Idea Snippets » Spring 2008

Slow Resolution Display

alex.abreu — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 02:21:34 +0000

Together with Taylor Levy and Che-Wei Wang, I developed a thermo-chromic light bulb display capable of slowly and organically changing changing each its pixels from black to white. We completed this piece in time for the 2008 ITP Winter Show only with the help of dozens of friends from the ITP and Pratt communities. Despite our very inefficient use of light bulbs, I really enjoy the subtle revelation of the display. When completed, we asked one of our friends to take a look at our creation. After watching some of the wrapped light bulbs change from black to white he asked us if it was working. He hadn’t noticed the color change because he was still waiting for light to appear. It’s pretty uncanny to watch the light bulbs slowly change color, and not really know what the mechanism is behind the change. Our slow resolution display fights backs against the immediacy of light and instead offers a very Edward Scissorhands experience to the viewer.

Che-Wei and Taylor have more pictures and information on their blogs which is definitely worth a visit.

Thermochromic Display

Every wall is a door. – R. W. Emerson

alex.abreu — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 16:31:23 +0000

A door is definitely a valve and restricts access by means of one type of security or another. Sure enough, we’ve all grown accustomed to keeping things private or semi-private, and a door does just that. Whether building a hinged, sliding, louvered, pocket, or the mood-inferring door described in the reading and comments, doors serve a pretty well-defined purpose. Restricting access is part of the game. Not everyone is always invited over for tea. We’ve also created a language around the door which highlights this mystery of restricted access. The door in a lot of ways, represents chance. There are, by far, too many doors to count, and trying to keep track of the contents behind each of them is that much more impossible. So we’ve resigned ourselves to not having to think too much about doors. After all, random chance and dumb luck are just that. Random and dumb, and we like that.

Opportunity knocks only once
The girl next door
Behind door number one

The Energy Cost of Beef

alex.abreu — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 17:17:11 +0000

There is constant noise surrounding the fact v. myth debate involving the health effects of meat-based and plant-based diets. I decided to circumvent the health issues in an attempt to compare the two diets on a much more concrete level. Using numbers stated by cattle ranchers, the U.S. government, and people analyzing both sides, I tried to weave together a cohesive analysis of the energy costs related to raising beef for food as well as those related to soybean agriculture. I was unable to find sources comparing these two data points directly, but found a considerable amount of information about soy as it is used to create bio-fuels. I married this data with the data I found about beef production in order to create the presentation below.

Sources:

From Mid-East Oil to London Broil: A Comparison of Energy Inputs in Feedlotversus Grass-Fed Beef
by Jivan Lee, Diana Nezamutinova & Todd Paul
November 2005, Acres U.S.A.

University of Michigan Blog

Biodiesel Energy Balance
by Jon Van Gerpen and Dev Shrestha
Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering
University of Idaho

Soy Powered Bus
A Joint Study Sponsored by:
U.S. Department of Agriculture and
U.S. Department of Energy
Final Report
May 1998

Excellent New York Times article

Vlox – The Virtual Building Blocks

alex.abreu — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 04:10:06 +0000

Vlox are the much overdue update for classic building blocks. No longer will children have to take apart their prized designs to make new creations. No longer will kids have to choose between interactive play with other children and solitary building in their rooms. Most importantly, children will still continue to enjoy the wonderful tactile satisfaction experienced when positioning and reconfiguring blocks on top of one another. After all, we believe this play pattern is the essential for children young and old. Building and designing in physical space allows a child to explore the concepts of geometry and spatial orientation.

With Vlox, children will continue to experience all that they love about their current block building toys with the added ability to save, share, discuss, and explore their models in virtual space. A child will be able to build away to his/her imagination’s content, and when ready, be able to upload the finished work to his/her Vlox locker. A limitless, space the child will be able to upload as many designs as he or she likes. Through a simple and intuitive interface, the child will be able to select a design from the locker to paint, edit, and then, if he/she so desires, place the design into an explore-able online world. The castle built last week can be placed along side this week’s tree house. With a few clicks, children will then be able to add virtual characters to their invented world. Our goal is to allow virtual play time to complement and add to the time a child has already invested in making his/her models. Children will also be able to share and browse through other children’s plans and designs so that they may download and build ideas other than their own. This way, children will be able to find new and more efficient ways of building, fostering a learning center for design.

The Beginnings:

Screens are not windows (yet?).

alex.abreu — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 17:58:05 +0000

The argument is attractive and mighty compelling, but it doesn’t quite capture all the variables necessary to make the case. Simply put, there is something very real and tangible about looking through a window that is lost when viewing the same or comparable image on a screen. The Department of Physics at the University of Central Florida published an interesting paper highlighting the inaccurate representation of the laws of physics in more than a few Hollywood films. Ignoring the fact that a screen is a 2-D snapshot of the real world, the modification of the laws of nature in making images for mass consumption creates a real problem for me. I’m definitely a member of the generation of people who have spent the most time (historically speaking) in front of screens. Televisions, computers, cellphones, I-pods, yadda yadda. Each and everyone has proven itself to be a powerful and valuable tool in and of it’s own right, but the screen to window analogy misconstrues the purpose and utility of such devices. The minute we, as in humanity, forget that screens are not windows, we loosen our grip on our understanding of the world we inhabit. Suspension of disbelief while in a movie theater and permanent suspension of disbelief are two very different things. The case has been made that increasingly larger amounts of screen time have led to the weakened spatial reasoning and mechanical aptitude of entering engineering and physics students. I believe these symptoms (if true) speak to a larger issue. Should we truly aim to replace our real world with a digital copy? I have no doubt we have (or will have) the technology to do so, but I fear that no copy will be truly accurate. Unfortunately, if a copy becomes our reference point, we won’t be able to understand the difference. So for now, a screen is a screen is a screen.

As a quick aside, I think the solution to this dilemma is to never allow technology to replace the natural world, but simply to augment it. We must use all the good technology has to offer to provide a clearer view of the world we live in and never get caught doing the opposite.

If these walls could talk.

alex.abreu — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 18:37:08 +0000

I hadn’t really ever stopped to analyze my relationship with the walls of the world, but doing so did give me some insight into my unconscious behavior while walking through the city. Walking around this week, I began to notice that I always leave a fair bit of distance between myself and any wall I happen to be walking by. The width of a sidewalk is immediately reduced by this automatic buffer, amplifying the claustrophobia factor of a heavily-trafficked narrow sidewalk. I also began to notice just how many walls surround me in the city. The walls which make up the buildings in this city make up a a gigantic labyrinth which I just meander through as I go about my day. Shops and restaurants distract me while in route, but the overwhelming majority of my time is spent walking parallel to a wall of one form or another.

Earlier this week I noticed a ‘new’ form of advertising in the subway tunnels around the city. Some company or another has started placing advertising panels in the subway stations complete with a 30 second sound clip ready to be listened to by a curious commuter equipped with headphones (I believe Pepsi may have done it first in Canada). At first, I thought the campaign a bit silly, but I caught myself and realized the power behind such an idea. Granted execution in the form I’ve described is less than perfect, but this company figured out how to make the everyday regular old unnoticed walls around us talk. Right now they only play a part of a song, but what if they could do more than that? What if they could tell secrets, or be listening booths, or song-sharing stations? What if there was way for us to interact with the very real walls which surround us? I believe this transactional model yields the potential for a passer-by to look to the wall as more than just a barrier, and then to begin to inscribe some part of herself upon the wall in a non-damaging way.

This idea of a ‘non-damaging’ relationship is important to me as I believe that others have just as much a right to a relationship with a given wall as I do and vice versa. I was recently in the Czech Republic and was horrified to see what so-called graffiti artists had done to some of the historic cities around the country. I understand a certain desire to leave a mark, rebel, and create art, but I simply cannot understand juvenile attempts at such destroying walls and monuments that belong to a greater community. It would be great, if interactive walls provided a means of voting for which graffiti enhanced or detracted from a given space to then be able to identify which graffiti should be removed. In this way, I think certain spaces could be taken back from imitators who can’t do much more than poorly write some obscenity, and deeoer graffiti art which has a larger message in mind. The wall could then become the stage for a democratic process of determining what types of things should be imposed on the greater society which also shares the wall.