In the early spring I went to go see Casey Reas speak about his work He referenced Sol LeWitt’s instruction based art works as a source for his work. LeWitt would send parameters and instructions to galleries to create the art work themselves.In this method he would communicate complex drawings through precise instructions such as the following piece from the MoMA in 1978:

Three-part drawing: A six-inch (15 cm) grid covering the walls. 1st wall: On a red wall, blue lines from each corner to points on the grid, yellow lines from the center to points on the grid; 2nd wall: On a yellow wall, blue lines from each corner to points on the grid, red lines from the midpoint of each side to points on the grid; 3rd wall: On a blue wall, red lines from the midpoint of each side to points on the grid, yellow lines from the center to points on the grid. (The number of lines and their length are determined by the draftsmen, but each wall has an equal number of lines.) 

The idea of prescribing rules to programatic objects has stuck in my mind since Reas’ talk. I worked on this theme and built a system of circles that follow a few behaviors and executes a drawing. Though I like the look of this project as static images, I feel it also has a life as a screen based piece that follows the evolution of the drawings. The circles are first drawn to random points on the screen. They pick a destination, and then when they reach it they pick a new one and move there. If along the way they run into another circle iit is considered that they are mating. When the circles mate they add together each one’s colors. After a circle reaches a certain age and it has mated it can die. When a circle dies a new one is born and its predescessors trails are faded out a little bit at a time. At points during this progression you get different static images. Many times there are mass die outs, and births that disolve all trails and return the screen to black with individual circles.

There are places in our life that we all want to remember, whether it’s the spot we met our first love, the park we played in as children, or that great bottle of wine you had last week at that restaurant. Remmbr is a service based on the idea that remembering should be easy. Remmbr allows you to simply take a photo of the place that you’re trying to remember, upload it, and retrieve your memories by tag, title or location. Remmbr isn’t a replacement for flickr, picasa, etc, but works with those services to help you get to your memories faster. We always have our phones on us, and as such they are usually better for capturing the impromptu and casual moments of life than our large digital cameras. Remmbr plots these images on a map for you and provides an easy interface for you to retrieve them. Another important feature of Remmbr is the ability to share your memories.
As opposed to the share all method of most sites and of user-gen business review sites like Yelp, Remmbr reintroduces the the idea of meaningful recommendations. When you have a friend coming in from out of town you can send them places from your Remmbr map, giving them a personalized guide to your area. This method allows you to get and receive recommendations and suggestions from people you trust instead of strangers. Also the ease of sharing a map allows saves time on both ends. Remmbr will be available soon.

Claptime is a piece produced for the 2008 Big Screens show at the IAC building’s 120 foot video wall. Claptime was designed as a system that leveraged the width of the wall to divide the audience into performative groups. Utilizing simple gestures and actions such as clapping, snapping, singing and jumping, Claptime directed the audience into performing a rhythmic arrangement. The sound was fantastic and it was a lot of fun to participate and create a big piece together.

Big Screens – Claptime by Vikram Tank from Gizmodo on Vimeo

Gus are windchimes for the urban dweller. City living puts people with different backgrounds, preferences, and schedules within feet of each other. In this sort of environment noise is at an excess and silence at a premium. Traditional windchimes broadcast their sound to all around, and don’t allow a user to opt out of hearing them. In an urban environment putting windchimes outside your window will probably make you the most unpopular neighbor, and earn you some complaints. Gus solves that problem by changing the interaction of windchimes from broadcast to opt-in while maintaining their connection to the actual wind in your location. Gus has a silent wind sensing portion that you can place either outside or on your windowsill. To listen to Gus simply open up the widget on your computer and you are able to hear the chimes as they react to the wind right outside your window. Gus uses the wireless Xbee protocol to transmit wind information from the outdoor sensors to the computer where real recorded chime sounds are played in response to the wind. For more information on Gus please see the Gus website. Gus was created by myself and Amanda Bernsohn.

FlickrText is a text art generation program that processes texts fed to it into diagrammed sentences with images in place of the nouns and the verbs.  The images are pulled from Flickr using Flickr’s relevance search method.  By replacing some of the text with images, the viewer is left with a residual structure of the original text due to the articles, adverbs, and adjectives that pepper sentences.  However, there is a level of abstraction to the reading of the text as many portions of it are chains of images.
In making this project I was thinking of the relationships between words and pictures.  Having been trained as a photographer I have always gravitated away from text to images to convey ideas and thoughts. However, in constructing this program and seeing the final results I see that more often than not the text is required to elucidate the authors original meaning from the text.  One could say that this is entirely true to of any project of this nature.  However, in portions of the image the meanings remain clear.  I think that part of the reason for deviation in the image is the nature of my image-getting process. The images are chosen from flickr’s user-generated and user-tagged archive.  Since users tag their images and users are human an image of a cat can also have tags for cute, evil, fuzzy, furry, happy, lucky, killer, tabby, mouse, happiness.

Thus when I search for a word that image of a cat can appear as a result.  I enjoy these unexpected surprises when looking at the printed work and hope my viewer does too.  They were also part of the reason I chose to present the bulk of the work as a printed piece.  The persistence offered by a printed piece is something unavailable from a digital medium.

The part of the work that is digital deals with much shorter texts.  I have made a version of FlickrText that reads a Twitter feed and visualizes the last tweet. I think that this is an interesting way of displaying the short form messages transfered over Twitter.

For more and higher resolution images from FlickrText please visit the FlickrText blog.

Set in Stone is a pair of interactive, touch-sensitive, concrete interfaces for transmitting presence across long distances. In today’s world we have many options for communicating with others.  Sending an e-mail, making a phone call, or writing a letter all allow full ideas to be sent across to other people.  However, there is no way to transmit the incidental or intentional touches of life.  What about the pats on the back, the handshakes, ruffling someone’s hair, and holding hands.  Touch is a different way of experiencing someone.  When you put your hand up to a windowpane and I touch the other side it feels different.  But what if the two sides of the windowpane were separated by miles of distance, how would you know I was there. If you put your hand on one of the set in stone interface the other lights up. When I put my hand on the lit one, yours lights up and you know I’m there. We can be connected by touch anywhere in the world.  

Set in Stone is able to be used by two people, but can be extended out to encompass more people. What if two people that would never have any contact would be able to send each other their touch, say a child in Iraq and a child in Kansas. The possibilities are endless. 

Each panel is made up of LED’s, fiber optics and concrete. More information on the project as well as the process of making Set in Stone is documented at the Set in Stone blog. Set in Stone was created by myself and Ithai Benjamin.

TheNewVote.com is a location-based SMS polling system and place to post photographic proof of election day votes. The election process should be simpler and more transparent. This website allowed people to declare their voting intent as well as to prove their actual vote on election day. Every voter’s opinion should matter when it comes to the presidential election, and this site gives individuals the power to create a higher resolution representation of the electoral outcome.

Also, as vote tabulation should be efficient and error-free. The election result should not be subject to any chance of fraud or manipulation. Asking individuals to create photographic proof of their vote helps to keep the established voting system honest by adding a new user-generated layer of checks and balances.
You can see The New Vote at www.thenewvote.com . The New Vote was created by Che Wei Wang, Alex Abreu, and myself.