The third fabrication assignment focuses on measuring tools and using the laser cutter. I continued my series of absurd and user unfriendly objects and made a pencil holder that holds exactly one pencil.

The second fabrication assignment is centered around streamlining our fabrication process, and building 5 or more of the same object as a result. I decided to maintain my focus on absurd and user unfriendly interfaces and made an awkwardly big, cube-shaped, wooden USB flash drive.

1—I have been fascinated with clocks and their sound since childhood, and have been thinking of building my own for a while. This direction involves creating a sound installation out of multiple clocks (between 9 and 20 of them, arranged in a grid.) I am interested in creating polyrhythms out of their mechanical movement, while also giving the viewer the illusion of control over how fast / slow time is passing in different clocks. All clocks would tick at the exact minute, but for the 60 seconds in between minutes the rhythm of each clock is adjustable.

For the physical computing midterm project I worked in collaboration with Keunjung Bae. The assignment was Halloween themed, so we decided to build a device that allows one to search for the spirits stuck between worlds. Inspired by technology used by the ghost hunting communities (namely ghost boxes,) we came up with our own interface for finding ghosts.

The first weekly assignment for Intro to Fabrication involves building a flashlight.

The Mirror Room is an installation built in collaboration with Rachel and Shuyi in response to The Nether—a sci-fi play talking about avatars, emotional attachment and pedophillia (yes, it’s complicated…).

This week’s physical computing labs involved working with analog input and output for the Arduino, as well as soldering. Since we’re having a review week, I chose to focus on two things: 1) Improving the LED sequencer I built for the previous lab; and 2) Getting outside of the breadboard and working with resin, a material I’ve wanted to experiment with for some time.

A piece of public technology I get to observe and interact with daily is the crosswalk button at the intersection of Bushwick Ave. and Kosciuszko street. While Bushwick is known for being one of the latest additions to the gentrification train, we can rest assured that at least in terms of infrastructure, everything is older than most inhabitants of the neighborhood 🙃.

For the first CL: Video & Sound assignment, Russell and I worked on a sound walk of 370 Jay Street, focused on creating a narrative arc for the evolution of the building’s usage from the 1950s until today. 370 Jay St. was erected as a headquarters for New York’s Transit Authority (the MTA) in the 1950s, and served that function for more than 40 years. Throughout the 1990s, the MTA slowly moved into a new Manhattan headquarters, leaving the 370 Jay building partially empty and unproperly maintained. Once regarded as a landmark of modernism in Brooklyn, the building fell into decay until 2012, when New York University acquired it, expanding its Brooklyn campus.

For our first physical computing lab, we were tasked with understanding and experimenting with basic circuit components, working on a solderless breadboard. This involved learning how to use a multimeter—for checking continuity or measuring resistance, voltage, and amperage—as well as creating a few basic circuits, involving a power supply, resistors and LEDs.

Dollar Van is an audio sojourn that details the history of the MTA at 370 Jay Street in Brooklyn and the Interactive Telecommunications Program at the Tisch School of Arts at NYU. It provides a thematic insight into the shared values of both organizations from founding until the present day. This soundwalk was created by Cezar Mocan and Russell Ladson - graduate students at the Tisch School of the Arts.

Passing Stranger is an hour and a half long audio tour of the East Village, framed through the life stories and work of artists who have emerged and lived in the neighborhood during the second half of the 20th century. Curated by the Danish poet Pejk Malinovski and narrated by filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, the sound walk truly acts as a time portal to a less gentrified and more politically radical East Village, home to characters such as Allen Ginsberg, Patti Smith or The Velvet Underground. Having previously spent some time in the neighborhood, but never enough to know it intimately, the tour was a perfect opportunity to strenghten my friendship with the village’s streets and landmarks.