ITP Spacetime Poi Suggestion
November 6, 2018 Alizarin Zroob

Intro to Physical Computing Final Project Proposition: a Playful Performance Art Instrument Recap Following the class presentation of our midterm project Albino Bat, final tweaks to the code were made. A smooth but quick fade was assigned to the light-up wings, depending on the magnetic field rather than the facing (angle) of the stick. In practicality, this fine-tuning has turned the Albino Bat into a delightful interface. After a very short learning period, I figured out and got used to the precise hand gestures turning the wings on and off. I became so in tune with this cyborg extension of…

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ITP Final Project Proposition: Peace Bomb
November 6, 2018 Alizarin Zroob

If there’s something that the world is in need of, is some good news. Peace Bomb is an interactive experience aimed to cheer the world up with an explosion of positivity Background In my background lie almost unbearable amounts of terror. Being born just in time to see the miserable decay of world’s largest empire of all times, USSR, it was determined upon me to look for a brighter future in middle-east’s trendiest war zone, Israel. Religiously-biased education, racist government and mandatory army service failed to exterminate my inner peace. Taking the best from every life lesson, I’m excited for…

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ITP Nature Pong
November 4, 2018 Alizarin Zroob

For our ICM Madness challenge we were randomly assigned building a nature pong that beeps. What a wonderful randomized theme.   That’s what we came up with in only two hours of activity. Enjoy playing! Z and C keys to move the pigeon platform, right and left arrows to move the squirrel platform.   We were also randomly teamed into a great group: Maya, KC and me, Alizarin. We never worked together before and enjoyed the opportunity to collaborate with new folks.

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ITP Creativity
October 31, 2018 Alizarin Zroob

Creativity is the adaptation of the mind to reality’s ever-changing conditions. It allows you to find unexpected solutions to any problem you might encounter and it’s crucial for art, business and survival. Creativity is more than a human trait: it’s one of life’s innate features. Nonetheless it can be taught, learned and exercised. Here are my 2 cents on how to achieve greater creativity. Don’t wait for inspiration to strike The key to making something really creative, is making something. Do what you gotta do, then do some more. Try to do your best every time. If you succeed to…

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ITP Albino Bat
October 24, 2018 Alizarin Zroob

Albino bat light-up halloween costume / wearable photography gear Halloween season and pcomp midterms were a wonderful opportunity to lay my hands on a first, ambitious project in wearable electronics. The objective: to design more that just a spooky costume, but also a practical wearable electronic device, capable of capturing footage at halloween’s wildest parties.

    The inspiration: albino bat.             A rare, true freak of nature.    
My teammate for the project is Jacky Liu, whose affiliation to fine arts and…

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ITP A Good Night
October 17, 2018 Alizarin Zroob

Pcomp Lab 5 and ICM exercise at serial communication. Promoting health by making each night a good night. Intro The following lab is brought to you by two subjects that were on my mind in the past week. The first, is Building health into the OS. A delightfully radical idea brought to discussion at ITP by Lori Melichar & Steve Downs of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. They promote entrepreneurship that enhances the user’s health by changing their life-habits through their smart devices. That’s a noble goal I could see devoting my life to. At least the official work-hours of my…

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ITP Indie Moisture Monitor
October 10, 2018 Alizarin Zroob

An electronic plant communication device that’s also an eco-friendly fashionable bling Welcome to Lab 4, featuring a continuation and refining of my lab 3 project. In lab 3 I was clumsily trying to build a plant communication device for my tropical pots. Playing with a manufactured moisture sensor lead me to understand how unnecessary it is. Also, it was clearly designed by someone, or something, that doesn’t understand neither botanics nor aesthetics. All a moisture sensor does is lets us check if soil is moist enough by examining its conductivity. If there’s enough water in the soil, it’ll close the…

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ITP Destruction
October 9, 2018 Alizarin Zroob

At the 6th week of fall semester came the reminder of how harmful a simple mistake could be. Humans are so limited and fragile, so prone to mistakes and malfunctions. Machines are prone to a whole new array of mistakes and malfunctions of their own. And the most harmful of them all, is the combination of human and machine working in unison to wreak accidental havoc! Statistically, just think of all the ways the electric pulses can go wrong in the circuits between a microcontroller, a sensor, an output, our computer and an open-source program running on it?! Pff. Then…

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ITP We Built This City
October 3, 2018 Alizarin Zroob

On rock’n’roll, blood sweat and code! At the 4th class some of this javascript code starts make sense. Very little of it. The newfound understanding the potential interactions, movements and complex functions that javascript allows pushes me up and forward. In this example I’m singing a short code ode to industrialism:  Editor > The first version was a static city with a changing sky color. The ideal version will include a sky changing color and brightness, with buildings growing from the ground in different paces, creating the illusion of perspective. Perhaps also this playing in the background (considered by…

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ITP Plant monitor communication device
October 3, 2018 Alizarin Zroob

At the 3rd lab of physical computing, I finally acquired enough knowledge to harness technology in a way that’s meaningful to me and my little living friends. This lab’s objective is to create an electronic monitor for my beloved hand-painted pots of tropical plants. The method? Attaching a moisture sensor and an audiovisual output, so the plants can let me know when they’re dry and need watering. These are my baby plants, hand decorated, home-grown from seeds and bulbs. They’re like pets but better: while pets output noise and poop for me to clean, plants output oxygen for me to…

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