The New School Archive

Tinker Lab Project – The Reading Minion

Here in the School of Media Studies Tinker Lab (AKA, the Tinker Palace) we’re working on experimenting with Optical Character Recognition. Utilizing open source software, a web cam, pcDuino, and a Minion doll, we’re building a system capable of recognizing printed text and reading it aloud.

Check out the Minion in action, reading Shakespeare!

Many thanks to Eva Jacobus and Dale MacDonald.

The New School Archive

Summary of experience // Let’s SEE the Trash @ Ideas City

We learned alot about our Let’s SEE the Trash project by entertaining many visitors in our booth at the Ideas City Festival this past weekend. In total, approximately 50 people visited us, who took roughly 30 of our bookmark business cards with QR code, designed by SMS graphic designer Chad Phillips.

From those visitors, our embedded video site received approximately 20 unique visits. Of those visitors, we did not receive any repeat visits to our booth.

We found it very useful being able to situate the project in public to discuss with visitors their impressions of what they thought our work would be based on how we described it. The process of our attempting to explain what the piece was, how it worked, and what the goal was in the greater context of the festival was very useful on our fine-tuning how we described the piece. Our description drifted away from mobile augmented-reality app towards location based documentary. Several visitors inquired as to whether we were able to physically track garbage across a large distance, or if we were able to obtain any data about the phenomenon we were attempting to depict. We were fortunate to be visited by a Department of Sanitation worker attending the festival, who provided us useful insight towards who to contact and how the department handles producing media pieces about their work. He stressed that the public should be made more aware about the process that garbage goes through after its initial disposal.

After our experience at Ideas City, the team feels that this was more a first iteration of the project rather than a finished product. That being said, we’re definitely proud of the technology we were able to develop for this first iteration of the piece that included: GPS detection and real time updating in a web based app using Google Maps API , applying custom map styling, geo-fencing points of interest, reactive points of interest icons, and custom video playback using YouTube API. We plan to reach out to our new contact in the Department of Sanitation in an effort to involve them. Additionally, we think it would be beneficial to rework our description of the piece to that of a location based documentary. This describes more the intention of our piece given it’s current technological approach. In describing the project as documentary, the footage currently employed would need to be reconceived and reshot, most likely with the help of Red Dog Productions. Finally, we found that if we were to include a URL in our promotional material, that the URL be shortened by goo.gl or bitly.

-David Wilson

Research Assistant

Public Interactives Research Team

The New School Archive

Summary of experience // Temperament of Space @ Dawn of Summer event

I just wanted to send along a quick summary of my experience with Curiosity of Temperament of Space during the Dawn of Summer event at The New School University Center on Friday 5/1, specifically highlighting areas where I feel the piece was really successful, our challenges where the piece might be able to improve, and other general observations.

I would estimate the age range of students who were experiencing the piece as 18 to 27. The ratio of female visitors to male is what I would call 3 to 1, for every 3 female visitors, there would be one male visitor. I would estimate the average length of experience with the piece at between 1 to 3 minutes, with the short outliers around 30 seconds, while the longest stay with the piece were two students constantly interacting with it for well over 30 minutes (more on these two later). In total I believe the piece saw between 60 and 70 unique visitors over the course of the 12 hours.

Feedback that I received from visitors was overwhelmingly positive. I took questions about who on campus was responsible for the piece, and found myself describing the nature of the research, and also the Public Interactives Research Team. Many visitors had specific questions about the technology and software that were employed, and how each were working in specifics to “see” or “detect” them.

< Successes >

Many visitors were drawn in by the visual aesthetics of the piece, to be pleasantly surprised by the interactive audio element. Many commented that the piece was “relaxing” and “meditative”, that the audio and visual elements were “beautiful”. Some visitors wanted to know where in the world the natural imagery was taken from. Some visitors, even though the interaction design meant that the interaction with the piece was “slow” rather than a direct mirror of their movements, wanted to DANCE in the piece. At least 10 visitors over the course of the evening did this. Watching these visitors, I got the sense that their perception was as if the piece augmented, rather than mirrored, their movement. One group of students, actors from the drama school, mentioned that the piece could function well as a teaching aid (act out what you see, and what you see acts with you).

< Challenges >

Many visitors had to be prompted to enter INTO the piece to interact with it. At one point, Dale taped arrows on the ground in an attempt to help people into the space, then into the piece to begin the interaction (unfortunately, it didn’t help much). I found that if I greeted guests and told them to walk in a general direction and that “something cool” would happen, visitors took that as a general invitation to enter the piece. I also thought that general instructions kept visitors in the space longer as opposed to directing them specifically and telling them what would happen.

< the Outliers >

Two Parsons fashion design students, undergrad juniors, one male, one female, spent a very long time with the piece, and in the room in general. Each of them commented that the piece was relaxing and that they enjoyed the pace at which the piece interacted with them. Each told me that they were very stressed out by their final projects and that the piece helped them to relax in a really engaging, but not ‘lame’ way. They made fun of the dance party happening in another part of the building, and that Temp of Space provided them with a great social/technological alternative. Them seemed to enjoy watching other visitors interact with the piece. The male student was very interested with the technology and commented that he wished the fashion department would incorporate reactive elements into their design curriculum.

< Suggestions for further development >

* a random mechanism with the audio distance detection, where once a users distance is detected the upper and lower bounds of the ultrasonic sensor are altered slightly (for instance +/- 5), to prevent users from finding a zone that does something specific. Essentially, to contextually randomize the experience further to promote further engagement and wandering within the space.

* We should consider strategies for shepherding users/visitors INTO the space, eliminating (or reducing) the need for a person to be there with the piece to guide visitors inside.

-David Wilson

Research Assistant

Public Interactives Research Team

The New School Archive

Ideas City 2015 Project

PiRT is currently working on a project to be included in the Ideas City Festival 2015 at New Museum. The project is a locative experience that makes visible the invisible process of garbage collection.

We’ll post more about our progress soon.