For this project, we were interested in the look and feel of stress on the CMU campus. The original intent was to make our piece interactive and crowd-source in realtime people’s thoughts and feelings on stress. Technical difficulties and a lack of time however forced us to consider an approach that was not real-time, but achieved the same goals. The piece thus works as follows: a participant listens to a video question about stress from the last participant, answers this question with another video, and finally records a video question for the next participant. We were intrigued by this self-propagating feature of the piece because we believe it adds a feeling of genuineness and authenticity when the questions about stress come in the form of a dialogue from a peer. The piece was projected on the memorial right in front of the Hunt Library – a location where we were sure to find stressed college students.

Pinokio is an animatronic lamp that is an exploration into the expressive and behavioral potentials of robotic computing. A webcam, microphone, servos, and halogen globe are hacked along with Arduino and OpenCV to bring the lamp to life. More info here

The piece was created for the english indie band, The XX. It consists of a room full of stepper motor controlled Sonos speakers that pivot to follow listeners as they move through the space. More info here

Vincent and emily are two self-willed robots designed to explore solitude of a partner relationship and their impulses. The robots capture sounds and movement via sensors and react on those signals with their own expressions. More info here

Void  is a large scale mechanical structure that uses 8 synchronized suspended winches to produce light paintings over the public parking lot in Nagoya, Japan. The piece was inspired by Jurg Lehni’s printer mechanic sculpture. More info here

In this piece, Viennese artist Alex Kiessling creates three artworks simultaneously in three European cities with the help of two robots. The final result is three independent, yet connected pieces that can be regarded as a global work. More info here

Karel created this piece as a response to a challenge from Jonathan Ross as part of the “Faces and Traces” exhibition of self-portraits at the 286 Gallery in London.

Sensebellum transformed a block in Capitol Hill into an immersive urban theatre by projection video feeds of performers and concert goes onto different buildings and floors. The projections were synced to the beat and pacing of each song. More info here

Akiko Yamashita and some of his friends basically took over the city hall building in Los Angeles to ring in the New Year. There is not a lot more information on the process behind the video, but his website is available here.