Fiona Daniels

Applications for Interactive technologies

My M5 bus trip

I receive this project and I think to myself, “Who wants to ride the bus for an hour, I have so many other things going on in my busy life.  Aside from keeping up with my classes at ITP, and my already long commute into the city from my home in Brooklyn, I tell myself that I’m just going to either skip the trip or stay on the bus for a half hour at most.  It is the weekend and the last thing I want to do is leave my home to go on some “silly” (as I described it) trip around this city I have seen a billion times.  I remember that the trains are always a mess on the weekend.  I then try to give myself an incentive for going on this bus route…shopping? Chinese food? Starbucks?  I figure I might as well get it over with…I have been in the house reading and reading and reading about programming.  I devise a plan to make my trip less lonesome.  My textbook, snacks, Ipod and cell phone for text messaging is a must. 

I’m at Houston and Laguardia, I see no bus and I start to get agitated.  While standing I remember that I walked down this very street during my apartment search period a month ago (which technically is still going on).  I am reminded of how frustrating and daunting the New York City apartment search has been and can be for others.  After about five minutes that feel like forever, here comes the m5 and I reluctantly board the bus.  As I walk to the back I find a seat right near the window and take out my pen and pad ready to take notes. About 10 minutes into the trip (and not having written anything of substance) I start to feel like this bus ride is exactly what I needed in my day.  I look out at all the other people walking briskly and I imagine that each one of those people have something important to do.  Whether it is the mother going to pick up her child from school or everyone trying to beat the daily rush home; everyone is in a rush to go somewhere, while I’m sitting on this bus taking a breather and watching things pass by (literally).  My mind starts to drift and I start thinking about all of the work that I have to do when this bus route is over. I think that I should take out my camera and start taking pictures every 5 minutes like I had planned with the intentions of making a stop motion video or something of that nature ( I had not decided yet.  However, I am enjoying my time on this bus.  This neighborhood is rather unfamiliar to me and I have lost track of the exact street that I am on.  Besides the fact that we already live in a city congested with all types of pollution, I see a group of people smoking talking to each other.  I wonder if they ever think about quitting or if they have children they smoke around.  We all complain about the city being so polluted yet many of us forget that pollution starts with an individual.  The bus stops and more passengers board the bus.  From where I am sitting my view of the front door is constricted and I hope that not many more people board the bus.  I think back to all of my long commutes during rush hour on the trains home to or from Brooklyn…the nose to nose commutes with other strangers, the delays and the need to get off the train as soon as possible.  Luckily for me, it is the weekend so the bus doesn’t become too congested.  However, I can’t help but notice the race that I always see on a daily basis.  We are at a light and the traffic at the intersection just starts to move.  I think of a race right after the gun goes off and think of all the people in their vehicles that have somewhere to go or a deadline to meet perhaps.  The catering vehicle might have a delivery to make by 4pm for a socialite gathering.  I continue to think about my own deadlines for schoolwork, a sense of panic hits me.

I realize that I do not have my Ipod playing.  I guess this is a first for me.  At this time I am usually heavily into my tunes, and thinking of which song I’m in the mood to hear next.  When I am on the train I use this device as a way to block out all of the distractions and nonsense around me.  The loud straphangers, beggars and crying children are drowned out when Alicia Keys starts to sing.  Somehow my ride sometimes becomes a little quicker, a little less hectic. Although I miss my music, (and the fact that I have found a place to sit) I am enjoying this ride but wonder will it end soon.  In a recent physical computing observation assignment, we documented the frequency of people using technology.  My Ipod usage reminds me of how dependent I am on my little gadgets.  I start to count the people that I pass using any type of device.  After about 22, I stop counting.  I notice a lot of cell phones (not surprising), some music listening devices and one person actually walking with their open laptop from one building to the next.  I think of him as a busy person that works in an office, maybe a big firm. I’m only about a half hour into my ride. I think back to our assignment paper and remember reading “1 1/2  hours” as the duration for this ride.  I am thinking of all these things I have to for my classes and then I notice that I am in a neighborhood where the social class seems to be a little higher than my drab, vandalized Brownsville area of Brooklyn.  Cozy restaurants, stores, and some banks are in their daily bustle as I pass by.  I think of how many banks have popped up within close vicinities of each other within the last couple of years.  I then think back to Brooklyn and how far apart banks are from each other.  I drift and start to think about a time when I needed money to attend one of my weekend parties and how hard it was to find my particular branch or ATM.  Like most New Yorkers, I am skeptical about using random ATMS.  I look for my phone to call my mother to tell her I am passing by her workplace on the bus, as I pick up the phone and continue to look out the window, a truck has stopped right next to my window and I am somewhat face to face with a truck driver.  This makes me laugh as we keep eye contact for a few seconds before I look away.  This makes me think of how the buildings in the city are structured, and how our sense of space is sometimes limited or not even there.  Though many inches from me, him being on the same eye level with me kind of made me slightly uncomfortable.  I think of how often this happens on the train when I am involuntarily standing very close to someone (nose to nose). Also, instead of being able to look outside of a window and see nature in all its glory, I see another man-made city distraction (the truck). Just as I look outside the window at ITP and see another building (how surprising is that).  As I stretch my neck to look up, I remember how beautiful I thought skyscrapers were when I first came to the United States, how amazing and unique each of them were for having a designated location in the city hovering over everything while the rest of us run around trying to keep up with the daily demands of life.  While I still admire them, my admiration is more architectural.  I have used the word “distracting” several times, as anything that draws our attention or focus away from nature can be deemed a distraction. 

  In my quest to establish myself as a career woman, I notice some very attractive cars.  I imagine that I am a senior flash developer at a huge company with my own personal parking space for my very classy, expensive and upscale car that has a child safety seat in the back.  I’m 24 years old and have a long way to go but also know that I have come a very long way.  I remember the Fiorello’s restaurant I passed and wonder if those people are making memories with their friends or how far they have come.  

Alright time to concentrate on this bus route.  My mind tends to drift sometimes. Change of scenery comes and goes, but nothing that really stands out or pops out at me, just comparisons made, memories brought back and goals re-established in my head. Oh and also that yellow cabs are everywhere.  Finally, I think we are approaching the George Washington Bridge.  I am a little relieved that more than half of my trip is over.  I get off the bus and look around.  The surrounding stores remind me of a particular block not too far away from my home in Brooklyn.  This route was a little significant of the changing environments in my own life.  My daily travel to ITP causes the people around me to vary at different times of the day.  When at ITP I am surrounded by different nations, different languages and mannerisms, while being surrounded by some of the “distractions” of our everyday life.   

Since I already enjoy photoshop, this assignment was very exciting and fun for me.  When given the assignment, my partner Jeehyun and I had no clue as to what subject topic to choose for our comic.  We first came up with this weird idea that had something to do with dogs.  We had the entire weekend to read Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics (which was the best and very informative).  After we figured out a story line, we were anxious to try some of the techniques discussed in the book.  We decided that we would do a day around the city, more specifically Times Square.  After finding several pictures of the area, we also took pictures of ourselves with the intentions of adding them into the pics that we found online.  We chose the Times Sq. idea because the book briefly talked about relating to your audience.  We therefore chose several well known areas in the city and incorporated it into our comic.  In photoshop we used many effects, filters and shapes (for the caption boxes).  Instead of keeping our pictures three-dimensional, we decided to mix it up; combining 3D with some 2D and using filters that imposed a draw or crayon-coloring effect.  We did each picture separately and then combined all picture segments on a blank canvas.  Combining and tweaking, the last step involved a lot of flattening of the pieces as we went along.  We found that it was sometimes a little tricky to move pieces without other pieces moving.  In a nutshell, this was a very fun project.  I Definitely also learned a few tricks about photoshop from my partner.  I had alot of fun.

“The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”

Walter Benjamin

Regardless of how limited man was in duplicating or mass producing works of art; the bottom line was that it was always possible.  The reading also goes on speaking about how production has evolved over time.   He also discusses how some forms of print foreshadowed other technological advances. Founding and stamping later turned into lithography and then photography and later on film.  

The duplication of arts has been argued to take away from the authenticity and tradition of the work.  This argument can also go in both directions when Benjamin discusses that copies of originals can end-up in places that would probably be impossible for the original to be stating that “above all, its enables the original to meet the beholder halfway.”   With that said, Benjamin also talks about “aura” referring to the awe of having been exposed to original and unique works of art; or the art work’s history, authenticity, exhibition value and rituals. I feel like even in duplication, a work of art can still be appreciated (unless of course its meaning changes over time) Duplicates of original art can be found in many places. It is this way that people of many generations come to be familiar with a piece and know its history.  However, Benjamin makes a good argument when he says that when the “historical testimony is affected”, the “authority of the object” is also affected.  This reminds me of storytelling and the very very repeated story of Christopher Columbus and his “discovery” of land that was already inhabited by people long before his arrival.  The point being that something or anything can be changed through the course of time or experience.  Duplication definitely can pose such a threat to original work in terms of changing their meaning.  Being a Marxist, Benjamin believed that through Communism, art can be brought to the masses and also have its meaning changed by adding politics to the meaning.  

In a nutshell Benjamin examines the real or true meaning of art at a time when it can be easily manipulated and distributed to the wide population.  All the worry that one might have about duplication of work, I can’t help but think that the meaning of a piece of art can be changed depending on the “beholder”  (as Benjamin calls them”).

Understanding Electricity

Electronics Lab

In this lab certain things started are still continuing to make a little more sense to me.  It was also much less stressful working without the Arduino board and having to do coding.  However, my biggest mistake during this lab was confusing the voltage regulator with another piece in my toolkit (a transistor….they looked exactly alike).  When I did the first step of the lab, the transistor that I accidentally put in the breadboard became extremely hot (even after only having plugged in the breadboard to power for a minute or two).  

The multimeter was the newest piece of equipment that we used in this lab.

The most annoying part of this lab was soldering the wires to the DC Power Jack.  However, after fixing any problems on my breadboard, I then went on to the fun part of measuring the voltage.  After measuring the voltage on the power and ground bus rows (which should be 5 volts or close to it), I got a reading of -4.96.   I then realized that I switched the wires while soldering them to the DC power jack, which would confuse me in the end.  This wasn’t hard to fix.

In the following steps of connecting an LED, a transistor and a switch and re-connecting to power, the switch turned the LED on and off.  This part of the lab, made me better understand how the flow of power with an LED, the resistor, ground and power worked (as simple as it is, this was something that confused me a little in previous labs.

Adding more pieces to the breadboard equation was ok.  When measuring the voltage with the potentiometer in place I was unsure of if i was doing anything right.    

I sometimes got readings and wasnt sure if they were right or not.

 As “easy” as this lab was supposed to be, I ran into some problems and was unsure of what I was doing at times.

On our observation, Carolina and I walked around the city and reached as far and 34th street and Broadway after we left ITP.  Overall, we saw many people using different types of electronic devices (some more than others).  Carolina took notes as I snapped pictures of people using ipod’s, cell phones, ATM machines, taxi debit machines, copying machines and so on.

Street Observation

6:26pm on W9th street- man walking holding his iphone and another using an ipod

6:28pm on W 9th – man wearing headphones

6:31pm woman using cell phones (hands)

6:32 pm- couple taking pictures (hands, eyes)

6:34pm- Woman robably text messaging (fingers)

6:35pm- Man using ATM (eyes, fingers)

6:37pm- 2 women in hair salon drying hair under a bonnet

woman using an ipod

6:39 pm- Woman paying a taxi with her debit card

6:40pm- Man using a parking meter (took him about 4 mins.)

6:43pm- Woman in nail salon drying her nails

6:50pm- We went into staples and saw a woman sending a fax (we got there while she was already in the process of sending…maybe took her more than 5 mins as she had a few pages to fax). A man was also in the process in the photocopying single pages.  We estimated he took about 10 mins or so.

6 Av, W24th street

6:54pm- woman taking a picture

7:00pm- 6ave/26th- We walked past an eyeglass retailer and saw a man measuring glasses some some type of device. (didnt take him long at all, about 3 mins)

7:03pm- 27-6av – People using computers in a cafe.

7:04pm- Woman using ATM

7:09pm- we passed my mother’s building where she works on West 32nd so I decided to give her a call…using my cell phone. We also pass a guy talking on the phone.

W 33rd/6av-

7:15 pm- We walked into a gaming store and saw multiple people playing the games in the store (Wii and ps3)

7:17pm- guy using blackberry and headphones

Devices such as earphones, talking on the phone require motor skills as hearing.  Using the phone, laptop , playing the games, faxing, photocopying or using a blackberry to text required the persons hand and vision.

This physical computing video documents the electronics lab in our physical computing class.  This lab was intended to introduce us to a few basic electronic principles by putting them into action.  At one minute and forty nine seconds, this video is short and to the point.




The second lab assignment was pretty straightforward.  However, in this assignment we used a potentiometer. Things in this lab started to make a little more sense to me. 

In the first step I connected the Arduino to the the Breadboard and wiring the breadboard didnt take a long time. After uploading the code from the Arduino software onto the board, everything ran smoothly…causing my LED to light up and dim as a result of turning the pot.  

In the “get creative” portion of the lab, it became a little harder when I had to incorporate a flex sensor into my project.  I decided that I was going to place the sensor into the belly of my stuffed animal.  (love doesn’t only have to be limited to humans=]  ).  The 4 Led’s would go into the eyes and 2 other holes displayed on the stuffed animal.  After pressing the belly of the animal, the eyes and other parts of the body would then light up meaning that the animal feels loved (cheesy I know)  I received alot of help with this project as it was not turning out the way it was intended to.  Aside from the Arduino and the Breadboard, I also used the force sensor, 4 LED’s, and (4) 10k resistors.  At first it was not lighting up at all.  After much fidgeting and fixing we managed to finally get all of the lights turned on. Only problem was that all the lights were on regardless of whether the sensor was being pressed or not.  My project seemed to be working backwards.  When I pressed the force sensor after having changed some values within the code, one of the lights (that were already on) would dim down and then turn back on.  I guess you can say this was a failed attempt at my original intended
project.