Smells dreamy

[Wearable]Savage Cord Video Documentation

2007-05-03T11:20:00.000-07:00

[P-Comp]Paso Andando Link

2007-05-02T18:12:00.000-07:00

http://omorphy.com/paso

[P-Comp]MIDI lab

2007-04-17T15:53:00.000-07:00

I worked with Dave and Robert for MIDI lab.
First we had MIDI device and speaker problem, but after changing a speaker and changing something in MIDI device, it worked out well.
Dave and Robert wanted to use the MIDI sound for their final project. In order to make it work, first we had to try with digital input.
As you press the switch, it will play the note which is ascended from previous played note. however, if it reaches the highest, the note will be decended as you press the switches. Again, if it reachest the lowest, the note will be ascending back until it reaches highest. Below is the code I made in order to make this work.

// The switch is on Arduino pin 10:
#define switchPin 10
// Middle C (MIDI note value 60) is the lowest note we'll play:
#define middleC 60
// Indicator LED:
#define LEDpin 13

// Variables:
char note = 30; // The MIDI note value to be played
//int AnalogValue = 0; // value from the analog input
int lastNotePlayed = 0; // note turned on when you press the switch
int lastSwitchState = 0; // state of the switch during previous time through the main loop
int currentSwitchState = 0;
int notechange= 1;

void setup() {
// set the states of the I/O pins:
pinMode(switchPin, INPUT);
pinMode(LEDpin, OUTPUT);
// Set MIDI baud rate:
Serial.begin(31250);
blink(3);
}

void loop() {
currentSwitchState = digitalRead(switchPin);
// Check to see that the switch is pressed:
if (currentSwitchState == 1) {
// check to see that the switch wasn't pressed last time
// through the main loop:
if (lastSwitchState == 0) {
// start a note playing:
noteOn(0x90, note, 0x40);
//save the note we played, so we can turn it off:
lastNotePlayed = note;

note= note + notechange;

if (note>=90) {
notechange = -notechange;
}
if (note<=30) {
notechange = -notechange;
}
digitalWrite(LEDpin, HIGH);
}
}
else { // if the switch is not pressed:
// but the switch was pressed last time through the main loop:
if (lastSwitchState == 1) {
// stop the last note played:
noteOn(0x90, lastNotePlayed, 0x00);
digitalWrite(LEDpin, LOW);
}
}

// save the state of the switch for next time
// through the main loop:
lastSwitchState = currentSwitchState;
}

// plays a MIDI note. Doesn't check to see that
// cmd is greater than 127, or that data values are less than 127:
void noteOn(char cmd, char data1, char data2) {
Serial.print(cmd, BYTE);
Serial.print(data1, BYTE);
Serial.print(data2, BYTE);
}

// Blinks an LED 3 times
void blink(int howManyTimes) {
int i;
for (i=0; i< howManyTimes; i++) {
digitalWrite(LEDpin, HIGH);
delay(100);
digitalWrite(LEDpin, LOW);
delay(100);
}
}

[Wearable] Savage Cord-Performance on 14th at Washington Sq.

2007-04-14T23:22:00.000-07:00

(Video Documentation- Comming soon)

April 14th, 2007 4pm at Washingtn sq.

Performance in public was one thing I had never done but always had longed to do in my life. Even with the sour shoulders from sewing to make the 70 meter-long cord, I was so excited to realize my old dream.
The idea for the work is umbilical cord, but I still wanted to be open for people's perception. It could be anything depending on your imagination. I just wanted to give a fantasy to the urban people with same visionary routine.

I thought Washington Sq. would be a good place to get people's participation since people there are used to see those kind of performance. Though it eventually worked out pretty well, making strangers involved to performance was not as easy as I thought. As other weekends, there were a lot of people at the park. As I walked into the park, people start to look at me, with curiosity, disgust, or laugh. I found a spot to start Luckily, I had friends who I asked as initiaters. After, some young girls were really excited to join us. Some photographers kept taking picture of me. Whenever I hand them the cord and make them involved, they would say no. Lot of people seemed to enjoy watching but not willing to be involved. Some people asked me, 'what is it for? what does it mean?' but I didn't say anything and kept making a motion as if i was a mime artist. When most of the cord was almost unwrapped from my body, I need few more people to finish, but at this moment it was hard to find a people who seem to be involved. It was interesting that people in the were scared of being involved. In my imagination, Washington Square Park in New York City was a place that people are open to new things and ready to participate. By confronting a reality, I learned a lot about public, and the city. In my ideal scenario, people would be opened to new experience and willing to join to share an umbilical cord. But in real world, mostly people rather chose to watch. I kept being playful to not to be seen to serious or freaky. At the end,to draw an interaction, I almost had to push people to join. Sometimes I didn't back out when they said no. I still kept being playful and sneakily wrapped the cord to their body only to make them take it off. After all, the cord which was totally wrapped on my body spread out with the strangers as I planned.

Episode

It was interesting to hear what they were saying;
'What is that?'(with disgust)
'She's crazy!'
'It's Washington Sq.'
'Oh my god, this asian girl is doing something totally crazy'(A girl talking on the phone)
'Bark!bark!'(A dog seemed to be astonished)

[P-comp]Understanding Multiplexer

2007-04-10T17:27:00.000-07:00

Since this project will have more than 14 input, we decided to use a multiplexer. Thanks to Greg's help, today I could start building a curcuit with multiplexer. However, I still need more time for coding.

[P-comp]Paso Andando

2007-04-09T19:24:00.000-07:00

Paso Andando is an interactive travel log, using shoes to navigate city's we passed through and the photos taken during our Spring Break 07 trip through Guatemala and Caye Caulker, Belize. The idea is to present a different way of browsing photos of ones journey and also have the user experience the virtual paths taken, thus the shoes.

User Scenario

The user walks into the two sided photo enclosure approaching the screen. At the base of the screen there is the shoes on the table. The user will select the destinations by pressing the buttons where the lacing holes are. Once user select a destination the name of the selected city will appear on the screen superimposed over the map of that area. This will then transition into the photos taken. To navigate to the next pictures, user will move the shoes to the right, to previous, move shoes to the left.

[Wearable] Final Project-Savage Cord

2007-04-05T10:13:00.000-07:00

In the city,
between huge cubes of buildings,
we walk by people without awareness,
because they are strangers.
We might have been in a same elevator a week ago.
We might have watched a same movie.
We might have used a same bathroom somewhere.

We share the air, the water, the earth.

We all breathe, eat, dream, desire, live, reproduce, and will die.
We are all animal.

I would like to share our forgotten umbilical cord,

'Savage cord'

In broad term, we are all from the same big mother land.
Once we were the one.

This is a single long cord made of stocking stuffed with plastic bags. First I will wrap my body with a cord, and start to hand one end to the stranger. The stranger will wrap his/herself as well, and ask another stranger to share the savage cord.
At the end, we will all be the one again for a moment.

Arthur Ganson

2007-03-22T09:42:00.000-07:00

It is amazing to observe and create something alive.
Watching his works, and his enthusiasm toward his works, I had thought that making art works is an human reflexion of reproductive instinct.
Art works from an identical artist are in same gene. Distribution would be depended on the recognition or sympathy.

It is truly thrilling to make ambiguous dream formalized in real world. Working on abstract and intuitive idea, it is hard to make people understandable and sometimes it makes me even doubt about my initial thought. Then I loose energy to move on and become weakest ever. Ganson's lecture encourages me to believe the instinct and confront the uncertainty with curiosity and joy.

Life happens, so the art does.

Bottle genitian

2007-03-22T07:51:00.000-07:00

Bottle genitian only opens for bumble bee

[Wearable] On reading Dress Codes

2007-03-07T08:57:00.001-08:00

Among some countries like Korea,Russia and Japan,there is one legitimate place everyone has to be cloth-off without exception at the same time(and it's not a beach)-Public bath. For those who has never been to Public bath, if you are going with your friend, you might have a harder time to find your friend than usual, especially if you have a bad vision.It's also harder to assume other people's occupation, social statue or personal taste by a first glance. Before getting a vision improvement surgery, my impression of public bath was, a big animal farm. Every women looked same, with bare flesh.From the experience, I could realized an importance of cloth as a distinction of identity in both public and personal term.

Observing dress codes between two cultures, I find more individuality in America than Korea,although young Korean generation are becoming expressing more personal self. Simple example can be found comparing dance performances(here it means modern, pop, and contemporary) between two cultures. Mostly, Korean dancer's costumes looks more deliberated to provoke a united image. For instance, even if dancers in a same group wear different colors,at least they would be in same design. Every costume look very organized. On the other hand, American dancers are not necessary in a costume with same design because they are dancing together. Sometimes each of them look like they just picked up a random costume from their closet.

[Wearable] On reading Textiles from Novel Means of Innovation

2007-03-07T08:54:00.000-08:00

When we are born,
When we are in a reproduction process,
When we wash ourself,
When we need a serious cure,
We are all naked.

Once we were all naked even beside the above cases.
Human being are too vulnerable to be naked now.
Mere clothing is not enough for us. Thinking about what I carry with me when I leave home,I always double check if I miss my wallet, cell phone, pen and notebook, or camera, depending on case. Lack of any of them makes me feel incomplete and not prepared for outer environment. Likewise, tools we made for our own sake are becoming part of our body.The relationship between our body and implements are becoming more intact, like symbiotic animal. We take most of devices so granted that we don't even aware of them while we are using them. Developing interactive technology makes us possible to make our devices as a second skin.

Extending our body performance with wearable technology sounds wonderful. But, isn't it proving that our body is loosing independency more and more?

[P-comp] Arduino with Processing

2007-03-06T18:58:00.000-08:00

Thee of us (Charley, Paul and I) had a hard time make to make Processing recognize Arduino with Mac. However, with Todd's help and an instruction online, after a not-so-simple process which also involved Terminal, it worked.

In Processing part, we made a ball in setup function to leave the track and made a simple drawing machine using analog input of potentiameter. With switch,which is digital input,you can clean up the background to make a new drawing.

[P-comp] Analog output

2007-03-06T11:23:00.000-08:00

I tried hard to find out why it didn't work.
I wasn't because of flat sensor of servo motor.
There was nothing wrong with circuit.
With Greg's help, I could later figure out that surprisingly,
the problem was some of bad wire and the resister!
I learned how small faults we might not pay attention can cause the failure in physical computing.

[Wearable]interactive meterial

2007-03-06T00:15:00.000-08:00

Two examples of interative material

very INTERACTIVE

[Observation]deliberate discomfort

2007-03-03T23:45:00.000-08:00

There are some people who never say what they want, but let people do exactly as they want. Technically they seem innocent because they never tell you what they expect you to do.

There are some designs which look like one of those people made. One example I found today is,the lockers at Cols Sports Center. I couldn't make a room for my shoes in the locker, so I intuitively reached my hand to the top of the locker to put them. However, when I look up, I realized that it is impossible to place anything on the top of the locker-it was sloped toward the front by almost 30 degrees. If I hadn't looked up and put my shoes there, I would have hit by my shoes.

[Werable]Smelly necklace

2007-02-22T00:45:00.000-08:00

Smell is irresistable.
It is alive, therefore honest.
It is a proof of your presence.
It is also very subjective, because it's related to memory.
Dogs identify objects with smell.They wouldn't approach it if it brings them the bad memory.
What if you have a language of smell?
Express yourself on the air. Blow it.
And let them breathe your feelings, between 6 smells.
To foe, hating smells,
To lover, seducing smells.

[Thought]On our senses and bodys

2007-02-21T19:55:00.000-08:00

We see,
hear,
smell,
touch,
taste
the world.

Some might not able to see.
Some might not able to hear.
Some might only depend on their nose or hand to recognize the world.

With exploding technology, and ability to replicate the world in various means, we make art, and savour it with high resolution.

However, what does all that mean if you can't see it?, hear it, or both?
Aren't we depending too much on our only two senses when talking about technology?

Isn't our body degenerating as the technology is evolving?

[Werable]My broken frog wings

2007-02-15T11:44:00.000-08:00

I bought a swimming frog at Chinatown on Sunday.
I wanted to change the moving legs to the wings you can hang on your shoulder.

On Monday, I hacked the frog and cut the unnecessary part of the legs.

Now I had to find a way how to make the wings.
Since I always wanted to reuse bunch of plastic bags I collected at my apartment, I decided to use some of them with pretty color.
To make those wings stable, I thougt of using wire to sustain them.

On Tuesday, I brought some shoe-hanger to use its wire as a bone of the wings.
When I made the wing out of the wire and the plastic bag, it turned out that the wing was too heavy so the motor stopped to work.
I had to figure out lighter things to make a figure of the wings.
I still wanted to find material from my so-called sustainable trash collection. So I cut the plastic bottle and attach them at the frog's leg part with glue gun. Obviously, it was much ligther then using the metal wire.

HOWEVER, it turned out that the frog does not work anymore.

[P-comp]Ardunino Analog input

2007-02-14T15:04:00.000-08:00

Idea of using flex sensor

[P-comp] Observation

2007-02-14T10:33:00.000-08:00

Feb. 13. 2007

NYU Bobst Library

NYU Card Recharger
,

A guy wants to add more value in his ID card with this machine, but the money keeps returning. He tries several times, shakes his head, and finally gives up.
I also tried to see how it works.

Why it has to ask you this question even before it actually works?

However, it doesn't even take the money

If it means it's out of service, why it it turns back to the menu after a few while? Does it mean it can't only to the job of adding value?

Elavators

It looks like there are 8 elevators in this building.

But you never know which elevators will stop.

On the right side of the building, this LED seems like it's meant to tell people which elevators are at which floor, but who knows which one is elevator 1? And why there are 9 numbers here?Where is the other elevator? One lady was waiting for elevators, totally seemed overwhelmed. She glanced around, and found this, but got more confused, and just ran to the elevator which happens to come first.

Only two elevators on the left have two lamps, while other's have one;that means, they only goes upstairs.

Possible solution for the elevator LED design

-Make the order of LED as same as the elevator.

However, there's a chacne that they designed bad on purpose to give information selectively to some people in charge of maintenance. In a word, it might be intentional discomfort.

[Wearable]Final Project preliminary proposal

2007-02-08T13:40:00.000-08:00

Brainstorm..

Back to the animal

In most of my previous works like sketch, painting, or animation, I find the repeating abstract images look like organ or something live. I realized I always seek for living things, living moments with throb.
Clothes this days looks so man-made. Citizen look similar to the sky-scrapper than other breed of livings nature. I want to make a cloth which can represent a human being as an animal. In that point, the costume would not hide it's savage, but rather express it. It might look like a monster or a beautiful creature depending on situation.

Possible inputs are the movement, temperature, humidity, outside light, and sound.
Cloth will perform differently responding to the inputs.

Good example I would like to implement for is the way male peacock stretch his wings.

I know that it's quite a irony to use a technology to make a cloth represents our nature, but I believe it could be a worth experiment to try.

Reference: http://clarinabezzola.com/02.Shows/00.showsframeset.htm

[Wearable] Who's watching who?-on reading of Steve Mann

2007-02-08T10:11:00.000-08:00

1984
13th floor
Matrix
Gathaca
The Truman show

Since high school, these kinds of books/movies evoked me a big anxiety of possible hidden eyes. When I got extremely nervous, I was even scared of going to dress room at department stores or using public bathroom.

Now I am asking myself. How many camera do I have? Two-I have one Digital SLR, one in my laptop.(My previous cell devices used to have camera inside but not anymore for now.) How about you? how about the others? According to my observation to among the people I know(without video surveillance though), approximate for one person is 2. The memory capacity is also getting higher and higher. All of them mean more and more pictures in the world. Even if you are a kind of person who hate to be in a picture and never intend to be model, there are lot of possibility you might have involuntarily modelled for someone's picture. But for them, you will just be anonymous background. They don't care who you are.(sometimes you are just bothering person who block the background)

Overwhelmingly increasing amounts of pictures and anonymity of individuals among them has trained me to become more indifferent with the hidden eyes. They are watching me, but most of them don't know who I am.

[P-comp]week 3 lab assignment

2007-02-07T18:43:00.000-08:00

Dave and I made this creepy face with firing eyes.
The eyes part is originally from the electronic candle-sort of inside application..

[Wearable+P-Comp] Turn-me-on gloves

2007-02-06T22:21:00.000-08:00

All I know was turn LED on and off so far.
I decided to use this simple idea of on-off to make a connection between to lovers.

First time you hold his/her hand,
there's a sparkling light between two.

It was too new for me to sew the gloves and they turned out to be the ugliest gloves I have seen. Making circuit stable with fabric wasn't also easy as I thought.
This time I learned the hardness of combining hardness and softness.
Nothing is ever easy except in the imagination.

(The pictures are taken by isight. the resolution is not so great)

[Wearable]my fossil

2007-02-06T22:08:00.000-08:00

First work for wearable class
(hair, wax, slightly burned paper with my name and address on it, purfume)
This is my fossil. But I don't want it to remain after I die.
I want everything related with me to be disappear as a magic as I die.
It's so creepy that my ID or blog will remain after I die.
That's one of the reason I am not a big fan of on-line communication in some way.