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Exploring death through the isolation of VR
I'm sitting on a field of tall, red grass staring straight ahead at a lone tree. Its leaves match the crimson landscape that stretches out before me. In the distance, a rusty orange forest fades into the background. There's a gentle rustling of leaves, occasionally interrupted by the faint chirping of a bird, that forces me to breathe slower.
Touchless music game lets you create jittery drum and bass with your face
If there was one ubiquitous item at NYU's ITP Winter Show, it was the Kinect. Countless projects were built around the Microsoft-made sensor. Max Ma's Touchless, which he built with a ton of help from Tony Lim, originally featured one, but the version that made it to the floor went with an OEM equivalent instead. But the effect is the same: a set of cameras and sensors track various parts of your face, turning your muscle twitches and eyebrow raises into raw data. While Max says this data can be used for a host of different applications, such as unlocking your door with a series of blinks and winks, he focused on bringing joy to people's lives through music creation. The sensor tracks between 16 and 64 points (under ideal conditions) on your face, and uses your movements to trigger and manipulate samples. Truth is, it's hard not to smile while making ridiculous faces, though, I was a little disappointed to find out that the tracker did not play well with my winter beard. The main method of interacting is by tilting your head, opening your mouth and raising your eyebrows, but Max added some depth by turning a Leap Motion sensor into a controller for a software synthesizer. So samples and beats are all above the neck, but you can wave your hands through the air to play a lovely lead melody. Really, the whole thing is pretty self-explanatory and quite fun, as you can see in the video after the break.
Relightable Dome creates interactive images where you control the light source
Stitching together a bunch of images to create a single picture is hardly a new concept. Panoramas are old hat, and Google is even using 360-degree photos to help guide your shopping decisions. But a team of students at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program, with the help of a few others, are taking a slightly different approach. The Relightable Dome, or Relightable Photobooth, uses Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) technology which captures an object or person under a variety of lighting conditions then combine it into a single, interactive photo. Inside the box is a concave surface studded with 81 LED flashes. A custom microcontroller inside triggers each flash in sequence and a camera mounted at the rear captures an image at each stop. And, while the enclosure is custom, the camera doesn't need to be. At the back is simply a bracket that practically any shooter can be mounted on, though in this case it was a Canon DSLR. The pictures are then stitched together on a laptop using a piece of open source software and a special algorithm to create an interactive image where you control the light source. The whole process, from triggering the first flash to final file takes less than five minutes.
Clack-Clack FACE gives a typewriter new life as a text-based portrait painter
There's something oddly romantic about taking a piece of archaic technology and giving it new life as a work of 21st century art. Take the Royal Empress typewriter you see above. This particular model was built in 1961 and eventually landed in the hands of Amanda Gelb as graduation gift. She and her fellow classmates, Jinyi Fu and Quingyuan Chen, looked at the hunk of aging metal and saw potential instead of an obsolete writing tool. For their installation at the ITP Winter Show, they wired up each of the keys to an Arduino for tracking what a user types, then paired that with a tiny projector that displays the letters on a sheet of paper wrapped around the platen. The "face" part of the equation comes from the webcam mounted to the top of the typewriter case. It uses brightness to map a silhouette of the person sitting in front of it and fills only the darkened areas with letters, creating an ASCII portrait in real time. The code also automatically loops the letters you type, so even if you press only a single key the picture will appear. Of course, you could also type out a love letter or a quick blog post and the whole thing will be wrapped inside the confines of your outline. When you're done, you can press the re-labeled print key and a laser printer spits out your portrait. While there are already plenty of apps and sites out there that will automatically create ASCII versions of images, there's something alluring about sitting in front of gorgeous piece of hardware and creating it live. Plus, there are few things in this world as satisfying as pressing down the stiff keys of an old typewriter, hearing the titular onomatopoeia and seeing the letter appear before you. Especially when you know you're creating a work of art, even if you're a terrible writer.
Insert Coin semifinalist: Make a Play is a high-tech puppet stage
The students at ITP are constantly churning out creative projects that are unafraid to walk the fine line between art and tech. So its no wonder that Gal Sasson's Make a Play wound up as one of the semi-finalists in our Insert Coin: New Challengers competition. It doesn't hurt that the concept also combines two of our greatest loves here at Engadget: toys and Arduino. The name, it turns out, is actually quite descriptive. The microcontroller-driven stage allows anyone to quickly create a piece of miniature theater using handcrafted puppets and an impressive selection of buttons, knobs and switches -- all lovingly handcrafted out of wood on this prototype. The control panel can move the actors using two motorized carts, cue lighting, playback voice recordings and even activate special electronics embedded in the puppets, such as LED eyes in the demo video after the break. Any action can be recorded and fed to a companion computer program, where tweaks can can be made to the automation. Honestly, sounds like the sort of thing we wish we had a as kids. Check out the full list of Insert Coin: New Challengers semifinalists here -- and don't forget to pick a winner!
Cat Car turns your feline into a furry RC vehicle
Lasers, Arudinos, cats doing funny things -- here's a student project custom built for the internet age. We popped by the Winter Show at NYU's ITP school to check out a new batch of works exploring the intersection between art and technology and couldn't help but be enamored by Cat Car, the "feline fitness frenzy." Designed to be a sort of exercise contraption for our furry friends, Sam Brenner's project eventually blossomed into something for more entertaining, though he assures us that "the safety and wellbeing of the cats involved [were his] top priorit[ies]." Cat Car uses a steering wheel controller with an attached Arduino and gyroscope / accelerometer, which communicate with a cat harness via an XBee. The movements control a servo on the back of the cat, which moves around a laser pointer, propelling the cat forward, thus allowing the user to remotely control the cat. A video of this magic can be found after the break.
Bricolo mechanical music system hand-on (video)
Nick Yulman has been doing the whole mechanical music thing for sometime. In fact, the first time he came to our attention was at Maker Faire a couple of years back, when he had a cadre of small robotic instruments set up on a table in a quiet corner near the food stands. For ITP's Spring Show, Nick decided to share the love and brought along his Bricolo mechanical music system. Comprised of a number of different modules, Bricolo is meant to simplify the act of incorporating robotics and physical objects into the creation of "electronic" music. The two main pieces are a drum arm, which can be mounted on a mic stand and uses and uses a simple actuator to swing a drum stick, and a platform with a small solenoid that can produce either percussive rhythms or melodic tones. All of the pieces can be easily controlled by any MIDI instrument or sequencer. The small platform that can produce actual musical tones converts notes from any MIDI source into a frequency that the solenoid can vibrate at, creating sound by striking a surface extremely quickly. In the video below you can see as an old hard cover book is turned into a bass synth. Interestingly, by opening and closing the book, varying the weight placed on the platform, you're able to create a filter effect. For the moment the tiny musical motors are largely a proof of concept -- exposed components attached to black or clear acrylic, but the hope is to eventually sell them to curious creators. Our composing skills might not be quite up to Mr. Yulman's lofty standards and we'll never write a bass line as good as I Want You Back. But, we are big fans of noise, and you can make plenty of it with Bricolo. Check out the video after the break to see it in action.
Plinko Poetry hands-on (video)
Don't lie, you love The Price is Right. There's no shame in it. Maybe you don't watch it religiously, but you get a thrill every time you see them break out the Plinko game. Now, what if you could combine that visceral thrill, with the absurdity of magnetic poetry, while juxtaposing the conflicting political perspectives of Fox News and the New York Times. That's exactly what Inessah Selditz and Deqing Sun did with Plinko Poetry, an installation on display at the ITP Spring Show. Operating it is as simple as dropping a red plastic disc, but the tech behind it is decidedly more sophisticated. It starts with a script that harvests headlines from the Twitter accounts of the New York Times and Fox News. Those streams of words then scroll across a screen dotted with yellow pegs. A simple webcam with a polarizing filter tracks not only those pins, but a red disc that you feed through the top of the display. As it tumbles, the words it passes over are selected to create mashups of the days top stories that are sometimes unintentionally hilarious or accidentally beautiful but, more often than not, predictably gibberish. Once the Processing script on the controlling computer constructs the new phrases, they're fired out into the digital ether via the @PlinkoPoetry Twitter account, which you can monitor on the iPad mounted next to the Plinko itself. To see the art in action, head on after the break.
Etch-a-Sketch 3.0 hands-on (video)
The Etch-a-Sketch. A standard bearer for childhood, and one that most of us never really mastered. While Yelizaveta Lokshina can't help you create awe-inspiring portraits from aluminum powder, she has managed to update the toy for the digital age. Using an Arduino, a few buttons and a pressure sensor crammed inside a hollowed-out Etch-a-Sketch, the 3.0 version of the doodler is able to draw in old school gray, as well as vibrant colors created by blending an RGB palette. While holding down the red, green or blue button you squeeze the pressure sensor to add more or less of individual hues. The same sensor is used to change brush width when you hold down the black button. There's even a secret mode that automatically cycles through colors and thicknesses for creating vibrant, almost hallucinatory patterns. At the moment, the dual doodle knobs need to be physically connected to a computer so that a Processing script can work its magic and render the virtual Etch-a-Sketch. But, future versions may include wireless for sketching out images from the comfort of a couch and an accelerometer for the replicating the satisfying sensation of shaking the red fram to erase your creation. Basically, it's still a work in progress. Drawing with the Etch-a-Sketch 3.0 is just as satisfying, in a tactile sense, as the original, though we struggled slightly to get the hang of the pressure sensitive selector. One thing's for sure, though, the kids love it even more than the 1960 creation. Check out the video after the break to see it in action on the floor of the ITP Spring Show.
Burritob0t hands-on (video)
ITP, or the Interactive Telecommunications Program at the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU churns out some of the most reliably interesting tech-centric artists in the world. Every so often, the school opens its doors to the public and the press and, of course, we jumped at the chance to see what the grad students were cooking up... literally. Marko Manriquez took the opportunity to showcase his thesis project, the Burritob0t, a 3D printer the spits out edible piles of beans and cheese, instead of non-toxic (but, highly inedible) plastic. The base is built largely around a standard RepRap machine, with the Frostruder attachment from MakerBot. From there it's pretty simple to plug in any 3D model and build your creation from highly-processed Mexican food -- on a heated platform from the Thingomatic, of course. Marko says that his creation not only seemed like a logical way to combine "edible bits and digital bytes" but also a way to address the increasingly mechanized food industry and our growing reliance on manufactured "food." Sadly, we weren't able to get a complete demo on the show floor. The current incarnation of the device relies on air pressure to push the ingredients through syringes, and firing up the compressor was not an option. A Kickstarter is forthcoming, however, and Marko plans to upgrade the components to ditch the bulky and loud compressor. He also hopes to actually serve food from his printer, perhaps by taking up residence in a park. But, we suspect it'll be a while before you can get a Burritob0t burrito while you wait for your Concrete from Shake Shack. Check out the video after the break. %Gallery-155478%
Highlights from NYU's ITP winter show 2009
Our friends over at Adafruit Industries made their way over to NYU's ITP winter show 2009 recently, and they've blessed us with some highlights. ITP shows are always interesting and worth a walk through, and this is one show we regret missing this time around. The fridgebuzz MK1 protoype alone is enough to snag our hearts -- a MIDI controller with 32 LED button switches and six copper switches, all in a super attractive package. The Super Duper cubes go beyond their ridiculous name, and operate as an interface to control video and music, with each cube boasting a gyroscope, accelerometor, battery, and wireless communication, so that the cubes can be turned (no wires!). There is plenty more to see, so hit the source link to check out photos and a video of the full highlights.
Tweenbots project finds people really do care about robots, for now
We've already seen a fair bit of evidence suggesting that humans can quickly form bonds with robots, and it looks like ITP's Kacie Kinzer has now thrown some additional, adorable fodder into the mix. Apparently, she's spent the past few months sending a robot, or "Tweenbot," aimlessly wandering through New York's Washington Square Park in the hope that passers-by would take time from their busy day to help guide it from one corner of the park to the other -- or at least point it in the right direction. As you may be pleased to know, it turns out that plenty of folks were more than happy to help out the little bot, and it was even able to complete its journey in as little as little as 42 minutes with the help of 29 people. Of course, no one sends a smiling cardboard robot out into the wild without capturing a bit of video, so head on past the break for it, and hit up the link below for glimpse at some future Tweenbots.[Via MAKE]
Plink Jet makes beautiful music with dried up ink jets
Despite our best attempts at trashing the planet in hopes that Al Gore will grow a beard again, we can't help but love repurposed electronics. The Plink Jet, spotted at NYU's ITP Winter Show 2007, uses the back-and-forth mechanisms out of four old ink jets to slide up and down four guitar strings, with various knob-controlled settings to control pitch and strumming patterns. The resulting noise is nice hybrid of robotic clicking and analog twang, but we hear HP charges a fortune for the strings.%Gallery-11997%
Single White Android just wants to hang out
There was a lot of fun stuff at this year's ITP Winter Show, but Single White Android stole our hearts with his dejected expressions, glowing belly and brightly-lit excitability. Oh, and saran wrap, lots of saran wrap. The bot isn't terribly complicated, his belly glows red when he wants you to touch it, and when you do he lights up with joy. Hey, it's the little things, and while SWA might not be giving biped humanoids a run for research dollars anytime soon, he certainly managed to elicit some emotion from his audience.%Gallery-11993%
The "Is our machines learning?" machine 2.0 test-taking bot
We never liked taking tests in a general sense, but there was always something fun about filling in the answers with that trusty No. 2 of ours. The "Is our machines learning?" bot, shown off at the 2007 NYU ITP Winter Show, takes over that delicious task but still leaves humans with the chore of answering the questions remotely over the internets. The bot's name is a not-so-subtle jab at President Bush's grammar skills, but if we told you more we might all be in danger of some educatin', and the world doesn't need any more of that!
NYU shows its stuff at the Winter 2006 ITP
When hordes of folks gather 'round to show off various forms of gadgetry or design-influenced niceties, we can't help but stare, and while we weren't able to attend NYU's Winter 2006 ITP show like we were last year (and the year before), we were there in spirit, and now we're bringing you the pics. While there's far too much to cover here, a few highlights included the solar (iPod-charging) bikini, which gave the fellas an excellent excuse to gander at such a fanciful article of clothing, the "Botanicallss" plant that lets you know when it needs some lovin', a 3D display known only as the "Orb," and a MIDI-enabled guitar pick. Of course, the LED-infused stones that lit up differently based on arrangement, child-proof rendition of the iRocker music chair, and the motion-activated lamps were all showstoppers as well. So if you're craving a glimpse into the hereafter, be sure to hit the links below to see just how bright (and zany) the not-so-distant future is.[Via MAKE]
In Mobile Assassins, cameraphones do the shooting
Students in NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program at the university's Tisch School of the Arts have just completed a hi-tech version of the game Assassins, in which players use their cameraphones to take a picture of their target and score a "hit." Designers Jennifer Chowdhury and Ran Tao will unveil the game, called Mobile Assassins, at tomorrow's annual ITP Spring Show, after which it will be available for the public to use in controlled situations such as college orientations, trade conferences, and other events where you wouldn't be getting photographed by complete strangers. To enter a game, players must first take their own photo and MMS it to the MA server, after which they are sent a picture of their first target; if the first target is successfully "assassinated" without first snapping the assassin's picture, then the next hit on the target's own list is reassigned to the assassin. This all sounds a bit complicated, so if you're ever involved in one of these tournaments, your best bet is to lock yourself in a room for most of the game, only to reemerge just in time to counter-strike the other remaining player and claim your victory.[Via picturephoning and WMMNA]
