Author Archives: Ryan

Instruction Sets for Strangers – Second Prototype – Results and Feedback

There was no public interaction with our installation. After initially allowing the board to stand alone and seeing no results, we moved the board to another area that had more people who were stationary. We also drew some possible examples on the paper, and these drawings captured people’s attention, but not enough to initiate any [...]

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Instruction Sets for Strangers – Second Prototype – Implementation

On Saturday, October 31st, we placed our intervention in Bryant Park around 10am. We then staked out a place where we could watch the activity surrounding it. We first chose a high-traffic area to place the installation. Here are video’s documenting the installation:

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Instruction Sets for Strangers – Second Prototype – Preparations

We first created a logo and created a website called Our Bryant Park at www.OurBryantPark.org. We created a number of posts on the site which included scanned images of our first prototype (personal logo postcard project) as well as discussions of the goal of the site, which is: “Welcome to OurBryantPark.org! The goal of this [...]

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Instruction Sets for Strangers – Second Prototype – Precedence and Plans

After receiving feedback from our last presentation, Minhao and I decided that we needed to do an intervention that would provide us more information and data in that moment of the installation. In keeping with our postcard request of a personal logo, our plan was to place a board for writing as well as writing/drawing [...]

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Instruction Sets for Strangers – Second Prototype – Research

Research Bryant Park is in constant flux. Since first beginning this project, Bryant Park has gone through several different changes. First, there was a large grass field with large amounts of seating spread over the lawn and the various paths circulating the perimeter of the park. Last week, the grass field was removed to expose [...]

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Midterm Proposal

My intention is to create a percussive and rhythm-based instrument that can be used in a live sound performance. The instrument will use midi and color tracking as inputs and make use of samples that have been prerecorded or recorded during the performance. A key aspect of this instrument will be an abstract Max visualization [...]

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Reading fellow student papers – Jeanna Hamilton

Just read Jeanna Hamilton’s midterm reflection, and you can check it out here.

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Reading Response – Erving Goffman "Relations in Public: Microstudies of the Public Order"

The levels of description are many, and this is a thorough analysis of pedestrian walkways and the interaction of people using it. As an example of human interaction research for our Instruction Sets for Strangers projects, I would be interested in hearing more about hat happens when there are enhancements or improvements to environments as [...]

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Reading Response – Space Time Play Readings

These readings are amazing. “Ubiquitous Gaming”, for instance, is a great continuation of the Norman discussions of “affordance”: “It is not the references or cognitive concepts that ubicomp wants to proliferate; it is, rather, interactive experiences and phenomenal affordances that will be made pervasive.” (234) In my own investigations with sound, I feel that interactive [...]

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Reading Response – Michael de Certeau "The Practice of Everyday Life"

While reading Michael de Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday Life, I immediately thought of the film The Cruise, directed by Bennett Miller, which is a documentary of sorts on Timothy “Speed” Levitch, a New York City Bus Tour Guide. Levitch’s life is tied directly to the fleeting nature of the city, which always exists in [...]

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