People have always loved watching screens. The video screen has surged where people love this window onto a whole new world of possibility and opportunity. We are increasingly feeling this attraction with screens. Over the past decade we have seen the emergence of more and more screens with serious multimedia capabilities. Today, we use screens for informing, communicating, entertaining, and connecting. The following are ten of my favorite interactive video art projects that I believe make strong emotional connections with people using screens.

1. Potent Objects
Potent Objects playfully examines the way we ascribe emotion to inanimate technologies. The work parallels current research in ‘affective computing,’ in which the capability of sensing and conveying emotion is built into computing devices. (Work by Camille Utterback)

2. levelHead
levelHead uses a hand-held solid-plastic cube as its only interface. On-screen it appears each face of the cube contains a little room, each of which are logically connected by doors. (Work by Julian Oliver)

3. The Jitterbox
Change the tune and watch the beautiful tiny dancer shake and shimmy along with any song! But beware the talky talk radio, this dancer loves to boogie but hates chit chat! An interactive radio from the 1940’s! (Work by Gabe Barcia-Colombo)

4. Whirl
In Whirl memory and nostalgia is revealed as a warped phenomena. The viewer’s breath is mapped such that blowing a pinwheel controls the playback of both record player and video, warping nostalgic sound from a found record of old rhyming favorites and imagery of wildly physical play on turn of the century (19th to 20th) circle swing. (Work by Christa Erickson)

5. Visual Attract & Attack
27 touch screen adaptions of Han Hoogerbrugge’s web animation series NAILS presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Taipei. (Work by Han Hoogerbrugge)

6. Machinema
The animation creates an ecosystem of mechanical and natural elements coming into life on the screens with the spin of a big physical crank. The project explores the connections/tensions between digital and analog, between natural and industrial, revealing the living spirit in the machine and the mechanical cycles in nature. (Work by Adi Marom and Filippo Vanucci)

7. Experimental Devices for Performance
Experimental Devices for Performance are wearable and handheld devices used for media interaction in experimental performance. Being performer oriented, the devices make the connection between media and performer inseparable. The performer affects the media through the devices and the devices affect the performer. Together, they become the performance. (Work by Andrew Schneider)

8. Funky Forest
Funky Forest is an interactive ecosystem where children create trees with their body and then divert the water flowing from the waterfall to the trees to keep them alive. (Work by Theodore Watson)

9. The Taste of Daily Life
Presented at the National Palace Museum in Taiwan, in this video artwork the visitor can use their breathe to blow the interactive video to make it comes to life. (Work by Huang)

10. Cantique No. 3
A choreographer, dancer and performer, Marie Chouinard produced an entire series of works that originated with filmed choreography featuring faces, grimaces and voices. (Work by Marie Chouinard)

A collection of images that will help inspire the design of my thesis project at ITP. Gathered from a wide array of sources, some of the artists’ and designers’ works assembled into my thesis mood board include Han Hoogerbrugge, Rafaeal Rozendall, Morgan Guegan, paperad, Redman, Slick Rick, and Craig Robinson.

You can view each individual image from my mood board on my Flickr page, over here.

Presented at the ITP Winter Show 2009 and NIME 2009, Rusty Business is a video sequencer that produces electronically controlled cartoon antics using large inflatable hammers.

A database of slapstick comedy gags are executed when inflatable hammers hit push button switches. The interactions performed by the users handling of the hammer produces a unique visual and auditory experience onto the projected montage displays. Every hit from the inflatable hammer triggers a different, unexpected and shocking reaction from the character, conveying his struggles with work, sickness and modern day insanities.

Read more »

This week I performed my new interactive comedy project “Rusty Business” at the ITP New Interfaces for Musical Expression Concert 2009 in Brooklyn at Southpaw. My project is a video sequencer that produces electronically controlled cartoon antics when large inflatable hammers hit jumbo push button switches. My performance also featured a guest appearance by Elie Zananiri who played the role as my character’s boss.

Click here to view more photos from the show. (Courtesy of LEESEAN)

The web site I designed for the University of South Carolina Aiken’s online student magazine was recently launched. The site’s overall purpose is to provide a news resource for student’s studying at the University. My focus on their redesign was to create a more youthful and fun look to help students become more interested to engage in on campus social life, take a look.

The Joy of Smoking is a collection of humorous video clips about a smoker who will go to almost any lengths for a nicotine hit. This is the first prototype of my Headsprung video sculpture series that I am currently developing.

Read more »

This is a business card design that I will be using to help showcase my new portfolio web site that I am currently developing. The typeface that I chose to represent my name with is the Frutiger font. I used ITC Avante Garde Gothic Bold for the headline of the card, and Arial for the content. I expect my new web site to be completed and published by November.

For this week’s assignment in my Visual Communications class, each student was asked to design three expressive words considering guidelines in typography. In addition, each student was asked to create six examples of their name choosing font preferences with at least one example of serif, san serif, decorative and script.

Read more »

Is this guy really running for president? If he is, I don’t think this ad would help him get the votes he would need to win. Nevertheless, the design of the poster made me want to visit his web site. I think this advertisement is a clever way to get someone’s attention, but in the end of the day, I just don’t get what Tone Tank is trying to say.

Read more »

My direction for my first assignment in my Interactive Screens & Cinematic Objects class was to identify the different parts of my face in a non-literal sense. I wanted to break apart my face into a multitude of sections and highlight those areas that would typically go unnoticed in a realistic sketch. In a geographical map, it is it’s structure and design that orients the viewer’s understanding of a specific territory. Unpopular and small populated areas in geographic maps are invisible to the viewer. In this personal map, I wanted to highlight those areas on my face that I never draw my attention to.