CommLab
Electronics Lab (with HD video)
This is a two-in-one: I did the electronics lab for physical computing, while taping it for CommLab. The Lab: It was good to get a better idea of the electronics behind our work. It seems crazy that we use so many electronic devices without having any clue of the mechanisms. The biggest trouble I had [...]
Response to Walter Benjamin
The heart of Walter Benjamin’s piece lies in one sentence: “Even the most perfect reproduction of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space.” Artists can agree with this, to a certain degree — and that degree, I think, determines how reproduction affects one’s work. 1. Creating for a space: On first [...]
Sensorizing something
The assignment was to put a sensor on something, so I put a pressure sensor on the bottom of a coaster. The red LED goes on when a) nothing is on the coaster or b) something heavier than a Blackberry is on the coaster. The green LED goes on when something the weight of a [...]
30-minute film festival
We had 40 minutes to create a two-minute film using Xacti cameras, so our initial thought was to film a long narrative piece and intertwine “Real World”-like testimonials in between. I’ve worked in broadcast news, so I knew that editing is often what takes the longest time — especially when trying to develop a narrative [...]
Forster’s black box
Limits create a world that is less controllable, yet lead to moments of pleasure, pain, unexpectedness and, I think, freedom. But in E.M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops,” the world is more predictable — more controllable. The Machine manipulates the environment to fulfill human needs, which are apparently ‘programmed’ into infants. (Those who have needs that [...]
Installing WordPress
I installed WordPress on the ITP server and came up with this blog. The process of installing WordPress was quite easy. In short, it’s about 1) downloading the guts, 2) editing the wp-config.php file with the proper information and 3) FTPing the contents of that file onto a specific directory. An aside: Until a few [...]