Mixed Signals
Mixed Signals
Thesis project
Project Instructors: Tim Durfee
“Mixed signals” proposes a dynamic, interactive filter into an ambient, media ecology. With simple gestures, viewers can alter the populations – casts – of streaming media. Inspired by the Bechdel-Wallace test, which evaluates gender representation in media, it exposes the inequities through dynamic erasure, transformation, or emergence of movies, series, or news broadcasts. it aims to prompt viewers to reevaluate their viewing habits and the embedded gender inequality it seeks to expose.
LUNG #16800
GMDP-598-01.23SP_studio3
Eco-Imaginaries
Project Instructors: Tim Durfee & Mashinka Hakopian
In the scenario of urban life, plants usually exist around us in the capacity to green the living environment and improve air quality. When this invisible "contribution" becomes a habitual perception in our subconscious, we take the benefits from plants as granted. As insatiable demands gradually shatter our dreams of a "habitable planet," we ought to reconsider the relationship between humans and plants to explore a new coexistence model.
The daily oxygen demand of humans can be satisfied by the oxygen supply of 16,800 leaves, which you can visualize this as a mature oak tree allowing you to inhale fresh oxygen. Lung #16800 is a post-human urban communal installation, a giant artificial oxygen chrysalis.
As you poke your head into this microscopic ecosystem, you might realize that plants are not merely urban ornaments, but rather oxygen generator human relies on. By reading this hymn, humankind's arrogance of believing themselves as the "masters of the planet" begins to be shaken.
The Unnamed World
GMDP-599-01.23SP_studio4
Mount Wilson Welcome Center
Project Instructors: Sean Donahue & Ben Hooker
“The five colors make man's eyes blind, the five notes make his ears deaf, the five tastes injure his palate. ”
--- Lao Tzu
We used to name and classify the world based on our subjective understanding.
We name the artifacts because we created them. We likewise name nature's species because we decided to do so.
A systematic classification of things helps people develop a shared understanding of the world, which is necessary for further knowledge sharing and exchanging. Meanwhile, thousands of fixed notions also constrain the dimensions of how we perceive nature. They are like our default output, which was already set when we first learned the name of this plant. The things we missed are the complexity & diversity of this world and a more a more subtle perception we had. Only when people forget the inherent conceptions/names, they are just starting to recognize what is in front of them.
It's not a piece of moss, but island #011, weighing 14 grams.
It's not the lichen, but the tiny pioneer plant and a mysterious graffiti created with natural pigments.
It's not a stick of pine branch, but a broken feather fan someone lost.
You are in an unnamed world.
Project Breif
Based on the native species of Mount Wilson, this project deconstructs and assigns them with unnormal textures. By replacing the virtual species into the realistic setting, it places people in an unfamiliar scene, making it difficult to recognize what they are familiar with daily.
Once giving up fetching inherent names/concepts/categories from memory, people have the opportunity to focus on perceiving nature in a broader dimensional and sensory context, thus establishing a more intimate relationship with it. Moreover, the recognition reversal caused by an unanticipated outcome has a chance to stimulate people's perceptions, making them more plastic.
Project Process
#1 Research on the indigenous plants in Mount Wilson.
#2 Deconstruct and recreate the plants in blender in accordance with their characteristics.
#2 outputs
#2 outputs
#2 outputs
#3 Scene Setup, Lighting, Rendering & Compositing in Blender.
The unnamed world would be like...
01/ Skin pores
02/ May's hemlines
Now you can name the existence in front of you any way you prefer.
"Post-it notes" City
Dev Studio 3_ 22SP Media Production_Final Project
What do you expect your community to look like?
If you are given a paintbrush to portray the city, what might the lines, colors, shapes, forms, values, spaces, and textures be like?
Now, we invite you to participate in urban planning. Leave your opinions on these Post-it notes. No matter what it is, it will have the opportunity to be taken on board and influence future decisions.
In this video, I attempt to objectify myself as the city. People were granted permission to write down the symbolic meaning of each part of my body to make it more straightforward. The head symbolizes the government. The arms signify transportation facilities.
Via a form resembling public art, I intend to convey a complicated and subtle emotion that the inanimate city is like a lifeless painting; pick up your brush and leave your comments to let it be reborn. For sure, it's a challenging attempt for me.
Excerpts from The Video
Social Relationships in The Camera Perspective
GMDP 569_Studio2_22FA_"Everything As Input"
Sponsored by Meta Reality Labs_University Collab Program
Group Project_Yanyi Wang & Xiaomeng Wang
Stranger · Acquaintance · Friends · Intimates
How can we identify relationships between people through the camera? In this project, we respectively recreate scenarios that we usually encounter in our lives from the 1st and 3rd perspectives.
What you see on camera shows the relationship between someone and you. Or the relationship between them who are in front of your lens.
what would it be like?
Carmoji
Dev GradLab_IxD 101
Group project_Yanyi Wang Rongda Tao Xiaomeng Wang
"Road rage" refers to aggressive or angry behavior by the car driver. It can cause altercations, injuries, and crashes that result in injuries or even death, and aggressive driving has become a topic of concern over the past few decades.
One of the main reasons is the lack of communication with other drivers. For instance, some road rage happened because of driving in the wrong lane. The road rage drivers would yell obscenities to or honk their horns constantly. Suppose drivers could communicate with each other to convey their emotions, express their intentions, and even apologize for doing something wrong. In that case, it might help calm the emotions of road rage sufferers.
“From rage driving to peaceful driving,
all you need is a
CARMOJI"
Design Process
HMW Statement
Questionare
Interview
How do drivers feel about road rage?
Analysis
Sketch
Projector Design
A projector device capable of 270-degree surround projection enables drivers to display emoticons on three sides of the car window, which helps them express their current status.
App Prototype
We also designed an application, "CARMOJI," to work with the in-car projector. Drivers can select the emoji they would like to project through it. It features three modes, including automatic control, manual control, and voice control, to assist drivers in operating the app in various driving conditions.
User Senario
"TA-DA"
Dev Studio 4_Interactions_Final Project
The moment when I track down who once owned my personal items.
By designing a "gift trade" event named “TA-DA”, the event Initiators will randomly invite people they meet in public spaces to exchange personal items with them. This project intends to create a new communication channel to increase the possibility of communication between strangers.
Why we need a "TA-DA" ?
We are generally attracted to someone we have a lot in common, which may be analogous to the catalyst that push a relationship forward. It could be a common hobby, a YouTuber you're both obsessed with, or an elegant diner you "check-in" to every week, etc. Whether tangible or intangible, physical or digital, they are all reasonable opportunities to start new dialogues between you and them.
What if the "common" is a personal item that both of you possess, certainly, on different timelines? Does it intrigue you to explore further about this person?
Prototype
Gift Box
Select a gift blindly or openly.
Scan the QR code to check more details of your gift on the TA-DA app
Each gift comes with a unique ID card. By scanning the QR code on the backside, Participants can learn more story of that gift, track the "trading history" and even get in touch with the previous owner.
"TA-DA" Rules
First, decide what gift you would like to exchange with me.
Then tell me your reason or story for why you want to trade on this gift.
Field testing #1
Field testing #2
Field testing #3
Insights
from the field
"You think you know me well?"
Dev Studio Lab - 21FA Sec01_project1_"portrait"
The technique I used was 3D meshing to create my portrait by taking screenshots of the results of the 3D meshing and presenting different angles of me.
The camera, speaker, and guitar around the body represent my hobbies and passions. You will never have a comprehensive picture of me until you understand my passions, experiences, and inner world.
When you think you have a thorough understanding of me, you will realize that I am not a perfect person. The broken parts of my face, the twisted hands, and the amount of noise are all attempts to suggest that I am just a natural person with virtues and flaws.
Design Process
Map
Dev Studio Lab - 21FA Sec 01_project 2_"map"
The map is inspired by hieroglyphs, which is consist of two parts. The part on the left is the Chinese radical for "dog", which means "dog" in English and usually represents an animal. It is the smallest meaningful lexical item and is quite similar to the morpheme.
For instance, in Chinese characters, 猫 means cat, 狐 means fox, and 猪 means pig. The same radical gives the audience a clue to infer the meaning of the character.
In response to the hieroglyphic character, the right part was chosen to be presented with a dog graphic. I believe the visual effect of the combination of text and graphic is more straightforward and vibrant than using only one of them.
"狗"
A Chinese character that means dog in English.
Character
Disassembly
In Chinese characters,
猫 --- cat,
狐 --- fox,
猪 --- pig.
書
Dev Studio 2 - 21FA Sec 01_project_Texts
This project explores the possibility of changing the process of "experiencing" a text through the lens of design. Various ways of "dialogue" between the text and the audience unfolded before me from experimenting with different media, formats, and techniques.
The video presented is based on an article discussing the differences in type in Chinese graphic design. By creating a text-based response to the original article, I intend to provide a "dialogue" between the author's statement and my voice, that is, unlike Western typography, Chinese typographers consider the concept of calligraphy and the pictorial meaning of a character.
Collection of Iterations
City
Grad Lab (Dev) - 21FA Sec 01_City _Group Project
The part of the project I am in charge of is about exploring the relationship between historical landmarks and contemporary cities. If we assume that the city is a canvas, then history, present, and humans are the three primary colors.
The city provides the space or the opportunity to mix them together and support them to create more colors, such as more distinguished civilizations, great works of art, architecture and technology.
If we lose any of these, we lose a great deal of color and the possibility of creating a better future.
#1
#2
City of Humanism
City of the net
The scaffolding indicates that the city is always under construction and that city workers are working hard to transform our city from chaos to order.
City of artwork
The body of the person crossing the street consists of elements from various works of art, such as paintings, sculptures, literary works, and some unknown works that we may create in the future.
City of Humanism 2.0
The circle and the two semicircles in it represent social order and lawbreaking, respectively. The white figures represent law-abiding citizens, while the figures outside the circles represent lawbreakers.
The prominent and luminous blue figures build the outline of some classical sculptures. And all these figures have enough influence to occupy the center of the circle.
PARK LSL
Grad Lab (Dev) - 21FA Sec 02_Prototype
Video Prototype_Group Project
Yanyi Wang：narrative & filming
Rongda Tao：storyboard & actor
Xiaomeng Wang：postproduction & actress
"Cold and darkness fill the room, only a faint light is lit on what looks like an operating table. A young girl with a helmet on her head lay silently on the operating table, no breathing. Suddenly, the helmet light flashed, the girl opened her eyes and sat upright. The girl's eyes look straight ahead, no other action anymore. At that moment, two people came in wearing masks and face masks towards the girl. The people took out their instruments and began scanning the girl's body. They seemed to be looking for cells and muscle tissue in her body that could be activated. When they scanned the girl's elbow, the scanner suddenly lit up and made a sound, and the girl's elbow began to move."
Storyboard
Shooting process
Prototype of brain scanning helmet device
Shooting process
Shooting process
Interactive Experiential Prototype
Grad Lab (Dev) - 21FA Sec 02_Prototype
Calliagnosia Neurostat Programming Helmet
Prototype_LED device
Description
The "3rd eye helmet" is designed to be operated by a programmed system by injecting a programmable drug called “neurostat”.
Once the helmet is in place, there will be a body temperature input. The skin detector then receives the signal, triggers the LED turns on and flashes for a few seconds. In that case, the helmet is successfully activated and ready to present a world without glamour or ugliness in front of people's eyes.
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Diagram
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Sketch
part#1
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Video Presentation
To get as close as possible to the concept model, I chose to use polymer clay for this prototype, which has good malleability or gel-like properties. Since baking enhances its firmness, I put it in the oven to harden. What I didn't expect was that it shrunk a little due to the evaporation of water. Since the helmet was not large enough to be worn on an adult's head, it was not feasible to use skin sensors to detect body temperature as planned. Therefore, I temporarily utilized a distance sensor to demonstrate this prototype. For now, I believe the unwearable property is the most regretful defect of the helmet.