I’ve always gravitated towards nature and ecology and plants most of all. Whether its ambling along the edge of wilderness in Colorado or just a romp through a botanical garden, I greatly enjoy the company of fresh, greenness.  Unfortunately, we don’t get much of that here in Brooklyn which is ok because there’s still plenty of interesting wildlife, detritus and epiphytes of other sorts. In many ways, this urban setting has become our new “natural” as we recognize that Nature is a human made construction.  Our physical landscape has inevitably begun to mimic our digital ecosystem somewhere along a superimposed horizon where they collide into a Blade Runner-esque scape. Timothy Morton’s, Ecology Without Nature, outlines this paradox where he proposes:

a ecological criticism must be divested of the bifurcation of nature and civilization, or the idea that nature exists as something that sustains civilization, but exists outside of society’s walls.

To have a properly ecological view, we must relinquish the idea of nature once and for all or in the words of Graham Harman, Nature is not natural and can never be naturalized. This notion is a fascinating new lens in which to view our environment. As the Earth’s ecosystems interweave with the modern built environment, into what geologists have begun calling the Anthropocene, we seem left with a new, post-natural topography lush and competing for space and resources in an invisible landscape of wifi networks, EM waves, artificial microclimates and junkspace pocket gardens.  Technology becomes the primary means of interfacing and interacting with our environments and co-inhabitants.

Living in an industrial zone, I was curious to fashion my own ambient poetics and dusted off my old reciepe for moss milkshake to “grow” some living graffiti aka moss graffiti. The results were favorable and since true mosses lack a vascular system or roots (they have rhizoids which do not abosrb water or nutrients but instead serve to anchor to a substrate), moss can be safely blended without harm to them. In fact, a moss milk shake (while it may sound tasty) is a special blend of moss, water, some beer for mild acidity and water retention gel to create a living paste that grows on walls or other hard surfaces. Taking inspiration from artists like Anna Garforth, [Space] Invader and even Knitta Please, I laser cut some stencils and off I went to reactivate urban space. Its up to others to decide if the results are a hybrid of urban gardening, arts activism or as the cops that stopped me struggled to accuse me of… vandalism.

Reimagining history and urban context through a scent-story tableau.

Haze State creates an imaginative environment that juxtaposes the past and present via a scent-story tableau. By creating a scent topography inspired from the Brooklyn (Bushwick) post-industrial landscape, this mock garden explores an often under-used sensory spectrum as creative medium.

Haze State as an installation involves distributing urban-inspired scents by instantly “atomizing” or nebulizing various hydrosols (water-based perfumes) in a contained headspace.  The headspace is an enclosed, translucent sphere that can emit and neutralize scents on command from a developed device called the Nebulizer Olfactory Simulation Emition system (NOSE) comprising a series solenoids, ultrasonic nebulizer devices and dc fans controlled via Arduino and sensors.

Haze State is intended to present an alternative way of imagining history and by association memory, a sense of place to evoke conversations that only scent can engage. Participants are invited to experience the installation through the headspace where a scent cartography (a mixture of hydrosols) activates a dusty memory, nostalgia or visceral sensation. Hydrosols are custom-distilled using a similar biological process to create perfumes and other water based scents.

Aroma Cartography

List of Hydrosols Custom from Bushwick (East Williamsburg Post-Industrial landscape):

• Mushroom
• Tofu
• Dandelion
• Tortilla
• Clam Chowder Soup
• Chicken Noodle Soup
• Pickled Cucumber
• discarded sock/mint/cigarette paper

Inspired by the thriving post-natural neighborhood of Bushwick/East Williamsburg,Haze State proposes a scent-sory tableau of Bushwick’s past (Bushwick from Dutch name Boswijck means “little town in the woods”) intersecting with a cartography narrative  of Bushwick’s present—the burgeoning factories/warehouses that crowds the industrial neighborhood. The headspace reflects both the green woods imaginary landscape while the presented artificial aroma inside the forest are a symbolic mix of food factories of the neighborhood.

An installation by Felisia Tandiono and Marko Manriquez.

www.catalogfelisia.com
www.markomanriquez.com
hazestate.tumblr.com/About

Press:

http://inhabitat.com/nyc/the-best-green-designs-from-the-nyu-itp-2011-spring-student-show/itp-show-haze-state-1/

http://core77.com/gallery/itp-spring-show-2011/57.asp

ITPWC is a phytoremediation device based on the Eco-Machine systems developed by Dr. John Todd* and research done by the ITPWC team on aquaponics systems. Built in the men’s bathroom on the ITP floor, our inspiration for this project was to create a system that made a positive impact on air quality while also improving the overall ambiance of the space.

Aquaponics is the combination of aquaculture and hydroponics. Aquaponic systems are designed to grow plants and fish symbiotically in one integrated system. The fish waste provides a food source for the growing plants and the plants provide a natural filter for the water that the fish live in.

A large scale aquaponic system build on the Eco-Machine paradigm has been designed to filter human-created wastes from water, so that water can be recycled for human usage. This system lives at the Omega Center in upstate New York. Two members of ITPWC team had an opportunity to visit Omega, and get a tour of this new inspirational creation.

To track the impact that this system had on the air quality in the men’s room, we installed sensors that measure changes in the level of methane and solvent vapors. These sensors were attached to an Arduino that uploaded average readings every five minutes to data feed onPachube.

Here is an overview of how the different components in this system work together to create a symbiotic ecosystem and to remediate the water:

1. Aquaculture: The fish living in this component excrete waste and ammonia into the water, which will act as fertilizer for the plants. Water is pumped up to the grow bed and then gravity does the rest to keep things moving.
2. Phytoremediation: These plants remove chemical vapors from the air, as well as help rid the water of pollutants. They absorb nutrients from the nitrate-rich water and produce oxygen at a high rate. Plants used include dresden, boston fern, golden pathos, english ivy, peace lily.
3. Aquaticremediation: Aquatic plant roots provide habitat for waste eating microbes. Filter feeders, like the clams in this system, help remove algae and other toxic particulates from the water. Plants used include penny worts, banana plant, freshwater plant, freshwater flat clams, and duckweed.
4. Bio-Filter: The bio-filter is an anaerobic environment (no oxygen) where micro-organisms and bacteria strip any excess ammonia, nitrates, nitrites and phosphorus that remain in the water. The mud used to inoculate the system comes from Prospect Park lake in Brooklyn.

I want to thank the ITP WC team for all the hard that they devoted in building this system. We all wore many hats on this project but I want to give credit where it is due. Macaulay took the lead on the physical design and production of this living system, while Adib became our resident aquaponic/eco-machine expert, and Marko led the way in creating the communications for to system.

Here are some pictures from the installation itself:

STEP 2: Building the Installation and Fixing the Code

During this past week we continued to make good progress on the ITP WC project. Our main objectives were to continue working on building the physical structure for the aquaponic installation and to fix issues with the sensors to ensure that we are able to get valid readings from the bathroom.

The Physical Build
After working on developing detailed plans for the bathroom installation, Adib, Marko and Macaulay set out to construct the structure for the aquaponic system. The final design leverages the large Poland Springs bottles that are common to the bathroom as the containers for the living system. To create an appropriate structure, Adib designed a set of clear plexi stands that will serve as displays for the repurposed bottles. Here are a few design sketches:

The Bathroom Layout – Overhead View

The Aquaponic System – Close-Up View

Now here are a few pictures of Adib, Marko and Macaulay working on building the installation earlier today.

Air Quality Sensors
On the air quality sensing front we continued to encounter some issues. For our Carbon Monoxide and Methane sensors to work properly we had to re-write the Arduino code. While for our Pachube feed to work continuously we had to upgrade our account to Pro level (luckily, for students the pro membership level is free).

Here is a brief overview of the changes that we incorporated into the code for the Methane and Carbon Monoxide sensors. Working with gas sensors is usually tough. One of the main reasons is that gas sensors need to run for several days before they are able to provide accurate readings (usually they need to run for 4 to 5 days). Since we set-up our sensors we had been encountering problems with the readings readings and the feed.

Based on information that I found out from conversations with Melissa Clarke last week I became aware that we needed to set-up our sensors differently. Carbon Monoxide and Methane sensors require that their heating element receive alternating amounts of voltage every 20 seconds. Furthermore, in order to get accurate readings it is crucial that the microprocessor capture data during a very small timeframe that lasts approximately 5 milliseconds.

This data was not clearly spelled out in the short datasheet that I received along with the sensors. It was only after finding the the detailed documentation online that I was able to accurately understand how to write the code. Here is a link to the code I wrote, available on github.

STEP 3: Local Sensing, Worldwide Sharing

Over the past week we have been making a lot of progress on our bathroom intervention project, ITP WC. Macaulay and Adib have been taking the lead on the physical design and planning for our installation, including the aquaponic system. They have completed some initial prototyping work and have begun to procure the materials for the final build. More updates to come on that front from the two of them.

Marko and I have been focusing our efforts on creating the circuits that feature the gas sensors, and writing the code to share the data using Pachube. I’m happy to report that we have come a long way. We have installed our two first sensors in the ITP men’s room and we have started to feed data to Pachube (feed 11193).

Our first step was to set up the sensors on a breadboard and hook them up to an Arduino with an Ethernet shield. We started with a sensor the captures Methane and Carbon Monoxide (TGS 3870), and a second one that captures solvent vapors (TGS 2600). For building the simple circuits we got some help from an instructable article, since the datasheets from Figaro left much to be desired. We also looked at some tutorials on the arduino site to get up and running with the ethernet shield.

Getting started on Pachube required a good bit of learning. We had to get up to speed onPachube’s API, which is not very complex but does require some time and effort. We used one of their tutorials as the basis for our code.

The last step was getting the sensors installed in the bathroom and tweaking the code to make sure we were getting reliable readings. The main change we incorporated into the code was to add functionality that takes several readings from the bathroom during a one minute period and averages those readings together uploading data to Pachube (which is done once a minute).

I was really happy to attend a talk with Marius Watz, one of my longtime idol’s, hero’s, persons of interest in the field of digital fabrication 2.0 or whatever we’re calling it now. Marius labels himself as an oldschool media artist (which I can related to not only because I’m getting older myself) but perhaps because I am not of the mindset that using the latest “cutting edge”[ack] technology makes oneself a new media artist. Hype fueled rants aside, “the future is already here its just not uniformly distributied”, as William Gibson proffers.  Mr Watz takes this a step further by graciously providing a link to some of the code he demoed during his ITP talk on one of his sites here. Also of interest are his sites mariuswatz.com, unlekker.net and generatorx.no

Parametric modeling is still an obscure term among anyone but design geeks and architects but give it 3-7 years and you will be seeing 3d printers and laser cutters and the like at your nearest Kinko’s(need to engrave happy birthday mom on a custom iPhone cover in 5 min? click. done). The term parametric modeling is somewhat redundant but essentially its modeling forms as a system of generative rules, controlled by parameters that describe distinct qualities of that form.

When I was a kid, the first thing that attracted me to art was the beauty of its minimal order, found in book of aesthetics and math such as Design and Logic. Now with rapid prototyping and CNC, I realize i can make what was once only possible in this long fabled cyberspace tangible. these parabolic bits extruded into physical space of mazes and sculpture splashed with the softness of color’s mood. I’ve been tinkering with some of Marius’s code and the next steps I’d like to see are in color gradations around the arc, camera nav using BoxD2 and further integration of ControlP5. The real trick is morphing a pretty object into a valid data visualization so the real trick is to how to import CSV data into radians.

Like most visual pieces, this one’s impact is confined to the scale of screen resolution. Further progressions will be of laser cut cardboard (freely available) to section, slice and stack together as recursive patterns on a more sculptural scale.  I want to break free of the confines computer arts been locked into the same way computer graphics where before more sophisiticated graphics cards. Data visualizations existing on many scales but personal, networked and reactive as  wearable fabrications rendered on a laser etched ring or jewelry or CNC milled as a color coded sculpture illuminating environmental, personal social media or other exogenous metrics.

Physical mock-ups coming as soon as I can get into the digifab shop. Until then, some inspiration.

http://workshop.evolutionzone.com/

http://forum.processing.org/topic/announcing-first-release-of-modelbuilder-library

http://code.arc.cmu.edu/

http://www.interactivefabrication.com/projects/

http://mwatz.tumblr.com/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/watz/

http://www.openscad.org/

Not only code is scav­enged with­out mercy, a whole range of ref­er­ence mate­r­ial on algo­rithms is scoured:

1. The über-reference Paul Bourke. Invalu­able for many geo­met­ric algo­rithms, espe­cially in HEC_IsoSurface.
2. Chris­ter Ericson’s Real-time Col­li­sion Detec­tion for many of the geo­met­ric datas­truc­tures and inter­sec­tion algo­rithms in wblut.geom.
3. Code pro­vided by Jon Squire served as the start­ing point for the basic pla­tonic solid cre­ators in wblut.hemesh.
4. Scloopy‘s ref­er­ence to a paper by Man­dal and Esan proved just the thing I needed for wblut.hemesh.modifiers.HEM_Wireframe.
5. A thou­sand page tome has added its bur­den to my desk: Geo­met­ric Tools for Com­puter Graph­ics by Philip Schnei­der and David Eberly. Its con­tents are increas­ingly imple­mented in He_Mesh’s geo­met­ric back­bone. If He_Mesh turns out to be sta­ble, this book deserves the praise. If not, it’s me that messed up somewhere…
6. David Marec was so gra­cious to pro­vide me with metic­u­lously com­piled ver­tex and con­nec­ti­tiv­ity data for a whole host of poly­he­dra. Not only was the data flaw­less, it was also almost directly usable. A rare for­tune indeed.

Data sculpture representing movement and communication using a cell phone.

Concept 1: Internet Rest Stop / Ambient Attention Tracker

Cultural Critic, Donna Haraway postulates that our bodies have given into the machine. This certainly seems to be the modern condition for many of us, either at work or leisure, as we sit hunched over a computer monitor for uninterrupted periods of time. Often, we are so transfixed in our internet life we forget to breath correctly (what is called a diaphragmatic breath), blink regularly,  or stretch our poor backs and wrists. Compounding to this ergonomic stress is the added stress of multitasking or what Linda Stone calls,  Continuous Partial Attention and Email Apnea.

My first tracking device, tentatively called the Internet Rest Stop / Ambient Attention Tracker (a catchier title is needed), is a way to signal a person to take a quick rest break from the computer. By tracking a person’s posture and blink rate via the webcam found on most modern computers, the Internet Rest Stop prompts the user to adhere to a version of the 20/20/20 rule or every 20 minutes focus the eyes on an object 20 feet (6 meters) away for 20 seconds. Research demonstrates that such a break reduces the risk of dry eye and eye strain, back problems and carpal tunnel syndrome. Tracking blink rate can also give insight into the fatigue of someone while on the computer (and possibly attention of what they are reading/working on). Could blink rate track attention span as it ebbs and flows throughout the day? Could daily recording of facial gestures contribute to recording emotion analysis?

There’s an old saying that goes, “if you let a conversation go long enough, eventual talk will turn to sex, death or poo”.  All of them are worthy topics of fantasy tracking however,  my next fantasy tracker investigates the last topic. I was inspired by mention of high tech Japanese toilets. I to0 had the opportunity to, ahem, test the facilities of advanced Japanese toiletry and appreciated the often overlooked area of improving this most necessary area of our lives.

Concept 2: Sanctorius Scatologic Scan™
Sanctorius Scotologic Scan (SSS) is the worlds first, consumer facing, comprehensive excrement and urine analysis tracking device. What if we could non-invasively track our bodily waste to analyze our dietary and nutritional needs? So much info of what we eat and drink is literally being flushed down the toilet. The average person urinates 7 times a day. That frequency is a perfect opportunity for built in tracking of bodily conditions. You wouldn’t even have to remember to do it – a perfect trinity of motivation, ability and triggers (FBM) if ever there was one. The Scatologic Scan gives a current snapshot of dietary state and offers recommendations to modify your consumption throughout the day. It can also alarm a user if they exceed a prescribed limit of a set paramater they wish to track (e.g. caloric intake, alcohol consumption, electrolytes, etc).

“We use numbers to optimize an assembly line. Why not use numbers on ourselves?”

Real-time data integrates both the algorithmic Anticipation of the Mind and a shared Interpretation of Nature into the human condition.  Will we become new beings augmented by an understanding of the present moment that is fed by an awareness of self-metrics? I am excited in the potential of self-tracking/self-quantization as a means of mitigating the gap between online self and physical self and how it extends to health and behaviors.  How can self-tracking afford us to see ourself more clearly  in terms of the tentions between wellness and our constant interfacing with technological devices clamoring for our attention?  How can we think about health in more integrative terms, not only metal or wholestic health as it relates to the body but the biological impacts of the Internet, deluge of social media effects, and the emotional stressors and physical ailments/ergonomics of staring at a computer screen more most of the day? Or how much (physical, digital, advertising/visual, noise, etc) pollution we are exposed to in a give day?

The health consumer will recognize the value of their personal data and will demand a way to participate or create systems that deliver their data back to them.  Foursquare understands this model but is no match for your cell phone provider, who already knows where you are at any given moment without checking in.  AT&T also happens to have access to the speed at which you walk, the number of times you check your Twitter, your burn rate on battery life, the ambient noise you’re surrounded by, and how many times you call your mother.  Efforts are now being mad to wrestle back control of this data with the likes of iYou [iyou.nu]. In the future, will the providers of your mobile connection will be the first filter that skims off the data warning everyone of your impending heart attack? How can a personal data logger like FitBit correlate with other user generated data (eg food/drink purchases from Credit/Debit cards) to monitor an correct proposed health goals? The next frontiers of self-quantization will aggregate the aggregators to sift patterns in the noise of our data.

Is the power of SQ to positively modify behavior due to a self selection component? (someone who is motivated to change a habit is more likely to turn to self-tracking as a tool)? We are unreliable self reporters subject to memory distortion, “extending to the old doctor’s adage of, “never trust the patient”. Hence, we need the objective perspective of a machine to give us insight to our bodies. Until you actually see the data, you may have no idea of the value of tracking it.

Self-tracking could also be seen as a grass-roots reaction to the terabytes of self-generated data corporations keep of our digital footprints but are reluctant to share. If I cannot gain easy access to my own detailled data that companies keep on me (without court order usually), perhaps its time to record it myself?  Ultimately, the appeal at Self-tracking seems to strike at something deeper than modifying a particular behavior or improving one’s health.  Even as a modern day tool inaccessible until now, Self-tracking fulfills a universal human need and Ancient Greek aphorism to “Know thyself”.

A general formula for self-tracking/self-quantization might be:

Hypothesis + (Track known behavior(s) X * Signal Feedback Y) / Specified Community DB = Aspired Health Goal(Modified Behavior)

The Cost Conundrum – Atul Gawande, New Yorker, June 2009

“Doctors order unnecessary tests just to protect themselves, he said. Everyone thought the lawyers here were worse than elsewhere.”

Anecdotally, I’ve found this to be true.  I recently had cataract surgery from a specialist and required not one but two referrals from a general practitioner that shrugged these were mere formality.  The GP and I had a pleasant conversation that had almost nothing to do with my condition, ordered a routine blood test and was on his way: He never once checked my eye. Healthcare as a service industry is paid to treat people that are sick but not to keep people from getting sick. So, can and how do we realign the metric for judging health care from monetizing illness to preventing illness? How do we focus on prevention and patient empowerment rather than, the across-the-board overuse of medicine, especially when more care can be worse for a patient?

Experiences self-tracking health:

I commute daily across the city via bicycle power. I love this mode of transportation despite some near misses with taxis, lack of bike lanes, etc.  Recently, I found this tracker for cyclists developed by ITP alum, Robert Carlsen, called MobileLogger, available on the App Store. The opensource logger was developed using javascript and tracks your speed, ambient sound (in db), time and distance and geolocation (among other metrics). What if this type of tracker could be augmented with gas sensors to track the amount of air pollution/Hertzian Space pollution we are tainted with during our commutes through the city? It would be interesting to do a side-by-side comparison between a bicycle commuter and subway commuter of the amount of pollution one is exposed to. Personally, my goal is to record my daily commutes and do an analysis of my ride with a data visualization porting the CSV logs into the Google Maps API. I also interested in correlations between frequency of riding and how it relates to mood and idea generation as a method of urban meditation. As open-source software, I want to make improvements to the log ON button as well as reminding a rider to log OFF the recorder (accelerometer time out after 5 min?) since there is a tendency to forget you are still tracking data.

In addition to tracking my urban bicycling (it occasionally clocks me at 34 mph!  I never knew), I also have begun keeping a nutrition diary and I occationally have used sleepcycle since I’m a big fan of naps. Also, I  keep a health care diary tracking my touch points with health care providers listing: date of touchpoint, who I speak to, subject of conversation, diagnosis number, and action items as well as any new industry vocabulary I deem necessary to successfully navigate the system. I just up for Nicholas Felton’s self-tracking site, Daytum.com too.

Personal Memorable Health Experience

After a brisk bike ride during my first semester at ITP, I experienced what I can only call an extremely itchy and somewhat blurry right eye. I casually attributed it to my allergies or perhaps a dirty contact lens. Over the course of a couple days, the problem slowly progressed to the point that I went to the Student Health Center.  As is the routine, they referred me to a retina specialist. Once there, after what I thought was a routine exam, they came back with a look you don’t want to see on a doctor’s face. The doctor told me I was diagnosised with advanced bilateral lattice degeneration resulting in a retinal detachment in my right eye.  Basically, half of my retinal wall had slowly peeled off and my vitrious humor (jelly in the center of the eye) was pushing underneath. And the same was about to happen to the other eye. So much for routine visit. They had to operate immediately if they were to save the eye but because I had eaten right before my appointment, they opted against the usual operation performed in a hospital under general sedation. Instead, they decided on an in-house treatment. They performed laser photocoagulation, cryotherapy and pneumatic retinopexy or in laymen’s terms: first they pulsed 600 bursts of laser (I counted) to solder the retina back on; then froze the eyeball; and finally stuck a needle in the eye and inserted a gas bubble for support. Unfortunately I was entirely awake when this is happened and under no anesthesia.

The procedure had a 70% success rate and I fell into that 30%. It didn’t work. But after two more operations (this time pleasantly sedated), they were able to reattach the retina. Although with a caveat, there was a 100% chance I would develop a cataract in my right eye but at least they would be able to replace it with an artificial lens after a year. Sometimes, in modern medicine, you have to break something in order to fix it. In the interim, I would still have to undergo a series of painful follow up laser treatments for a few months. And vision in my right eye didn’t return to normal(even after a retinopexy, vitrectomy and scleral buckle implanted). The cataract slowly grew to a class 4 which is the most dense classification for cataracts. Oddly enough, I got cused to it – one clear porthole and one smudged one.

This past August, the waiting was over! Early one morning I stepped into New York Eye and Ear with my cataract and walked out with an artificial lens and saw for the world for first time in almost 2 years with peripherial vision. So weird it was normal.

How can we physically represent our digital footprint of our online self?

How well does our interaction with social media allow us to reflect ourselves in a physical manifestation?

Naturally,  the algorithmic elegance of Jer Thorp and Marius Watz lends itself well enough as instructive inspirations.

Now its ok to play with your food!

The Cornell Creative Machines Lab has invented a 3-D printer that not only allows you to print food, but lets you create almost any design imaginable with your favorite ingredients. Working with experts from the French Culinary Institute, Cornell’s new technology may soon be available for chefs and home use, allowing enterprising cooks to customize new and interesting dishes with healthieringredients. We’ve seen a similar concept designed by a pair of students at MIT, but this ready made design takes things to a whole new level. Spaceship nuggets anyone?

What if eating greener and more sustainably meant printing your meals? Marcelo Coelho and Amit Zoran, a couple ingenious minds at MIT, have come up with a way to do just that. Hailed as ‘The Cornucopia’, this 3-D printer concept is a personal food factory that fuses the digital world with the realm of cooking by storing, precisely mixing, depositing, and cooking layers of ingredients with no waste.

Laser cut Moss map

[final proposal] ::

To develop a living sculpture that represents the fluctuating nature of real-time data.  The granularity of the data should map the resolution of the living pixels.

[background] ::

Data grows and dies. it is never static.  this property to be a fascinating attribute that many data artists incorporate into their representations. but what if data could actually be a living microcosm of what it represents?

Moving to an urban environment [new york city] from a bucolic one [boulder, colorado] i often feel removed from nature. too often, i find it so easy to become unattached, and removed in the hustle of city life. i believe that in such an intense cityscape it is crucial to inspire people to remediate and contemplate our relationship to the environment :: its impact on us, and ours on it.

[questions] ::

How much do we pollute? how much energy do we consume? where are the most polluted parts of nyc? what kinds of pollution are out there? what is the historical legacy of pollution? where are we heading?

We can talk about data sets and numbers; but what does this actually mean?

[the goal] ::

How are we affecting our environment? and how can this information be presented in a meaningful, and thought-provoking way?

[moss invaders] ::

Working on the moss invaders project of last year with kimi, we sought to change the way people in an urban landscape understand their relationship to plants.

for the living data project we propose to create a living map of new york city that represents the changing nature of its environment and our impact upon it.

[research and implementation] ::

Heather ackroyd and dan harvey are two british artists that have been working to create “photograss”. essentially by projecting high contrast images onto sod beds of grass they produce very detailed images by affecting the chlorophyll values of the grass.

thus, it is evident that refined detailing can be produced by controlling external factors [such as light, pH, moisture, soil conditions, etc.] on the development and growth of a plant.

[proposal] ::

To convert real-time data quantities into controls over plant behavior/growth [such as data as projected light mapped to a grass bed]. in order to create “organic pixels” a laser cut map of nyc will provide modularized beds for the plants to grow in and thus, provide us with more control over defining neighborhoods/regions.

Additionally, we plan on creating a slit scan in the code to create a time-lapse video of the plant’s development so the user can observe the history and evolution of the living data map.

Data would be represented by plant health, chlorophyll value [ie color], growth rate, height, texture, etc. thus, creating a 3-dimensional textured and constantly evolving map of nyc’s sustainability practices.

I believe the most intriguing part of this project is that the plant’s health is representative of our actual environment’s health. we as the developers of this project have no control over the condition of the plants; that is a decision left to society.

[next steps] ::

We are experimenting with creating the pixelated-map mold, developing a set-up to control ambient conditions so we can better manage the growth conditions of the plants, as well as exploring which types of plants are the most responsive to this project. additionally, finding the data set that is most appropriate.

Control test strips of moss – determine what elements to manipulate with the data: pH, light spectrum, moisture.

Data Sets sources:
MTA developer
NY data mining site
Universities Energy consumption

[Illustrator Live Trace Settings:]

• Preset: Technical Drawing
• Threshold: 255
• Blur: 0 px
• Max Stroke Weight: 0.1 px
• Min Stroke Length: 20 px
• Path Fitting: 0 px
• Minimum Area: 30 px
• Corner Angle: 2