Better late than never… Here is the documentation from Eyal and I’s Spatial Media midterm, flora.
Monthly Archive for April, 2009
Rats ‘n’ Bedbugs is an on-screen interactive visualization of the rat and bedbug populations in New York City.
The interface consists of a map showing the concentration of rats and bedbugs at different focus levels: the entire city, the five boroughs, and the community districts.The focus changes by zooming in and out of the map, through simple mouse clicks on or off the area of interest. This zoom is accompanied by scattering or flocking of pests as the numbers get adjusted, creating a smooth yet disturbing interaction.
The idea for this project came to me after moving to the city and seeing rats all over the place, and reading that there are approximately 5 rats per person in New York City. This made me very uneasy and I felt that making a project about it would help desensitize me.
The bedbugs aspect of it came from my girlfriend, who is as freaked out about bedbugs as I am about rats.
There is plenty of data on this subject, most notably the NYC Health Rat Information Portal and the New York vs. Bed Bugs website. Since the numbers are in the millions, the amount of pests shown will be scaled according to the number of people living in the area of focus. For example, if 1 000 000 people live in Manhattan and 5 000 000 rats live in Manhattan, this could be represented as 100 human sprites vs. 500 rat sprites.
One more step done for Rats ‘n’ Bedbugs: http://hipstershit.com/
The final application will be up very soon…
We’ve got the visuals almost there, just need to play with the camera calibration and adjust the colours. The next and hardest part we need to tackle is the audio…
Here are some pics of the Zoeprojectoscope being built. All the pieces were laser cut and then assembled using acrylic glue. Everything fit surprisingly well together, and I added a layer of Teflon tape to pieces that required a tighter fit.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
There is still work to be done. I have to recut the lens case and also cut a bunch of stopper pieces to attach the gears and wheel to the shafts, which is something I completely forgot about.
A more thought-out proposal of my zoetrope/projector…
The Zoeprojectotrope is a hybrid between a projector and a zoetrope. It is a toy designed to teach kids the main concepts of animation. 
Each frame is a piece of acetate which is drawn on. A recession in the frame of the device can be used to position two frames on top of one another, to ensure that the movement between them is fluid. The acetate is then sandwiched between two clear pieces of acrylic and placed in the wheel, which holds slots for 12 frames. To animate the drawings, the user turns the crank, which makes the wheel turn, and places the frames in front of the optics in the right order. 
The optics at the front follow the same principle as an overhead projector. A light will shine through the frame, and the image will reflect off a mirror on the other side, get enlarged through the lens, and finally get displayed on the wall. 
The light will be powered using the energy generated by turning the crank. A system of gears attached to the crank will spin a motor at high speed, generating enough electricity to power a set of LEDs. A set of contact switched will be positioned around the wheel so that the light is only turned on when each frame is perfectly aligned with the optics. This will simulate the shutter from a real projector. 
The Zoeprojectotrope will be entirely made out of acrylic sheets. The sheets will be laser cut because of the complexity of the shapes and because of the high level of precision required for the gear system and the optics. The lens and the mirror in the optics will be made out of glass.
Here is the spring contraption Stella and I built for the Mechanisms assignment. The object is to get the LED into the cup by hammering the end of the stick down. The spring then pushes it back up, propelling the LED into the air.
PoopWatch is an enhanced sidewalk designed to monitor dog owners, and ensure they clean up after their pets. It tracks people walking their dogs on the sidewalk, and when the animal relieves itself, checks if the owner picks up the poop. If he fails to do so, the system notices automatically and proceeds with the following:
- PoopWatch will place a bright outline around the¬†dog poop, to ensure that any passers-by notice it and¬†don’t accidentally step in it.
- PoopWatch will track the dog on the rest of its walk and draw a path from the poop to the dog, so that it can be identified and its owner brought to justice.
PoopWatch is equipped with pressure and temperature sensors on the entire sidewalk area. As weight is applied, the system can identify whether the walker is a human or animal by detecting the number of pressure points following the path (two for a human, four for an animal). If an animal pauses and leaves something behind, the temperature sensors measure how warm the dropping is to identify it as poop or not. If it is recognized as poop, PoopWatch registers the animal as an offender and follows its footsteps.
The PoopWatch sidewalk consists of state-of-the-art magic asphalt which changes color when heat is applied to it. A network of heating pipes is embedded in the asphalt and controlled by a computer system which can independently address every square inch. This technology is used to draw the poop outline and the dog path once the offending animal has been flagged.
