Interactive Puppet Theatre

Here's another great project from NYU ITP's Winter Show (you might be seeing a few more of these in the coming days; ITP shows are like Christmas-come-early for Computerkrafters):

The North Wind and The Sun is the first production by the Interactive Puppet Theatre. Here's the Scenario:

1. Every 4 minutes, a story starts.
2. Two children will be invited to play - one as the North Wind and the other as the Sun.
3. Both players will wear each costume; the Wind and the Sun, and hold its controller.
4. Watch and listen to the story.
5. When it is the Wind's turn to blow wind in the story, the blue light blinks as an indication.
6. The Wind child blows wind into the controller.
7. Repeat the above 5-6 steps according to the story.
8. When it is the Sun's turn to throw sunshine, the yellow light blinks as an indication
9. The Sun child blows warm breath into the controller.
10. Repeat the above 8-9 steps according to the story.
11. Watch and listen to the story.

To get a look at the project in action, you can watch the Interactive Puppet Theatre Video on Google Video. And if you want to create some 'interactive puppet theatre' of your own, it actually doesn't sound all that complicated (for how sophisticated the resulting interaction is). Here are the ingredients:

- Two Arduinos for controlling input and output, there are a total of 32 steps in the story.
- Six Servo motors: One for the Sun, one for Wind and four for the status of the traveler.
- An MP3 player for narration and background music.
- A microphone for the Wind controller (Same mechanism as the internal microphone in the Nintendo DS.)
- A thermometer for the Sun controller, which detects warm breath or rubbing.

Read the the artists' build journal and you'll be on your way.

Botanicalls

Botanicalls is a project submitted by four students to NYU ITP's Winter Semester Show:

"The project originally spawned from completely non-technical conversations about indoor container gardening and the air-filtration qualities of common houseplants. Our concern about bringing plants into the ITP community was their chance of survival-- high-paced technologists seldom have time to stop and smell the flowers, let alone water them. 'But, what if,' we wondered, 'the plants could call us and tell us what they needed when they needed it? If they assigned us tasks, would this alters or engages us,' and the project was born."

As you can see from the diagram above, their solution used environmental detectors, Arduino microcontrollers, and XBee wireless communicators to bind the plants in the ITP offices into a network. Then they gave this network the ability to communicate with its human cohabitants by connecting it to the office phone lines via Asterix.

The end result seems to be that they've given a rather eloquent and self-aware voice to a series of otherwise mute plants. What other silent omnipresent companions do we have that might benefit from getting a voice of their own?

Sewing Circuits

The Craft Technology Group has a great in-progress project called Sewing Circuits in which they are trying to design "a construction kit and acompanying activities that will allow kids to learn about circuits through sewing. "

"Each kit contains a patch of fabric, a fabric switch, LEDs, a needle, conductive thread, and a battery. Participants in our workshops design images that incorporate the lights and switch, draw their designs with fabric markers and then sew the LEDs and switch to their patches, creating a simple circuit. The crafting activity can include working with materials like beads, felt and ribbons, and the kit can also be used to decorate personal artifacts like clothes, caps and bags."

While this sounds like it will be great for kids when it's done, they've also got a great tutorial on DIY electronics sewing that's great for us right now. If you have any ideas for projects with cloth-based components this is the place to start.

Insect Lab

Like a character from a William Gibson novel, Mike Libby of Insect Lab builds "customized insects":

Insect Lab is an artist operated studio that customizes real insects with antique watch parts and electronic components. Offering a variety of specimens that come in many shapes, sizes and colors; each specimen is individaully designed and hand- assembled, each is one of a kind and unique.

I like the combination of gooey wetware with pristine/precise clockwork. Plus the Frivolous Victorian Luxury aesthetic is always a good bet, especially when given a cyberpunk twist like this.

(via Make)

Moonwalking Shoes

Moonwalkers is a great little project by Andrew Schneider, a student in Tome Igoe's Networked Objects class at NYU ITP. Schneider used two old sneakers, some guitar cables, a Nestle Quick box, Arduino, and MAX/MSP to make shoes that control the playback of Michael Jackson's Bad. A photoresistor in the bottom of each shoe lets MAX/MSP start, stop, and slow down the music depending on how far off the ground the soles of Schneider's shoes are.

The end result is that the only way to get the song to play continuously is to actually moonwalk (which Schneider does quite well), making for a great match between the media and the hardware controlling it.

US Invader and Pac Sweden

Swedish artist Vuk Cosik was a member of the groundbreaking net.art group who were amongst the first to explore computer (and especially) video game aesthetics. The best net.art work combines the conceptual complexity of 'serious' gallery art with a high level of fluency with computer and internet technology and culture.

Cosik's current series of national flags rendered as 8-bit video games is no exception. They somehow manage to point out the iconic quality of these video game images, deflate the self-importance of patriotic symbols, and comment on different attributes of national identity such as military superiority all simultaneously.

For more examples, checkout we-make-money-not-art's flickr 'vuk' tag.

The Antikythera Mechanism

Recovered from a Roman shipwreck at the turn of the last century, this bronze and wood device turned out to be a complex computer for calculating the relative position of the sun, the moon and the planet built by the ancient Greeks in the second century BC. According the the New Zeland Herald, on its finding:

"the device was evidently an instrument of some sort because it used a complicated set of gears to move a series of concentric wheels and pointers which appeared to predict the movements of astronomical objects.

However, the scientists were surprised to find that the machine was in fact a sophisticated analogue computer that acted as a long-term calendar for predicting lunar and solar eclipses as well as the movements of the planets."

The most amazing part of the story is that the Mechnaism's function was still discernible after having spent 2000 years submerged under 40+ meters of water. Is there anything you've made that could survive something like that? Is there something you could design and build that might be able to?