ITP Winter Show Slideshow

Earlier this week was the annual winter exhibition of completed and works-in-progress projects by graduate students of NYU’s ITP program.

The slideshow below is only a snapshot of the projects, objects, and displays that were on view. A total of 125 projects (by more than 200 students, by my estimate) dotted an entire floor and the lobby of the Tisch School of the Arts. It was especially welcome to see projects in the lobby — typically this space goes unused, which is surprising given that everyone in the building has to pass through and public passersby on the street can peer in too.

Which is to say the show is very fluid these days. It’s easy to flow from one space to another and to keep engaging something interesting. So for those of you who couldn’t make it, here’s a recap:

An installation of bottles filled to different levels with water, while air is blown across the bottles’ lips. The tune is both subtle and pleasant. The bottles account for the cardinal, ordinal, and further directional divisions.

Close-up of the bottle-motor mechanism.

A “screen-based multiplayer cooperative game” that happens to resemble a RPG classic.

There are *always* puppets at ITP shows — they’re one of my favorite things to see.

But this was the first time I have seen a felt puppet-laptop!

Audio output depends on the quantity and location of wooden blocks on the felt play surface.

This lamp “visualizes the ephemeral phenomena known as double rainbows by mapping geo-tagged photos posted to Instagram in the previous 24 hours.”

A houseplant you can interact with via Twitter.

A sound-and-projection dome sitting chamber.

The drawing you make on this pressure-sensitive fabric surface…

Gets mixed by this barbot.

“An array of mechanical split-flap displays present seemingly straightforward informational icons that in combination invite individual interpretation and wonder.”

A physical marble roll game; physical like the game Labyrinth but with a virtual game surface.

An interactive marble game played with two players remotely over mobile phones.

Feedback-fur responds to your petting gestures. I have a cat so I did good with this project!

Using drones and GoPro cameras to map the Staten Island coast two years after Hurricane Sandy.

A portrait drawn (somewhat resembling hatching) through a computer program. In case it’s not obvious I was wearing pink that night.

http://haptec.io/

A gun-motor activated zoetrope displays an animation drawing of the shooting of Mike Brown.

pressure touch-based wood-block drum synth

An interactive musical “living room” where the rocking of the chair, the lamps, and the oversized felting needles all provide input to the final beat.

Everything runs into this box and is processed inside by a microcontroller.

Projects not pictured but of note include:

• ITP Camp, the Un-University
• Mantis, a “Mutally Adaptive Neuro-Tonal Interface System”
• “Stitching Stories” by Sweta Mohapatra & Sisa Holguin, that turned a ’90s era game controller into a “choose your own” video narrative with a social commentary twist embedded in one of the controllers
• Ross Goodwin’s “Fiction Generator,” a computational novel-writing program that generates a story based on slider inputs and emails you the PDF. Go here to make your own.
• VJenerate, an overwhelming music video generator that sources your SoundCloud account for data
• Music Bench, a set of “musical chairs” and the one piece in the lobby that seemed to take advantage of the notion of a lobby
• Postural Awareness – Social Experiment which turns game-playing into a medical evaluation process
• Explorer, an “orbital mechanics” learning tool
• MyoBlaster: Sonify Meat DNA combines two cDNA sequences to create a musical beat and visual representation.

Kudos to the organizers for making links to all the projects now available online — go here for a complete listing of all 100-plus projects.

PS — more puppets please! I can’t get enough of puppets (with tech)!