Thursday, December 18, 2008

NYU ITP Winter Show

If you are in Manhattan today, go check out NYU's ITP winter show. I was prepared for something a little more techie, in part since I was a Media Lab wannabe in 1995, but, consider ITP to be where art meets computer tech. Lots of visual and geo-based apps, some fun basic ideas and some cool programming.

My favorite was powerAware, an ambient device that monitors your power consumption and you can even view a graph of your power consumption over time. One that creeped me out was Heartbeats Left, and now I know I only have 1.4 billion heartbeats left (according to averages, which say I won't make 80, I disagree). One that amused the most children and made them dance was Puzzle Groove. Something that amuses children and causes them to dance is all good in my book.

The two I used the most were Cosmic Hand Dance Actualization Machine (which does not actually win for longest craziest name as you will see) and Dra”Wii”ng Jackson Pollock, which uses a Wiimote so who can say no to that? And the Best OG Award goes to Studies in the Transverse Articulations of the Lumbo-Pelvic-Hip Complex (or, the Super Pelvotron 5000). Ms. Pac-Man FTW.

Apologies no photos, but you can trawl their website for some. And there is coverage on Gizmodo.