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Outside In, Downside Up

By Yi Ren (Rae)

In the past few years, I have so much great moment to capture, to memorize, and to recall. However, as time goes by, none of them was still alive, and they all changed to be a fade colored photo in my brain, while some of them have even getting vague. I was always thinking how can I keep my memory in the real world and how can I freeze the moment I’ve cherished? Collect the items I used? Write the feeling into the journal? But how about the scene I’ve experienced?  For this project, I am looking for a way to freeze my favorite New York season, Fall physically so that whenever I missed it, I can always see it again. I used the sticks, leaves and other items from Autumn to build up the project and stored the wonderful beauty inside my downside-up house, a metaphor of my memory reflection.

For the overall structure, I used the illustrator to design the patterns and printed them out by laser cutting machine. 

For the interactive part, I used Arduino with the ultrasonic sensor to control the light. When the audience is approaching, those clouds would light up. The closer they approach, more clouds would light up. The lighting-up is controlled by the distance. 

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Final Project Idea

My current plan is to create multiple light shadow boxes using laser cut to cut out multiple layers and then using the different sensor to trigger the Led light turning on or flashing, such as using light sensor, sound sensor, and temperature sensor. The final product would be similar as below but will be added more interactive elements.

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Immersive MeetUp Devices

After coming to NY pursuing my master degree, I was not able to communicate with my family very often. Although there is a variety of audio chatting or video chatting tools, I still felt I lost connections with them because of lacking physical interaction. So I am thinking to create a real immersive meetup devices so I can interact with my family, not just my eyes and voice but also physically interacting with each other in the “same” place. 

Physical Devices:

Immersive Carpet/room: providing the best surround sound from the other person and the environment, and creating the similar smell of the place.

Immersive Contact Lenses/Glasses: after taking the contact lenses/glasses, you and the other person you want to meet will see the same scene and each other.

Immersive Gloves: you can touch each other and feeling as if she/he is in front of you.

Digital Device-An App:

This App will enable you and your family to connect and choose a place to meet. Once it detected that both of your devices have connected, you two will enter the same virtual place and meet each other.

Different with current virtual reality devices, this one can help you interact with your family or friends more real by not only using eyes and voice but also nose and physical interaction. It is light enough and also portable. In addition, the virtual meetup place would also be the real place, not some virtual designed world. 

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A Christmas Scarf for my deer using conductive thread materials

After learning how to use conductive thread to connect led and battery together, I created a Christmas lighting scarf for my deer

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Hungry Bear using Conductive Tapes

Last week, I created a “hungry bear” through using conductive Tapes and led light.

This is a hungry bear that only when you feed it food it will smile(led light up). I used laser cut to cut out its shape and hollow out its eyes, mouth, and cheeks. Then I used conductive tapes to connect two light together with the coin battery. By using folded paper, I created some space between the bottom layer and bear head layer so that only when the food or finger tap on the mouth would the battery be connected.

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Warm and fun learning experience of using sewing machine and turtle stitch

Last week, after learning the turtle stitch and sewing machine, I had a great interests on learning sewing machine. I have been to thingspace several times to test and sewing different shapes. For the first, time, I drew an triangle which is very thin. Later on, I learned from another designer to create the shape as below, which is more complex and the thread will go back and force several times

And after 10 mins’ sewing, here below is the piece

Because the thread goes back to the center too many times, the center of this shape changed to be very tense. So for next time, I should code the stitch not going back to origin path too many times.

Apart from the Islamic Pattern, I also made use of sewing art to transformed my own design from illustrator to accessible file for sewing machine. Under Nick and Avery’s help, we not only created a birthday gift for our friend, but also learned how to wire hemming and create 3-D button.

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DJ Carrot, created with Scratch and MakeyMakey

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HCI-Calendar Carer

My idea about the human-computer interface is to create an intellectual calendar that can help elder people take medicine on time. This calendar will high-light the medicine that you need to take on the certain time slot. Each pill bottle lid can be connected with MakeyMakey, which only when the elder people pick up the bottle and put down the lid for a while, the highlight on calender would disappear. If the elder holding the bottle for more than the certain time, the intellectual calendar would use the human voice to give a brief introduction of this pill, and also if the elder did not pick up the bottle in the certain time slot, the calendar would also give a warm remind sound effect.

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Physics Lesson Plan with Makey Makey

MakeyMakey is a great tool to facilitate students building the connections between the physical world and digital world. When I was playing around with this tool, it also reminds me of the difference between “Conductors and Insulators”. So I think MakeyMakey can also facilitate middle school students get a better sense of which object is conductors and which is not.

Before learning conductors and insulators, teachers can first let students bring things that they think conductive to the classroom. Teachers explain how MakeyMakey is working so students can start their test. If the object connected to the MakeyMakey, it proved its conductivity. During this process, students can have a better physical understanding of which is conductive and which is not. After the test, students as several groups can discuss the feature of conductors and in the end, make a conclusion of what type of objects are in general conductive and what type are not.

This learning approach could help students shift those abstract concept into a game-based experience relevant to their daily lives. In this way, students no longer need to memorize the learning points after class but have already transferred this knowledge to a self-related experience.

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Reflection of “Gears of My Childhood”

This article reminds me of my past experience of playing the piano. I started to play the piano when I was four. Because of this hobby, I always had a better sense of sound effect than others. For example, when we have music class through my college life, I would be always more sensitive about intonation and tone. When I listen to the music, I can feel the difference when mistakenly wearing the left earphone output to my right ear. 

This experience leaves me a deep impression that learning something in an early childhood may better help you with the future learning experience. Instead of memorizing the knowledge, this early study may positive transfer into your natural behavior so you would make use of them naturally. 

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Learn through play: Solid Geometry

When I studied at elementary school, I used to have a hard time learning geometry such as the differences among point, line, side view, front view and vertical view. I created this scratch mini project to help others who also have the same problem learning geometry. Using this little app, they can obtain a better sense of point, line, side view, front view and vertical view.  

https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/176530853/

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Cupcup octopus ! I used the existing cups to create a jump jump octopus with two facial expressions!

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Reflection on “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

What does this approach to learning have to do with art and art education?

This article highlights five key components of the kindergarten approach to learning, “Image”, “Create”, “Play”, “Share” and “Reflect”. During the entire learning process, the author emphasized the importance of involvement, collaboration and also communication, which all have an important connection with art education. Just as the author mentioned, “The goal is not to nurture the next Mozart or Einstein, but to help everyone become more creative in the ways they deal with everyday problems.” I believe current art and art education should also not focus on training students to be future artists but rather forming the ability to appreciate art. By using this approach to learning, learners could not only purely seeing and reading the introduction of the art piece but more importantly, understand the intention and meaning of these artworks. This Summer, I visited Whitney Museum and what inspired me the most is their open studio. They chose one of the artworks on exhibition as the theme or main character to let children use their imagination to redesign something new. Instead of introducing the artwork history, background, the instructor would ask children first what they see, how they feel and what do they think the artist wants to express. This process encouraged children to the image, and the later hands-on process makes them create, play something associated with the artwork. And the last presenting part gives them the opportunity to share their work and reflect their design process. Instead of “walking around”, I believe this provides learners a more engaging way to learn the art.

What role do digital tools play in this process?

I think digital tools provide more possibilities for learners to accomplish their ideas. Especially under current social environment, many young people are saying they have many ideas but what stopped their action and design process is technical issues and lack of time to learn high-tech skills. Using digital tools can better help learners to avoid “obstacles” and become a creative thinker.  I believe these digital tools can better help solve technical issues and provide them more channels accomplish their ideas. Moreover, since not everyone has a good sense of color, shapes, or drawing skills, digital tools can also facilitate learners concentrate on developing “tinkerability” rather than concerning the technical issues.