Dendritic Cu Crystalline Growth

The following video is a representation of data gather from the 10th floor lobby at Parsons the New School for Design. Copper dendrite growth occurs with the triggering of proximity sensors in respective areas of the laser cut floor plan.


Dendrites, Cu, Copper crystalline growths, responsive environments, systems theory, interactive interiors from Thai Le on Vimeo.

Artist Statement [1]

Artist Statement

When I was a young kid I knew that I would be different from most of my friends. I use to collect Popular Science magazines for their emerging technologies sections. I would then reference back several months to a year later to see what actually made it out in the market and question why others did not. The new products and gadgets shown gave me a sense of wonder and excitement of what the future might be like. More importantly it represented possibility.

Up until my last year in high school I spent much time drawing and learning the arts. I compromised my interests in college to pursue a more "practical" career path. With both practicality and art in mind I took the opportunity to work in the construction development industry. Although the field was practical and had ample amount of design, it did not fulfill my desire for experimentation, innovation and creative expression.

I kept a diary of conceptual products over the years. These products focused on interactivity, practical use, artistic form and experimentation. My designs draw inspiration from people like James Clar who creates new forms of visual communication through art. Philosopher Russell Bertrand, reminds me to think critically about how people may perceive my ideas. His analytical approach to perception has influenced me to deconstruct many of my ideas. Lighting designer Janne Kyttanen's work will influences all of my future ideas, as her products lead me to look at nature and sacred geometry in the early stages of conceptualizing. Nature has a 4 billion year old R&D department to draw endless inspiration from. Buckminster Fuller's holistic/visionary approach has become a recent inspiration to my way of thinking. Currently my concepts emphasize associative thinking and integration of multiple disciplines. I consider psychology, marketing, bio mimicry, programming, product design and social responsibility whenever possible.

My interest in philosophy and psychology feeds my curiosity to explore emerging technologies and new forms of communication. I believe that we are on the verge of another technological revolution in which interaction/interactivity will be a central theme. It is my goal to research, experiment and develop with the current design and technology tools to prepare for a future of convergence.

Dendrites on the 10th floor

[click image to enlarge]
With a little bit of luck I will be able to pull this one day data viz, responsive art piece off. Above is overview of my interface project. Visit www.armyofclerks.net to see my inspiration if you like!
Also if you are more interested look up Gordon Pask, author of "An Approach to Cybernetics." He pioneered this method back in the 1950's - its coming back like polka dots with a vengeance.

I wanted to create a physical data visualization piece that accounted not just for peoples presence in a space but the totality of their being in that space including their: thoughts, feelings, plans, emotions and interactions. The sum of all the things we do as humans can not simply be represented as a node on a graph. Our presence is much more complicated than any one graph can depict. Here I use growing dendrite structures to represent the tapestry that we create by interacting with a space.

Assignment 2

The first portrait is of my mom. She is very religious and devout. She has a good heart. The following portrait using a square shifts gradients according to the sound of a heartbeat. A sound clip was analyzed and mapped using processing and transformed in to gradients.

http://a.parsons.edu/~let439/interface/Final%20Heart%20Beat/heartbeat/applet/

The second is of my sister. I always go to her when I need advice because she
1. considers all sides
2. narrows down the choices
3. usually leaves me with 2 good choices

http://a.parsons.edu/~let439/interface/portrait2/applet/

The third is of my best friend Alan. He always calls people up now and then to play Texas Holdem or bet/play a game of football and he is retro style (so the low-fi works for this application). (press and hold down the mouse left key to play forward and right key to play backwards, built with processing).

http://a.parsons.edu/~let439/interface/interaction/final_interaction/applet/

Interface Video

This is my first real attempt at using AE.

I have so many interests that it would be too much for the scope of this assignment. I decided to look for the root of my passions and interest. I was surprised to realize that I have not put much thought into this before. Data visualization (as depicted by the info-graphic) is one of my current interest. Visualization has a lot to do with how we all interpret visual information physically and metaphorically. It has a lot to do with psychology and how the mind works to interpret/filter "sense-data", hence the overlay image of the psychology iconography. Russell Bertrand wrote a lot about sense-data and how we use it to rationalize our existence (the guy with fuzzy hair). The Dalai Lama is trying to reconcile science and spiritualism (The Universe in a Single Atom). Leibniz (calculus/best possible world theory) and Lao Tzu (Tao-breath of life) are two other philosphers who influence my thinking. I have internalized many of their ideas, which inspire my curiousity for Design, Technology and the world in general. The merging of their ideas creates a lens through which I interact with the world.

Thai

http://vimeo.com/1749505


Interface Portrait Video from Thai Le on Vimeo.

This is the blog I will be using to post up interface assignments. Attached above is my first assignment for the "Self-Portrait Interface Design."

Some sites that I check on a daily basis are -

www.ted.com
www.glumbert.com
http://en.red-dot.org





-Thai