I was thinking about how I wanted to rework my project when I had to watch a video on Philip Zimbardo’s theory of Past, Present, and Future-orientation for my Dexign for Future class. At the same time, I was researching art projects about memories and came across this Memory and Loss installation:

www.terirueb.net/old_www/trace/paper.html

Merging the two ideas together, I came up with the idea for a rethink of the memory box. I have carried my memory box to each of the 17 apartments I’ve had as an adult but I never look into it unless I’m moving. And then only for few minutes. The rememory box would allow you to interact with your memories on a regular basis.

password: rememory

Circles in Motion from Dan Russo on Vimeo.

In biology class we learn about the heart, how it pumps blood throughout the body, and how oxygen is inhaled through the lungs. When you lift you inhale and exhale to maximize movements, but why do you do this? How does one know they are training their body in a healthy way or when their muscles are fatigued (rather than based on feeling)?

Heart Monitor – To know what ones heart rate is we measure the pulse. Using an LED the change in color on the finger tells when blood is moving.

Electromyography (EMG) is used to determine muscle fatigue

“Fatigue is a phenomena that accompanies repeated muscular exertion. The ability of the muscle to produce force is reduced as fatigue occurs. Local muscle fatigue is manifested in electromyography (EMG) signals by a shift in the EMG power spectrum from high to low frequencies.” (www.sbir.gov/sbirsearch/detail/259138)

How can this information be simplified to a user and be understood in a different way outside of the realm of medicine? Should visualizations of the body be included?

Current Market

Mio Link

Heart Monitor with Bluetooth connectivity, acknowledges current training zone by color on the wristband. Images below is off of the Mio Website . It indicates the 5 heart rate zones that are tracked by the heart rate monitor.

www.mioglobal.com/Default.aspx

My Issues: The wristband shows a simple out put of color, but you have to remember what that means and how it is important to incorporate that into your workout, a feed back of why and how long would be helpful to explain what the training is doing. You know you body is at its max due to red, but how fatigued are your muscles compared to heart rate?

Components:

I am currently using the products below to extract data and understand it to the simplest of variables so create a component that outputs the information in a simplified, non-medical manner.

EMG Spikershield from Backyard Brains

backyardbrains.com/products/emgSpikershield

PulseSensor by PulseSensor

pulsesensor.myshopify.com/

password: teletickle

I have a new idea for my final project: a Tangible Command Line (working title)

The concept of the unix terminal is a difficult one to grasp if you haven’t grown up with it. My idea is simple: provide a tool for learning how to use the command line, by converting archaic black-on-white cryptic text to physical blocks, flags, and connections. There are a variety of tools out there that attempt to do the same thing, but nothing I could find that reaches into the physical world.

Some inspirational products:

Illucia

Illucia is a video game controller inspired by Moog and Buchla devices. It passes OSC commands via physical wire between programs.

Littlebits

Littlebits are small single-purpose electronic components that connect together with magnets to produce an easy-to-make circuit.

explainshell.com

A website that prompts the user for a complicated shell command, and returns it annotated with relevant manpage sections.

Example commands and concepts:
Pipes (|), Redirects (>/<), Flags (-), sudo, ls, cd, grep, ssh, vnc, make, python, nano, mv, cp, rm, chmod, mkdir, pwd

One of my main interests is working with interfaces for sound synthesis. Over the years I’ve been experimenting with a few different techniques to see how different interfaces inspire different styles of performance and how the interface affects the sound produced. Without having a clear goal, I’ve delved into circuit bending/ hardware hacking, computer-vision, touch screens and web/text based systems. Here are some of my findings:

Circuit Bending

Elvis box – Circuit Bent DS-1 Distortion

Circuit Bending provides a great introduction to incorrect electronics, the idea is that you use wires to randomly create connections within existing circuits (using only battery power, for safety) and explore the effect these connections have on the sound (or visual). I think this wires the brain in a great way because you expect failure, instead of total control you have only curiosity and luck. This got me thinking about how I was going to control these sounds. Why had I decided to use buttons, patch cables and knobs?

(more…)

Idea-
Create a data visualization of an everyday far away space phenomenon in physical reality.

Similar Projects that I found

LIGO
ART

Cosmic Gravitational waves are detected(data is acquired) and showcased through LEDs. What I like about this project is an unseen or invisible phenomenon is given a physical form.
Moon Creeper: Sublime Gadgets by Auger-Loizeau(2012)

Apollo 11 mission left giant reflectors on the surface of moon. Reflectors can be illuminate by telescope laser beams from earth. The reflected beam is measured to calculate speed of receding moon from earth(3.8 cm per year). Moon Creeper is a visualization of receding moon. What I find interesting in this project is that a subtle motion is chosen and represented as is, and not accelerated in the visualization.

The Asteroid Impact Probability Drive.

the asteroid impact probabilty drive from luckytwentythree on Vimeo.

The device shows potentially hazardous astroids rotating around earth and shows warnings when their orbit matches with that of earth. Device Highlights that our lives our result of giant probabilistic equation. There are so many things that can go wrong and yet we go on living our lives as if we are immortal.

Academia

This paper by Stéphanie Fleck and Gilles Simon defines augmented reality platform for young children to learn astronomy. Every market corresponds a planet in the solar system. The augmented objects react based on their position and distance with respect to each other, real time.