It's hard to say which one was the best, but I did like "Simon Stabs" quite a bit (pictured above) - so consider this a MAKE "best of show" Aram!

• Knock - reinvented amulets and charms.
• Picture Me Rollin' - using your suitcase to play music.
• Epimetheus, trees will tell you when they're on fire.
• Brushbots, Paint Brushes with a mind of their own.
• Solar chandelier.
• Wireless synth modules.
• Using a wheelchair (and Wiimote) to create art...
• Simon Stabs.
• Speaker feedback instrument.
• fLux.
• Autonomous Parapoetic Device.
• Epafi touch communicator.
• Sustainable noise generator.
• ITP Spring 2008 pictures.
• ITP Spring Show 2008 (5 minute video).
• Naked Pixel.

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.

Current_tv segment on Etsy Labs' monthly Handmade Music nights.

Homemade Music Makers [via]

[Editor's note - The music nights usually with MAKE, but for this one the entire NYC team was out of town at another event, so that's why you didn't see MAKE --- our makers were there though! - it's usually Create Digital Music - ETSY - MAKE handmade music night - pt ]

This summer, hackers from around the world  will track the movements of thousands of visitors to New York City.

As part of a social experiment, attendees at a hacker conference in July will be issued badges with electronic tracking devices.  Large displays  will show in real-time where people go, with whom they associate, for how long and how often.

The tracking technology, known as RFID, is fast becoming an unseen part of everyday life.  This July, for the very first time, the general public will be able to participate in the transparent operation of a major RFID tracking program.

Conference attendees will participate in games built around the tracking system.  Players will seek ways to protect their privacy, find vulnerabilities in the tracking system, employ data mining techniques to learn more about other participants, and choose how much personal information they will disclose in order to play.

This demonstration will be open to the public at The Last HOPE conference from July 18-20 at the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York City. The first 1500 preregistrants will be guaranteed an RFID badge enabling them to participate in the game.  More information and preregistration is available at http://www.hope.net/.

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.

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.

Meredith writes in:

BarCamp Boston happens this weekend in Cambridge, MA, and to do our part DorkbotBoston member Keith Hopper of Hopper Analytics will be hosting a free workshop on how easy it is to get up and running with the Arduino. And since many of the Arduino lovers will be at BarCamp, we'll be holding the Boston Arduino Users Group meeting there this month too!

Go ahead and register!

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.

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 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

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.

SAN MATEO, Calif. — The muffins are rolling. The muffin cars, electric-powered vehicles built to resemble cupcakes, scoot around the open spaces of the San Mateo Event Center & Expo, a sprawling fairground about 20 miles south of San Francisco and, on this day, a million miles from normal.

Just inside the gates of the third annual Maker Faire, a converted fire engine belches an occasional explosive flare that sends a chest-pounding Pfoomp! throughout the fairground, startling bystanders over and over again. That contraption was made by folks from the Crucible, an industrial arts studio based in Oakland where people can take lessons in welding, blacksmithing and many, many other ways to play with heat and flame.

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.

The Interactive Telecommunications Program @ NYU is having their Spring showing - Sure to be many Arduinos put to creatively good use -

ITP Spring Show 2008
Monday, May 12 and Tuesday, May 13
from 5 to 9pm at ITP

A two-day festival of interactive sight, sound and technology from the student artists and innovators at ITP.

An oversized Greenwich Village loft houses the computer labs, rotating exhibitions, and production workshops that are ITP -- the Interactive Telecommunications Program. Founded in 1979 as the first graduate education program in alternative media, ITP has grown into a living community of technologists, theorists, engineers, designers, and artists uniquely dedicated to pushing the boundaries of interactivity in the real and digital worlds. A hands-on approach to experimentation, production and risk-taking make this hi-tech fun house a creative home not only to its 230 students, but also to an extended network of the technology industry's most daring and prolific practitioners.

Interactive Telecommunications Program
Kanbar Institute of Film and Television
Tisch School of the Arts
New York University
721 Broadway, 4th Floor, South Elevators
New York NY 10003

Related:

ITP spring show 2007 (photos)

The space itself opened with powder blue billboard with “GENTRIFY THIS” painted aggressively in black, which a mother explained to her young daughter behind me in line was “delightfully ironic”, a phrase that applied just as well to the work within and its interaction with the crowd. The audience was incredibly diverse and indeed, I think it was the crowd that I found the most interesting. We had the entire age range, there more than a few grandmothers admiring the walls and strollers and children marveling. And of course there were more than our fair share of hipster types. The range of cameras was equally impressive. I lost count of the number of cellphone cameras (and yes, iphones were disproportionately represented), but there were lots of semi and professional photographers on the scene, and even a good number of videocams and tripods. And an equally diverse range of camera styles, flybys, the sit and wait type, etc. The need to document and capture the art seemed as pressing as the need to get in to see it! And of course, there were stencils of photographers that needed photographing…

More:

• Stencil art fest, The Cans Festival.
• Scanned program.
• Additional gallery @ NOTCOT.

Related:

• National Rube Goldberg Machine Contest 2008 (Pictures)

I'll be doing a demo at 11am on Saturday at Maker Faire on embroidering a circuit with conductive thread, LEDs, and a watch battery. Don't worry if you've never picked up a needle and thread before; this beginner's level demo will show you the basics of embroidery and circuits. I'm very excited to see you all there!

NYC Makers - Want to attend a Make group, but can't find parking in downtown Brooklyn? Now there is a Make group you can call your own. New York City's second Make group (creatively called MakeNYC2.org) will be hosted in the center of Queens, convenient to most highways, bridges and tunnels (and plenty of free parking). If you're reading this website and you get a kick out of using your hands (and brain) to make stuff you know you're one of us, so come over on Wednesday night for an inaugural party with free pizza and soda. The first meeting has no agenda beyond meeting one another, but if you bring cool stuff you've made to show the rest of us, who knows, there might even be some cool prizes involved...

http://www.makenyc2.org/

When - April 30, 2008 - 7:00 p.m.
Where - 171-69 46 Ave (meeting hosted by Big Apple Hobbies)
Why - because it's fun (doh!)

Don't forget to submit your projects to ArtBots, the deadline is May 1!

ArtBots is pleased to announce that the fifth international ArtBots exhibition for robotic art and art-making robots will take place at the Trinity College Science Gallery in Dublin, Ireland on September 19-21, 2008. Creators of talented robots are invited to submit their work for possible inclusion in the show.

We have no fixed idea of what qualifies as robotic art; if you think it's a robot and you think it's art, we encourage you to submit your work. Regardless of whether it's hi-tech, low-tech, or neg-tech, we're interested in the ideas you're working with, not just the gear. Proposals for workshops, performances, and other kinds of participation are also welcome.

Each ArtBots is a bit different; the location changes and we invite new humans to co-curate the show with us. We hope that by changing the specifics of the show each year we can keep it accessible to a diverse range of people, works, and ideas.

Related:

Art Bots 2008 on HACKS

DC401 is bringing DIY rapid prototyping to their May meeting:

Bruce Wattendorf is a Rhode Island based RepRap maker. He and his son have working on their RepStrap since January 2007. Bruce will be bringing his RepRap in to demo its capabilities and talk about the process of actually building one. For anyone who's dreamed of printing 3D objects, this talk is for you.

Date/Time: 7 May 2008 - 1730-1900
Location: AS220, 115 Empire St, Providence.

The schedule of events for Bay Area Maker Faire '08 has been posted. Head over and start writing up you're game-plan for the big event - warning: this may be a bit of a challenge considering the GINORMOUS amount of good stuff happenning!

Seriously, this thing may be getting out of hand - Maker Faire Bay Area Schedule

Maker Faire is a two-day, family-friendly event that celebrates the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) mindset May 3rd and 4th at the San Mateo Fairgrounds, CA (Upcoming.org). It's for creative, resourceful people of all ages and backgrounds who like to tinker and love to make things. Buy tickets now and save, discount ticket sales end on April 25th, 2008.

If you're in the Bay Area, or plan to attend Maker Faire add "makerfaire" to your Twitter, we'll be giving away tickets and will have updates before and during Maker Faire!

Interactivos? at Eyebeam: Call for Participation Workshop dates: June 26th - July 12th.

May 2: Application Deadline
May 22: Notification of acceptance

Interactivos? was initiated by the Medialab-Prado program and the
Madrid City Council in 2006. The two week program is a hybrid
workshop, exhibition, and seminar.

This summer, Eyebeam joins Medialab-Prado in running Interactivos? as
part of its annual summer workshop-based programming.

Through a call for participation targeting artists, engineers,
musicians, programmers, designers, architects, and hackers,
Interactivos? seeks a set of projects for collective development,
within a set of inter-disciplinary work groups. Once projects have
been selected from the call for participation, a second call will be
published for individuals to apply to become collaborators on the
selected projects. Completed projects will be presented in an
exhibition July 12 – August 9, at the end of the program.

The program will be produced by Eyebeam staff, fellows and residents.
Please see the Call for Participation for more details:

Interactivos? @ Eyebeam