Tamara's Touch and Immersion Project

For the past year I have been volunteering at the Toronto General Hospital and it has given me a new perspective on medicine. Working in the visitor's waiting room I have gotten to know patients indirectly through their family members and other visiting contacts. In this project I attempt to shed a new light on the patient. Instead of focusing the medical procedure, I highlighted the person (their memories, their places of origin, their family and loved ones) lying on the operating table. My reason for focusing on this subject stems from the dehumanizing approach by medical professionals. It is very common for doctors to neglect the beliefs and unique ways of life in favor of solving a physiological symptom. The result being that patients miss out of the psychological and spiritual healing process. In my project I had participants perform an operation on a faceless patient. Using an adapted mouse, they explored the inner abdominal cavity. When they pushed a shutter release button that extended out from the interior, different backgrounds of the patient were revealed. My artistic aim is to lead the way in developing a more holistic medical practice. One that is more sensitive to the idiosyncratic needs of each patient.

Rola's Mouse Hack

Description:

This project represents the difficulty of taking big decisions in our lives and how each decision has the power of changing our paths. Each door symbolizes a choice. According to what a person chooses by trying to open the doors, it will start playing a different audio. The first door from the left will play a sound of ocean and birds, which reveal that the person will have a calm and a happy life. The middle door will represent a lost life full with fear. The last one shows that the person will live a mind gaming life full with gambling, which will lead to losing everything he/she has.

Technical Use:

The three buttons in a mouse were extended and attached to a switch in the end of each extended button, which was attached to a door handle.

Here is the link for the video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRraRf8jDwY

Mouse hack assignment by Nicole and Karen

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifTchOZ576Y

Mouse hack assignment
Handshakes are used when meeting another person, closing a deal, or congratulating someone. However, originally handshakes were used to prove a person does not have weapons when meeting another party. Today this practice is not prominent, but weapons and war affect adults and children everywhere in the world. Mahatma Gandhi said, “if we are to teach real peace in this world, and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with the children.” Unfortunately, at present millions of children involved in wars and violence.
In our project we have taken the idea of a handshake to symbolize war and peace in the lives of children in any country. We took two pairs of gloves, one pair of gloves with the black strip represents war and another pair with the white strip represents peace. We created a processing code that plays a nursery rhyme “ The Grand Old Duke of York” which is a nursery rhyme about the war.
When two users interact by putting on a pair of gloves with the white strips and shake hands, “The Grand Old Duke of York” nursery rhyme begins to play in an upbeat tune and children’s laughter in the background can be heard. When users put the gloves with the black strips and shake hands the same nursery rhyme begins to play but in a depressing manner and children’s screaming in the background can be heard.
The rhyme is used to show that children don’t understand war, whether they are in a country like Canada or in a war torn country .

Nancy Johnson & Shea Al-Khair's Mouse-hack project

This project was constructed through a mechanism where the mouse used to play a birthday musical video by pressing a birthday card attached to the hacked mouse, using processing code to turn the mouse to a switch. Beside celebrating message of the Beatles' song played in this appropriated video clip, there is another warning message that ended the video; a portend into the future of drinking and driving . During the critique; the project didn’t operate due to a malfunction of the mechanic connection between the mouse and the birthday card.

Oscar's (slowly documented) Digital Self Portrait

Here a physical representation of my inner person. Although it does not represent every part of me, it does present a major aspect of my personality; Nerddom. Crafted from playstation controllers, 3d glasses and a small speaker, this little guy embodies what i believe to be my nerd side. Its audio is a composition of many different sound clips from science fiction and fantasy tv and video games, which when heard by people like me will remind them of the things they love. My own voice has a small role, in the form of Chewbacca's trademark roar. This represents the part of me that loves quoting and imitating these movies and video games, and knowing that the people I am with understand exactly what I am talking to (either with pride or shame).

Kelvin and Ji's Mousehack

Alien-Wear

When thinking about a mouse, the first thing that came up was control. We took this aspect of control with something trending in our society. In this case, Aliens. We created a two-person instrument that controls a snake in scratch. We constructed a mechanism where the mouse speed could be tracked easily, and reattached the mouse buttons onto a helmet. Batteries we added as weight on top of the mouse to ensure smoother movement.

During the critique, the mouse buttons did not work and presentation mode screwed up the tracking of the mouse. The buttons the helmet are suppose to control the sounds so cymbals.

here are images of the device and a video in at the end.

The mouse with 2 batteries taped on as extra weights.

The building process of the shell and helmet.

The structure.

Finishing touches.

Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgFuENspO58

Phuong Diep - Audio & Object Self Portrait

Click on the link below to view my self portrait:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wsg7DFkS2LE

The objective of my self portrait was to demonstrate how every person - whether family, friend or stranger - has contributed to developing my identity. This is reflective of the saying, "the sum of our parts makes us whole".

Object -

I created a filing cabinet as a way to store the memory of each person/name. When sifting through the filing cabinet you can go through the names in alphabetical order. On each sheet, underneath each name, there is a short description/word/saying that reminds me of that person.

Audio -

For the audio portion of my portrait, I made a simple recording of myself listing all of these names.

Diane S & Jamie C's Touch & Immerse: PeepLe

Click HERE for our Documentation:

- Our concept brief

- Code

- Images

- Brainstorm notes

Click HERE for video footage & HERE

- Diane Stolte & Jamie Chirico

Mouse Hack - Everet the Zombie (Kayla&Oscar)

Our Zombie Game uses a mouse that has had the right click replaced with a reed switch inserted into the hand of a zombie which controls the graphics on screen. The graphics are that of a zombie walking towards a person and the object of the game is to keep the zombie from eating them. This is done by giving the zombie a brain which will kill it, however you are given a jar full of brains and only one contains a magnet which will click the mouse and kill the zombie.

Monica's Self Portrait

The main aspect of my self portrait is that I am always changing my mind, I am never consistent, and I will always continue to change. The audio was a combination of day and night sounds, I used the sound of crickets and birds chirping. The paintings are also the same scene reflected as day and night, and the sculpture of the horse was painted black and white so that when you walk around the sculpture, the white side would be seen with the day portion of the paintings, and the black side is seen with the night portion of the paintings.

Oscar Hazelaar's Paperless Algorithm

How to disengage from a boring conversation

Open your eyes as wide as you can

Do not take your eyes of the person you are trying to disengage from

Take a few long, exaggerated steps back towards the nearest exit

Stop

Tilt your head slightly to the left

Take quick, small steps back until you reach the nearest exit

While still looking at the person you wish to disengage from, reach back and open the exit

Slip through the door

If the door fully obscures you from view run as fast as you can, as far as you can

If the door does not fully obscure you, slowly slide to your right until you are fully obscured from view.

Once fully obscured from view run as fast as you can, as far as you can.

Guaranteed to work every time

Erin Sweeney's Self Portrait

Self portrait of myself represented as a turtle. Enjoy!

Erin Sweeney's Paperless Algorithm

1. Find a partner

2. Join hands w/ thumbs facing up

3. Say "1, 2, 3, 4 I declare a thumb war"

4. Begin War with thumbs

5. When you have captured your opponents thumb hold it down down until the count of 3

6. Determine winner

7. Best 2 outta 3

Shea's Audio & Object-Self-portrait

The "audio" part I have composed through several sound-layers of water lake, owl, and 2 levels of Sci-Fi and accompanied them by three of my voiceover saying repeatedly "it's so deep.. so deep.. deeper than you think..". The "underwater" blue screen is the visual background of the audio-work . The accompanied object is a glass jar with a stone lays on the bottom to create the depth feeling and emotion

As a self-portrait to me, this combination of the audio and object recalls unforgettable time of my adolescence when I was trying to represent myself as a rational teenager that discuss, debate, and doesn't agree with any kind of alien influence on mankind and civilization history; an argument went farther to discuss the water's role as an essential source and creator of our lives, and ancient civilizations, prior not only to our existence, but even gods!

audio and object

The name of the piece is Thought Bubble
The idea is that I always get distracted by a lot of things that would keep me away from working. So I created a thought bubble with colorful junk inside it ("thoughts"/ representation of the distractions). Originally it was suppose to vibrate using motors but the motor wasn't able to shake the bubble hard enough to shake the "thoughts" and it didn't work out as I hoped. So I decided it would be a shaker.




~audio~

Audio & Object Self Portrait ~ Chris Olsen

Self Portrait

For the project I bought a Munny and added LEDs and an internal + external speaker. Additionally I added the colouring, the colour choice was from personal preference as its contrast represents duality. The monolog is from an episode of Battlestar Galactica (2004), in which a Cylon (robot designed to look human) wishes to exist beyond his human-like body and surpass his limitations. He is frustrated with his existence.


-Chris Olsen

iMunny from Chris Olsen on Vimeo.