The Extensions of Noha

Hey y'all.
It's been awhile and I've missed you.

This spring, I stumbled into the Van Alen Institute, a funded organization in NYC that explores projects on the borders of art and architecture. By the end of the summer, I had ended up as the primary interactive designer of two of the Van Alen's three summer fellowship projects. It was truly great working with architects - highly skilled, educated and creative people - and being able to provide a perspective and skill set that their projects would otherwise not have.

The Projects

The Aurora Project

An amazingly ambitious work of interactive archisculpture wherein every piece was designed in some form of CAD and cut on a laser cutter. Each item is custom, hand made, and based on buoy data from the Arctic. There are 24 IR distance sensors placed around the perimeter of the field, which are tied to LEDs embedded in the base of the sculpture, and cold cathode tubes extruding from its top. As participants approach the sculpture, the LEDs dim and the CCTs brighten, to simulate the experience of the Arctic melting as more humans pay attention to it, releasing greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. I designed and soldered the circuits that power the electronics, and designed the Arduino software that provides the interaction.

Museum of the Phantom City

A walking tour through unbuilt architectural proposals for the "other futures" that could have happened in NYC, had visionary architects gotten their way. There are many documented proposals from big-name architects that were a bit too forward thinking for their time, from a 19th century pneumatic subway to a Bucky dome over all of lower Manhattan. This project, a combination of iPhone app, scavenger hunt and website, is a location-based walking tour through all of these. I did all of the iPhone programming, and much of the user experience design. This project marks my first published iPhone app.

ok!
I hope this is informative to those wondering what IMD students do when they graduate.
<3 U, IMD.
/noha

Posted by at 10:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today's featured article on wikipedia is none other than my alma mater, Stuyvesant High School in New York City. The article is extensive, well citationed and worth a time-killing read. It is a model of a well-constructed wikipedia entry and indicative of the institution that it is documenting.

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The French television station M6, by encouraging viewer participation in its programming through the solicitation of SMS messages from audience members to influence show outcomes, has managed to surpass its ad revenue with the income it is now receiving from this practice. Indeed, as this (somewhat poorly translated) article states, SMS voting has become an integral part of French television, with 2005 revenues topping 100m Euros, and television announcers sparing no dignity in their pleas for your text message. Is taxed interactivity the solution to flagging television ad sale revenues? It certainly leapfrogs over the TIVO issue. It will be quite interesting to see how this business model evolves, especially as it gains prevalence here in the states.

Link to the referring article

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I am currently in possession of two large (27" and 32") malfunctioning televisions that cost more than their worth to repair. In the interests of art, technology, and everything in between, I am proposing a contest - to whomever can propose the most interesting use of these televisions, from a videotaped trip to Joshua Tree with baseball bats to a radical artistic or environmentally conscious repurposing - will go the televisions, my blessings, and the bodily and vehicular energies to complete the project.

Only a briefly detailed proposal is necessary - just let the ideas flow!
noah@coercive.org

Posted by at 5:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So my '06 summer job bought me a new mobile as a show of good faith, the not unBlackberrylike Nokia e61.
I'm pretty excited, as I'll finally be able to use all of the powerful applications that have been beyond my tenacious but unready 6230's reach.
I also have a Bluetooth GPS unit on the way so if anyone wants to play some games or something I'd be down.

In terms of usabilty, syncing my contents and calendars with my powerbook required a plugin, and aside from getting the contacts off the old phone everything else has been relatively pain free.
Apple's address book did some strange things with the data it received, such as

putting the contact's whole name in the last name slot,



creating the Boutros-Boutros Ghali effect,



and adding an unnecessary surname to the singly named.
.

Other than that it's awesome.

I might also add that I'm looking to go power-user with this piece, so if anyone can recommend some more 1337 j2me, flash or symbian apps I'm all 3ar5.

Posted by at 6:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hey all,

So it's late, I've been biking all over New York City, and I'm feeling something about social change. There's a lot wrong with our country and our society at this moment, which many of us speak about to each other, and most if not all recognize, but few directly confront in the work that they do. Tonight I spoke with a man who railed against people's obsession with entertainment and fashion to the exclusion of concerns relating to current warfare or the wrongs of the world, but out of whom I could get no coherent solution of how to solve this problem. Later, I spoke with a man on the street who seemed quite intelligent, pleasant and functional, but who claimed to be homeless, unable to fund his "baby mamma" and unable to find work, convinced that his rapping skills would earn him some money some day. To both my natural response was to prescribe technology and entertainment media, to spread the message that the internet as a cost-free and omnipresent connection with millions of memeseekers would either propel them to stardom or spread their philosophy in a way that would actually speak to people's day-to-day reality in a way that newspaper headlines could not.

Am I living in a bubble? Is this really a possibility? Can Interactive Media - downloadable games, cell-phone based applications, stereoscopic technology - help not only entertain but spread messages that we would like to propagate? What is the ideal road to take? Armed with the convictions we possess, and the knowledge that we pass to each other and gain from working in this institution, is it not our responsibility to use what we have for the better good of society? Are we not betraying ourselves if we ignore what we feel and spend all of our time chasing a dollar and a gleam?

Obviously the approach to actually accomplishing this task is the hard part. Yet to date my most popular accomplishment at this institution with non new-media initiates is my involvement in the Darfur is Dying project. USC IMD is getting tons of press for what it is claiming to bring to games and new forms of media entertainment. People are definitely looking for Web 2.0 and New Media's Social Change Killer App - it is my opinion that we are the most qualified technicians to provide it.

I had been thinking about raves. Recently I've been thinking about schools. I wrote a letter to the editor of the New York Times a few weeks ago in response to an Op-Ed speaking our against the problem of cellphones in the classroom, in which I cited IMD's integration of technology into its lesson plans and made the point that when trying to reach a generation that communicates through cellphones, instant messenger and myspace, you will gain far higher mental penetration if you attempt to reach people on a level they are familiar and comfortable with, and maybe don't expect from the likes of you. If you like it can be downloaded here.

To quote a famous scholar, "my question is this:" Can a series of in-classroom games and real-world cell phone based exploration experiences increase a students interest in their education? Can interaction and understanding between disparate cultures, classes and economies be aided by community based and social networking technologies? Can this type of shit pay the bills? With the East River below me and the hot summer's air in my face, this is what I'm thinking about.

Posted by at 1:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

come closer

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So for CTIN542 project 3A, I chose the musician Jamie Lidell as my artistic inspiration, due to a recent concert of his that I attended with some mates, both class and non. At his shows, Lidell records himself beatboxing and humming to create his rhythm tracks, then over the top of it belts out some crooning vocals like he was the wonky british reincarnation of Al Green.

Taking a cue from the Lidell performance, I made this patch in MAX/MSP that allows one to four participants to make some interesting vocal collages with a microphone. It has four tracks that can be recorded on by pressing the corresponding number key (1-4), and will loop after 16 bars, with an adjustable BPM. After a track is recorded upon, the audio can be pitch-shifted and delayed, which is where the fun really starts. Take a look at the full-size image, or just download the patch. It's open source! If you own MAX/MSP, that is...

Enjoy!

Posted by at 3:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A gathering of links to interesting mobile technology related places.
Some of this is from the GDC talk "World Tour of Mobile Innovations"
Please, let me know what is missing from this list!

People:
Julian Bleecker
Mimi Ito

Blogs:
http://textually.org
smartmobs
-http://picturephoning.com
http://www.adverblog.com/ - esp. archives by topic beginning with "mobile"
http://www.wirelesswatch.jp/
http://www.moconews.net/
http://cellsuite.jp/news/ - hasn't been updated in a while

Interesting Tech:
Cingular/Shazam musicID service:
-record a tune - system identifies it and sends you an SMS with the title

FeliCa - Sony's RFID payment technology:
mobile Suica
-uses FeliCa technology - RFID payment system embedded in phone
-tied in with phone hardware and software, access payment information through phone menus
-some pictures of FeliCa in use here:

ToruCa - image capture and metadata retrieval/sharing:
ToruCa blurb
-future platform for ARG?

MoSoSo (Mobile Social Software):
Dodgeball
Rabble
PeepsNation
Playtxt
Jambo
Plazes
Hunaja
Wired MoSoSo Article

ADVERGAMING- much more to say about this later

Semacode:
http://www.semacode.org/
ConQwest
Semanote
Semapedia
eRuv

ARG (Alternate Reality Gaming):
http://www.argn.com
http://www.ilovebees.com/
mogi - real world collecting and trading of virtual objects
http://www.blasttheory.co.uk/
-I like frank
-Uncle Roy

Mobile Music:
Sonic Scenery @ Natural History Museum
Location33
Sonic Network
LISMO - itunes w/social marketing
-location based music search
-"what is the most popular song on this block?"
short description
japanese site

Random:
http://agagame.jp
i don't read japanese, but i think the basic gist is that you play minigames, and navigate between the choice of two advertisements before you can play

Relax-to-win
- galvanic response sensors with bluetooth

M-commerce:
-In Japan, customizing the UI is big

"emotion messaging" - analyzes the text content and emoticons in an SMS to flash the screen certain colors and "shining samples"

Driver License Training - practice for written tests, etc
-Brain Training is hugely popular now

Cascada Mobile
-P2P recommendation system

Google Mobile
-SMS and mapping services, everything else, etc.

Girlswalker
also a wired article
-portal site for rich tokyo girls
-small demographic - targeted to limited # of high spenders

Pikkle
-CharaJam

Camera Games:
SuperStar
-put up stickers of your picture and take pictures of other ppl's stickers
-earn points by seeing and by being seen - spectacle
Devil Darts
-take pictures of ppl and throw darts at them
Kick Real
-aim camera at foot and kick the ball
Photo Aquarium
-feed and breed fish by taking pictures of real world items
ARToolkit games
-and tech description

"Girl Games":
Metrogirl
Limelife:
-Girl's Night Out Solitaire
-Word Heaven
SuperModel Milano
Ibiza Party
-option to play as gay characters
Mushi-King and Love and Berry: (Boy and GIrl versions)

Girl Games for Guys:
Bikini Machine
Sexy Poker 2006
Playboy Amp'd
Cherrysauce
Leisure Suit Larry
Hot Secretary
College Girls

Themed/Branded Minigame collections:
The Three Stooges: Makin' Dough
Homies: Domino n' Dice
California Games
Gorillaz game

Mobile Links/ports to Console/PC games:
Star Wars Battlefront Mobile
Sims2
BeatMania (Bemani): e-Amusement service
-modify the game's graphical interface
-customize arcade experience with mobile app

Other Games:
Flitzer - streaking game
Pinball Factory
-Design and customize your own pinball game board - upload to phone
Pet Shop and Pet Trap (Floodgate - no online presence yet)
-Pet Shop - uses localizing software to allow for digital "best in show" competitions at local, city, state, and even nationwide levels
-Pet Trap - players have to electrocute their opponent's pet
Skipping Stone
-addictive one-button game
Path of a Warrior
-interesting because it has a $10/month play all you want pricing system
Baka-Ge - pull nose hairs out of a big nose - blood
Log Jam
Dr. Steve's Fart Box
SkillJam

Posted by at 5:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)