Arts

You’ll Never Look at Bananas the Same Way Again

by Amy Marcott on May 21, 2012

in Arts,Design,Media,Modern Geekhood

The back of the Makey Makey board.

The back of the Makey Makey board. Click to enlarge.

Bored with your conventional keyboard? Sick of joysticks? Tired of waiting for the bananas to ripen? Use Makey Makey and turn ordinary objects, even yourself, into touchpads and keyboard keys. No programming or software required. Makey Makey, dubbed “an invention kit for everyone,” is the brainchild of Jay Silver SM ’08 and Eric Rosenbaum SM ’09, both PhD students in the Media Lab. Silver works for Intel Labs’ Interaction Experience Research group, Rosenbaum for the Lifelong Kindergarten group.

At the most basic level, Makey Makey plugs into a computer via USB and lets users reassign the arrow keys, space bar, and left mouse click to objects by attaching alligator clips to the board and any material that can conduct at least a tiny bit of electricity. Turn Makey Makey over to access keyboard keys, the mouse, and more. Watch the video below for all sorts of inspired uses.

Makey Makey kits, which come with alligator clips and USB cable, are $35 (including shipping) and currently available on the Kickstarter website, though the cocreators have far surpassed their fundraising goals. Later this year, the kit will be available on Sparkfun’s website and other select retailers.

{ 0 comments }

Photo of the Week by Owen Franken ’68—May 19, 2012

by Amy Marcott on May 19, 2012

in Franken Photo of the Week

Coffee at the end of a meal, Le Grand Vefour, ParisCoffee at the end of a meal, Le Grand Vefour, Paris (© Owen Franken).

Curious about Owen Franken? View more of his work via the Franken Photo of the Week category, learn more in this profile, read a What Matters opinion column he wrote called “Life in Brownian Motion,” or visit his website.

{ 0 comments }

Where the Wild Chairs Are

by Jay London on May 17, 2012

in Arts,Design,Events,Learning,Modern Geekhood,Science

The Wild Chair. Image: MIT Media Lab

According to the MIT Media Lab, we’ve been sitting on chairs for 27,000 years. And some chairs are sick of being taken for granted.

The result: Rebellious Chairs, a collaboration between the Media Lab’s High-Low Tech group and France’s École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (National School of Decorative Arts) that seeks to “rethink the relationship between people and chairs” and design chairs with distinct, interactive personalities, ranging from warm and cuddly to dangerous and territorial.

The video below highlights The Wild Chair–a defensive beast with porcupine-like wooden quills–created by Paris designers J.C. Karich and Pauline Jamilloux.


Other, slightly less dangerous chairs include:

  • The Baptism Chair, a pew-like chair with a money slot for donation and pours “holy water” on the kneeler
  • Cocooning, a chair-blanket hybrid that simulates the sounds, ambiance, and coziness of sitting by a fireplace
  • DIKTATÖR, which dictates head movement according to the direction of sounds around it
  • Lucien, a solar-loving chair that rotates and turns toward the light or sun
  • Vincent, a verbally-interacting chair that communicates with humans through a language of real chair sounds

Cocooning chair. Image: MIT Media Lab

The five-day workshop–held in France earlier this year–was organized by Dana Gordon, a former design researcher for the Interrogative Design Group at MIT’s Center for Advanced Visual Studies, and workshop advisors included High-Low Tech research assistants Jennifer Jacobs and Sam Jacoby.

For more information, check out a photo gallery of the research and design process and view photos and video from the final presentation.

{ 0 comments }

Photo of the Week by Owen Franken ’68—May 12, 2012

by Amy Marcott on May 12, 2012

in Franken Photo of the Week

Couples on the banks of the Seine, Île Saint-Louis, ParisCouples on the banks of the Seine, Île Saint-Louis, Paris (© Owen Franken).

Curious about Owen Franken? View more of his work via the Franken Photo of the Week category, learn more in this profile, read a What Matters opinion column he wrote called “Life in Brownian Motion,” or visit his website.

{ 0 comments }

Why Write Your Dissertation When You Can DANCE It? [Video]

by Amy Marcott on May 11, 2012

in Arts,Learning,Modern Geekhood,Research,Science

Post-doc Stephen Steiner SM '06, PhD '12 dances his PhD thesis, “Carbon Nanotube Growth on Challenging Substrates: Applications for Carbon-Fiber Composites.

Post-doc Stephen Steiner SM '06, PhD '12 dances his PhD thesis, “Carbon Nanotube Growth on Challenging Substrates: Applications for Carbon-Fiber Composites. Watch below.

How many times as a PhD student did you wish you could just bust a move and show people what your research was about instead of launching into some boring elevator pitch?

What? Never? Well, maybe you should try it. Enter the Dance Your PhD Contest, open to anyone who has ever completed a science-related PhD or who is a student pursuing a PhD.

The contest is the brainchild of John Bohannon, a writer and visiting scientist at Harvard who seeks to make science more accessible. Watch a TedxBrussels Talk…er…Tedx Dance by Bohannon called Dance vs. PowerPoint, a Modest Proposal, in which he (with help from performers from the Black Label Movement) practices what he preaches.

The 2012 contest just opened up a few weeks ago. Each category winner—physics, chemistry, biology, and social sciences—receives $500 and recognition by Science magazine. Grand prize is $1K and free travel and accommodation to attend TEDxBrussels in November. Entries are due Oct. 1, 2012.

Videos are judged by a group of scientists and artists on scientific merit, artistic merit, and creative combination of the science and art. Dances have to convey something essential about one’s PhD research so that the judges “get it.”

If you need inspiration, check out last year’s videos. Two of the record 53 entries were created by MITers. Though they did not win prizes, they both deserve huge props for heeding the contest website’s advice: “You’re a scientist. With your superpowers comes the responsibility to communicate the thrill of science to the public. Yes, sometimes in dance form. So dance like you mean it.” Oh, they mean it. Enjoy. Both entered in the chemistry category.

Post-doc Stephen Steiner SM ’06, PhD ’12 dances his PhD thesis, “Carbon Nanotube Growth on Challenging Substrates: Applications for Carbon-Fiber Composites.” Learn more about his research.

Current student Hoda Eydgahi SM ’08 dances her thesis, “Development and Application of an MCMC Algorithm for Obtaining the Joint Parameter Distribution in Biochemical Networks.” Learn more about her research.

{ 2 comments }

Watch the Oceans Van Gogh

by Amy Marcott on May 10, 2012

in Arts,Research,Science

Take a look at NASA’s Perpetual Ocean, a stunning visualization of worldwide ocean surface currents between June 2005 and December 2007. It stems from model output from the joint project between MIT and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab at Caltech called Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean, Phase II or ECCO2.

Here are the details, as noted on NASA’s Perpetual Ocean website:

ECCO2 uses the MIT general circulation model (MITgcm) to synthesize satellite and in-situ data of the global ocean and sea-ice at resolutions that begin to resolve ocean eddies and other narrow current systems, which transport heat and carbon in the oceans. ECCO2 provides ocean flows at all depths, but only surface flows are used in this visualization. The dark patterns under the ocean represent the undersea bathymetry. Topographic land exaggeration is 20x and bathymetric exaggeration is 40x.

Is it me or is there a little post-Impressionism going on here?

Left: NASA's Perpetual Ocean. Right: The Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Left: NASA's Perpetual Ocean; right: The Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh (public domain), via Wikimedia Commons.

{ 0 comments }

Photo of the Week by Owen Franken ’68—May 5, 2012

by Amy Marcott on May 5, 2012

in Franken Photo of the Week

A boat in Kerala, IndiaA boat in Kerala, India (© Owen Franken).

Curious about Owen Franken? View more of his work via the Franken Photo of the Week category, learn more in this profile, read a What Matters opinion column he wrote called “Life in Brownian Motion,” or visit his website.

{ 0 comments }

Photo of the Week by Owen Franken ’68—April 28, 2012

by Amy Marcott on April 28, 2012

in Franken Photo of the Week

A child in MexicoA child in Mexico (© Owen Franken).

Curious about Owen Franken? View more of his work via the Franken Photo of the Week category, learn more in this profile, read a What Matters opinion column he wrote called “Life in Brownian Motion,” or visit his website.

{ 1 comment }

Photo of the Week by Owen Franken ’68—April 21, 2012

by Amy Marcott on April 21, 2012

in Franken Photo of the Week

Full moon and the Seine, Pont Neuf, Paris Full moon and the Seine, Pont Neuf, Paris (© Owen Franken).

Curious about Owen Franken? View more of his work via the Franken Photo of the Week category, learn more in this profile, read a What Matters opinion column he wrote called “Life in Brownian Motion,” or visit his website.

{ 0 comments }

Nuclear Engineering Major Embraces His Inner Performance Poet

by Amy Marcott on April 16, 2012

in Alumni Life,Arts

Photo by Ronen Zilberman.

Kealoha (Steven Wong) '99. Photo: Ronen Zilberman.

In honor of National Poetry Month, here’s a look at some slam poetry from Kealoha (Steven Wong) ’99.

Kealoha majored in nuclear engineering with a minor in writing and while a student, he interned at MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center and at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. Upon graduating, he changed gears and worked as a management consultant in San Francisco. One night in 2000 he attended his first poetry slam and his life changed.

Disillusioned with the corporate world, Kealoha began focusing his attention on poetry. By the end of 2001, he had left his job, moved back home to Hawai`i, and was sleeping on his brother’s couch. He began sharing his poetry at open mics and in 2003 founded HawaiiSlam and First Thursdays, a monthly poetry slam that quickly grew to attract upwards of 500 people—and to become the largest registered poetry slam competition in the world.

According to his online bio, he is the first poet in Hawai`i’s history to perform at a governor’s inauguration, and in 2010 he was selected as a master artist for a National Endowment for the Arts program. In the seven years that he has represented his state at the National Poetry Slam, Kealoha has performed on the finals stage four times, was ranked in the top ten of the nation’s best poets in 2007, and was honored as a National Slam Legend in 2010.

These days, he lives in Honolulu and still makes his living as a performance poet by touring the world, performing in music concerts, and visiting Hawai`i’s schools, libraries, and community centers.

Watch Kealoha perform “Recess,” which was recorded live at HawaiiSlam’s First Thursdays on February 4th, 2010. Want to learn more about him? Read Kealoha’s life story and view more videos of him in action.

{ 0 comments }

← Previous Entries