basis.
Awhile back someone forwarded me an article of an interesting talk by Ira Glass on creative work. He talks about a period of time where many creative people give up because what they create does not measure up to their expectations. So the 5-in-5 projects for me is a way to push through a body of work, to get to a point where I am satisfied with the output.
There has been mixed feeling regarding Jason and Stella’s Living Art installation and I wanted to document their presentation so that their intentions are made clear. Testy Touch has been accepted to the 2008 ITP’s Spring Show many have felt that it should not belong in the show due to the “bad taste” of the project. Personally I’m glad it got accepted to the Spring Show. A classmate of mine asked me, “Would you want this piece to represent ITP?” and I whole heartedly say, “Yes.” If ITP feels strongly about the diverse student body then they should support a diverse body of work that is produced here. Here is their final presentation and following Q and A.
So this past weekend was not the most ideal flying conditions but I manage to get some user testing. New York City may not be the most ideal city either. Each park has specific kite-flying restrictions and since it is earlier spring, the Great Lawn in Central Park is not open to the public. Another problem I have run into this weekend is that many parks close at dusk.
On Saturday night (April 19th), Sinan and I arrived to the Great Lawn in Central Park. Even with a warning that Turtle Pond was close, we still made an attempt to get the kite off the ground. Here is Sinan planning to make another run to get the kite off the ground. Unfortunately there was not enough wind to get the kite up.
On Monday evening (April 21st) I decided to try D.U.M.B.O. (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge) right by the river in the hopes to get enough wind for flight. Unfortunately we had to get our flights done before dusk because the park rangers were pretty strict in the closing time of the park. This meant their was too much light in the sky to take decent long exposure photographs.
For my Nature of Code final, I decided to move away from a conversation analysis/visualization from midterm. Midnight Doodler is a drawing tool that uses the night sky as the “canvas” and a kite with controllable LEDs to create lines made visible through long exposure photography. The LEDs can be controlled by either a accelerometer driven light patterns (auto-pilot) or manually controlled LEDs using momentary switches using an xBee radio for wireless communication.
A clear windy evening (~18 m.p.h. winds) is ideal weather conditions. Two users are necessary, but more are welcome. One user is the piloting the kite and the other user controls the LED lights through momentary switches. The LEDs can be dynamically driven by the accelerometer (auto-pilot) or manually turned on/off using momentary switches and xBee wireless radio communication. The camera will need to be set on a tripod and set to ‘manual’ to slow down the shutter speed.(Suggested settings: 100ISO and f22 at 1 minute exposure) Wide angle lens offer more “canvas” area for the light drawing kite.
References
Pika Pika
Uttarayana, Indian Kite-flying Festival
GRL
Charlie Brown
