Mar 23

for Youmna

Are you familiar with this website?

A collection of smell/scent art exhibits from 1999 till present.

http://andreaskeller.squarespace.com/odor-art/

ALSO this:

http://www.haque.co.uk/scentsofspace.php

Mar 22

Y.A.M.Y. — Iteration One



For My Y.A.M.Y project, I made an avatar machine for capturing third person view.

I use a fram, which is bound up with my knapsack to carry my camera.

The camera is a web cam and taped on one end of fame. The web cam is  a normal microsoft HD web cam for desktop.

The capture of web cam is inputted into a laptop. A processing application processes the input and outputs the video onto the screen.

Now let’s start to explore the mechanic part . The following image is a interface of the processing application. There are few keys showed on the interface. These keys are there for giving commands to a player who is wearing this machine such as stop, explore and orientations.

Mar 22

Communication Over A Distance, Part 4

http://youtu.be/-M3qplYLOvU

Mar 22

the ol’ switcheroo

this is a rethinking of the idea of a switch, sometimes the most obvious answer isn’t the funnest so took the idea of the switch and applied it here å la the parent trap. and in the style of indiana jones, with a twist of olde gold.

under the hood of this project is a pressure sensor hooked up to arduino, an rgb lcd screen that prints the weight on the readout, and a buzzer that goes off if the weight changes by too much for too long. i would have used and explosion but that seemed a bit out of the question.

http://t-wreks.blogspot.com/2012/03/ol-switcheroo.htm

Mar 22

meaningful interactions

We are so connected in today’s that I wanted to explore how meaning full these interactions are.  The physical act of getting mail is more meaningful than receiving email today.  I wanted to explore more than just how we communicate over a distance and touch on why we communicate over a distance.  Is someone posting happy birthday on your facebook wall more meaningful than receiving a birthday wish  through snail mail.   Although the facesbooks ease of connection allows us to stay in touch with hundreds of of friends at any one time, what makes these connections have value.  I would say that my approach to this is less of an experiment and more of an exploration.  An experiment lacking all variable control to measure the success of the interaction but it has lead to some interesting discoveries.  The lack of a control also speaks to the nature of the project in that all the media we use to connect are full of control and each media informs how we interact with one another, and how we are somewhat constrained what these media allow.

In these series of meaningful interactions i attempted to take the feeling of receiving physical mail and transfer it to a various digital social media.  A few examples are that I sent my mom on a short internet scavenger hunt to wish her happy birthday, i congratulated friends who were getting married, i ask a simple question about programing similar to g chat (a one liner that will take days to receive the answer.)  Some of these were met with confusion and others with clever responses, one of which i received in a cryptic note in the mail that i decoded to read “do you smell what the rock is cooking” i was confused as i am sure the recipients of my messages were, but it was a much more meaningful interaction than an email.  All recipients got a different form of messages: drawings, hand written url links, QR codes linking to url all leading to a handwritten note online or a postcard like picture or some received tweets.  some others received qr postcards, qr  text and SMS messages and even QR phone call options.  How these people responded to to the message was left up to them and i got a variety of responses as well.

one of the challenges i faced with this project was a way to make it easy for them to interact but in a different or meaningful way hopefully.  I am curious what my mom though of the twitter message, but i also wonder how those who were directed to my website with a letter felt about replying via my personal website via form submission.  I have found that there isn’t a huge rush to reply with these which is an obvious difference from email.  another challenge i ran into was more of a technical one consisting of php script allowing those who receive letters to share a collective twitter account “friendsofbrian” which is title borrowed from a previous project but still very appropriate.  since not all letters have been sent until i get my @friendsofbrian tweets from my site those will ramain unsent so i can further explore this medium.

i will leave with a few links to specific letters since they are one my server and not linking to anything in particular yet.

http://t-wreks.com/dearjessie.php

http://t-wreks.com/dear/sentjoe.html

http://t-wreks.com/dear/mom.html

Mar 20

Creativity Necklace – Communication From A Distance

My Inspiration

Dedicated to my little sister, Carillon, in hopes of enabling us to better inspire one another with our shared creativity.

Components

• 2 pen/pencil encasings (one for her, one for me)
• 2 necklaces w/ RGB LEDs, power sources, and a Wi-Fi transceiver (one for her, one for me)

Concept

Each of us will wear one of the necklaces and carry around one of the encasings.  When either of us draws, writes, or creates something w/ a pen or pencil we will use the encasing and click the button at the back.  This button will send a wireless signal to turn on the other person’s creativity necklace.  The necklace will then calmly fade between RGB hues to signal that the other person is “creating.”  The intention is to inspire one another over a distance.

Concept Render

What I Manifested

 

Next Steps

  • Get internet message sending working – use bluetooth connection to send message through mobile phone to other person’s mobile and then back to bluetooth
  • Create custom PCBs for interior components of necklace and encasing and then manifest a pendant with all functional parts (WiFi, RGB, power supply)
  • Add sensors on pen to control hue of color (pressure, temperature, etc.)
  • Have Carillon design necklaces or bracelets for pendants

 

Mar 19

BrainSYNC – Neurofeedback vs. Social Media

For the social media project I attempted to find a way of incorporating my own personal research of EEGs and Brain Computer Interfaces (BCI) into an application in the field of social media.  In order to design this application, I assumed that users would have access to personal EEG devices that would be able to record their neurofeedback and regularly send it to their smartphone throughout the course of a day.  While this technology doesn’t currently exist there are companies such as Nuerosky and Emotiv that are working to create commercial EEG devices for the everyday person.

After making said assumption I designed the interface for a smartphone app that would allow the user to do a number of things:

  • passively log personal EEG data through a discrete wearable sensor over the course of a day
  • actively record external stimuli to retroactively plot against personal neurofeedback
  • interact with passively and actively recorded data through a comprehensive graph plotter
  • create unique categories of manual inputs
  • share interesting findings with other users
  • have the option to anonymously share personal neurofeedback data and manually recorded stimuli with a central server for BrainSYNC researchers to perform research of the masses
  • read articles and research performed on data collected from the mass user base of the application

It is my hope that an application like this would create a new method of conducting scientific research – research of the masses.  Though it could be argued that this type of data is not collected in a scientifically acceptable manor, there would be no denying the value of such a large set of data entries if a sizable number of users got partook in the social aspect of the application.

Below is a screenshot of an interface mockup.  I haven’t posted all of the interface mockups for proprietary reasons.  Feel free to contact me if you are interested in getting involved or just to learn more (conor.russomanno@gmail.com).

 

Mar 18

very cool bbc documentary

also, came across this bbc documentary over the break. it’s made by adam curtis and raises some very interesting questions regarding how we define nature and humanity with technology and technological terms. link below.

http://vimeo.com/27393748

Mar 18

Interaction Over Distance – Empathonic -Interface Mock Up

I’ve retitled my project Empathonic, a combination of Empathetic and Bionic. I’ve spent a lot of time adjusting interface and working on patching the Pulse Sensor to OpenFrameworks where I’m working. Wireless hopes are a bit foiled at this point, I need several parts I don’t currently have (little things like male pin headers, etc), so judging on what I can get my hands on, I’ll see if I can implement the wireless aspects of the project. For now I’m rigging up two pulse sensors to a breadboard attached to a laptop. Running on the laptop is an interface that I’m still programing, but here are the mock ups…

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here are some early paper prototypes…

Mar 18

Communication Over A Distance, Part 3

Just realized how challenging the feedback/drawing coding is going to be for this project. Need to implement some kind of control theory – yikes. The hurdles to overcome are as follows:

  • With only eight LED indications there are only a total of 16 directions I can direct the user.
  • Need to break the drawing into line segments which are navigable for the user without creating erratic/confusing/contradicting LED directions.
  • If the user deviates off course, the path needs to be corrected and recalculated.

Here are some photos. Enjoy.