ESC:Electronic Social Club

[ ESC ] salon + mixer*
Electronic Social Club: a network of NYC graduate students connected by the practice of creating social dialogue through projects in media, art and design.

Friday November 14 | 7-10 pm
Hunter College | 695 Park Avenue
Room HN 543 | Black Box

…..new media projects, video art, web-based projects, experimental, interactive, performance, media art, installations, sound projects and games…..

Like a social club, [ ESC ] is formed around a common interest, activity or location.  We bring together MFA students from across New York City to meet and showcase their graduate art work, and to form a common network around the theme of creating social dialogue through art and media.

Programme of events to follow.   Past participants include:  ShiftSpace (shiftspace.org), the ICED Game:  I Can End Deportation (icedgame.com), and projects from Hunter College, NYU ITP, Parsons MFADT, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn PIMA, and Brooklyn Polytech.

• My friend Drew Cogbill was one of three speakers at this event. Drew spoke about his thesis project called Pigeon which is an experimental phone-based social networking tool that allows people to send mass communications through land-lines and mobile phones.

Drew Cogbill

Video of his presentation is coming soon…

• Some other interesting installations I saw at the event included a piece done by an ITP student that combined sound and sensors.

Just playing with it to see how it work

ESC from Rabia Malik on Vimeo.

ESC from Rabia Malik on Vimeo.

Micmicking a DJ playing a music record to see how the sound changes.

Untitled from Rabia Malik on Vimeo.

One of my favorite projects is called Peek Poke Talk and its done by two ITP NYU students, Meng Li and Elim Cheng.

Its an interactive bench that triggers interventions between strangers in public space. (this project reminded me a lot of a project I did with my classmates in my Studio class last year called “The Awesome Chair”

A very interesting talk by Jan Chipchase

Jan Chipchase

Tiger.Blam. 5th November 2008 presentation at the Morgan Stanley Auditorium hosted by Frog Design & the Interaction Design Association at the NYC hosted by Robert Fabricant.

Jan currently conducts research for Nokia Design and runs user studies and develops new applications, services and products that, if done right will be used 3 to 15 years from now. He use to be a Principal Researcher in the Nokia Research Center, Tokyo. Now Jan specializes in taking teams of concept/industrial designers, psychologists, usability experts, sociologists, and ethnographers into the field and.  “The tough part of the job is in using the data to inform, inspire and affect how my colleagues think and what they do, and in turning research into core intellectual property that underpins the future business” (http://www.janchipchase.com/about).

Future Perfect is about the collision of people, society and technology, drawing on issues related to the design research that I conduct on behalf of my employer – Nokia. “Jan Chipchase“

Prettie and Aussim’s future co-workers

Since Prettie Reddy and Aussim Bhutt work at a call center I realized that they need more co-workers to make up an office full of call operators therefore I created a few more characters and asked some friends to draw what they might look like. Here’s what we came up with…

We used napkins and colorful markers to create the potential characters

Prettie Reddy (is a Dentist), Rick Shaw (cab driver), Para Salin (future political candidate), Ophelia Payne (Teacher based on SNL character called Debbie Downer), Doug Graves (works at a mortuary), Bud Wieser (Bartender), and Iona Stonehouse (Soccer Mom)

I got my inspiration from this site that has a ton more names with double meanings (http://www.bored.com/namehumor/)

As well as this Youtube video

Techno Textiles 2 by Marie O’Mahony

These are pictures I took when Marie O’Mahony presented her second book “Techno Textiles 2” at Parsons.

Events & Exhibitions

Techno Textiles 2 – lecture by Marie O’Mahony

The advent of new and advanced technologies has had a dramatic impact on the world of textiles. Its influence can be seen in every area from fashion and product design to art and architecture. Highly engineered fibers and fabrics are allowing new structures to be produced with enhanced performance characteristics. New surface treatments are transforming the appearance, aesthetic and performance of fabrics. Digital advances are changing both the appearance and viewpoint of textiles, while new developments in electronics have opened up whole new areas of interactive art and design. The outcome is that we are seeing not only textile artists and designers reassessing fabric, but product designers, engineers and architects have come to regard the material in a new light.

Marie O’Mahony is an independent textile and technology consultant based in London. Her clients range from NIKE to Arts Council England to Zaha M Hadid and Hussein Chalayan. She has curated numerous exhibitions, including The Fabric of Fashion for the British Council and her books include TechnoTextiles, SportsTech and Cyborg – The Man Machine. Her most recent book titled TechnoTextiles 2 (coauthor) was published by Thames and Hudson last year. During August 2006 she is a visiting lecturer at UNSW COFA conducting workshops on ‘Camouflage’. Her visit to UNSW is supported by the Ove Arup Foundation.

Enquiries: Liz Williamson, School of Design Studies COFA, tel 9385 0610 or email Liz.Williamson@unsw.edu.au
Where: COFA Lecture Theatre EG02, Corner Greens Road (Gate 2) and Oxford Streets, Paddington NSW.
http://www.dhub.org/articles/742

Precedents and my idea for a future prototype

Precedent

Below are some tools I can use to make my own simple robot.

Tools to make my own robot

Simple Robot

I learned a lot from the Techno Textiles book launch that happened at Parsons. Check out the book Techno Textiles 1 and 2 on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Techno-Textiles-Revolutionary-Fabrics-Fashion/dp/0500280967