Julian Bleecker
Journal entry from October 16, 2009:
The Smart Surfaces instructors encouraged us to attend a talk last night by Julian Bleecker, an LA-based designer/engineer. His day job is at Nokia, but he works on the side in free-form design studio called Near Future Laboratory.
"Normalization" was a recurring term in his presentation: the transition of technologies or ideas from extraordinary to commonplace. He talked about his love for science fiction, and how great sci-fi writers use stories like virtual testbeds for radical (or not so radical) advancements in technology, to demonstrate the ethical, social, economic (etc.) effects such changes might bring. Sci-fi presents scenarios where scientific or other such changes that might seem radical to us are normalized to the population in the story, and how they have adapted to it. He used this video as an example:
Very cool perspective: I had never thought about writing in that way, to be used as a tool, rather than just a medium.
Side note: Julian had worked on virtual reality systems in graduate school in the '90s, at a time when they were speculated to radically transform the way humans interact with computers, across the board. I see VR as an example of a technology that has not (yet?) delivered on its promise of revolution. Their cost aside, I have not seen any virtual 3D interfaces that are actually effective and practical for personal computing. Hopefully we catch up with the sci-fi on this one (lookin' at you, Minority Report).
Ball Finder Robotic Arm
Update (7/22/10): Learn more about the class here.
This was my team's Lab 1 project for EECS 498 - Intro to Robotics. The lab assignment was to detect balls on a table by processing the frames from an overhead camera, then having the arm pick up the balls and place them in a container.
MRI Adventures
A very cool example of the power of imagination, creating immersive experiences, and how to design for kids:
Was having a conversation with a GE employee this evening, and he told me about a recent pilot program GE Healthcare started.
MRIs are generally terrifying for kids: a huge, loud machine in a cold, sterile room that you need to get inside of and be completely still. Kids normally require sedation for this reason, increasing health risks for the child and stress for the parents.
In this pilot program, GE is covering their MRI rooms and equipment in a pediatric hospital with cartoon graphics, printed on the plastic used for car wraps. For example, the graphics might make the MRI machine appear to be a spaceship, and the children are told they are preparing for blastoff while laying down inside. According to the article, this has immensely reduced the percentage of children that require sedation.
http://www.healthymagination.com/pediatric-design-turns-scary-mris-into-adventures/
Miura-Ori Lamp
The first assignment in my Smart Surfaces class was to do some simple RGB color mixing using the Arduino, and to create a "lampshade" of sorts for display. I had a piece of origami sitting on my desk from Creative Process last year (another very cool Provost-sponsored team-taught course), and imagined the way the highly faceted paper surface would dissipate and reflect light.
The form is a Miura-Ori fold, an origami pattern invented in 1970 by a Japanese astrophysicist. The interesting feature of this pattern is that a surface with a large area can be completely unfolded by pulling in one direction, making its operation intuitive and mechanically simple. One interesting application of the Miura-Ori fold has been on satellites, where instead of paper the surface is composed of solar cells, hinged along the would-be creases. During launch, the solar arrays are relatively compact, but open during deployment to form a large planar surface area. I enjoy their integration of an ancient art form, deeply rooted in traditional Japanese culture, into a high-tech system.
While considering the satellite's collection of light along the length of a solar panel array, I stuck three rows of colored LEDs on a breadboard, aligning with the "corners" of the folds. Along each row, the LEDs slowly fade in and out in cannon, which I accomplished by expanding some Arduino tutorial code. The vertical separation of colors (as seen in the picture) almost makes the lamp seem like a spectrograph or a prism. Though there is not enough light projected for this to be a practical lamp, I was pleased with the visual effect of the light on the lampshade form.
How do you arrive?
When I walk into an improv jam, it always takes me a good 5-10 minutes to get in the state of mind where I can focus. I usually start moving around slowly on my own, in a combination of stretching and mental relaxation.
I’ve heard debates in the past about how to approach improvisation cognitively. Something we talk about in my Physical Theater class is that a clown has no past, and has no anticipation of the future: they exist completely and helplessly in the moment. Should the mover shut out any thoughts that are not immediately relevant to the task at hand, i.e. what assignments are due tomorrow, when will they eat dinner, etc.? On the other hand, if that is what is immediately important to the mover, shouldn’t they leverage that material? Isn’t that the point?
A Widening Field
A widening field by Miranda Tufnell and Chris Crickmay: Chapter 1
My favorite passage was the following factoid: “When the Crow Indians felt stuck in some habit they do everything in reverse – ride their horses backwards, eat breakfast at suppertime.”
Body Blows
This is a response to reading out of the coursepack for DANCE 572 - Performance Improvisation, journal entry #1.
Body Blows by Tim Miller: Foreword by Tony Kushner and Introduction
I was lucky to have participated in the workshop with Tim Miller when he came to town, and went to see his performance 1001 Beds at the Aut Bar. I don’t know of many performers that make a career doing solo performance, and this was among the most engaging shows of any kind that I have ever seen. I admire how exposing his performances are (in all senses). I never felt that he was putting on a persona or twisting the truth in any way, which is so easy to hide behind as a performer. That is something I have been learning in Malcolm Tulip’s Physical Theater class: it is much easier to go onstage and pretend to be someone else with fake problems, rather than being yourself. On top of that, being isolated as a soloist takes another huge batch of courage. As Tony Kushner put it in the Foreword, Tim Miller is “democratically, expansively self-celebrating.”
- RT @harisamin: for over a year I 've been doing every hackathon in NYC in the hopes of winning an I pad, I guess I can finally rest now ...
- @HarrisonWeber @harisamin i have shows and rehearsals that weekend so ill be in and out
- @thoughtpunch I think Consumer should be "project 1": https://t.co/I7cBryMy
About Me
Aidan Feldman
Photo by Angela Cesere
aidan [dot] feldman [at] gmail [dot] com
Technical Resume: pdf
Originally from Oak Park, IL (just outside Chicago), I'm a recent graduate of University of Michigan with dual degrees in Computer Science and Dance, now living in Brooklyn.
A web developer by day and dancer by night, I am working as a Ruby on Rails developer for Jux.com, and performing with Artichoke Dance Company (Lynn Neuman), Chavasse Dance & Performance (Amy Chavasse) and A Corps Perdu (Stephanie Landouer).
My interests include user interface design, web/software development, artificial intelligence, choreography, road & mountain biking, eating, discovering music, sustainable design, improvisation, dance performance and physical theater. To name a few.
Favorite world-changers:
- The Beatles
- John Cage
- Charlie Chaplin
- John Coltrane
- Salvador Dali
- Albert Einstein
- William Forsythe (see here)
- Arthur Ganson
- Don Hertzfeldt (see here)
- Jiri Kylian (see here)
- William McDonough (see here)
- Radiohead
- Steve Reich
- The Rolling Stones
- Shel Silverstein
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