User:Nadiners/what, how, why
My Google Story
My Google Story is an application based on a users most recent Google searches, its purpose is to present an automatically generated Haiku a day. The user can look through all the previous Haikus from the day it was purchased. It becomes a sort of diary, once reading back through it and looking at the dates, you can be reminded what you were busy with at the time. And sometimes the Haikus even make sense. The initial idea came from the fact that with a gmail account one can look through and download his Google searches with all its metadata. I was looking for a reason to use all this data. So using the application Processing I found a code that would generate Haikus, I then integrated my searches into the code and designed an interface to accommodate the idea of the application. Setting the mass surveillance of GAFA aside, and how these so called ‘Haikus’ are extremely intimate pieces of information. This also work made me question whether a computer can produce (good) literature, whether it will ever reach the capacities of human creativity in writing. This project is also a way to reveal to the user on a personal level, (self awareness of how time is spent/wasted) how disturbing it could be to look at his data, or how amusing it could be, depending on the person!
PHYL
PHYL (Personal Hyper Linker) is a personal reference library in the form of a mechanical machine. The user must select the data he would like to store in it, based on his interests. The data is stored on microfilm which is then inserted into a roll underneath one of the four screens and can be interchangeable. The information is linked from one screen to another in numerical order. Influenced from Vannevar Bush’s Memmex, one of the first ideas of accessing links with code (hyperlinks) and seeing them through screens. I built the machine from wood, plexiglass and vinyl for the screens, a bit of 3D printing for the rolling mechanism and LED lights. Contrary to the internet, where data gateways are open to all, this machine allows data to be input solely by the user, to be able to control and select ones content. It becomes a personal library rather than a collective one. It explores the evolution of reading printed material, taking the idea of hyperlinks back to basics.
Sky Hacker
Sky Hacker is a potential idea for a drone that draws or writes in the sky controlled by a tablet with a real-time drawing application. the idea was to give accessibility to more people to be able to trace in the sky, not only on national holidays or military events that do it with airplanes. This brings up lots of issues, freedom of speech, controlled air space, sharing and communication. This project has environmental downsides that cause CO2 pollution and noise pollution. And for some even visual pollution. To control the tool the user would need an application on a tablet, and a drone with the capacity to emit smoke, being an open source project the idea is that it could be downloaded with instructions and made accessible to the public. The result in the sky would be ephemeral. Originally being served as a weapon of war, today it is used for pretty much anything we want; from a toy, to a camera, to a tool of surveillance. The aim was to find a new use for it but also to find another way to write, and communicate in this 'open space’ called the sky, and let it be accessible to more people.