The trip was amazing though. I got to meet with important people that have been living and working their for some time. I saw the Surface table at Microsoft. I meet with Nokia, studied at a University larger than any other University I have ever seen. Ate some of the best food in my life. Went to a rave were the Great Wall of China meet the ocean. The main things I took from it was that there are other cities than New York. I could completely live in Beijing and work. Living another countries life for a month really puts your life back home into perspective. I will never forget this trip and will be returning soon.

I will post stories from the trip as I get more photos. Cross your fingers I find my camera.

1. About 10 -12 LED Throwies
2. A fan – We found one on the street.
3. A power supply outside.
4. A crowded place for people to watch.

First You will need to find a fan. We found one on the side of the street. Remove the front cover of the fan. This is so that you can put the Throwies on the blades of the fan.

Attach the LED’s so that one is on one side and one on the other. They will hold eachother onto the blades.

You know need to find a place that has power and is crowded. Union Square was the perfect place to release the LED Throwie Throwie. Open the cover of a street lamp. You will just need to unscrew the bolt (usually just hand tight) and open the lid. You will find a plug conveniently for your fan.

You are now ready to let the fan rip. Start the fan on low let it start up and then turn it on high. Stand back and watch the Throwies Throw.

There are some setbacks with the Ultimate Throwie Throwie. Due to the times that we live in the general public may have concerns of the appearances of an LED. If you just so happen to find yourself in trouble with the authorities for such an act. Blame it on art school. I running into such a situation found it a safe and cheap way out of jail.

In all seriousness LED Throwies are a blast but not to be taken lightly. They are an interesting take on public space and graffiti art. Granted they can harm the environment, but they are removable. If you choose to explore the public realm or graffiti art with LED’s don’t take it out on the authorities. See where the stand on the topic, put yourself in their shoes. They have no choice but to take the appropriate actions. The real fight should be against the people that clutter the public space with junk; the crude and intrusive advertisements. Find those targets and “Throwie” them.

Video
Photos

Chelsea Art Museum
556 West 22nd St., NYC

Tues-Sat 12-6, Thurs, 12-8

Video
Site

Photos
Schematic
Board

I am currently enrolled at Parsons School of Design in NYC. I took a class called Geek Graffiti a couple of semester ago. In this class we worked in conjunction with the GRL to create technologies for urban communication. I was very familiar with the technology and LED art, so I had an idea what this was. By no means was I scared or thought was a bomb.

A couple of people outside the bar saw me climb the bridge and grab the LED Ad. People around said that they liked the Ad. “It has been up for a couple of weeks, its nice. It turns on at night.” They even mentioned some artist that they thought it was. By no means were these people scared or threatened by the LED Ad.

The Ad was far out on the bridge so I had a hard time getting to it. It was attached with magnets and hard to get off. I told Ryan to catch it but he missed and it broke. We brought it back to his place and started to dissecting it, I wanted to see how the circuit worked. After some testing I found out the construction of it.

The LEDS are attached to a circuit that takes an average level of the light using a photo resistor. Based on the level of light the LEDs will fade on or off. It is powered by 4 D batteries. The Ad life is about 2 – 3 weeks.

Ryan and I documenting the constriction of the piece and posted it to Make Blog and Flickr. This was about two weeks ago. The response was good. A little after this the creator contacted me and said:

“I am glad you got one of the adult swim signs, there are other’s out there as well so keep looking up. We were hoping that people would take them.” After this the story was over, well until the other day in Boston.

After speaking to many reporters I have to say the whole situation is getting out of hand. I respect the police and authorities for acting on the bomb scare. The bomb squad needed to sit back and realize what the Ad was. The word terrorist or bomb should never have been released to the public unless they were certain.

Take a look at this photo and this photo, The bomb squad should have been able to figure this out, before it got out of hand.

Link

Update:
Project makes it to PixelMakers

Concept:
IDEA:039 (Interactive Paper) is a collaborative art project. Through interaction with a camera the artist composes a designs in time lapse. The results are then uploaded to Flickr, creating a growing “piece of paper”.


Keep in mind this is new technology. Updates will arrive as the software develops. Uploading take some time, be patient. Hopefully Flash 8.5 and AS3 will fix this problem.

Links:
Project Page
IDEA:039 @ Flickr

Here is are game concept:
Gym Jungle is a multi-player mobile game played in conjunction with a large-scale, public digital gamespace. Players navigate to the top of a school gym ropes course on the larger screen by catching directional cues from dodge balls launched across each player’s handset.

Instructions given to player:
Catch the balls to plan your path. Three catches updates your location. Find the trophies for bonus points and reach the goal within your allotted (for example, 15) moves.

Additional gameplay information:
Before sending a command to the larger gameboard, the handset stores up a queue of three moves to perform in sequence. Players must catch the moves on their handset via the mini dodge ball game that then govern advantageous positioning/advancement on the large gameboard. Players must reach the top of the gameboard in a certain number of moves to receive points for that trial and are encouraged to pick up trophies along the way. Upon successful completion of a trial, the player is placed at the bottom of the map again, but the interaction on the handset increases in difficulty, i.e. the dodge balls fly faster and the number of allotted moves is decreased. Players compete against one another for points based on number of trials completed and trophies collected. The map remains static, so players may leave or enter the game at any time, competing most closely with those who joined the game within the same timeframe.

Game on mobile phone

Game on large screen

Parts List:
2 Jumbo red LEDS
2 100k Potentiometers
Fancy Knobs or Dials
3 Small push buttons
Various Resistors (used to create pitch bend)
Various Capacitors (used to create pitch bend)
Wire
Solder

Links:
Flick Page
Hack Baby Video * exporting now
Hack Baby Audio

Flickr Photos

Tenth Floor
Felissimo Design House
February 22-28, 2006
Felissimo Design House
10 West 56th Street
New York, NY 10019