Category Archives: 2010 Spring

Visual Music Studio – Final Project

Ryan Raffa, Visuals and Sound Editing Spencer Snyder, Composer Mark Lev Through the manipulation of public domain film and sound composition, we are investigating the meaning and use of gesture as it relates to human interaction. By using film from the late 1940′s and 1950′s, which often times contain exaggerated movements from the actors to [...]

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21st Century Skills

For Design and Education, we were asked to identify what we felt were important skills that should be encouraged and reinforced for students to succeed in the 21st Century. I put together a non-exclusive list of skills I feel need to be addressed by all areas of education (from children to adults) at the local, national, [...]

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FrontlineSMS – Saving to a database

For our Major Studio Red Cross project, I continued with setting up the FrontlineSMS system, and we are now successfully saving the received messages to our database using HTTP commands calling to a PHP file on our server. I put together a quick tutorial on how to set-up FrontlineSMS to save the information you receive [...]

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Interactive Architecture – Chair

Zane Murray and I finished up our prototype for our interactive architecture collaboration, and we’re happy with the steps we’ve made toward our vision. After our initial prototype, I thought more about what we wanted the interaction to be, and so we decided to use sensors as a way to interface with the piece. The [...]

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Reed Switches and Angry Robots

For Physical Computing 2, we’ve been discussing robots, so for an exercise we each built a robot kit to get a better understanding of how they are set-up. I put together “Herbie the Mousebot” from Solarbotics. Herbie responds and chases light and also knows when it runs into things (because of the sensors on its [...]

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ICFF – Submission is in!

Zane Murray and I collaborated on a piece, called Transformium, that we submitted to the New School judging committee to hopefully be selected to participate in the International Contemporary Furniture Fair (ICFF) happening here in New York City. I was heavily influenced by the book, Interactive Architecture, by Michael Fox and Miles Kemp, so I [...]

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Prototype Playtest – Participation Culture

For Design and Education, we were asked to prepare a testable/playable prototype of an activity based on one of topics/weeks listed in our class syllabus. I chose week 4 from my course, Participation Culture, which was focused on the Situationist International, forms of investigation/research, and Psychogeography. In brief, my prototype will have students interacting with [...]

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FrontlineSMS and Sierra 885 – Successful setup

For the Red Cross project that 6 of us from my Major Studio is tackling, I asked to be assigned to the SMS receiving and database management portion of the project. Based on other NGO’s success with FrontlineSMS in similar types of projects in different areas in Africa, I began working on setting that up [...]

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Marina Abramović – The Artist is Present

Marina Abramović’s exhibit “The Artist is Present” at the MOMA is a clear and resounding statement for performance art, and the pieces/performances on display are shocking, disturbing, and will leave you with an understanding of the power and the possibilities of performance. With written descriptions, videos, and images of performances, such as Rhythm 10, Rest [...]

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Social Networks in the Classroom

For Design and Education, we were asked to write a paper which proposed a way for a social networking site to be used in the classroom setting. I am proposing to use Flickr as a way for students to investigate and propose alternative uses of space at the high school where the students attend. Flickr [...]

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