project listing - Installation
Memory Nodes
Memory Nodes is an interactive installation, developed as part of the LMCC Swing Space residency in late 2007.
As an installation, there are two primary ways to participate with Memory Nodes. First, you can call a phone number (currently offline), and leave a memory. It can be anything from a personal memory, a funny story, or something that recently happened to you which you'd like to share anonymously. Second, when you enter the installation space, by walking up and touching any one of the memory nodes, you will unlock a memory hidden within, which will then sound out throughout the space. Multiple memories can be released at the same time, allowing a mix and recombination of people's memories in a unified space.
This project is a step towards a larger memory project, developed as a way for people to store their memories in a physical entity. Each of us have personal artifacts, which we carry with us as we move throughout time and space. This project aims at giving items through a period of time the opportunity to collect, impart, and distort information about their owners and users. Its a hands-on experience for viewers in an installation space, as they are able to see and hear into objects. Subsequently, while experiencing more about the artifacts in the space, they add to the future record through their interaction with that object.
MS Gloves
A consultation for Wilson Built in Brooklyn, New York.
This was a short adaptation project from existing hardware. Wireless communication was needed between gloves, which simulate sensations to that of multiple sclerosis.
These modules were adapted from Velleman IR transmitter/receiver pairs, allowing vibrating motors to be triggered remotely by software. This software was integrated with visual and treadmill feedback, which was all synced to emulate an experience from the perspective of a person with MS.
Antikythera Mechanism Exhibit
In Collaboration with Rich Miller and John Schimmel, for installation in the Ancient Greece exhibit at the Children's Museum of Manhattan.
This project consists of two touch sensitive kiosks, which allow users to view and experience the antikythera device. This device is currently thought to be one of the earliest computers, designed by the greeks as a timepiece, it is one of the earliest uses of gears on record. In conjunction with HP research, I was involved in integrating the hardware with PTM technology HP had developed for viewing pre-photographed objects in a multitude of different lighting conditions.
Above is a picture of the installation in progress. It is now alive and active in CMOM, and will be installed for at least another year and a half.
Shift in the Fabric
Concept
As part of my thesis project at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU, A Shift in the Fabric was a computationally driven visual installation. As an installation, it creates, analyzes, and reveals nuances of potential networks and infrastructures in our world.
Through the aggregation of approximately 5000 most populated cities in the world, this project visualizes these as nodes in a variety of different ways, showing network characteristics that can be represented in different visual contexts, where viewers can be left to interpret them in an environment.
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Top Left: This is a traditional map view. Here you get a sense of continents and size of cities (based on the diameter of the clouds)
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Top Right: These are examples of "caveman" style networks, where connections are made in tightly regionalized spaces, and occasionally make one leap outside of this area to another location.
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Bottom Left: This is the beginning of the view when exploring an ecosystem of various networks and protocols, all of which share common nodes. Here in this example, different colors represent different types of connections and/or infrastructures.
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Bottom Right: This is an example of a centralized network emitting out of North Africa somewhere.
Having control over the connections, as well as the nodes, allows for flexibility in moving the nodes into different arrangements, thereby allowing us to see different relationships between the nodes when put into different mappings.
This is an example of a rank order by population, in which the cities fan out, allowing you to view characteristics of these nodes from a macro level. Gray connections here represent "caveman" world networks, green represent small world's networks, and the red is the beginning of a centralized connection.
Next Steps
This project is a work in progress. For more information about the project's conception, as well as some of its various branches, view the original thesis section of my website!
Death of Sound
Overview
Created in the fall of 2005, Death of Sound is my initial exploration using artificial intelligence for computationally-driven musical instruments. Seven individual steel-stringed wooden instruments make up the project, in which the each are mounted to the wall. These all connect to each other through an eighth wooden box below. Programmed to be aware of people in the space, as well as each other, these seven simple tone makers make their own decisions on when to perform.
When one of the instruments chooses to make sound, it begins powering a motor spinning four rare-earth magnets. Based on the speed and the duration of that spin, the magnets induce vibration of various different tones, and assorted attacks and decays can be performed. Each of the seven are given certain characteristics when the composition begins. Over time, they use these characteristics to decide how to live, and begin a simple life-cycle until their compositional death.
Concept
Originally, upon their death, I had hoped to have circuitry which would destroy itself once its composition was complete, creating truly one-time instruments. After a prototype of this nature, however, I became attached to them and noticed others viewing/listening to them made a connection as well. In that regard, I lost my desire to see them physically die, and decided to save that element of the project for future exploration in other work. Rather, I became more interested in the story-telling elements of these instruments, as they live and act near each other. This lead to my further investigation of these instruments as objects with life characteristics, which grow and change over time and ultimately come to their end.
Compositionally, this project explores the sound created when performers argue, interact, and neglect each other. As these different instruments fight for attention over each other, very simple acts of motors spinning become much more complex anthropomorphic experiments. Most, if not all of this is done within the audience's mind.
As much as I try, as a programmer and circuit-maker, it is simply too complex to create human emotion in simple inanimate objects (at least intentionally). Ironically, the objects do a wonderful job of it on their own when viewers create their own interpretations. By creating objects which appear to speak the same musical language and have similar dimensions and placements, people begin to assign them similar emotional entitlements. This has fostered some incredibly simple, yet fascinating ideas about simulating intelligence, which I hope to use in future work.
Technical Details
This project is a combination of instrument design with a little electronic cocktail underneath. In its structural design, its a pretty simple piece. A single microcontroller guides and controls each instrument, through the spinning of the motor. Also, each instrument has a pre-amplification circuit and a microphone, which is then connected to an external sound source. This allows the instrument the ability to be amplified in the space beyond acoustic sound.
This shows a bit of the spaghetti of connections inside of the main control circuit (without the microcontroller)
Future Considerations
Reaction in the installation space fostered a completely different outlook on the project than I had begun with. Originally, my approach to this project was to explore the idea of death in inanimate objects. I wanted to see if an audience could sympathize with a simple mechanical tonal object. From a technical standpoint, I investigated ways in which to have circuits actually destroy themselves electrically. Through the use of nichrome wire, which is commonly used to electronically light fuses for fireworks, I found a viable solution. By supplying voltage to this wire, it becomes incredibly hot, and can short itself like a fuse as well as melt components and circuitry. As mentioned before, I decided not to use this concept in the piece, but it remains an area of exploration in future work of this kind.
After initial reactions from friends and peers, I have become much more interested in the mental reactions the audience performs during the course of an installation. I hope to employ ideas of endowing inanimate objects with other life characteristics, in an effort to give the audience further ways in which to associate with simple musical devices.
tags: artificial automata frequency intelligence interface magnetism music networked objects resonance sound strings
24 Hour Incidental
This project is a collaboration with Peter Coffin.
24 Hour Incidental was originally built and installed for the Swiss Institute in Soho, Manhattan. This piece acts as an musical interface and installation within a gallery space. Quite simply, it maps the interactions of the curators and gallery staff at their computers with that of the tonality created in the space. As these staff members work at their computer, their keyboard input is transformed into musical phrases and sounds.
As common tasks and works are typed throughout the installation, various repeating phrases and melodies appear. All of these happen at different rates and frequencies, based on the individuals preferences and speeds.
Built using a keyboard sniffing application combined with specialized software which speaks to a sound generator, this piece allows those in the gallery space the opportunity to connect the mundane, logistical, and managerial aspects of a gallery space with the experience of the space itself.
Wave Machine
A collaboration with Todd Holoubek, Dan Shiffman, Meghan Trainor, and Dimitri Negroponte. The Wave Machine is an experiment in taking an artificial mechanization of a real phenomenon and reproducing it in digital form.
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Nine of the twenty one hand-etched boards
In today's world we are confronted with the unreal, primary as digital media. Through the media we are forced to accept the "essence" of what we would like to have. This project takes this idea to the test by reproducing the much loved "wave machine" as a tilting light grid. We are offering the essence of early nineties kitch as a series of ones and zeros.
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The wave machine, in a test run
Inherent in this project, which uses the emphemeral and realitivly abstract medium of computer programming, we have sought to focus as much on the physical elements of the digital object. The wave machine is a mechanical abstraction of water. To create a digital form of this natural event implies a more ephemeral experience. However we have focused as much attention on the physical aspects ofcreating a digital experience as we have to the programming elements.
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A view of the wave machine from behind, showing connections between the boards
Handcrafting our circuit boards, etching designs, words, and parts of the programming language we are using itself onto the boards, is in opposition to both the ephemeral and mass-produced elements of contemporary digital experiences.
tags: board circuit copper etch machine wave
Light Organ - Empire State Building Public Art
Currently an ongoing collaboration with Peter Coffin.
This project is an exploration of synesthesia as it is conceived in relation to sound and color. There has been extensive research in this area for hundreds years, with many different theories from widely popular to widely unknown scientists. Our project aims at controlling the colors and tiers of the empire state building from a single piano, and then hosting performances which would be available in different mediums for people to watch and explore the tonal space, both through sound and sight.
For the first part of the project, I worked on the electronics of three different five foot tall plexi-glass models of the building. These prototypes were connected to a midi-keyboard, where you could interact with the model in realtime, watch the colors change and interact to your performance. Below is a link to the preliminary code for the project, a demo of the top tier in action, and a look at the microcontroller and electronics under the hood.
Code - Top Tier Demo - Electronics
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