Automata_Salvation

By jhclaura in Automata, Blog 0 Comment

AUTOMATA. VERY EXCITED.

For the first assignment, we have to develop an idea for a project that involves Automata.

  • Two quick studies that explore some facet of the design, experience or concept. Can be any materials or methods including software, models, mechanism mockup, etc.
  • At least one physical studies.

Because I’m still dizzy in the post-era of Maker Faire, I don’t have the whole picture about what I want to do with Automata, but I know I’m also fascinated by chain reaction, parts triggering parts sequentially in a strange and unexpected way, and I’d love to try out Whirligigs!

The idea of the project is “after finding out what your decision did to yourself and bearing all the consequences, you will be less mad about yourself from watching yourself being punished“, aka Salvation.

For the past two months, I felt I was running along the edge of the cliff. Holding all the stuff and running forward clumsily, and the deadline just kept poking me behind. And sometime it made me want to kill myself(METAPHORICALLY). And this whirligig of artist Ben Thal somehow has the healing effect on me.

I love this kind of simple movement repeat again and again and again, and it allows me to stare at it tirelessly and helps me to clear up my mind, especially the self-destruction genre.

And my first design for this concept is Stab My Face.

stab my face

sketch

Stabbing My Face

It’s also a practice of the amazing Harry T. Brown’s 507 Mechanical Movements #157. I chose it because it has a nice momentum to strike the stab, insteading of constant speed all the time.

Screen Shot 2014-10-09 at 7.20.24 PM

 

 

Ideally, it should be driven by motor instead of my clumsy fingers, and they all should be well designed and fabricated instead of taping everything on top of the shop table.

And my second design for this concept is Pull the Guts Out.

pull the guts out

It’s an automata that keeps pulling out the guts. The guts only moves when arm moves downward.

Using the same gear setup #157, girl’s arm rotates up and down. And once the arm goes down, the stick connected to it pushes the gear with teeth rotate counterclockwise, and then drag the softmateral guts rotate counterclockwise too. The tricky part is, I’m not sure about the movement when arm moves upward. Ideally the gear would just have little movement when arm moves up because of the teeth.

 

TRAF_Traces

By jhclaura in Blog, To Remember And Forget 0 Comment

For my archive system for the class, which requires to be public, permanent and accessible, I have a digital version of it: http://laura-traf.tumblr.com/, which integrating all the data I leave on digital media platforms through ifttt. So far, I hooked it up with Instagram, wordpress, Pinterest, and Vimeo. But I just felt it’s not interesting enough… I crave for something physically.

archive_one

I started collected daily objects and sounds since 9/15, and ordered the glass bottles * 24, which were delivered last Friday(9/19) but I didn’t see it at all…

Really want it to happen as well as my remembering system for Dream. See if me telling myself “I can make it.” can make me memorize the things I have to do and thus I’ll be able to pull if off or not. :)))

Go go.

HHouse_Immersive Performance_Elevator Ticket

By jhclaura in Blog, Haunted House 0 Comment

For the first week assignment – a simple immersive performance, to put a new slant on an everyday situation or interaction.Ben, Tom and me present the Elevator Ticket!

And here’s the nicely put-together by Tom:

In New York there isn’t much more routine then taking an elevator ride. With the exception of freak accidents elevators usually function in the same way. Press the button, wait, get in and awkwardly attempt not to look at other people, get off.

As routine as elevator rides may be, we imagined disrupting the routine of elevator usage.

In the style of old train tickets, we created an elevator ticket and instructed visitors to the NYU Tisch building that a ticket was required for using the elevator.

Using the reasoning of ‘safety’ and ‘efficiency’ we asked visitors for his/her destination floor and collected tickets prior to boarding the elevator. The ticket was not presented as an option but instead as a requirement to use the elevator.

The responses varied from mild amusement, to annoyance and non compliance. It was interesting that most elevator users accepted the reasoning of ‘efficiency’ or ‘safety’ at face value, even as we were not dressed in a way that might suggest authority.

We imagined that to enhance the performance we could  dress in uniform and have operators standing inside of the elevator asking for tickets from passengers and pressing floor button for them. During the ride the operator could talk about the imaginary floor news and wish passengers a merry imaginary scenario day when arriving.

{Tune In, Tune Out}

By jhclaura in Blog, Mashups Web APIs, Spring 2014 0 Comment

Screen Shot 2014-05-27 at 2.34.35 PM

For the final of Mash-up class, Jeff Ong and I teamed up and made “Tune In, Tune Out”. It’s a webite uses your computer’s on-board microphone, listens to the surrounding environmental sound, and translates it into a musical landscape.

An accompanying visualization appears on-screen, along with options to change the musical fundamentals (key, scale, mode) of the sounds. Build with Web Audio API and Tone.js for audio, and Three.js for visual.

We started idea of filtering out the “sound of the sound”. So much effort and energy has gone into our attempts to “escape” our immediate sonic environment: conversations, distracting noises, and try to drown out the surrounding chaos.

There’s no denying the need to focus, and there’s also no shortage of aural distractions, especially living in urban areas. “Tune In, Tune Out” offers an alternative to the music and tools we use to tune out the noise around us, channeling that very noise into a sonic landscape.

The_eight_musical_modes

An additional project inspiration and goal is to build some basic tools around making it easier to use music theory concepts in tandem with data representation. There are different types of Key, Mode, Scale, and Sound Wave to choose from. Thank Aaron Arntz for the music theory Fly by!

GitHub here.

{Walk & Talk}

By jhclaura in Blog, Spatial Media, Spring 2014 0 Comment

IMG_5162 copy

Walk & Talk

is the final project of me and Ziv for Spatial Media.

 

Ideas

For the final of Spatial Media, there’s no restriction on content and context, so because of the struggling process of brainstorming, we decided to make a project helping brainstorming! Getting the inspirations from Land and Sea, a game heard from Ziv from Israel, and the Boundary Functions of Scott Snibbe that exploring the relation between people and spaces, we built up a system that people can expand their territory by walking and shaking, and once people stop moving, their territories will shrink and eventually disappear. Based on several researches proved that “Body Movements Can Influence Problem Solving”(e.g. Science Daily, May 13, 2009), it has the potential to be installed in office space, and help employees brainstorming.

traditional_territory_small

 

Concept

Each person in the game is assigned an initial territory, which he can expand by walking. If they don’t walk, their territory gets smaller. Also, if they don’t talk (to brainstorm or just chit chat), their territories will shrink. This way, people have to walk and talk in order to keep his/her territory.

 

Context

This game can be used for multiple purposes, e.g. DECISION MAKING • BRAINSTORMING • VOTING ON IDEAS • BUDGET PLANNING. Overall the main function is provoking thoughts about sharing and space with movements.

http://www.jhclaura.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/walk-n-talk.pdf

 

Technique

process

Tools: OpenFrameworks, Kinect*1, projectors*2.

 

Developing

1) The first attempt to expand the territories based on the blobs movement captured by Kinect.

2) Using ofPolylines to smooth the shape of geometry.

3) Beautiful mistakes 😉

4) Final version of color-filled geometry.

Virtual Reality Tour of Met

By jhclaura in Blog, Job, Spring 2014 0 Comment

For my internship during Spring semester 2014 in Media Lab of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, I hooked up

    1. 3D models of Met from the Architecture Department
    2. Official Audio Guide
    3. 3D models art pieces in Greek and Roman gallery, made by 3D scan with photos
    4. Unity as game engine
    5. virtual reality head-mounted display Oculus Rift as controller

and create an immersive virtual reality tour of Met!

forBlog With Oculus Rift, users can wonder around the museum, listening to the audio guide and admiring art pieces, walk upstair, watch butterflies, being blocked by huge bowl, and being inside of the surreal mash-up models(credits to Decho<horse> and Rui<uncolor triangulars>). metTour

IDEA

With a background as VFX artist of 3D animation and post production, I’m always interested in 3D and how it can be interactive in the creative way. Once I got the chance to intern in Media Lab of the Met and knew we can access the 3D models of museum, I wanted to use Oculus Rift to walk inside the fantasy version of the Met, and to enjoy the immersive experience in space.

 

PROJECT_DEVELOPMENT

Virtual Met Museum –> Fantasy Experiment –> Art piece + Audio Guide

 

BASIC_SETUP_HOW_TO

First of all, tons of basic knowledge about Unity here. And setup a project from scratch, here.

 

✓ Import BIM 3D models into Unity

Basically just put the fbx file into the Assets folder of the project you just created. Not too complicated but there’s one thing you should be aware of, the SCALE. It’s a good practice to setup scale right in the modeling application before importing the model to Unity, and associated details described as below:

  • 1 Unity unit = 1m
  • the fewer GameObjects the better. Also, use 1 material if you can
  • useful link: wiki unity3d

 

✓ Oculus Rift Plugin in Unity 3d Setup

Just follow the clear instruction on youtube!

 

✓ Add collider to meshes

In order to preventing player walking through meshes(e.g. walls, stairs), we need to add Collider attribute on models, steps as below:

  • select model
  • @inspector
  • Add Component –> Physics –> Box Collider or Mesh Collider
  • Mesh Collider is more specific than box collider but at the same time is more expensive to use.

collider copy

 

✓ Occlusion Culling

Means that things you aren’t looking at, aren’t loading into memory, so game will run faster.

  •  geometry must be broken into sensibly sized pieces.
    • if you have one object that contains all the furniture, either all or none of the entire set of furniture will be culled.
  • tag all scene objects that you want to be part of the occlusion to Occluder Static in the Inspector.
  • Back!
  • useful link: unity3d manual

 

✓ Import 3D-Scanned Models from 

  • Take about 20 photos around the object you want to 3D scan of(360 degrees!).
  • Upload the photos to 123D Catch.
  • Yeah now you’ll have both .obj model file and texture file!
  • Just download the file, and drag whole folder into the Asset folder of Unity!

 

POSSIBILITIES

  • Gain accessibility for people who can’t visit the museum in person.
  • Installation design simulation.

 

Thank_to

It’s really a good experience interning at MediaLab of Met. I know I want to keep working on 3D and also step into virtual reality world with Oculus Rift, and it’s a great match that I can have this topic as my own project, and also match to the needs of Met! From this internship, I gained valuable resources from the museum, and also knowing amazing mentors and colleagues from Labs. This project leads me to the world of virtual reality and I’m glad and also thankful that I’m a Spring 14′ intern of Media Lab of The Metropolitan Museum of Art.