Project abstracts

1. Spatial Monocle

Generative AI has risen to massive popularity in recent years, taking over the umbrella label of “AI” that also encompasses technologies including neural networks and semantic search. The latter I believe to be one of the most powerful innovations in the area, able to make using our personal computers closer to their original vision as a “bicycle for the mind.” It stuns me that the first wave of AI rollout from companies like Apple and Google includes all kind of generative boondoggles customers did not ask for, but not 10x better search using embeddings. We’ve all struggled to find files in Finder and emails in Mail countless times.

Last year, I made a project to express the non-linear relationships between words and concepts embedded in my Twitter likes & bookmarks, which I later expanded to Bluesky. Hacker/writer/researcher Linus Lee made a project called Monocle to ingest all the text he writes and published, and things he saves from the Web, into one index, running embeddings on them, and delivers a near-real-time search interface.

Spatial Monocle (all names in these concepts) combines the all-encompassing backend index he developed with the frontend ideas I explored in Spatial Bluesky Search, allowing rapid searching of my corpus of personal notes and content with the flexibility of the infinite canvas concept as a tool for organizing ideas.

This project could conceivably be commercialized, and provided to customers as personal software. The hosting costs would be significant, and require user payment to be financially sustainable.

2. Little Drought Plant

Most New Yorkers are unaware of our water trends, because city-goers experience dry spells as a lack of the daily inconvenience of rain. We keep watering the plants in our apartments, and the landscaped plants outside get watered by other humans.

Last fall I prototyped a digital houseplant that visualizes the amount of rain New York City has gotten over the last sixty days as a state of perkiness/wiltedness in a houseplant.

IMA graduate David Yang’s “Little Ambiance” project built ambient computing into a window frame, visualizing the sky where a partner or family member lives. Berkeley grad researcher Visit Bhargava recently explored visualizing wind speed and precipitation through a fan blowing on a physical plant, as a passive data representation of natural phenomena in the home. Both pulled inspiration from Google’s “little signals” research explorations, which were similarly never commercialized.

Little Drought Plant is a physical, yet entirely artificial plant. It combines an Arduino microprocessor, the use of recent weather data over a web API, and small Servo motors to mechanically wilt or grow a small house plant, visualizing the recent precipitation trends passively in your home space. It is best suited for a gallery environment, and eventually someone’s home.

3. Instagram Mall

Though many users are vaguely aware Instagram makes them feel bad/inadequate, makes them spend money, or makes them aware of bad news they don’t want to see, it’s difficult for non-designers to grasp how intentionally the interface and content of the app have been designed that renders these side effects. Instagram Mall is an interactive performance art piece that demonstrates the absurdity built into the various features of the social network by having humans do all these tasks. It centers the viewer, as all social networks do, but is watched by an audience as a performance. It features:

• Performative descriptions of daily life from friends, making physical posters about their days to surround you with
• Regular interruptions for product placement by corporate people
• Social justice parodies, informing the audience of terrible news and forcing them to sign petitions and perform their guilt
• A constant stream of packages bombarding the viewer as the stuff they buy arrives

ITP graduate Sam Lavigne made a project called Online Shopping Mall in 2015 which used an EEG to detect brain waves and categorize them algorithmically as shopping or about mortality. Instagram Mall pulls similar threads, and could feature an EEG as part of an algorithmic training section of the performance. It would be installed on a a theater stage as a temporary exhibition/performance.