Yen-Ting Cho 2010

Yen-Ting Cho

[email protected]

TAIWAN

Interaction Design

Navigating Broadacre City

WHO Cares! Mobile Information UnitiroofOther Works

AnimationKapsis The Life of a Fly

ArchitectureAlgorithmic Architecture Village MigrationSwinging at Sea

Image

Cho VS Yen-Ting

Purple WaltzHaving ButterflyCho

Love Tasi Yun TseOther Works

EssayDigital MemoryArt ProcessingHermaphroditism

Photography

Digital Image

Drawing

‘09‘09‘09‘08‘10

‘09‘08

‘07‘05‘02

‘08

‘06‘06‘03

‘07‘05‘07

‘08‘07‘03

Interaction Design

NAVIGATING BROADACRE CITY

The concept was to allow visitors to move their body and navigate

through Broadacre City, as if they were looking down the city from

the top of a mountain. There were two layers of interaction. The first

was a white dot. Visitors could see the landscape through the dot,

which served as a kind of telescope. The second layer was Broadacre

City itself. I connected all the photos to create a large landscape of the

city. A projector on the ceiling projected the strip of photo and the dot

on a painted dark-gray wall; a webcam was attached next to the project-

ing lens, which detected the visitors’ movement from above .

This project was designed to present the plan of “Broadacre City” in the

exhibition, Frank Lloyd Wright: From Within Outward in Guggenheim

Museum, New York. Since the original model by Frank Lloyd Wright was

too big to be exhibited in the museum, the curators decided to use

photos of the model. Originally, they simply planned to make a slide

show and project it on the wall. In the end, I designed an installation

to show these photos in an interactive way.

Frank Lloyd Wright: From Within Outward,” Guggenheim Museum, New York. May 2009

In order to make the dot move smoothly, I assigned several attributes to it. First, if visitors

moved left and right, the dot would follow them. When visitors approach the projection,

the dot came down and its size shrank to focus on a smaller area, as the projection was

then above visitors’ eyeing level. Also, if visitors create a larger amount of movement,

the dot would bump more violently. I assign all these movements on a single dot to make

it look alive.

As for the second layer, the large landscape of Broadacre City, I created a loop that helped

people navigate through the big landscape in an orderly way. Three different motions were

assigned to the strip of photo: moving right or left, scaling up or down, and acceleration.

Also, I assigned different counters relatively onto each motion. In other words, each of the

motions had different frequency. Therefore, even when the photo moved to the same

position, a different portion of the landscape will appear in the projection. As a result, the

visitor would not feel that information was repeated.

Ping Pong in Mobile Information Unit

Mobile Information Unit (MIU) is a mobile information unit, which is a trailer that can move around cities. It is a student project initialed in Professor Martin Bechthold's class. The MIU consists of four optical panels and each of them has a projector attached, which can project image onto a bundle of fiber optics, the image will later then go through the fiber optics and be shown onto the outside panels. There are also touch screens installed inside the MIU. Unlike other projects, the MIU provides different physical space because the MIU has a skin, which creates interior and outer space. Therefore, my goal of this project is to connect these two spaces with virtual layers.

I planned to create a ping pong game on the MIU. I used an external video card to connectand line up four video outputs. The middle two video outputs are the two projectors of the outside panels and touch screens are located at both end of this chain. Therefore, a ball from one end to the other end goes through touch screen A, projector A, projector B, and then touch screen B.

GSD Open House. April 2009

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ke54x_MoYu0

GSD Open House, Nov 2008

GSD Open House, Apr 2009

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZsKB3PAjdc

Interaction design:

Yen-Ting Cho

MIU design:

Jaime Hernandez, Russ Gould, Bao Wei,

Rachel Vroman, Justin Lavallee,

Dido Tsigaridi, Stephen Hickey,

Yen-Ting Cho, Eli Allen.

iroof

It's a roof system that detects the indoor light-

ing intensity. The roof would response to the intensity of lighting in each single space and change its position to fulfill the variety of in-

dividuals' needs with various combinations of the layers. We started from single feedback system and combined eight single systems al-together vertically or horizontally to create a

multi-feedback system.

Case 2

o

Case 1

o x

Collaboration with

Huiying Ke, Matan Mayer, Rohit Manudhane, stephen schaum

WHO Cares !Who Cares(?), Second InternationalConference on Critical Digital,Harvard. April 2009

We used a face detecting system. Once there was a face in the detecting area, the system would track it. Since we want the captured faces to be shown larger than a certain size on the poster, people need to approach the webcam at certain, close distance in order to have their photos taken by the webcam. In other words, two conditions need to be met in order for a photo be taken.

Sohin Huang and I completed this project for the Critical Digital Conference Second. Since the title of the conference was ”Who Cares(?),” we decided to emphasize "WHO”cares. Therefore, we designed an installation with which the participants of the conference could take photos of themselves and their photos were repeatedly projected on to a customized poster through the conference.

Video Click: www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KjvR9CilS4

2. De-construction

I proposed to locate the MIU between

Holyoke Center and a pedestrian cross-

ing, and project a virtual façade from

MIU onto the façade of Holyoke Center.

While people cross the road, the anima-

tion would interact with people walking

on the crossing. For example, if these

people only have a few seconds left to

cross, the virtual façade will fall down.

With the touch screen installed on MIU,

visitors can interact with the visualiza-

tion displayed on MIU and the facade of

Holyoke Center.

This test would be done in a corridor. Imagine people rushing through a channel, maybe in an

airport; if they want to know the time, they just need to turn their head and a clock appears and follows the people, alleviating the need to stop to check the time. On the other hand, it is possible that there are places at which we

wouldn't always desire to have a clock bearing

down upon us. The design would require that

when we wanted or we needed it, we call it out.

The clock and its display of time can be replaced

with other factors, such as weather conditions,

information that is important to people before

they go out.

This test was part of a contemporary opera

in which I worked with Edgar Barroso, a con-

temporary music composer. I did this test to

see how body movement would interact with

music through the virtual layer of mixed

reality. Kapsis is a Mexican myth about a girl

who dives into the sea in search of a star but

drowns eventually. Therefore, I created a water swirl that could, continually respond to the music composed by Edgar by changing its shape.

4. XEYES video www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHuzhdYpk9k

1. Checkerboard Time Waster choyenting.com/flash/timewaster.html

3. TIVOLI interactive surface design

5. Kapsis6. What Time Is It?

1 2

3 4

4 5

3 6

Video

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzJ4s2eoCbc

Animation

Story Board of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Chapter: Advice from a Caterpillar

Kapsis is a piece for flute, electro-acoustic music, and video art. It portrays the mesmerizing Nahua myth of a young girl who becomes a starfish. The animation will be part of a contemporary opera,which is a collaboration between designer Yen-Ting Cho, composer Edgar Barroso, and filmmaker Aryo Danusiri.

(until 09/2010)

Director/Animator

Yen-Ting Cho

Comes from Taiwan, where he received a BS in architecture from National Cheng Kung University and a Master of Design Study in technology and design from Harvard Graduate School of Design.

Co-director/Composer

Edgar Barroso

Comes from Mexico, where he received a BM from Guanajuato University and an MA in Digital Art from Pompeu Fabra University (Catalonya). His main interests are instrumental composition with/out live electronics.

Synopsis

Kapsis, every day after finishing her daily work, used to lie alongsidesome rocks near the sea and lookand look at the movement of the waves. The entire tribe believed that a shark had bewitched her, so one night her father came to the hacocama (magician) who ask the big boss how to cure his daughter. After the hacocama had failed, that same night, Kapsis went back to the sea and she wished ferventlythe night would never end; and for hours and hours with her beauty she was there. Suddenly, becauseher love was magical, her favorite star fell down from the sky.

The black and lively eyes of Kapsis followed the trail of bright, until she discovered that it fell into thesea. Frightened, the young girl went in search of the nearest canoe -- rowing strongly she came to the place where she had seen the falling star, and without much thought was thrown into the water to rescue the star. Kapsis fell to the depths in search of the star to get to the bottom of the sea, but in her rapid decent, she fell on a treacherous rock and it killed her. Xtamosbin, goddess of the seas, wasmoved because of Kapsis's willingess to save a drowned star, so placed her hands on the limp body of Kapsis, turning her instantly into a beautiful starfish. Kapsis would look all night at the beautiful star whom she loved so much.

Website:

kapsis.choyenting.com

Yen-Ting Cho

Sound:

Edgar Barroso

Music:“Life of a Fly” by Edgar Barroso“You Are Beautiful” by Faith Yang

Special Thanks: Harvard VES Animation,Rock Records Co. Ltd

Animation: Synopsis:

A quivering fly passes through various spaces,changing its direction and perception as it

moves across different landscapes. Through compound eyes it has different temporal and

spatial perceptions of a chaotic world. How-

ever, theflying adventure ends at the same

moment as its existence.

Video Link:www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-jxBLYOd98

Architecture

Algorithmic Architecture

Sheng-Wei Lo

Kent Wu

Yen-Ting Cho

Site Planabout 40 house hold units

Resident Church Conference Public Bath Dancing Plaza Observing Tower Wild Hot Spring

Dancing Square

Swinging at Sea

Image

Cho VS Yen-TingI often talked to myself.

The photos show the various

kinds of dialogue between

Yen-Ting and Cho.

Purple Waltz

Having Butterfly

Love

Essay

1

Digital Memory ---

An Interface to Help Organize Data That Is Collected Through a Visit To Art Museums

Yen-Ting Cho

MAS. 672 Spring 2008

Project 1

[email protected]

Introduction

Visiting an art museum or a festival is a very complicated process – it involves factors of time, space and data. It is time-consuming. We experience various changes in space. It involves many different kinds of formatted information. Even with a multi-functional device, all the data we obtain from it have no interconnection. This paper is going to propose how context-aware computing can help us organize these data.

Context-aware computing is very powerful. Since there are still many obstacles which need to be overcome, such as privacy problems, the accuracy of locations and difficulty of outdoor/indoor tracking infrastructure, Context-aware computing have not been commercialized. [1] Hence, it is a good idea to use context-aware system to visit an art museum or a festival, because usually these spaces need to be quiet and people are not allowed to communicate verbally.

An application of Context-aware computing is mentioned in the paper, Hippie: a Nomadic Information System [2], the author points out how Context-aware computing can improve a visit to an art museum or a festival. There are two main points in the paper. First, the system can individualize process support and also adapt information to user’s knowledge and interests. The idea is very interesting but there are not too many details or a given scenario to show how users use it. Moreover, it does not say anything about information storage. Therefore, I want to design a system, which is called Digital Memory (DM by which, with Context-aware computing, people can organize and search their data more easily.

Design

Generally, people obtain three different formats of file when they visit an art museum or gallery: static image, time-based file and text. These inputs are related to different activities and equipments (see table 1). A personal mobile device, which is also a context-aware computing application, can either be a multi-functional device or be connected wirelessly to other digital equipments as in the table 1. The relationship between the device and other digital equipments is very similar to that of a camera and a remote flash light. Therefore, with DM, when we take a photo or record a discussion, the file will be directly sent to the mobile device and be converted into a compressed file. Most importantly, when you confirm that you want to save it, you can choose which file you want it to be linked to. Also, the context-aware computing will record when and where this file has been inputted into your device.

2

Scenario/Story

Andrea is going to bring her class to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Before leaving, they can select the exhibitions related to the class and a digital map immediately and automatically spot out these exhibitions on the digital map. The system recommends some exhibitions that are related to those chosen ones. After they have made the plan and set the time that they going to spend in the museum, DM suggests how long to stay at each stop. Then a list of chosen exhibitions in the order of visits will be automatically sent to everyone’s cell phone as well as a digital map with routes and schedules.

In the exhibition, Andrea and her students have made an agreement so that they know one another’s location. Once she wants to hold a discussion or leave for the other room, she just sends a beeping sound to her students and then they all know where to move to. In fact, through their cell phones, they can have discussions without everyone being in same place, but she insists that the students have to get together to see the works physically rather than on a digital screen. Of course, she remembers to record the group discussion and send it to her TA, Salome. The system has already sorted the recording with students’ names, so she has no problem figuring out who said what.

While entering the room, she touches a red sensor on the wall with her cell phone; the information of the exhibition is directly saved. If there is an art work that catches her attention, she will use her Nikon D3 to take a beautiful photo of it. Simultaneously, Digital Memory records the time and the location of the saving. She finds a small icon of the photo on her cell phone and before confirming it, she simply selects a review she has downloaded at home and a link between the two things will be created. She knows that the system has already

Input Format Source/content Equipment Image Taking photos Camera text Names of works & artist,

Reviews Scanner, Handwriting recognition

Audio/video Discussion, Video camera

Table 1: Input Format, Source, Equipments

3

matched her photo of the art work to the data from museum and attached basic information to it, such as the title of the work.

After returning home, she knows that she is bad at remembering names, so she decides to start with her photos rather than searching for the key words. She selects a photo and DM shows the entire link related to it. She finds out that all the students have finished the assignments and attached their comments about the art works on the photo before leaving the art museum.

Evaluation

Traditionally, we are bombarded with many different formats of information and we can only search a file with key words or a specific time it was saved. With DM, we can search a file using many different parameters. For example, we can point on the digital map and it will show us all the data we have saved in this space. To be specific, since there are many art works in a single room, people can easily connect them to a related file such as the note they took or the discussion about them. In conclusion, DM definitely can reduce our search time for different files that are related to same event.

Moreover, DM is a very good system to exchange information with others. When two people make the mutual agreement, they can search each other’s data. For example, when two people take a photo of a same thing, create links between this photo and other files to form a network and identify the two photos being the same, the two networks will be connected through the photo. Therefore, through DM, we are not sharing a single or a bunch of files, but a network.

DM also helps the learning process. People can understand and memorize an item from various parameters. It makes our memory three-dimensional, which is beneficial because humans have a very good sense of space. However, we have not fully utilized this ability in the digital world. While we link the digital data with other physical or digital data, we are connecting digital world with physical world. In other words, we can now use all our senses to comprehend and memory with DM.

1 | C H O

Art Processing: What Huge Impacts Programming Languages Will Have on Art

Yen-Ting Cho

13 August 2007

The artistic Director of Ars Electronica, Gerfried Stocker, once said, “software is omnipresent; digital codes are the materia prima of our modern, global information society.”1

Nowadays, people cannot live without electronic equipments and can not imagine what

the world would be like without all the digital information. We use email and cell phones every day to conduct business, to keep us informed about the changes in the world and to share our lives with people around the world. In architecture firms, designers also work with software. All software consists of programming languages. However, what people know about programming language is just the tip of the iceberg. They are still in the dark about what huge influence it will have on our society and design process.

Given such a situation, I want to explore the characteristics and potential of computer

language. First, in order to make my further analysis clear, I will introduce two types of artworks here: the classic and digital art. Next, I will explain the similarities between them. For example, both traditional pigments and digital media put limitations on artistic expression. In addition, I will discuss the unique characteristics of programming languages, such as the ability to interact with the artists and to generate countless results.

The definition of two types

The first type of artwork is done in traditional ways, such as oil paintings, water paintings

and drawings. These methods have been developed for almost a thousand years and abundant research on them has been done. Works in this group have been developed into clear categories by different concepts, such as Impressionism, Cubism and Modernism.

2 | C H O

The second type of artwork is done by using software, such as Photoshop, Premier and Maya. What is Software? Software is written in programming languages, sequences of alphanumeric characters and symbols composed according to rigid syntactical rules. Regardless of the content or intent of their work, contemporary artists are expressing their ideas through the medium of software.2

In addition, they challenge the underlying formal assumptions of computer code. Many

people think that computer programming remains within a unique area that only computer programmers can understand because similarly minded people usually create the programming language. After people with visual and spatial minds are engaged in computer programming, it is possible to create different kinds of programming languages, such as processing created by Ben Fry and Casey Reas.3

Furthermore, the area of audiovisual programming is an excellent example of this trend.

Small software companies like Cycling ’74, the developer of Jitter, are very responsive to their community of artists and foster the development of enabling tools. In addition, The Pink Twins, a duo of musician/programmers from Helsinki, have created Framestein, video processing software that links to PD, an open source real-time software for performance. The German artist collective Meso has gone even further with vvvv, an ambitious library of tools for real-time video synthesis.4

The similarities

Some people view artists as people who are bad at mathematics. However, when working on programming languages, experiment is very crucial and to experiment is to discover, not to verify. This characteristic makes programming language different from the traditional concept of mathematics, which is usually based on logical inference. Mathematics usually makes a logical assumption, and then experiments are needed to verify it. However, artists work in another way. In art and design, one plus one never equals two. Therefore, artists never get what they expect or they never expect something exactly before practicing it. In other words, creating art in some ways is a process of experiment. Therefore, if a person wants to write programming language to create art and design, he will know how it works only through constructing it. In sum, the practice of coding can be considered as an art form/art practice.5

Moreover, people often consider software and programming language as tools. Therefore,

they want to learn how to use them. However, there is no correct way to work with software to create artworks. In other words, learning all the effects of every function of software does not lead to the conclusion that a person can create good art work. In Ira Greenberg’s book,

3 | C H O

Processing: Creative Coding and Computational Art, he said that “Coding as an organic, creative, and cathartic process.”6 Artists always have to find out their own ways to use software. For example, in the first group, there is no correct way to paint. Good pictures express what the artists want to express. However, there are aspects of how to paint and since the development of painting has a long history, there are several established styles. Moreover, in the second group, software programs written in different languages also have distinctive aesthetic gestalts.7 For example, similar software programs written in Java and Flash have unique differences that are noticed by people familiar with both.

The biggest paradox is that people believe that in digital simulation, there are no

constraints placed upon imagination and creative impulses. However, pigment, software and programming languages can be considered as mediums that give artists the power to illustrate some ideas, but also limit their abilities to express the others. In other words, both types of artwork share this characteristic. For example, oil painting can express more details because it is not as spontaneous as water painting.

In digital art, while Illustrator is good for designing patterns quickly, Photoshop has

amazing filters which enable artists to create artistic pictures. The abstract animator and programmer Larry Cuba describes his experience, “Each of my films has been made on a different system using a different programming language. A programming language gives you

the power to express some ideas, while limiting your abilities to express others.”8

Furthermore, some programming languages are flexible and others are rigid. Flexible

languages like Perl and Lingo are good for quickly creating short programs, but they often become difficult to maintain and understand when programs become large. Programming with rigid languages like 68008 Assembly or C requires extreme care and tedious attention to detail, but the results are efficient and robust.9 In sum, just as some expressions are not translatable from one human language to another, programming structures often cannot be translated from one machine language to another.

The differences

Since computer programming still place constraints upon the imagination, what makes it

unique? Computer programming has the ability to respond, reverse and generate diversity of results.

The most unique feature of computer programming is that it creates a two-way

relationship with between the program and the artists because it can respond to artists’ request.

4 | C H O

This rarely happened to artists in the past. Usually, they tend to imitate the real objects. Through the process, they use objects, such fruits or scenery, to express their perspectives and emotion. For example, Edward Hopper painted objects to illustrate his loneliness. The category of still life paintings is another good example.

On the other hand, software is more interactive than the traditional pigments. When

using software, an artist is like a host talking with a guest, the software, and asking him/her questions and then he/she gets answers that entertain himself/herself and the audience. In other words, software can respond to artists’ request. In addition, in general, objects or images created by software can respond to any signal from the environment including anything from common input devices such as a mouse, microphone, and video camera, to more exotic devices such as radiation sensors and sonar.10

Furthermore, the biggest strength of being able to respond is that computer programs have the ability to generate results themselves. Artists can put in a series of inputs, such as a series of numbers and then they will get a huge number of different outcomes. Those results give artists plenty of options from which to choose and to discover spontaneous outcomes that they have not thought about before. Within those choices, they will choose their desire ones and keep working on them.

In addition, since artists can keep putting in different inputs until they get what they

want, it means that with software they have a chance to experiment. In other words, the creative process is reversible. Artists can hardly experiment with traditional pigments. That’s why Da Vinci left so many great sketches which were all his experiments before the final works. On the contrary, nowadays, people take photos with a digital camera; they can see what they took immediately, if they are not satisfied with it, they can delete it and take it again. This process, which never happened before the digital era, can be repeated as many times as they desire.

Software sets the standards and norms, and determines the rules by which we

communicate in a networked world, do business, and gather and disseminate information. It also provides designers with more possibilities through the design process. While programming language has its own limitations, the diversity of outcomes that programming language can generate is unprecedented. Media art is inseparable from the technological developments of the age and further efforts from different experts will definitely contribute to the power of programming language. In sum, we have seen how programming language successfully and so mightily pervaded all aspects of our lives and we will see how significantly and unstoppably it will change our design industry in every way.

5 | C H O

Notes

1. Gerfried Stocker, “CODE—the Language of Our Time,” (2004) http://www.sinologic.com/bbs/topic.php?sub=print&tid=583


3. Casey, Reas. “Programming Media” (2004) http://www.sinologic.com/bbs/topic.php?sub=print&tid=583


5. Ira Greenberg, “Processing: Creative Coding and Computational Art (Berkeley: Apress, 2007) ,xxii

6. Ira Greenberg, “Processing: Creative Coding and Computational Art (Berkeley: Apress, 2007) ,xxii





http://www.sinologic.com/bbs/topic.php?sub=print&tid=583



Documents

Yen-Ting Cho 2010