Albert Hwang

Hey all -

Months back Matt Parker wanted some help to pick up the Wiremap project and transform it into his own pet project, the Lumarca (which rolls of the tongue so much nicer, no?). Since then he and I have been in constant collaboration developing this technology.

He’s submitted the project to Siggraph Asia, and it’s been accepted!  So he, myself, and Elliot Woods (developer from England) are heading out to Tokyo to exhibit in December of this year.

If any of you are heading out to Siggraph Asia, or if you are gonna be in Asia, stop by and say hi!

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Built a minneature version of the wiremap.  I haven’t uploaded any video yet, but here are some photos!

http://picasaweb.google.com/hwang.al/WiremapMini#

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Hey all -

I can’t believe I haven’t posted this yet:

Should speak for itself!

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I just have to let the world know that I got my g1 and I’m kinda having an awesome time with it. I’m blogging from it right now, actually.

I know that this post isn’t really pertinent to the stuff that I usually talk about. I do hope, though, that this upgrade in technology translates to more of a web presence and more consistent blogging.

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Check it!

The dancer is Houdoken, a crazy talented liquid-head / popper.  All of the sounds are from the Free Sound project – and almost the whole video comes from this one sound.  Thanks for the sound, Melack!  Many thanks to the all of you.

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So during the opening at the exhibition in Seattle, I met with Melinda Minch, an employee at Microsoft currently on their Seadragon project.  She informed me that one of her colleagues, Mike Rorke, had a great time with the wiremap instructable and built one of his own.

I finally got in touch with him, and he’s uploaded a Flickr set.  Check it out!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/zimbo/sets/72157621811624584/

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So this last week or so I visited Seattle and had a hell of a time.  Many thanks to McDavid for letting me stay at his place.  Also, many thanks to Alberto and Andrew Carr for helping out w/ the build process, and for driving me everywhere between Seattle and Federal Way.

Lastly, thanks for all the folks at Dorkbot Seattle and 911 Media Arts Center, especially Eric McNeill of Dorkbot and Steven Vroom of 911.

And for your viewing enjoyment, check out the photos and some videos at my picasa acct:

http://picasaweb.google.com/hwang.al/911Wiremap#

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The Wiremap will be exhibiting as a part of People Doing Strange Things with Electricity 4 in Seattle from June 27th – July 24th!

I’ll be in Seattle a week leading up to the event building the structure, which will be built for the event (as opposed to building one in NYC and shipping it out).

In any case, if you’re in the area, please come on out.  I’ll only be there on opening night, but will be happy to give you an explanation.

See ya then!

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Around the beginning of this year I got contacted by Matt Parker, a student at ITP, who wanted to do his thesis on the Wiremap.  I was absolutely thrilled to help him out and to get the project a load of more exposure.

His work was exhibited @ the ITP Spring show.  He made a few changes to my original designs – most of the mods he made were beautifully executed.  Both the top & bottom plates were made of plexiglass, with magnets holding the strings in place.  All in all, the presentation was beautiful.

Unfortunately, and Matt would agree with me on this, the construction wasn’t as strong as he would have hoped.  He was looking to make the entire thing out of plexi, but it couldn’t hold it’s own weight.

In any case, well versed in object oriented Javascript, he’s made a public codebase.  It’s very strong, and much easier to learn and deal with than my amateur code.  He’s also very open to talk people through developing work for the Wiremap.

Access to the code base, .  All of that, in addition to lots of really sweet documentation of his work, can be found @ the website for his build:

http://www.madparker.com/lumarca/

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The Market Value of Monkeys and Robots is a performance that marries movement to digital media – including sound and projections.  Instead of dancing to music, our process is to build sound effects to choreographed movement:

We’re also looking at ways to unify the dancer’s impulses with the projected imagery.  Here’s a promo we built for the workshop of “Market Value” that we held at Media Lounge a few months back:

Performances are 7pm on Friday the 22nd and the 29th of May.

*This work is a part of Breedingground’s 2009 Spring Fever Festival.  Click here to buy tickets and for more information about all the other cool work that’s being exhibited in the festival.

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