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December 18, 2006

Interactive Telecommunications Program

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Winter Show @ NYU

As promised, I went to the ITP Winter Show opening today @ NYU; had a couple of thoughts about the show. Spoke with Benedetta Piantella Simeonidis and Lesley Flanigan who created the Sonic art weapon: Ravezooka which I mentioned yesterday.
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Benedetta also has a personal blog hosted at NYU. The Sonic art weapon is programmed in MAXMSP and it seemed to me that this is a good program to learn since it's so visual. LemurPlex, located in Brooklyn, NY, not far from my Studio, appears to be the best place to learn MAXMSP around here, in NYC, - and you can see all the courses you can take at the LemurPlex -

I've passed by LemurPlex several times but never spoken to anyone - and several of the projects in the ITP show had connections with LemurPlex.com. I think I'll look them up and take an intro course to MAX -as I think I can learn from them how to execute some of my ideas for modern art, ideas I don't think I can execute in traditional paint media - these ideas need electronic media.

By the way, the Sonic Art Weapon cost less than 100 dollars to manufacture and has applications in science (Mars Robotic Probes would benefit from the technology used here, for example).

Other exhibits in the ITP show that I liked - LocationAura which similar to We Feel Fine, a subject I have already written about in Webmetricsguru.com; Catherine Colman and Nanna Halinen were not aware of the program (I think they should have been - as LocationAura tries to do, more or less, exactly what We Feel Fine does, much better) - but for a graduate project, LocationAura was pretty good - with a focus on mobile phones that We Feel Fine does not have (but does not need, either).

The Interactive Pond by Diane Chen, Peng Zhao and Hye Ki Min where you can play with a fantastic virtual reality pond and get your hands wet was pretty neat. Whales in the Sewer was pretty funny but I'd feel sorry for any whales that actually got caught in a city sewer. Orb was pretty amazing - I wanted to touch it - but I was told it would hack my hands off if I did; you can see a good picture of the Orb in action here. Future TV is an interesting project - getting information on anything on TV by clicking on that part of the image though it's more of a concept as everything had to be hand programmed - but the idea is great, especially if bots can go out on the web and pull the data in.

And while there is a strong element of telecommunications at the ITN show, there are several students who did not go in that direction; I don't know why they're in the program in the first place.

I think it's important for the ITP program not to lose it's focus - all the projects in this show, in my opinion, should have been about using technology to interact and create communication - but not all were.

Links: ITP Winter Program [blogged by by Marshall Sponder on Smart Mobs]

Posted by jo at December 18, 2006 06:52 PM

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