Sharif Hadidi

This is where I write about the tech world as well as document my learning experience.

[sharifhadidi]

Interactive Self Portrait

Our assignment was to create an interactive self portrait. This was extremely difficult for me to decide on what to do. Initially I had been working on a emoji mosaic tutorial that I had found online only, because it seemed really complicated and was very interested in the idea. I soon realized though that it wasn’t actually very interactive. The time required to actually render the video was impossible due to the time taken to calculate the colors and find a suitable emoji for the pixel location. This made me think about another solution.

I struggle to find a way to make what I wanted to make without heavily using libraries. We were challenged with making it using pure javascript if possible. I was then reminded of a contract I had made before, which was a simple PhotoBooth application that had a few requirements that were similar to this. I was required to create a Photo Booth that would take a picture with the push of a button and load the previous pictures next to it, similar to a camera roll. The picture would then push the image to a DropBox account and save to the desktop.

This in and of itself was extremely complicated because of the need for interaction between the browser and the computer for security reasons. I didn’t want to have to address all those issues once again so I took the parts I liked and removed the parts I didn’t. This left me with the idea of creating a Photo Booth that would take pictures but would maintain the previous pictures without replacing them. I could then add filters now because I was no longer limited by a restriction of buttons as I had been before. I also wanted to make it seem as though it was a wall that you could hang your memories on for the future. I created a mini cork board for my project to simulate the feel I was looking for.

The next thing I wanted to add was the feeling of pictures so with some styling and some randomizations to the orientation I was able to create a feeling of pictures.

I also added the ability to move the pictures around that way you could organize it.

I think a nice step would be to add the ability of having the user log-in and from there be able to add actual experiences with friends. A really nice addition would be to find a way to allow this to work with the iPhone facetime camera so you could save the memories on the go as well.

LIVE SYNCHRONOUS SITES

For my live site I chose to use what I view as the standard in synchronous sites which is Gmail. Google has for years been providing a synchronous experience with Gmail using it to constantly grab your mail the moment it exists without having you reload the page ever. It has up to the date information the entire time you use it. They even include Gchat/Google Hangouts which allows for chat and video conferencing service within the mail app. I believe the only initial delay you have between mail being received and you seeing it in the inbox is the parsing and sorting of the mail based on its topic or sender.

I love and hate google products, the use of machine learning has improved the experience but at the cost of privacy. Everything you say and do is constantly monitored by google through the use of every single product they make creating a single cohesive environment. 

Code

Demo

[sharifhadidi]

Nothing in Space: An Illusion of reaction to our touch

For our final Roi, Ziyu, and I sought to look into the concept of conflicts. Our initial plan was to create a tent that would utilize audio and visuals to discuss the illusion of conflicts. We struggled with creative differences between our team on how to pursue the creation of such a project in a meaningful way that would be both reasonable but also respectful to those who have been effected by these conflict. So this caused a conflict amongst our team resulting in creative differences and us breaking off into two separate groups.

Me and Roi decided to team together and discuss the concept of space using light and sound. This lead to a creative coding and visual illusion that simulated waves and sounds from our grid. We utilized projections on a floating projector screen we built in order to allow for rear projection furthering the illusion of the screen floating with an interactive grid.

Our project used a processing sketch that was sent to Isadora using syphon. The sketch was a grid that would ripple and create sound from you waving your hand over the screen. We used a camera in order to calibrate our sketch in order to cancel out some of the visual noise that the camera would pick up. We used a very distinct color in order to limit off color pickups creating over simulated noises and ripples.

In a world where our new technologies have the name "reality" in them, it seems as we are trying to tweak and change the reality we live in. Using image recognition technologies, Reactions explores the way surface react to our touch.

CODE REPO

[sharifhadidi]

A/D/O Urban Bike

The presentation last week at the A/D/O space to discuss the urban bike created by the team from AA was interesting to say the least. I found the presentation to be interesting and the goal to be something I wouldn’t have thought of. In terms of what was created I found an issue with the device.

Here we have the bike that the team created in order to gather the specimens around Green point in Brooklyn. The bike was assembled by the team of architects in order to gather a variety different materials found. I found issue with the bike and what was added to it. I didn’t quite get some of their choices, as well as the lack of functionality of the bike at the end. The fan served no purpose on the bike and the ladders extension was too great in my opinion for what they needed. I think the biggest issue I had was with the simple functionality of the bike, as they needed to be pushed in order for it to move.

In terms of design I felt like the design left you wanting as it was not optimized for the base functionality of the device. They did a nice job and their documentation was really wonderful for the time allowed but I was not satisfied with the actual bike itself.

[sharifhadidi]

Space Installation

For my piece about space, I decided to discuss my project for another class that I have been using the concepts we have learned to better the project. My final for Nothing: Creating Illusions is taking the concept of conflicts and taking a look at what makes a conflict. We are examining the Syrian conflict and the differing narratives behind a conflict.

We decided to look at the idea of a refugee tent, as a common byproduct of a conflict is displaced masses. To do this we are building a structure to simulate a refugee tent. To do this we are building a box like structure, and plan on filling it with rugs and mats that are traditional to the middle eastern homes, and having a table with a tea pot and cups.

Hanging from the top of the tent I would have 3 projectors running with images of the conflict. This would be providing the different views of the conflict. With all conflicts there are many views on what causes the conflict, what is right and wrong in war. We would be displaying Pro-Rebel propaganda, Pro-Government propaganda, as well as foreign propaganda from around the world(USA, BBC, Aljazera).

The top view of the space

Front view of tent made of blue tarp to withstand the elements

What would be projected

The audio track would be news broadcasts feeds, audio from propaganda and music that would add or detract from the images being shown. The purpose of the piece is to show that a conflict and a stance on an issue can be an illusion. We are influenced by what we see and not so much what we know.

[sharifhadidi]

JUSTIFICATION OF PUTTING THE AUDIENCE THROUGH A DIFFICULT EVENING

I found this reading to be quite interesting, looking at the world from a different angle than we normally would. The author starts by talking about Hitler, how the things he said and did while vile and hate filled, he wasn’t always lying. He had some truths behind his word and he wasn’t all bad.

Its easy for us to look at him now and say he was a horrible person, but at the time he may not have seemed like one. People are not all black and white, we have degrees to us. We tell the truth, we lie, we tell partial truths and lies, we are good and bad but to varying degrees.

[sharifhadidi]

Whitney Museum

I went to the Whitney Museum of American Art this week to view the Biennial exhibits. I would first like to preface my post with the statement that I am not really a fan of modern art, and have always had issues with it.

The first piece I got to see was Untitled wood pieces

I found these kind of intriguing if I am being honest, mainly due to my fascination with how many were on display and also with the creation of the piece. I was trying to find out how he went about creating the pieces and got them within each other for a while. I assumed it was a lot of really well hidden seams in the pieces.

A piece I didn’t get a picture of but wish I had was “The Meat Grinder’s Iron Clothes”, this was fascinating and engaging. I wasn’t sure if pictures were allowed as I was there early in the day and the floor was empty aside from staff at the time. This piece reminded me of corporate America and the rat race. But also of death and sadness. It was really great especially the infinite mirror.

I then saw Censorship

This one I really liked, I found it interesting, both the pieces and the space created for them. I found myself sitting on the couch just reading the passages, really enthralled with message behind the pieces.

This was also the pieces that I took the most pictures of cause I really liked what the artist had done.

Because of the beautiful day out when I was at the museum I also spent a large amount of time on the Pacific Red II pieces outside on the terrace.

These pieces really were very interesting to me, I could see how at different times of day the pieces while simple change and alter the experience. Never quite giving anyone the same experience unless perfectly timed. This made me think about the Einstein Dream book we read for last week.

“The John Rippenhoff Experience” was unique, I didn’t quite get it as it was just a box with a bunch of lights that made me feel really hot. I like the infinite mirror aspect, but in general do not like pieces that make me put my head in a small box as I get kind of claustrophobic.

I also found the piece “beginning & the end neither & the otherwise betwixt & between the end is the beginning and the end” to be quite beautiful in both composition as well as its display.

I really enjoy stained glass, I find it to be extremely beautiful with the sun shining through. It is one of the things I always remember about going to mass when I was in catholic school.

The piece I didn’t get nor did I enjoy was trigger by Puppies, Puppies. This piece didn’t quite grasp me like I felt it was intended to. The whole 6th floor really wasn’t something I enjoyed as I am not really a fan of violence or weapons and a lot seemed to accentuate it.

I really did enjoy the Mother tongue Root Sequence piece. It felt out of place amongst the violence of the floor. This room was very calm to me and I spent a lot of time in here among the trees and really found this to be one of the better installations.

[sharifhadidi]

Syphon/Processing/Isadora Ideas

Sharif & Lindsey D

Idea #1

Using processing and the Kinect to track users hands, to erase a imaginary whiteboard that is being projected showing a window into a doggy day care. If the user wipes the full board, and continues to wipe the board they will see a new scene.

Idea #2

Project onto a canvas, when the user moves the paintbrush, the projection changes to a piece of fine art where the paintbrush has gone. This allows for the scenes to change when the user leaves the front of the canvas, it clears.

[sharifhadidi]

Material Creation

For this week we were tasked with creating a new material. I decided to try to make a brick out of existing materials I found around the shop. I spent a while thinking about this assignment before attempting to make it, which led me to what I created.

I decided to work on creating a material that was flexible yet also grippy. I was looking at composite materials and decided to try my hand at making some. In order to do this I decided to go to the shop and get some sawdust/metal shavings and mix it with some glue. John from the shop had told me before that they would use wood glue and saw dust to fill in wood pieces to give it a wood feel, though he told me this after I started making my material.

I mixed the dust/and glue together by hand to create a sort of pasty blob, which I placed between wax paper and pressed with the vice clamps. This was to make a flat brick that I intend to cut. The material didn’t work out great though as it has a bit too much glue and the wax paper is stuck to it. I am hoping that it will harden over night and allow me to cut it. if not I will melt the wax on to the material in order to create a further composite.

[sharifhadidi]

Einstein’s Dreams

14 April

“Suppose time is a circle, bending back on itself. The world repeats itself, precisely, endlessly.”

This quote really resonates with me in terms of what we believe and what is reality. We live life in the moment, not realizing that these moments will repeat themselves. It may not be repeated by us but by others, creating a feeling of nothingness and a realization that we are not special.

16 April

“In this world, time is like a flow of water, occasionally displaced by a bit of debris, a passing breeze.”

This quote explains that no matter what we have planned in terms of the our plans, something can small can disrupt it. This disruption will have residual effects not just on us but on others.  I view this as the butterfly effect, a small change can alter history but in place of history its time that is altered.

24 April

“In this world, there are two times. There is mechanical time and there is body time. The first is as rigid and metallic as a massive pendulum of iron that swings back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. The second squirms and wriggles like a bluefish in a bay. The first is unyielding, predetermined. The second makes up its mind as it goes along.”

This passage discusses the two types of people who live by the two forms of time. One is the body time, that operates on a whim based purely on emotion and feel rejecting the structure. The other lives by mechanical, they follow a strict schedule operating based not on feel but on planning. The two can become one, but they will also separate for nothing is set in stone.

3 May

“Consider a world in which cause and effect are erratic. Sometimes the first precedes the second, sometimes the second the first. Or perhaps cause lies forever in the past while effect in the future, but future and past are entwined.”

I found this passage to be the most intriguing, it really caused me to think about what they were saying. Cause and Effect, out of the way in which we view them. The world would be turned upside down we would not know what was real. Science and Art both altered with unforeseen consequences.

[sharifhadidi]

Social Network for small farming communities

I have been working on a project that will help farmers in rural communities with crop loss mitigation. Through my interviews we discovered that farmers in the rural communities use SMS to communicate with each other to warn of disasters to their fields. This led me to think about the concept of creating a social network for these farming communities. 

This would help them with a variety of different tasks ranging from moss mitigation to profit increases due to them selling their goods at a variety of different markets. I also see this as something that can be used in order to help finding assistance with work as well. I would want to use SMS in order to accomplish this because it is the mostly widely available in rural areas across the globe, but also has a lower cost and higher range of usability.

Here is my slideshow

https://www.dropbox.com/s/2cnu68t6pjt20jp/Social%20Network%20for%20farmers.key?dl=0

[sharifhadidi]

My Relationship with Energy + Waste Log

I will first start with my collage I have made in regards to my energy usage.

Looking at this collage I have made some items bigger and more prevalent than others in regards to how they effect my life and how I interact with them.

Power Plug:

I use these constantly, I am always plugging in my computer or charging something. My room has 3 different surge protectors to ensure that my stuff doesn’t burn up and all of them are used. This is probably my biggest energy usage. 

Coffee Iced/Hot:

Coffee is my next biggest energy object, I am constantly exhausted from lack of sleep and working on a variety of different projects all at different stages. I use coffee to make me a functioning member of society. I would say on average I have about 3 cups minimum of hot coffee and about 1 cold coffee that either I have made or bought.

Parfait/Breakfast Sandwich:

I eat either one of these every morning, because its true what they say breakfast is the most important meal of the day. I prefer going for parfaits over the breakfast sandwich most days because its much healthier.

Lightning Cable/Beats Headphones:

I use these once a day at night to charge my phone and headphones at night to give me a full days charge.

Toku:

My dog is a huge energy user for me, he gets walked 2/3 x per day. Usually for no less than an hour at a time, because I feel so bad that he is home alone most of the time cause of school.

Heater/AC:

My apartment constantly has one running, I personally dont use the one in my room because the excess heat from the other rooms keeps my room at a reasonable temperature if not too hot.

Waste Log

Friday/Saturday/Sunday-

I didnt produce any waste aside from toilet paper and water usage, I brought my food this day in reusable containers, I did waste water washing them but I feel like it is something that cant be helped. I also brought my thermos so that I could drink coffee out of a non disposable cup. I had some waste from my cooking which was just food waste that went into my compost bin. I find this to be the best strategy.

Monday-

Monday I ordered food and it came in a styrofoam container which is not biodegradable and I also got coffee in a plastic cup but that cup is actually recyclable which is nice for me. The solution to the styrofoam is that they would be that it should come in a more environmentally friendly container. I never really understood the use of styrofoam since we know the issues it has on the world and our health.

Tuesday-

I brought my own breakfast and lunch, I ate dinner out but at the restaurant so as not to have more waste. This is important because as a long time resident of SF I always felt like you are encouraged to eat at the establishments over carryout for these specific reasons. I hope one day New York will follow the path of California and seek to better the environment.

This assignment was actually pretty interesting for me, it made me really think about my choices, I tried to bring my own containers, I tried to repurpose a lot of the containers people were getting and just throwing away. It is something that when you see the waste created in just a single day it really makes you think about the worlds future.

[sharifhadidi]

Airline application

This is my airline ordering application that I created, it is something that I worked on trying to simplify the UI to make ordering as easy as possible. A big part of the goal was to separate the different components of the application. I wanted the user to be able to find their items in a quick and easy way, while also having the ease of finding the items in as fast a way as possible.

https://xd.adobe.com/view/5c9429ad-9c68-411d-a379-1480d3cfb707/

[sharifhadidi]

User testing 2

[sharifhadidi]

User tesing

[sharifhadidi]

Connectors

This week were were tasked to look at connectors, I took this in a literal and figurative manner. I believe connectors are anything and everything that brings things together.

I choose to look at traditional connectors, this came in the form of plugs and usbs as well as wifi and bluetooth connections. These are connectors for obvious reasons as they connect devices to power, internet, or just data transfers. These are the obvious answers to what a connector is. 

The less traditional connectors I looked at were trains, friends, food, and love. Over the weekend we had a potluck among our friends, some we haven't seen in a while or had time to catch up others we see and talk to daily. This is a connection that we hope to maintain as it brings people closer together. Food was the main connector I believe as it was the reason for all of us to get together. Another non-traditional connector was the train as we had to use the trains to connect to other trains to arrive at our destination(I have a very strong hatred for the MTA because of this connection strategy but thats is another story). The final connection is love, which you can see by the holding of hands in the collage, I choose to keep the faces of the people out because it is more than just them but a symbol of their connection to each other. It is something that I view as being a very strong connection between people.

Connector

This week I continued on my theme of hardware and cardboard. I created bluetooth headphones and a wifi router. These connect to the laptop and allow for internet connection and music streaming. They also work in unison with the laptop to add extra functionality. 

[sharifhadidi]

Modules plus Remaking the laptop

Since we had extra time this week due to the snow day, I decided to really look into the design of the laptop and thought about creating modules for the laptop itself. I first decided to address the hinge in order to stop it from falling back all the way. In order to accomplish this I added another layer to the laptops bottom and create a shelf for the screen layer to rest in.

I then went and added a actual print out of a screen and keyboard along with a responsive trackpad with a click function instead of just having it be a drawing of one.

I will admit it doesn’t look the greatest, but the shop was out of clear tape at the time and also needed something with a little greater hold than the standard roll tape. I added buttons underneath the trackpad and shaved off some of the cardboard as well.

I then began working on my modules, I added a usb port in order to allow for the modules I created to interact with the base. 

The first module I worked on was the mouse, which I created a wireless usb mouse that has a usb dongle.

I added 2 buttons to have clicking functionality, and covered it in tape because it felt better in the hand.

The second module I created was a USB external hard drive, the wire was provided from a phone cord I found on the junk shelf.

I really enjoyed this assignment and was very proud of what I came up with(as many in the class can attest to as I ran around the floor showing everyone). This was something that I felt not only worked but also looked nice. and was a real life example I found.

Another thing to add

 While perusing the net I came across this product for modular chocolate and thought it was just an interesting coincidence.

https://www.complements.com.au/

[sharifhadidi]

Counter iPhone App

My approach to making the counter application was to go for a simple solution to what could be a complex problem. My favorite applications have always been those that are extremely simple. I chose to go with an app that I would like to have on my phone if I was to create a counting application.

Here we have the counting up segment, it would add circles around the one main circle that symbolizes the first segment of the counter. It has two large buttons for up and down in case you accidentally added one to the counter you didn’t mean to add. There is also a tab section that allows you to switch between types.

Here is the count down, as you press the red button the circles would disappear. You have the same UI as the count up but there is just a simple difference between the colors.

The final screen I created was the dashboard that you would go to in order to switch between the different counters, I had a counter for dates that would look similar to the standard alarm application that you would have the wheel to select a date and the countdown would be the red screen.

Here are the versions of the app in the iphone mockup.