Experience: Exchange Place

I received my experience invitation from Jason Sigal back in October and had yet to go through with it. Today I decided it was finally time for action, so I took the F to the A out of Brooklyn and arrived blocks away from the World Trade Center PATH station, the first stop on the journey.

Jason provided a series of audio tracks to accompany different parts of the experience. I was impressed by the production quality and appreciated the minimalistic sound design he used combined with his own voice, giving me information and instructions.

I arrived at the PATH station but it was impossible not to stop for a moment to take in One World Trade Center. Because of its height it was literally impossible to capture the ground and the top of the building in a single frame. Jason's helpful narration assured me I was in the right place, and guided me into the station so that I could catch a PATH train to Exchange Place, in New Jersey just over the Hudson River.

At times Jason included sounds that he himself had recorded in the exact same location, and it was strange to hear recorded sounds that matched the environment I was in, but that did not match temporally. Also, his narration invoked imagery of a friendly futuristic robot, as did the minimal sound design I mentioned earlier.

There was a track meant to be listened to every place along the way, including in the PATH train, and on the escalator exiting the Exchange Place station.  Above the escalator there is an installation of neon lights by the artist Stephen Antonakos, which I found rather uninspiring.  I appreciated Jason's curation of this exhibit, but I felt that the lights did not do anything for the space; they seemed haphazardly arranged and lacked cohesiveness, mostly relying on the shock value of neon in a public space.

After exiting the PATH station, I was directed to the Katyń Memorial, a statue memorializing Katyń massacre of 1940 in which the Soviets murdered around 22,000 Polish prisoners. There were flowers on the steps of the monument, and I witnessed at least one person cross themselves as they paused to respect the victims.

Looking back over the Hudson River gave me an amazing view of downtown Manhattan. I may have put this experience off for far too long but I was glad that the day I chose was bright and crisp, though cold. It was interesting to compare One World Trade Center to the Empire State Building (seen in the second photo above).  The difference in distance makes it appear even smaller than it actually is compared to the newest addition to the city's skyline.

Jason provided me with a ticket for the NY Waterway ferry between Exchange Place and the World Financial Center ferry terminal. He also included music for the ride. I was instructed to look for the Statue of Liberty, which I found directly in the beam of the setting sun.  I also looked back at Exchange Place and noted how sparse the skyline looked in comparison to that of Manhattan.

The last stop was a visit to the Irish Hunger Memorial.  This may have been my favorite part of the trip, as it was a very unique architectural experience and something which I had never seen before. It's meant to raise awareness of the Great Irish Famine of 1845-1852 which killed millions due to starvation.  The last picture is an example of how unique this place is - you can frame a photo that appears to have been taken somewhere in the hills of Ireland, yet you are standing in the financial center of the world.

This experience was carefully crafted and I thank Jason for taking the time to put it all together. The short trip made an impression that will last much longer than the hour or so it took in reality. I was able to see new things, revisit old things, and all the while be personally guided by precise narration, intriguing insights, and a general feeling of positivity.

Experience: A free coffee, a stranger, and a decoration competition

The experience I designed is relatively simple, and it involves my favorite coffee joint, Everyman Espresso.  Here I am, outside:

My invitation consisted of a coffee cup, a free drink coupon (in the form of a buy 10, get 1 free card, completely filled out), and a note with instructions.

The note read like something like this:

1. Have a coffee on me (don't forget to tip!)
2. Collaborate with a stranger to decorate the coffee cup
3. Present the decorated cup to the barista(s) for judging, and encourage them to start an annual cup-decorating competition.

The idea was to see if I could affect change indirectly; that is, by getting someone to carry out my idea without me actually interacting with the people at the other end.  And of course, to get the person who received my invitation to leave ITP for awhile, have a delicious coffee, and interact with someone completely unknown to them.

Response: "The Machine Stops" by E. M. Forster

"The Machine Stops" is a short story by E. M. Forster, originally published in 1909, which describes a future in which humans no longer live on the surface of Earth; instead, they inhabit underground rooms which offer complete insulation from the natural environment. "Buttons and switches everywhere" are used to "summon" physical objects, control the artificial climate,  and communicate with other humans, making it unnecessary to ever leave one's room.  An entity called "the Machine" runs these systems, and, because humans depend so heavily on it for survival, the Machine is often regarded with divine fervency.

It's hard to imagine living in the world of "The Machine Stops," and yet it's relatively easy to analyze current technologies to predict similarly dystopian scenarios for our own future.  For some, personal computing and the ubiquity of mobile devices symbolizes a loss of human-to-human interaction unmediated by computers.  Others, like Google co-founder Sergey Brin, do recognize that these technologies can be "socially isolating" but work to reduce the effect.

The irony is that many current technologies designed to connect people also have the side effect of causing social isolation, perhaps due to the immense difficulty of creating artificial experiences that rival in-person interaction.

What, at a basic level, do you think is required in technologies that facilitate and/or simulate true human experiences?  Given our current communication and social technologies, are you confident that new technological paradigms will alleviate this problem of social isolation?

Fall 2013 courses

Applications (Nancy Hechinger)

This introductory class is designed to allow students to engage in a critical dialogue with leaders drawn from the artistic, non-profit and commercial sectors of the new media field, and to learn the value of collaborative projects by undertaking group presentations in response to issues raised by the guest speakers. Interactive media projects and approaches to the design of new media applications are presented weekly; students are thus exposed to both commercial as well as mission-driven applications by the actual designers and creators of these innovative and experimental projects. By way of this process, all first year students, for the first and only time in their ITP experience, are together in one room at one time, and as a community, encounter, and respond to, the challenges posed by the invited guests. The course at once provides an overview of current developments in this emerging field, and asks students to consider many questions about the state of the art. For example, with the new technologies and applications making their way into almost every phase of the economy and rooting themselves in our day to day lives, what can we learn from both the failures and successes? What are the impacts on our society? What is ubiquitous computing, embedded computing, physical computing? How is cyberspace merging with physical space? Class participation, group presentations, and a final paper are required.


Physical Computing (Tom Igoe)

This course expands the students' palette for physical interaction design with computational media. We look away from the limitations of the mouse, keyboard and monitor interface of today's computers, and start instead with the expressive capabilities of the human body. We consider uses of the computer for more than just information retrieval and processing, and at locations other than the home or the office. The platform for the class is a microcontroller, a single-chip computer that can fit in your hand. The core technical concepts include digital, analog and serial input and output. Core interaction design concepts include user observation, affordances, and converting physical action into digital information. Students have weekly lab exercises to build skills with the microcontroller and related tools, and longer assignments in which they apply the principles from weekly labs in creative applications. Both individual work and group work is required.


Materials and Building Strategies (Peter Menderson)

You’ve built a foam prototype. Your project idea is now out in the open sitting on a table where you and your teammates can look at it. It’s not quite what you thought it would be when you made your first rough sketch, there’s even something a little goofy about it, but then there’s also that interesting curve that you hadn’t envisioned. Your teammates have also noticed some things that you hadn’t thought of. You see where you can reshape the foam to make the prototype both look and work better. You’ve made your first step; you’ve moved your project forward. Removing barriers to creative problem solving and learning the steps for advancing a project are the dual purposes of this course. You’re asked to make things over and over during your time at ITP. This class helps you to break out of 2-d screen and keyboard thinking and take advantage of the discoveries that inevitably occur when you're thinking in 3-d by manipulating materials with your hands, observing the results, and refining successive iterations of your idea. From techniques for prototyping and making small objects to fabrication methods for kiosks, you’ll get hands-on experience with a variety of materials and methods. You have an idea for a wearable device? Mock it up with the sewing machine. You're thinking about a squeezable children’s toy with sensors? Make a mold and cast some sensors inside soft rubber. You want to build an installation? Make a foam core model of the space and get a valuable preview of your project installed. During the course you'll be introduced to building in a variety of materials. You’ll make objects of wood, foam, plastic, metal, clay, plaster, rubber, paper and fabric. You’ll move a project from sketch to prototype to presentation and learn to incorporate the lessons of the process into your final product. By taking notice of the unexpected your original concept will evolve, and amplified by those revelations it will surprise you and delight your audience.


Designing for Persuasion (Katherine Dillon)

In subtle and not-so-subtle ways technology is influencing our behavior – from buying more books on Amazon than we intended to, to helping us change bad personal habits to leveraging the voices of many– technology presents an opportunity to be an agent of change. This 2 pt course will explore how technology can be used to influence behavior. We will look at a number of behavioral theories including incentive–based design, gamification and social influence. We will review case studies on how these techniques have been used to effectively affect behavior. After researching theories on behavior motivation each student will identify a problem or issue that they hope to influence. Students will document the problem, develop a concept to influence the behavior associated with that problem and prototype (or build) their solution. They will test their solution and draw conclusions from the experiment. Projects can attempt to influence social change at a large, social scale or at a personal level. The unifying theme behind the projects will be that they intend to inspire positive change.


Visual Language (Katherine Dillon)

The goal of this course is to provide students who are new to the principles of visual design with the practical knowledge, critical skills and confidence to effectively express their ideas in a visually pleasing and effective way. Over the course of 7-weeks an overview of the many tools and techniques available to convey an idea, communicate a message and influence an experience will be presented, discussed and applied. Topics covered in the course include: typography, color, composition, branding, logo and information design. This class is intended for students who do not have formal graphic design or visual arts training but recognize the powerful impact of visual decisions in their work.