Allison Walker – Page 31 – Thoughts from the Underground

Exploring My Animal Self

Admittedly, for my Animals, People and Things In Between assignment, I really wasn’t sure what animal I was going to choose. I took one of the (corny) okcupid.com quizzes, and found that I was actually really satisfied with the animal I seemed to identify with most: deer.

Deer are strong, yet graceful. Humble, but not easily dismissed. It seems as if their eyes see what is already familiar to them, as nothing new has been invented. Growing up in Ohio, it wasn’t uncommon to see deer somewhere in the woods, in a park, or sometimes in someone’s backyard. They simply appear at your backdoor, and yet disappear without warning. Most deer are seem pretty shy, even when they somehow manage to live in cities. Whenever I saw a deer on the side of the road, I often couldn’t tell which one of us was intruding.

My short comic on how I become a deer…
I saw a link on the birth and rescuing of a fawn, which for a while I imagined was my former life. I imagined what I would do if I were really a deer. I would go to the park and the museum, and I’d eat good food. No one would bother me, because I’m just a deer. And, deer are only easy to find when they want to be found. Eventually, I’d get tired of being a deer and I’d need to go home. So, I’d just catch a train, turn into a human, and go home.

Anyway, aside from deer I also considered two other options. Lately, I’ve been imagining myself as a cat, but as the type of mysterious, anti-social cat that runs and hides whenever you get close but whose owner swears she’s very friendly. Incidentally, my first cat was the first pet I was allowed to have that also seemed to care for me, too.

A project that sounded interesting was to imagine myself in a cage – myself as the pet. Perhaps I would get a wire cage, with sawdust, an exercise wheel and tiny human furniture. Then, to represent myself, I would create a tiny, gerbil-sized puppet of myself that would live inanimately inside the cage. It seemed intriguing to take care of my own pet self? I wonder if, as a pet, I would take better care of myself?

Jan 13-15: Antenna Design Workshop

This past week at ITP, I was one of 16 lucky students to participate in a workshop on “Intervention/Interaction – Multi-person Interface” hosted by the co-creators of the awesome design firm Antenna Design. Sigi Moeslinger (ITP Alumna ’96) and Masamichi Udagawa led the workshop over 3 days. Our task was to create an intervention of some type in a public space, keeping in mind that the focus of our interactive experience should be on people.

Along with Nien Lam and David Phillips, I created an intervention in the Bobst academic library at NYU. Our proposal was a type of “relaxation station” that transported the users to different natural environments. It was targeted towards busy students needing a short break from their studies, but could still be unobtrusive enough to still be situated within the library.

As I mentioned, each station would be based on a natural theme, which were organized by the floors of the library. So, the ocean-themed station was on the 2nd Floor, which the night sky-theme was on the top floor. Within each station, students would be able to participate in the shared experience of being transported to another natural environment, complete with enhanced oxygen and sound design that would become more complex depending on how many other students were also sitting in the station. Each station would also have some type of visual aspect, since there would be some type of overhang to each bench or seating area, that sort of resembled a bus stop. What I specifically worked on was the sound design aspect, which I found I really enjoyed from the sound editing assignment in Communications Lab. Additional credit goes to Nien for developing the 3-D software model of our station, and David for the presentation and photo-manipulations.

I really liked our project, as did many other students. The breaking point for us was spending several hours in the library and simply observing the behavior of students there, and taking careful consideration of what would really be feasible in that space. I’m really proud that we were able to come up with something really nice in just 3 days. Nice job David and Nien, especially for putting up with my paranoia and perfectionism! 🙂

Anyway, here is our project description, some photos and some links.

Photos of our final presentations, by Jonathan Ystad.
Our presentation by David Phillips.

Project Description:
Design an intervention (= installation or an automated machine) for “interactive services” in public space which will generate a new interaction amongst people.

An “interactive service” is a “mechanism” which provides some service or product for people. It is a kind of hybrid object/environment, such as an automated vending machine, information or entertainment kiosk, street furniture, etc.

The task is to go beyond an interface between a system/object and a singular user, to coming up with an interaction amongst multiple people mediated by the new system/object.

In this project, the essence of design is to “activate” people who encounter your intervention. The design should be safe and enjoyable, help people become more curious, more intellectually and/or physically active, cultivate relations with others (strangers, family, community, friends, colleagues, etc.) and grow as humans. It sounds obvious, but people must always be the focus of design.

Article: “Tangible Interaction”

The current issue of interactions magazine features a cover story called Tangible Interaction = Form + Computing, which the authors, Mark Baskinger and Mark D. Gross, describe as a combination of physical design and computing. They reference NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts (ITP) as one of the first schools in the world to have embraced tangible interaction design. In their article, they speak of the switch as the simplest of sensors, and reference Pd (a software program specifically for sound design), Arduino (for gadgetry) and Lilypad (for wearables)…all of these part of our non-core curriculum.

As an ITP student, one of the most heartening parts of this article is the section on “Where Do Tangible Interaction Designers Fit?”. They say, “The field is still wide open, but one thing is clear: We’re likely to see more, not less, programming in things, and a lot more experimentation.” It’s nice to hear that there’s still so much more development to be had, since it means I’ll eventually have a job.

In reference to ITP, well, we have a lot of artists who come through and I don’t know how many of them would really think of themselves as a “tangible interaction designer” even if that’s really what they are, if you have to call it something. And, I do think the article lacks a bit in the artistic and simply wonderment aspects of what we do; not everything is designed for more than just enjoyment of life or experimentation. Not that they need to, but as they say they’re modeling their studies at Carnegie Mellon on programs like ours. So, maybe, there’s a PhD in my future…I did after all quote Dr. Gross in my ITP admissions essay.

Happy New Years!

My New Years e-Card 2009 from Allison Walker on Vimeo.

2009 was a big year for me. And, I spent some time today reflecting on how I relied on the help of a lot of people, both personally and professionally, to make this year a success. I met so many fun and exciting people, and my life changed so much, I just couldn’t ring in 2010 without writing something to thank them.

The problem is writing/sending something appropriate for both professional and personal contacts. That led me to look for a nice e-Card that wasn’t too sassy, but still fun. Well, I looked for a card and frankly, I didn’t like them so much. I guess the ones that were so generic to work for everyone seemed like cards I could make myself. So, I did…

First, I had the content, or copy, and figured out what I wanted to say. Then, I looked for the picture I wanted, and found a nice one of the Statue of Liberty that I’d taken earlier this summer and had already adjusted the colors. Then, in Photoshop, I continued to add text and image layers, and adjust color balance just to what I liked. When I was satisfied, I pulled it all into After Effects.

In After Effects, it was pretty easy to pull the composition together. Since I ended up animating one big image, instead of an arm or mouth, the animation part was super quick, relatively. Finding the image files was sort of difficult, but not too bad. I didn’t edit the sound files ahead of time, mostly because my impression was that After Effects could handle what I wanted, which was just fade in and out. Sort of, yes, but after this project I’d probably use any sound editor other than After Effects. It works but it’s not a sound editor – much like double-stick tape will help in a pinch, but it’s not sewing.

Then, when all was finished, I exported as a .mov file and that was that…or not. Rendering so I could watch the animation and the sound together took kind of a while, and I made a couple of .mov files as I made small changes here and there. (Actually, the RAM preview and exporting eventually took about the same time!)

In the end, I ended up with a generic enough card, that also includes something meaningful to me and New York. Not perfect, but it works.

Article: Merging Man and Machine, The Bionic Age

The cover story to the January 2010 issue of National Geographic is an article about how bionics, or “the study of mechanical systems that function like living organisms or parts of living organisms”, is being used to help people with limited abilities and handicaps, due to accident, genetics or age. In addition to a very nice slideshow, the whole article (maybe?) is available here. The following is a small clip…

Four years ago an automobile accident robbed Amanda Kitts of her arm and the ability to do things most of us take for granted, like making a sandwich. “I felt lost,” the teacher from Knoxville, Tennessee, tells writer Josh Fischman in this month’s cover story on bionics.

Then Amanda met Todd Kuiken, a physician and biomedical engineer who knew that the nerves in an amputee’s stump can still telegraph brain signals. He fitted her with a bionic arm. Bionics is technology at its most ingenious and humane. Most of us first encountered the word in science fiction books or television shows like The Six Million Dollar Man. In that 1970s series, pilot Steve Austin is injured in a crash. His rebuilt body, which includes a bionic arm, eye, and legs, is nothing short of superhuman.

But the bionics of modern medical engineering has little to do with enabling someone to run at 60 miles an hour or use an eye like a zoom lens. It is more about the quiet miracle of holding a fork or seeing the silhouette of a tree. It’s about allowing people like Amanda to reclaim what they’ve lost.

A year ago Ray Edwards, a quadruple amputee, was one of the first people in the United Kingdom to be fitted with a bionic hand. When he flexed his new hand for the first time, he cried. “It made me feel I was just Ray again,” he said. The restoration of one’s normal self is a powerful gift.

There’s also an interactive section about bionics and current advances in prothetics relative to specific body parts.

Just an added note: In the slideshow, there’s a picture of Kitts laughing as her prosthetic arm squeezes a bottle of mustard. Frankly, it’s a pretty awesome photo – and, I definitely find much more joy this photo than I do of that other photo of Jenny McCarthy squeezing a bottle of mustard in a bikini. (Not added, but easily found if you search.) Anyway, if Kitts ever sees this post, I hope she’ll appreciate my comparison between her and her bionic arm, and McCarthy.

Article: Bacteria is put to work turning gears

I came across this interesting article about biological and “micromechanical machines” this morning while eating oatmeal and toast.

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory and Northwestern University have discovered that common bacteria can turn microgears when suspended in a solution, providing insights for designs of bio-inspired dynamically adaptive materials for energy.