Installation made with Hush Studios and Flightphase for the University of Dayton admissions office. When I enter the building, it is in “idle mode”, where there is some animated typography of some questions. When I enter the interaction area, a 87×26 field of cubes starts moving, rotating, and scaling in waves, and some cubes directly in front of me congeal into a surface and a video of student life starts playing. At one point, you can see the Kinect cameras installed in the ceiling.

Materials
1 32′x12′ wall
3 Panasonic PT-D6000ULS projectors
4 kinect cameras
2 mac minis (2 kinects each)
TSPS “people tracking” software (modified to use 2 kinects)
1 Mac Pro tower
custom openFrameworks software

into this:

Now you can!

Laser-cut mirrored acrylic with peel-off adhesive on the back. Available for free!

How to make your own (very rough)

1. Download the pattern in Illustrator or EPS format
2. Take a 8 inch piece of standard 1inch wide double-stick puffy tape and put it on the back of a piece of mirrored acrylic.
3. Put the entire thing in the laser cutter with the tape facing up
4. Set the laser cutter to raster. On a 60 watt laser, set power=65, speed=6.0, PPI=1000
5. Cut away!

I created a little CV web app for the musician/”mad beat scientist” FlyingLotus back in November, and it launched today.

I’d like to give super big props to Eugene Zatepyakin, aka in-spirit.  Eugene used the Alchemy Project to compile a SURF algorithm into ActionScript, and the Apparat framework to optimize it, resulting in a totally real-time matching algorithm in ActionScript, ASSURF.  Without his work, this definitely wouldn’t have been possible.

If you have any of the album art, click here to try it out.

The hall of a nightclub turned into an interactive canvas for live animations drawn by the passing and moving bodies.

Commissioned by White nightclub, Beirut

in collaboration with Aaron Meyers and Ayah Bdeir
June 2010

Frameless LCDs, IR cameras, IR floods, Custom Software, Algorithmic Animations

Art Fag City critic and series participant Paddy Johnson calls it, “The most challenging IRL Internet competition of the decade.”

“Blurring distinctions between performer, audience, and participant, this work exposes and makes fun of network culture.”
- Brian McCormick on “World Series of ‘Tubing”

The World Series of ‘Tubing is a conceptual augmented reality game played in front of a live audience, combining the intensity of a high-stakes poker tournament with the world of sensational online video. The competition consists of two players trying to out-do each other by presenting a series of YouTube videos (rendered as an augmented reality layer on top of a real card) to an audience in a series of fast-paced rounds. The competitors can manipulate the playback of the video in a number of ways by tilting or gesturing with their card. The crowd decides which video/card wins by shooting a target on stage with a laser, and the process repeats until a player wins three rounds. During the game, commentators provide a running commentary on the game much like during a football or World Series of Poker game.

The World Series of ‘Tubing brings televised competitive sport and game show aesthetics into the realm of participatory theater, complete with live commentators and stellar motion graphics. The everyday action of “favoriting” online media is expanded into a participatory game show. By blurring the distinctions between performer, audience, and participant, it work builds upon the inherent qualities of shared culture as it exists online.

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Inspired by distributed computing projects such as Folding@Home and SETI@Home, Praying@Home is the name given to a suite of technologies developed by The Institute for Faith-Based Technology, or InFaBat™, innovators in the field of technologically-aided spirituality.  The first development is the PrayerRecorder™ – a USB device that plugs into any PC and allows the user to capture her unique Prayer Signature®, an ultra-frequentic resonance that is “broadcasted” by the human body while praying.  The user simply attaches the InFaBat Senso-Cap to her temples and forehead, presses a small InFaBat Prayer Paddle™ between her hands, and prays on a particular subject.  Meanwhile, the PrayerRecorder captures and records the PrayerSignature to the users’ hard drive.  Then, using the InFaBat PrayerBroadcaster™, we can broadcast her Prayer Signature, somewhat like an FM radio station that only God can hear!  Unlike humans, who need to take breaks from praying to fulfill biological needs, computers need no breaks, resulting in 24/7 prayer output.  Additionally, the PrayerBroadcaster unit is equipped with a SPU (Standard Prayer Unit) Amplifier, which increases the strength of your prayers by up to 54%.  These technologies truly represent a revolutionary breakthrough in the field of Digital Prayer Technology.

Our display at the Expo consists of a small, tastefully decorated booth – 8 feet wide, 6 feet deep, and 8 feet tall, containing a solid white prayer bench facing a white computer screen on a white altar and hundreds of pure white candles: a mix between a confessional and a blood-giving station. An attendant in a white lab coat and a priest’s shirt and collar stands by to help users. Choral music plays from speakers positioned in the far corners of the booth.  Adorning the proscenium of the booth is a large glowing sign that displays the number of Standard Prayer Units (SPUs) that we have collected over the course of the Expo. Our goal for the Eyebeam Mixer Expo is to collect 375,000 SPUs, focused on a variety of urgent problems faced by the world today. Above the SPU meter is a glowing sign with the words “Institute for Faith-Based Technology: Come Experience The Amazing New Digital Prayer Enhancement Technology”.  Atop the booth sits an InFaBat PrayerBroadcaster, which looks a lot like a large set of rabbit ears.  Inside, the both is adorned with religious symbols and imagery.  On the prayer bench is the InFaBat PrayerRecorder with the InFaBat  PrayerPaddle and InFaBat Sens-o-cap.

Visitors are invited to come into the booth and kneel down on our prayer bench facing the computer screen.  A soothing voice leads the user through the initial setup process, explaining how to put on the InFaBat Senso-Cap and position the InFaBat PrayerPaddle properly.  The voice will explain that in order to get a perfectly pure PrayerSignature, un-Christian thoughts must be kept at bay because they can disturb the prayer recording process. The voice will suggest that the user get all un-Christian thourhgs out of their system before starting the recording process.  The voice will then go through a brief explanation of how the technology works, and instruct the user to start praying. Meanwhile, the InFaBat PrayerRecorder senses and records the peaks and valleys of the users Prayer Signature as they whiz by on the screen on the altar.  If, at any time during the process, an un-Christian thought is sensed, an alarm sounds and red lights flash, and the user must start over.  On average, this happens to 1 out of every 3 users.

Once recorded, the Prayer Signature and a 2-frame animated snapshot of the user are uploaded to our InFaBat Worldwide Prayer Visualizer. The visualizer is displayed in the form of a large projection above the prayer booth. Participants who have contributed their Prayer Signature are represented inside the visualization by a bubble-like avatar featuring their animated snapshot and prayer signature. The avatars float in a sparkling stew of ephemeral prayer-related iconography. As their prayer is digitally replicated in the InFaBat Mainframe, participants will be treated to dazzling animations of the SPU’s emanating from their avatars and then projected into the heavens.

When the user is done, they are given a readout of their Signature, a sticker to tell the world that they contributed their Prayer Signature to a good cause, and a pamphlet will be available that describes the technology behind the system and give users information about how they can purchase the Praying@Home PE system and optimize their prayer output by using unused computing cycles on their home PC.

Why?

Praying@Home is a parody of Christianity’s attempt to validate itself in the scientific academy, as seen in “scientific” studies about the effectiveness of prayer, creationism, intelligent design, and faith healing.  Our fictitious group – The Institute for Faith-Based Technology – claims to be interested in finding a link between technology and faith, seeming not to notice that their attempts undermine the very idea of faith – namely that it doesn’t care about evidence.  They believe that praying is a purely mechanical task and should be dealt with like any other task that is such a waste of human effort – by mechanizing it.  In so doing, not only do we save time, but we take advantage of the added efficiency, tirelessness, and networkability of computers to multiply the worlds prayer output infinitely, thus solving all of the worlds problems and creating a utopia on Earth.

The Institute will invite visitors to try out their PrayerRecorder and PrayerBroadcaster technology at the Expo in an attempt to get them to buy the home version.  As a marketing scheme, the Institute has announced that they will try to collect 375,000 “Beckells“, or “Standard Prayer Units” (discovered by Fredrick Beckell in the 1970s) during the Expo.  Each user who volunteers to kneel down in the booth and use the PrayerRecorder contributes a varying number of Beckells depending on the purity of their thought and the strength of their unique Prayer Signature.

The Institute also displays a not-so-subtle favoritism towards Christianity, simply assuming that the Christian God is the “correct” god to pray to, while also imposing their on values on the users by warning them against thinking any un-Christian thoughts while operating the PrayerRecorder.  This very dystopic attitude betrays the fact that the illusion of utopia often hides a darker truth.

In society today, criticizing a persons religion is often seen as un-PC at least, and completely taboo at worst.  Religion is given special privileges in most areas of public life, from politics to casual conversation, where other beliefs, like non-religious pacifism, are not protected by the law.  People treat religion as if it is something immutable, like race or sex, rather than as a choice that a person makes for themselves.  Through this parody, we hope to open a debate that is often enthusiastically avoided by forcefully insisting that religion should be open to criticism just like any other belief.

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When installed properly, GodBlock will test each page that your child visits before it is loaded, looking for passages from holy texts, names of religious figures, and other signs of religious propaganda. If none are found, then your child is allowed to browse freely.  But if religious content is found, your child receives a page that states simply:

Blocked for religious content.

“Please refrain from devoting your life to imaginary supernatural beings until you are at least 18 years old.”

No filter is perfect, and false positives are an unfortunate reality.  But isn’t it better to be safe than sorry?  Make the world a better place.  Protect your impressionable kids and students from harmful ideas so that they don’t grow up to spread hate, fear, and shame.  Allow them to hold onto their natural reason, compassion, and acceptance without being polluted or destroyed by some self-serving or delusional fanatic.

Install GodBlock today!

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Delete City uses the ridiculous storage allotment of web hosting services like Dreamhost to cache large amounts of user generated content from sites like YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, etc. and then monitors to see if any of this content is subsequently taken down. When it finds removed content, it automatically posts the content to your WordPress blog. The nature of the content can be customized by the user by site, keyword, and other criteria. Devious? Maybe. But also one step in the fight against censorship.

The DeleteCity plugin is now available for download at WordPress.org. You can view a sample blog at DeleteCity.com/blog

With Chimpton (and ABSML), I once again returned to the theme of generative text. The operator (or “puppeteer”, as we called them) would enter into the software the interviewee’s name, website, and medium, and based on that information, a set of interview questions would be generated. The puppeteer would then use the software interface to trigger the questions.

After the break, I have posted all of the Chimpton interviews, courtesy of Neighborhood Public Radio

Joe Delappe
Michael Triglilio
unknown
Lewis Schwadron
Julian McCullough
Joan Wasser
Stephanie Diamond
Steve Lambert
Friedrich Kirschner
D Lanzilotta
Sara Cook
Mazeav Marsha
Julia Schwadron
unknown

With the creation of BoozBot, Eyebeam Fellows David Jimison and Jeff Crouse have now added the bartending robot to that list of creative roles for automatons. The birth of BoozBot opens a fresh chapter at the intersection of technology, human interaction, and the science of personality. BoozBot converses with the wit and wisdom of your favorite corner barkeep, pouring drinks, monitoring sobriety, and engaging patrons one-on-one.

My role in the creation of BoozBot was to write the software that controls him. I also did a bit of the building.

The first Dirt Party took place at the Eyebeam 10th Anniversary Benefit, where the output was a series of dynamically generated tabloid covers.

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For more pictures from the installation, check out the page on the Digital Situations site.

Please check out the DoubleHappinessJeans site for more information/updates.

“Taken at face value, You3b is an absolutely horrible idea. ”
- downloadsquad.com

“If your Youtube addiction has you seeking out more and more videos, constantly, non-stop, perhaps you’d be satisfied once and for all with You3B.”
-killerstartups.com

/**
*	Represents one Craigslist page.
*	Can either be a page of results or a single listing page.
*/
class Craigslist extends PlacemarkSource {

private $url;

private $type;

const url_pattern = "/craigslist/i";

private $regexes = array(
/**
*	This should match the URL of any single Craigslist listing page.
*	They will look like
*	http://montreal.craigslist.org/sub/298262212.html
*	http://newyork.craigslist.org/brk/sys/299139631.html
*/
'single_listing_url' => "/craigslist.[a-z]{2,3}/(.+).html/i",

/**
*	This should match the URL of any page with multiple Craigslist pages
*	These pages may look like :
*	http://newyork.craigslist.org/search/bik/brk?query=&minAsk=min&maxAsk=200&hasPic=1
*	OR
*	http://montreal.craigslist.org/sub/
*	http://newyork.craigslist.org/que/bik/
*	BUT NOT
*	http://montreal.craigslist.org/sub/298262212.html
*	http://newyork.craigslist.org/brk/sys/299139631.html
*/
'multiple_listing_page_url' => "/craigslist.[a-z]{2,3}/i",

/**
*	This should match the URL of any Craigslist listing feed.
*	These pages should looke like:
*	http://philadelphia.craigslist.org/apa/index.rss
*	http://philadelphia.craigslist.org/search/apa?query=&minAsk=&maxAsk=200&bedrooms=&addTwo=purrr&addThree=wooof&hasPic=1&format=rss
*/
'feed_url' => "/craigslist.[a-z]{2,3}/(.+)(index.|format=)?(rss)/i",

/**
*	This Regex should match 1) URLs of listing pages 2) Titles of listings
*/
'get_listings' => "/<p>(.*?)<a href="(.*?)">(.*?)</a><font size="-1"> ((.*?))</font>(.*?)?</p>/i",

/**
*	In the pages of most Craigslist listings, the city that you are exploring is in a link at the top.
*	<a href="http://philadelphia.craigslist.org">philadelphia craigslist</a>
*	or
*	<a href="/"> new york craigslist</a>
*/
'city_in_title' => "/<a href="(.+)?">(.*?) craigslist</a>/i"
);

/*
*	The constructor for a Craigslist listing.
*	Most times, if you are parsing an entire page of listings, you will know the city
*	for every posting and the title along with the url before you construct them.  So if you
*	provide them, the constructor will go faster.
*/
function Craigslist($_url, $limit=null) {

$this->url = $_url;
$this->limit = $limit;

// First we will figure out what kind of page we are dealing with.
if(preg_match($this->regexes['single_listing_url'], $this->url)) {

$this->type = "single"; // an actual listing page.

} else if(preg_match($this->regexes['feed_url'], $this->url)) {

$this->type = "feed";	// A feed of listings

} else if(preg_match($this->regexes['multiple_listing_page_url'], $this->url)) {

$this->type = "multiple";  //  a search results or browse page

}
}

/**
*	Takes a relative URL from the current page and turns it into a full URL.
*/
function unrelativize($relative_url) {
$u = parse_url($this->url);
if(substr($relative_url, 0, 1) == '/') {
return "http://".$u['host'].$relative_url;
} else {
return "http://".$u['host'].dirname($u['path']).$relative_url;
}
}

/*
function parsePlacemarks() {
foreach($this->placemarks as $p) {
$p->parse();
}
}
*/

function getPlacemarks() {

switch($this->type) {

// It is a single listing, so just parse the current page.
case 'single':
$this->placemarks[] = new CraigsListing($this->url);
break;

// If if is a page of many listings, get all of the URLs.
case 'multiple':
$content = HttpClient::quickGet($this->url);

// The city appears in a link at the top.
preg_match($this->regexes['city_in_title'], $content, $matches);
$city = $matches[2];

//assert('$city!=null');

preg_match_all($this->regexes['get_listings'], $content, $matches);
$listing_urls = $matches[2];
$titles = $matches[3];
$locations = $matches[4];

foreach(array_keys($listing_urls) as $i) {
$listing_urls[$i] = $this->unrelativize($listing_urls[$i]);
}

if(count($listing_urls) == 0) {
trigger_error("Earthify couldn't find any listings on the page you provided.");
}

// Loop through all of the matches and make placemarks from them.
$max = isset($this->limit)
? min(count($listing_urls), $this->limit)
: count($listing_urls);

for($i=0; $i<$max; $i++) {
// Check to make sure the link exists first
if(HttpClient::url_exists($listing_urls[$i])) {
$listing = new CraigsListing($listing_urls[$i]);
$listing->setTitle($titles[$i]);
$listing->setCity($city);
$this->placemarks[] = $listing;
} else {
trigger_error("{$listing_urls[$i]} returned a 200 or 302 status, which means that it doesn't exist.", E_USER_WARNING);
}
}
break;

// If this is the RSS feed from a particular kind Craigslist page, just parse the RSS
case 'feed':
$content = HttpClient::quickGet($this->url);

$xml = new SimpleXMLElement($content);

// The city name appears in the channel title.
preg_match("/<title>craigslist | (.*?) in (.+)</title>/", $content, $matches);
$city = $matches[2];

//assert('$city!=null');

// Loop through all of the matches and make placemarks from them.
$max = isset($this->limit)
? min(count($xml->item), $this->limit)
: count($xml->item);

for($i=0; $i<$max; $i++) {

$link =  (string)$xml->item[$i]->link;

// Check to make sure the URL exists first.
if(HttpClient::url_exists($link)) {
$listing = new CraigsListing($link);
$listing->title = (string)$xml->item[$i]->title;
$listing->city = $city;
$this->placemarks[] = $listing;
} else {
trigger_error("{$listing_urls[$i]} returned a 200 or 302 status, which means that it doesn't exist.", E_USER_WARNING);
}
}
break;
}

return $this->placemarks;
} // end getPlacemarks()
}

/**************************
*
*	Serializer.php
*	Turns an array of Placemark objects into an Earthify KML script.
*
*	Written by Jeff Crouse at Eyebeam
*	February 8, 2007
*
***************************/
class KMLSerializer {

public static function serialize($placemarks) {

// Create the XML document and the root tag (kml)
$dom = new DomDocument('1.0', 'utf-8');
$root = $dom->createElement("kml");
$dom->appendChild($root);

// Create the Document tag
$doc = $dom->createElement("Document");
$root->appendChild($doc);

// Add a Earthify tag to the document tag.
$doc->appendChild($dom->createElement("name", "Earthify"));

// Make two folders within the document.  One for locatable items, one for lost ones
$found = $dom->createElement('Folder');
$found->appendChild($dom->createElement("name", "Earthifyable Listings"));
$doc->appendChild($found);

$lost = $dom->createElement('Folder');
$lost->appendChild($dom->createElement("name", "Un-Earthifyable Listings"));
$lost->appendChild($dom->createElement("description", "Items whose coordinates could not be geocoded."));
$doc->appendChild($lost);

// Loop through all of the listings and add them to the document.
foreach($placemarks as $placemark) {
if($placemark instanceof Placemark) {

// Make the placemark tag in which all of this shit will go.
$placemark_dom = $dom->createElement("Placemark");
$placemark_dom->setAttribute("id", $placemark->getId());

// Make the name tag for the Placemark
$name = $dom->createElement("name", htmlspecialchars($placemark->getTitle()));
$placemark_dom->appendChild($name);

// Make the description tag for the placemark.
$description = $dom->createElement("description");
$cdata = $dom->createCDATASection($placemark->description());
$description->appendChild( $cdata );
$placemark_dom->appendChild($description);

// If we can't find any coordinates, add this item to the "lost" folder.
if($placemark->getCoords()) {
// Make the Point element for the placemark
$point = $dom->createElement("Point");
$coords = $dom->createElement("coordinates", $placemark->getCoords());
$point->appendChild($coords);
$placemark_dom->appendChild($point);

// Add the placemark to the "Found" folder
$found->appendChild($placemark_dom);
} else {
$lost->appendChild($placemark_dom);

}
} else {
trigger_error("KMLSerializer received something that wasn't a Placemark.", E_WARNING);
}
}

return $dom->saveXML();
}

This document is the written portion of my MS defense at Georgia Tech. It is a survey of artworks that use live information sources, and a study of how emerging web technologies can encourage this type of art. Finally, it proposes Switchboard, my library for real-time art, and discusses the design and implementation of it.

Interactive Frank was part of my masters thesis at the Information Design and Technology Program at Georgia Tech, and an example of my interest in interactive narrative.  The program was meant to be mostly a proof of concept of my Processing library, Switchboard, and of the idea that it is possible to use content found on the web to algorithmically generate meaningful new content.

Switchboard is an open-source conceptual level interface to a library of data mining tools and web services, including Google, Yahoo, Amazon, Del.icio.us, Flickr, and many more. This library was created as part of my masters thesis at Georgia Tech. It is written in Java and packaged for the Processing environment.

While in graduate school, I worked as a Graduate Research Assistant, building tools and generally organizing the web presence of the IDT program, and eventually moving on to related programs.  In this role, my responsibilities included many things.

As the lead programmer on the IDT web team, I developed an intranet on the IDT website where students can log in and get various forms, edit their profiles, and take surveys, among other functions.

As an employee of Ivan Allan College, I began work on what was to become a college-wide faculty information tool. It included an extensive set of forms, and features for exporting reports to Microsoft Word.

Along with the IDT Intranet and IAC Facutly Database (also listed here), the LCC Content Management System comprised the bulk of the work that I completed while the lead web programmer at the School of Literature, Communication and Culture at Georgia Tech.  The LCC Content Tools are used primarily to update the LCC website. They include tools for creating surveys, updating news, FAQs, course information, and sending out mailers to students.

In the setting of a late nineties startup Internet company, the player must interact with these characters – coworkers – in order to make decisions that will influence the success of the company, as well as how well he or she comes out in the end when the company goes public – or goes bust.

In ChinASCII, the player takes on the role of Charles Bukowski, and must work to keep the balance between his love life, his work life, and his leisure time that led Bukowski to create the gritty poetry for which he is known. I created the engine and the “Love” game.

Operation Clyde is a multiplayer game which utilizes cell phones as the control device. In Operation Clyde, players control ghosts using the number pad on their cell phone, by calling into one of the game’s phone numbers. Operation Clyde was premeired at the Georgia Tech Living Gameworlds Symposium. I was co-programmer and game designer.

PixelTrainer is a Java game where you must collect all of the spinning tokens before the birds flying around the board can take them back.