The Naked Pixel challenges our notion of decency in public arenas by using the entire visual display to represent individual pixels of a nude photograph sequentially over time. By viewing the piece, the audience is not only unaware of what they are viewing, but their primary visual cortex can not mentally construct the sequence of colors into a coherent image.

Using a light sensor, the piece detects nightfall and further "undresses" each pixel's color into its binary value by displaying a sequence of ones and zeroes. This further obfuscates the representation of the potentially "obscene" image.

My intention is to convert a still image into an animated sequence of pixels. This changes our perception of the image by limiting the stream of optical information from a parallel format (all pixels at once) to a serial format (each pixel individually). Our visual system is incapable of parsing this visual information, which fundamentally changes the character of the image. Our experience of the still image becomes entirely new, even though the content of the image remains.

In his neverending quest to life off the grid, Mikey Sklar made a LED grow lamp from some LEDs, a power supply, and an old broiler pan, which functions as a heat sink. Mikey writes:

A 33 watt grow light made from 19 blue and red LEDs. Each LED is glued onto a broiler pan which acts as a heat sync. This light should be excellent for growing many forms of plants and algae. It cost me about $113 in parts and shipping to make this unit. I estimate this light to be equivalent to a 300W HID/HPS grow light.

Nice process photos and materials/suppliers list included.

A funny thing happened to Tim's LEDs while attempting to cast them in resin -

For a project at work I had to mold some things in this hard clear polyurethane, so my Mechie ordered a giant kit of the stuff - more than the project ever will need (and it has a very limited shelf life). So I mixed up a little more than necessary and used the leftover to pot some LEDs.

Steppers were designed to get kids up on their feet, moving, and playing with sound and music. An external sensor sandal is worn over a child's shoes, noting each footstep, and, in real time, playing back sound effects/music to compliment their movements. Force sensing resistors housed in each sandal wirelessly transmit information back to a computer, which then broadcasts sounds over an FM radio chip that accompany each footstep. Users hear the sounds that they create over an ordinary radio, or through FM headphones.

Knock is a collection of cultural artifacts of today's society, a society defined by an obsession with technology and a goal-oriented approach to mysticism and faith. The collection consists of updated versions of traditional amulets, lockets and charms that reflect the way technology has influenced the values and beliefs of our culture. Instead of the antiquated superstitions that old amulets represent, they function according to contemporary ideas of protection, fertility, and social bonds.

Picture Me Rollin' is a manufactured surface designed to produce beats as roller luggage is pulled across. Tones are produced as the wheels of the roller luggage encounter different textures, and these tones will be arranged in a way to create beats. Multiple parallel surfaces are planned, as to allow for multiple bags to generate more complex melodies. The tones produced are modulated and amplified using contact microphones and Max/MSP.

Background
After the concept was formed, we began conducting research on different surface materials with different bags in an effort to isolate our variables and find sample tones to work with. With the sample tones, we generated sample beats which we then used to guide our patterns of construction.

Audience
Commuters in airports/bus/train stations.... and everyday travellers. Hopefully, this project will lead to other interventions, including rollerbladers in Central Park, etc.

User Scenario
Our ideal user would be the hustling commuter rushing through an airport corridor with their roller luggage in tow. As the wheels of their roller luggage pass over the textured surface, they would hear interesting rhythmic beats.

Epimetheus is the feasibility prototype for a larger environmental framework that emphasizes the ability to monitor a site in real time.

Designed for deployment in public and private spaces by loosely organized groups of citizens, Epimetheus uses technology as a DIY layer on the physical environment that the citizen-scientist can deploy. By design, groups of citizens will be able to add new nodes to a pre-existing network using publicly available manuals, schematics and configuration settings. Once fully registered, an individual node will be viewable as part of a layer in Google Earth. Once viewable, the node as well as the entire network can be monitored remotely by the original group or individual as well as affiliated interest groups and local leaders.

Epimetheus uses a multi tiered approach to the communication of environmental information. Designed to accept multiple sensor technology such as UV, infrared, and smoke, the sensor units use advanced mesh networking and solar power to achieve grid autonomy. The gateway units are designed to aggregate data on the edge of the sensor networks from the deployed nodes in the forest. Protected from the harsh environmental conditions, the gateway units have access to the power grid and a cellular network. Utilizing off the shelf consumer phones, the gateway unit sends critical updates in the form of SMS texting to a third tier of the system: individual users, citizen action groups, and publicly viewable databases.

The act of localized deployment and open monitoring of a site can create a long lasting effect that transcends saving forests: Empowered civilians with a real sense of custody over a specific site.

This kit looks pretty easy to use, just send the line to be displayed over a COM port. It even supports hex letters (a,b,c,d,e,f) - of course, a 14-segment version would be even cooler. Still, a lot of potential applications - USB7

Related:

U-Disp - An open source USB display
&
Seven-segment big LED display

In the Maker Shed:

LED Micro-Readerboard Kit

Just when you thought you had them all, the Arduino mutates yet again -

The new Arduino Nano is the smallest and most versatile Arduino board yet. Designed and manufactured by US-based Gravitech, it has all the functionality of an Arduino Diecimila in a compact, breadboard-ready design. The Nano includes an ATmega168 microcontroller (w/ bootloader), integrated USB (FTDI chip) w/ Mini-B jack, a full complement of i/o pins (including two more analog inputs than the Diecimila), an ICSP programming header, and on-board regulator.

Update: The Nanos ship from Gravitech in June - Arduino:Blog

In the Maker Shed:

DC Boarduino

A slightly more complex version of using a water surface as a music controller featuring five lasers instead of just the one. Please note that this is a prototype version, and as such does not represent the variety of output for the finished thing

Read a little more about the Toriton Plus

Synthcart is a cartridge for the Atari 2600 written by Paul Slocum. The program uses the Atari 2600 keypad controllers as an interface for users to trigger notes and beats on the video game console.

Read more about Synthcart control

Brush Bots are tiny machines that work in tandem with the user in creating generative art. Released on top of a piece of paper, the BrushBots zoom, careen, and spin around the interior of a simple wooden frame in wild and unpredictable patterns. The user then drops ink, paint, or liquid water colors onto the blank page, providing the Bots with a medium with which to work. As these autonomous paint brushes plow throw the puddles of pigment, they mix colors and leave beautiful patterns in their wakes. The user and the Bots work together, neither party having full control over the piece, creating a unique work of art.

A kinetic mobile made of up of several independent light seeking, energy gathering BEAM robots. Each segment/robot of the chandelier will rely upon sensor input to move into an optimal position for gathering solar energy. The movements of each suspended robot will affect the positions of those that it is attached to, resulting in an active "fight" for light between the chandelier segments throughout the day. At night, the robots dispense the energy that they have gathered as light, the most successful segments staying lit the longest.

The solar chandelier provides a dynamic visualization of the normally static process of gathering solar energy. Users will witness parts of the chandelier moving and reacting as though simple living organisms, and directly benefit from the energy that they gather.

From HackedGadgets:

Here is an interesting build of some Automatic Closing Gates that was made for this wooden gate. It was built out of necessity, the builder had a child that he did not want running onto the road. The motor and gearbox is controlled using a Picaxe Microcontroller. Activation of the gate is done remotely using a wireless keyfob.

The gate

Anonymous pointed out this darn fine lookin' MIDIBox64 PIC based controller.

• 12"x12" Faux Walnut Case
  
• 16 Knobs
  
• 5 Faders
  
• 16 Arcade Buttons
  
• 32 MIDI controlled LED buttons

Check the MIDIBox site for more info and a list of project code - uCApps.de

More about the project...

Digital drawing tool for people whose physical challenges confine them to wheelchairs.

http://digitalwheelart.com

Everyone has the desire and the right to express themselves. People can draw pictures, play music, sing songs, move their bodies, write compositions or poems to express their feelings and emotions. However, not everyone can use these methods. There are many people who want to express themselves but cannot to do so because of physical disabilities. In this project, assistive technology including electronics, mechanics, and computer programming is applied to help those people to express themselves, and moreover, to provide an opportunity to be an artist.

In this project, I successfully provided alternate methods of self-expression for people with physical disabilities. Because I designed the system while considering a variety of disabilities and locations so that a wider range of users can easily use it. Since it is based on computer technology, new functions can be added easily. Also, the replay features of this project allow for profound understandings about the creative process of art as opposed to just seeing the final products. In the end, I have transformed a wheelchair from a practical tool that assists disabled people and that at times is also a symbol of stigma into a tool for self-expression and art-making.

This "Butterfly GPS" device was built with an ATmega169 microcontroller, a GPS receiver board based on the SiRF chipset, and an LCD screen that reads out the data in real-time as location, date and time. Very simple construction and nice details on how it was built at the PDF link below.

A Butterfly GPS (PDF), [via]

This project provides a way to do Linux-only USB communications with a PIC18F4550. This setup provides a kernel module in the development tool allowing for raw transfers from the PIC to the PC. Nice to see all OSes represent in the PIC interface family.

Linux-only PIC development framework, [via]

The project is a multicolored LED staff designed for dance performance, shows or general play. It can independently create beautiful light patterns that react to movement, or can be coupled with a PC laptop for more complex reactions and for synchronization between multiple dancers/performers.

More information about fLux

Related:

More ITP Spring 2008 pictures

The device beeps a short beep of a very annoying frequency in random times. The time between beeps is anywhere within half an hour to nine hours.

Make your own Sanity Nullifier

Related:

Read about a Simple noisemaker annoys your neighbors

The Autonomous Parapoetic Device is a self-contained and portable machine that generates poetry. Constantly creating new sequences of words, lines, and stanzas, the APxD promises serendipitous encounters between aleatoric (but affective) text and our experience of physical space.

Read more about the Autonomous Parapoetic Device

Related:

More pictures of the ITP Spring Show

Scott Beale of Laughing Squid writes:

Our friends at Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories presented me with an awesome surprise gift this year at Maker Faire, a prototype of a Laughing Squid logo turned into an circuit board. As far as I know, this is the first time that anyone has taken our circuit board inspired logo and made a actual circuit board out of it.

Laughing Squid Circuit Board by Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories

Related:

• PCB business cards

Check out my Flickr photo set

Related:

Phil has a lot more photos of the ITP Spring 2008 exhibition

I will be posting more about these projects and more over the next couple days, for now sit back and enjoy the show.

If you're in the NYC area you can still check it out Tuesday, May 13 from 5 to 9pm at ITP.

Over the next day+ we will be posting some of the projects (photos, videos and more) - but for now, feel free to poke around on what photos I took.

Ladyada's just churning out the new kits these days; I'm not sure she's human. The latest:

Adding quality audio to an electronic project is surprisingly difficult. Here is a shield for Arduinos that solves this problem. It can play up to 22KHz, 12bit uncompressed audio files of any length. It's low cost, available as an easy-to-make kit. It has an onboard DAC, filter and op-amp for high quality output. Audio files are read off of an SD/MMC card, which are available at nearly any store. Volume can be controlled with the onboard thumbwheel potentiometer.

Here's a video of the Wave Shield for Arduino in action:

You can add "drum machine" to your list of things you can do with dead hard disk drives.

HDD drum machine (connection/synchronisation test)

Here's a detailed description of the guts of the "Plasma Mug", another piece of geeky schwag. This maker details the entire breakdown process to the last drop of spilled dripping hot glue.

Plasma Cup Inverter