(Photo of my thesis – Immersive Emersion from BBC News)

Click here for the audio slideshow on BBC News.

Click here for the Huffington Post coverage of the ITP 2010 Spring Show.

These are the choice of categories for your reaction at the top of the article:

Breaking into day.

Immersive Emersion inflatable test w/ plastic

Originally uploaded by teknevision

Test w/ painter’s plastic sheet. Using 120mm, high CFM (100+) Delta Fan.

Just a reference for my thesis.

Immersive Emersion

Abstract

What Immersive Emersion is.

Keywords

Sensors, Inflatables, Perspective, Perception Shifts,

1. Introduction

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

2.  Background

Undergraduate studies

Jobs in marketing and advertising

Personal interests

3. Concept

An installation that only exists if at least one person is present within it.

4. Inspiration

Joshua Allen Harris: Subway grating inflatables.

James Turrell

Necker cube (aka paradoxical cube)

Surrealism

5. Other Artists

Anakin Koenig Airways

Chico MacMurtrie

Nicole Cohen

6.  Related Works

Encomium (undergrad thesis/installation)

Here and There

Zoetrope

7. Conclusion

8. References

Now that this is working properly, I have to try out higher (and unfortunately louder) CFM fans.

Controlling a PC Fan with Arduino from teknevision on Vimeo.

Artists are magical helpers. Evoking symbols and motifs that connect us to our deeper selves, they can help us along the heroic journey of our own lives. […]

The artist is meant to put the objects of this world together in such a way that through them you will experience that light, that radiance which is the light of our consciousness and which all things both hide and, when properly looked upon, reveal. The hero journey is one of the universal patterns through which that radiance shows brightly.

-from Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation by Joseph Campbell

A rough sketch of the inflatable installation idea. This is definitely NOT to scale.

Design Notes:

Installation
*Ripstop Nylon
*Vacuum Fans w/ Motor
*Leafblower
*Lighting w/ gel designs
*Hypersonic speakers
*Motion tracking(?)

Website:
*Ingredients/Components
*Origin of each.
*Modular?
*Which parts are easily re-purposeable?
*Energy intake?
*Energy output?
*Local materials?

I just downloaded Balsamiq Mockups to use for wireframing the website idea. I have OmniGraffle Pro and even though there are a bunch of stencils available for web wireframing, I find the mish-mash of different styles distracting. OmniGraffle may be useful for the installation idea.

I’ve been looking online for a website dedicated to some kind of DIY Sustainability and though I can find the term in random articles and blog posts, nothing yet is full on. I’m concerned that I’m possibly not using the right combo of search terms and that perhaps one or several exist, but are just not prominent via Google.

At this point, the idea is to have a reader/user submissions that go through a review process before being published.

Some ideas:

What makes this project sustainable?
Is it the energy it uses?
Is it the energy it generates?
Is it the materials?
In what way are the materials sustainable?
Where do the come from?
How will this break down after?

For the art installation (2nd project idea):

The concept of an installation that pops up only when there are viewers illustrates how the artwork only exists if there are people there to view and experience it.

It also reminds me of the philosophical idea of “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

I have to figure out how large and powerful the fan needs to be in order to blow up the inflatables. I’m thinking the “final prototype” of the forest will be somewhere between 4 & 5 feet high.

I’m wondering if the fan/fans can be turned on and off using a midi-controlled light dimmer. I will test something other than a light this week and hopefully there will be a fan of some sort on the floor I can use.

Also found the work of Chico Macmurtrie.

Sketch idea:

Person walks into room
Sound starts
Then video
Then inflatables.

I’ve been enduring a headache since early this evening and feel it more as I use the computer. I believe the headache is a result of considerable tension/achey-ness on my eyeballs – so I will make this very brief.

I’m currently looking at CMS (content management system) options for the website. I looked through a CMS matrix, but it only does initial comparisons by name, instead of having a tick-list of features.

So – I’m narrowing it to the three popular ones: Joomla, Drupal and WordPress.

The site will basically be composed of a combination of submissions that will be subject to an review process (similar to Make) but possibly have video embeds and/or several still images per submission.

For the installation idea, instead of several fans per pop-up, I was thinking that a routed pipe with a big fan on one end could work – similarly to a ventilation system.