Ah, the High Line, the perfect venue for a photo shoot in the middle of winter. The bright background lights. The dark foreground. The cool wind…

You know what? One would think that I would have learned my lesson after parading around in an open backed dress for my last photo shoot, but it seems that I truly am a glutton for pain. Tonight was in the mid to low 30s, Fahrenheit—practically balmy for New York, January standards. Yet, add a nice touch of wind chill and take away gloves, scarf, hat, and coat and you have yourself a photo shoot with pain to follow.

Yes, I stood outside for forty minutes holding still for long exposure shots. The freezing wasn’t the bad part. I really didn’t feel it at all. What I did feel was my blood flow as it returned to my hands when I finally reach warmth. It was excruciating. I feel sorry for the other clientele at the restaurant* that we retired to as I writhed in my chair, unsure what to do to ease the throbbing and sparks of pain inside my hands.

All the same, the long awaited photo shoot took place.  Ever since the winter show, I have been meaning to get some decent pictures of the life dress in it’s illuminated form. Unfortunately, due to some wiring problems and my desperate desire to GET IT OVER WITH ALREADY, I was only able to light up one series of lights. Still, it was my favorite series so, no complaints here.

I am tentatively planning another, indoor, shoot for next week. I would be interested in any suggestions for sites that would have the appropriate interior and won’t require excessive hoops to be jumped through in order to take the pictures. I may be featuring a larger “spaceship” pattern for the next run. Come to think of this, this may shape up to be a series on different popular patters from the game of life.

As with any outdoor photo shoot, we had plenty of onlookers.  While I tried to look as casual as possible when looking into the camera, I overheard plenty of comments acknowledging that the ensemble might not be the most seasonably appropriate.  Come this summer, I will be rocking a fully programmable dress in a climate that won’t kill me.

The glider taking off in the hall of blue-purple light.  The hallway was a beacon after so many shots in the dark.  Suddenly, enough light for a regular exposure.  Though, the angle gave the shoots a rather ominous look.  I rather like it, though.

In case you didn’t get it the first few times I said it.  This was a COLD night.  At times I was contorting poses in order to maintain any last vestige of warmth.  Don’t get me wrong, I like the wrapped look, but it was practical to both of my purposes.

*For those interested, the restaurant was Cola’s, on 8th Ave. The sole fillet was amazing, and the angel hair salmon was divine. Coupled with a nice glass of Chardonnay and the frozen hands were a blissfully distant memory.

Related posts:

1. Life Dress [Photo Shoot]
2. Life Dress [LED Choice]
3. Life Dress [aftershow wrap up]

This semester has been the semester of disappointment—both for me and my professors—as I presented half finished projects and weak excuses for my own shortcomings.  Of course grad school is hard. That is why one doesn’t flagrantly fill one’s schedule with work, projects, and responsibilities that are going to compromise one’s performance.  And yet, last semester was also a time of accomplishment for the same reason—be it the Stern Business Competition and our project (already in the semi-finals),  FashionCamp and the phenomenal people I worked with, Startup Weekend and the dedicated team Startup Matchup, or the Winter Show and my short lived flirtation with the press.  My compromises have lead to some surprisingly beneficial results.

Regardless I see all this aptly summarized in Jonathan Ystad’s picture of me presenting my progress on the Life Dress during the materials final.  Yes, a progress report at finals.  I only had two rows of the dress composed of the nine rows that I finally settled upon.  I suppose I am cursed with this project.  At least, with each iteration, I draw closer to completion.  We’ll see if I will ever be satisfied with the project.

Related posts:

1. Life Dress [Prototype]
2. Life Dress [documentation]
3. Life Dress [Matrix]

Now comes part two of my Processing documentation for Momentary: an algorithmic animation of a cherry tree, drawn in a pen line style.

After working on the mountains, it came time to work on other components of the scroll.  I started playing around with different tree sketches that others had written in Processing.  The one I finally chose to work with was a drawing by Luca Ongaro.  In his animation, every time the viewer clicked their mouse, a new tree would be drawn with branches and blossoms.  It was a rather static piece that only varied in the frame between clicks.

Since the animation for momentary was about dynamically drawn content, it was up to me to deconstruct the code and reformat it so that each line was drawn methodically and over time.  Since I was interested in simulating line strokes, I rewrote the code so that all the intersection locations were saved in an array and then the points that composed the branches were drawn, point by point, in continuous strokes, with the cherry blossoms being after thoughts that bloomed on the branches as soon as the were given life by the artist.

I have several versions of these stroke drawings, each surveying slightly different purposes.  The trees used in the final piece did not have the cherry blossoms.  I included this version since I put in the effort to allow for a growing item in the piece which was never fully realized in the final piece.  There is no point in leaving it to simply languish on my hard drive without ever being realized in the vast world.

Thus, I post a sample and the code for you to use as you will.  Attribution and a link back would not be unappreciated.

Related posts:

1. Painted Mountains
2. Big Screens
3. UFO

Today I thought I would do some makeup documentation, as promised in my earlier post on Momentary

My first, and possibly the only worthwhile, contribution to Momentary (Let’s face it, Eyal was the brains and the computational brawn of this project) was my algorithmically drawn mountains.  You can see them as a constant theme throughout Momentary.  They derive from an earlier little experiment on perlin noise that I did back in my desperate attempt to get into Shiffman’s Nature of Code class.  We can only be so lucky, I suppose.

This version includes a fade function so that the mountains fade out in a water color-like look.

You can run the applet and download the code on the mountains webpage. (For some reason it is rather finicky as a web applet. I swear, it’s fine when run from Processing)

simulating mountains painted with watercolor.

Related posts:

1. Cherry Blossoms
2. Big Screens
3. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature…but it has to go

It occurs to me that, in the hectic events of the past month, I have let a great deal of documentation fall to the side.  On December 4th, ITP students, faculty, and followers gathered in IAC’s loby to stare in wonder at the company’s 12o by 12 foot screen and conceptual animations designed by students in Dan Shiffman’s Big Screens class.  One of these animations was Momentary, an animation by Eyal Ohana and myself.

Momentary is a short animated interpretation of Japanese scroll art developed in Processing and Adobe AfterEffects. The piece explores the momentary nature of the present and how nothing lasts, including the natural elements that are dynamically drawn and fade away.  Eyal was the mastermind behind the work and the AfterEffects magition who stitched it all together.  How he made some of the pieces I will never know.

My own contribution, relatively limited in comparison to Eyal’s work, was writing algorithmic scripts in Processing that dynamically drew mountains and trees to then be incorporated into the piece.  I will be including sample code for the mountains and trees on our webpage: http://www.momentarymotion.info.

The event itself was fantastic.  It occured on my last day of work for NBC.  Thus, not only was I celebrating the conclusion of one of my classes, and the resulting accomplishments, I was also celebrating the end of my work at an event with free wine in the back.  In fact, what most amused me all night occured after I had made an announcement welcoming everyone to the show.  I walked up to the bar and asked the gentleman behind it to be a bit more generous with the pour.  He objected, “But you are preforming in a bit.”  To which, I happily replied, “It’s all automated, fill her up.”

Oh, it was a wonderful event.

Related posts:

1. Painted Mountains
2. Cherry Blossoms
3. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature…but it has to go

The Life Dress is a garment constructed of dragon skin silicone with leds embedded inside.  The dress is largely a conceptual experiment in constructing a dress our of unusual materials. I chose dragon skin for three reasons. [1] The dragon skin diffuses the light of the leds into a halo effect, [2] the dragon skin has an odd, pseudo organic feel, and [3] it is named dragon skin and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to tell certain geeky friends that I had a dress made of dragons skin.

The dragon skin is poured as tiles with an led embedded in each tile. The tiles are then linked together in a grid formation to construct what is, in effect, a platform for dynamic patterns, animations, and interactive displays.

The form of the dress is inspired by the grid layout used in running John Conway’s algorithm, the Game of Life. The algorithm is a simple set of rules that determined weather each cell in a grid is either alive (on) or dead (off). I was intrigued how, with a simple set of rules, the algorithm generated simple animations which I could visualize on a dress as a dynamic pattern. Thus, each tile on the dress represents a cell on the board so that the dress becomes a board that envelopes the wearer. The pattern is also easily reinterpreted as a cylindrical screen with three inch square pixels so that the dress can easily be repurposed for other other patterns and interactive displays.

After constructing the dress and experimenting with lighting, I made an additional and rather amusing discovery. I was aware that the the tiles were somewhat transparent, that serves my interest in diffusing the light. However, what I later discovered was that, when lit, the tiles obscured whatever was underneath so that an observer could only see vague shadows. Thus, depending on what tiles are on and what tiles are off, the Life Dress can be considered an exercise in public indecency.

I am, quite frankly, shocked by the reception of the dress. I had considered pulling the dress out of the show when I couldn’t wire all the tiles in time. But the night after the show’s first day, I received some very unexpected validation: a writeup in Gizmodo. Aside from being the best birthday present ever, the Gizmodo article also caught the attention of many attendees to the second day of the show. Several individuals came up to my dress and noted that they had read about it in Gizmodo the night before.  Better yet, the dress is now the top Google hit for “ITP Winter Show.”

The interest keeps snowballing, though it will probably wear out soon.  All the same, there are some things in the works now.  I have been approached by some other publications to submit work in collections for wearable technology.

At the after-party, I was glowing and it wasn’t only due to the vodka (and I wasn’t wearing the dress).

Close up of the Life dress on a model.

Coverage

Gizmodo
Talk to my shirt which seems to be getting a lot of activity.
Technovelgy.com
Switched
Empathic Design
blogadr

Related posts:

1. Life Dress [Prototype]
2. Life Dress [Proposal]
3. Life Dress [Mold v3]

I base this on the coverage by Gizomodo: a nice big picture at the top of the main page. Granted, the photography is a quick snap shot (too bad they didn’t ask for one of Jon’s amazing shots). I can’t really blame the disparaging comments below, given the quality of the photograph. Still, you can’t blame me for being slightly excited about the coverage.
I’m not sure if a dress composed of a few dozen dragon skin silicone tiles—each infused with an LED light—is the most comfortable or practical thing to wear, but it sure does create all kinds of possibilities.

I just might wear it tomorrow for the press run through in the early afternoon. This is some birthday present!

Related posts:

1. Life Dress [aftershow wrap up]
2. Life Dress [Mold v3]
3. Moiré Dress [Spring Show Edition]

The winter show is coming soon.  I’m taking it in stride–returning to my optimal work schedule: noon to 4am.  I haven’t been seeing Sean at all since I get home after he’s asleep and he leaves before I wake up.

Instead, I have been cutting and linking tiles and working on the wiring.  I thought I had resolved all of lighting issues last year, but I don’t seem to be so lucky.  So, I cut my losses and did a quick test shoot this evening with Jonathan Ystad.  He was fabulous, as usual.

You can check out the Life Dress on:

Winter Show

December 20, 2009 from 2:00 pm to 6:00 pm
December 21, 2009 from 5:00 pm to 9:00 pm
721 Broadway, 4th floor
New York. New York

Related posts:

1. Life Dress [Coming Soon!]
2. Life Dress [Photo Shoot]
3. Life Dress [documentation]

Full circuit with Arduino, Bluetooth, and the resistor heater. Ignore the Arduino Pro Mini board. That’s part of a transition I’m making…

My circuit is displayed above. The hardware is programmed in Arduino and uploaded to the Arduino Duemilanove. The Duemilanove’s TX and RX pins are connected to a BlueSMiRF Bluetooth module. Pin 7 is connected to an LED for debugging purposes (it blinks on the completion of every loop). Pin 8 is hooked up to a transistor to switch on and off the 9V heater circuit.

Processing Code

import hypermedia.video.*;
import processing.serial.*;

Serial myPort; // The serial port
OpenCV opencv; // Face detection

boolean firstContact; // true if this is the first exchange with the bluetooth
boolean isLooking; // true if face detection recognizes a face in the camera

PImage b; // image that is shown in the frame (preferably of the locket wearer)

void setup() {

size( 732, 543 ); // change according to the size of framed picture (b)

// setup face recognition
opencv = new OpenCV(this);
opencv.capture( width, height );
opencv.cascade( OpenCV.CASCADE_FRONTALFACE_ALT ); // load the FRONTALFACE description file

// List all the available serial ports
println(Serial.list());
// Last time I used this my bluetooth module was [6] on the list.
// change the number according to where your bluetooth module appears as
// don't forget to setup your bluetooth with system preferences before
// trying to find it with Processing
myPort = new Serial(this, Serial.list()[6], 9600);

firstContact = false;
isLooking = false;

// setup image of loved one
b = loadImage("grad.JPG");
image(b, 0, 0);
}

void draw() {
}

// check if someone is looking at the picture and respond
boolean checkIsLooking () {
isLooking = false;
opencv.read();

// detect anything ressembling a FRONTALFACE
Rectangle[] faces = opencv.detect();

// draw detected face area(s)
fill(255,0,0);
for( int i=0; i
isLooking = true;
rect(width-10, 0, 10, 10);
}
if( isLooking ) {
return true;
}
return false;
}

void serialEvent(Serial myPort) {
println("starting serial event");
// read the serial buffer:
String myString = myPort.readStringUntil('\n');
// if you got any bytes other than the linefeed:
if (myString != null) {
myString = trim(myString);
println( myString );

// if you haven't heard from the microncontroller yet, listen:
if (firstContact == false) {
if (myString.equals("hello")) {
myPort.clear(); // clear the serial port buffer
firstContact = true; // you've had first contact from the microcontroller
myPort.write('A'); // ask for more
}
}
// if you have heard from the microcontroller, proceed:
else {
// split the string at the commas
// and convert the sections into integers:
int sensors[] = int(split(myString, ','));

// print out the values you got:
for (int sensorNum = 0; sensorNum < sensors.length; sensorNum++) {
print("Sensor " + sensorNum + ": " + sensors[sensorNum] + "\t");
}
// add a linefeed after all the sensor values are printed:
println();
}
// if someone is looking, then true, if no one is looking then send false
// this is the section that tells the arduino whether to heat up or not.
if( checkIsLooking() ) {
myPort.write( 1 );
println( "You're looking" );
}
else {
myPort.write( 0 );
println( "You're NOT looking" );
}
}
}

Arduino Code

int ledPin = 7; // connects to LED for debugging
int transistorPin = 8; // controlls circuit of 9V battery and heater
// through a transistor

void setup()
{
pinMode( ledPin, OUTPUT );
pinMode( transistorPin, OUTPUT );
digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH);
digitalWrite(transistorPin, HIGH);
delay(1000);
digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW);
digitalWrite(transistorPin, LOW);

// start serial port at 9600 bps:
Serial.begin(9600);

establishContact();
}

void loop()
{
// flash ledPin for debugging purposes
digitalWrite(ledPin, HIGH);
delay(1000);
digitalWrite(ledPin, LOW);
delay(1000);

// check for message from Processing.
if (Serial.available() > 1) {
int inByte = Serial.read();

// if Processing sends a 1, that means the resistors should heat up
if( inByte == 1 ) {
digitalWrite( transistorPin, HIGH );
}
else {
digitalWrite( transistorPin, LOW );
}
// respond to Processing to get next value
Serial.println("A");
}
delay(10);
}

void establishContact() {
while (Serial.available() <= 0) {
Serial.println("hello"); // send a starting message
delay(300);
}
}


Reference

Resistor heater tutorial
Controlling high current loads with transistors tutorial

Resistors in parallel, hooked up to a 9 volt battery. The final output.

Related posts:

1. Connecting My Foot With My Sister’s Face
2. Power Glove
3. eGlove

Today, quite likely, has been my most efficient work day on this project. I bought two gallons of dragon skin. I completed the rest of the mold—cutting, prepping, and setting the remaining 28 tile spaces that were left. I hacked several clear LEDs to be diffused. Then, I poured 35 tiles. I think I will certainly have something to show, come final presentation on Tuesday.

Shopping

I always love to shop. But, usually when I hand over my credit card to make a $170 purchase, it is for a high quality coat. This wasn’t the case today when I trekked over to The Compleat Sculptor to buy dragon skin.

There are several things I like about dragon skin:

1. The name: really, who wouldn’t get a kick of casually dropping a comment about their dress of dragon skin?
2. The texture: it feels like skin
3. The diffusion: the dragon skin does quite a good job of diffusing light. So I can embed leds in it

I had a small pack of the two parts that one mixes to make dragon skin, but I was almost finished with it after only pouring around 20 small tiles. So, it was time to invest in a bulk order of silicone. I brought my card, a cart, and steal constitution—it can be galling to pay that much.

Shopping (machine)

With the dragon skin purchased, along with some more plastic materials at Plastic Land, I went to school and spent a few hours in the shop. I cut and sanded new plastic dividers for the mold and then drilled holes in each divider to stick the led leads into. This time, the holes are in the center of the divider so that the LED is placed in the middle.

After all the prepping, I glued all the dividers to my original main plexi mold where the original 7 were made. Thus, I can now cast 35 tiles in one go. Fourteen of them are the original thickness (a little less that an ¼ inch), another fourteen are slightly thicker (a little over ¼ an inch), and 7 are a half inch thick for parts of the dress that really need to keep their shape.

Sanding

There is poetry to this part, even through it is quite tedious. My original plan was to embed four surface-mount LEDs into each tile to help the light be diffused. However, the effect wasn’t quite to my liking. Thus, I decided to embed a single pronged LED into each square. It’s easier to do and actually has a better effect. However, to get proper diffusion, I need diffused LEDs. While I do not have the time to wait for a massive order of diffused white LEDs, I have a lot of clear white LEDs. I bought them a year ago to make my original game of life dress. Thus, I found myself sanding down my old LEDs to make my new game of life dress.

Pouring

This part of the process was far more troublesome than I would have expected. First I mixed and poured what was left of my original small bottles of dragon skin. Unfortunately, several of the tile partitions were only partially filled and most had only a small drizzle. So, I had to open up my new gallon containers of part A and part B. These are far to huge to just pour into a mixing bowl. I had to dip individual cups into each container and then pour them into the mixing bowl. The process was incredibly messy and time consuming as I tried to pour out all the parts.

Some of the silicone had hardened. So, as I tried to spread out the silicone evenly I found lumps of it forming in different parts. Hopefully it won’t completely ruin this batch.

Regardless, I am very pleased with today and feel confident that I will have definite progress or my final on Tuesday and a fully complete dress for the winter show on the 20th.

Next Step

Obviously, I’m under the gun here, but there are a few things that I prioritize completion of over some others:

1. I need to buy material for joining the tiles that will help the dress keep its shape. I hope to swing by the fashion district for this tomorrow.
2. I also need to get all the code set on my Arduino and have it running properly on leds.
3. I need to set up a pressure sensitive tile that will allow the wearer to reset the game.
4. Finally, I need to decide if I’m going to take the easy way out and plug the dress in for the show or determine a mobile means of powering the dress.

The pouring process is probably the most compelling part of making these tiles. I always have an audience as I first come close to the mold and gently start to tip out the dragon skin and the, as the silicone begins to ooze out, I stand up on a table so that it is stretched out between my height plus the height of the table.

Related posts:

1. Life Dress [Prototype]
2. Life Dress [Tiles]
3. Life Dress [Mold v2]