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fortDesk: a playful workspace

by | March 20, 2015 | MA Project, Process, Projects, Reflection | 0 Comments

[vc_row][vc_column width="1/1"] I've been working on creating these toyls (toy-tools) with simple circuits and using interesting materials that prompt playful interactions. As I was creating them and started sharing them, I realized that they were all lacking one...
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What Play Is(n’t)

by | January 28, 2015 | MA Project, Research | 0 Comments

I've been spinning my wheels trying to come up with a solid definition of “play” that assimilates all of the research I’ve done and fully and accurately describes my use of the word/idea in my research endeavors (and in life in general). As Brain Sutton-Smith argues...
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Explorations in Making: Paper Circuitry

by | January 22, 2015 | MA Project, Process, Projects, Research | 0 Comments

Paper circuitry is something I've only worked with tangentially before, and I've always thought it was a really cool idea. I chose paper circuitry as a medium to explore primarily because I was interested in the idea that paper is something you find in almost every...
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Introducing… The BRAINCHILDREN

by | January 15, 2015 | Process, Projects, Reflection | 0 Comments

For Graduate Critique, we were given an assignment to make a media representation of our creative praxis. I was struggling a bit as the only non-fine arts student in the class, so I went with what I'm good at- stories. I decided to take this opportunity to teach...
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Playful Verbs

by | January 11, 2015 | MA Project, Research | 0 Comments

Rather than provide a concrete list of play activities (e.g. go for a bike ride, tell a story, sing a song, etc.) this list of playful verbs allows the reader (and the author) to use their own imagination to decide how these verbs can be used to create play states....
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WorkToy: an Internet of Things experiment

by | November 20, 2014 | Process, Projects | 0 Comments

[vc_row][vc_column width="1/1"] WorkToy is a desktop toy and internet of things object made with a Spark Core. WorkToy sits on a platform that acts as a button- recording whether or not the toy is on the platform.   Many of the libraries and even the example code...
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JavaBean Coffee Cup: an Internet of Things experiment

by | November 20, 2014 | Process, Projects | 0 Comments

JavaBean isn't your average coffee cup- JavaBean is equipped with a LightBlue Bean microcontroller that connects via bluetooth to your computer and tells you how much coffee you've consumed today. The LightBlue Bean device rests in the underbelly of the JavaBean...
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Cultural Event 3 – MediaLive 2014

by | November 17, 2014 | Process | 0 Comments

For me, the highlight of the MediaLive 2014 performances was Nick Briz. Nick introduced the concept of lock-in to me: when an element of technology becomes "locked-in" as the norm and a basis for which all technological elements after it are built upon, even long...
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Cultural Event 2 – Processing & p5.js Workshops with Casey Reas & Dan Shiffman

by | November 17, 2014 | Process | 0 Comments

Casey Reas' Processing workshop focused on pixel manipulation. While many of the functions Casey discussed were things I had heard of and/or seen in code before, his explanations helped me understand how to work with images in Processing in a way I hadn't thought of...
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IoT Process – Week 10

by | November 11, 2014 | Process | 0 Comments

After quite a bit of tinkering and experimenting, I was able have a Google Spreadsheet retrieve the button state from my Spark Core once a minute and append a row to the spreadsheet with the value of the button state as well as a the timestamp of the retrieval. I used...
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MA Thesis Mindmap – Version 1

by | Oct 1, 2014 | ,

This is the start of my mindmap about my thesis topic. As I've been reading and researching, I've been adding nodes and making new connections. I don't think this is anywhere close to being "complete" (is a mindmap ever really complete?), but it's definitely a good...

Project Timeline

by | Oct 1, 2014 | ,

Here's the working draft of the timeline for my MA thesis project. I'm using Timeline JS, which runs off of a Google spreadsheet doc and automatically updates the timeline when I add new line items to the spreadsheet. There's also the capability to include media,...

IoT Process – Week 4

by | Sep 30, 2014 |

Things that are pretty awesome: after I struggled with the LinkedIn OAuth process, I received an e-mail from a Temboo staffer offering some links to documentation that may be helpful. I e-mailed him back with some specifics about the challenges I'm tackling, and I'm...

IoT Process – Week 3 (part 2)

by | Sep 29, 2014 |

I signed up for a developer account for LinkedIn and got the necessary keys to get started. I started working with the SearchJobsByKeywords Temboo choreo. I was immediately thrown off when the first two inputs requested were "AccessToken" and "AccessTokenSecret" -...

IoT Process – Week 3

by | Sep 26, 2014 | ,

Project 1 proposal: Using job data from the LinkedIn API, I will use specific search terms associated with playfulness to search for jobs on LinkedId. Using the returned job titles, descriptions, and company profiles, I'll create a playful interactive experience for...

Brainstorming Thesis Statements

by | Sep 22, 2014 | ,

Some preliminary brain storming on variations of possible thesis statements, based on my research questions and the research I've done so far: With the increasing use of technology in/as the workplace, the way that adults exhibit play behavior has changed. Adults who...

IoT Process – Week 2

by | Sep 18, 2014 |

I was able to call 10 random words from Wordnik (with the appropriate formatting and no extra characters!) using the JSON examples we went through in class. After I finally got the words displaying correctly, I wanted to make them do something fun. I had originally...

Exploratory Play Research

by | Sep 18, 2014 | ,

I'm reading The Ambiguity of Play by Brian Sutton-Smith this week. Sutton-Smith describes 7 rhetorics of play. The predominant modern rhetoric is described as "play as progress," where children's play (and notedly not typically adult play) is treated as a method of...

IoT Process – Week 1

by | Sep 16, 2014 |

I'm trying to use the Wordnik Temboo Choreo to call a random word and make it follow the mouse.  Eventually I'd like to evolve this sketch to call many random words to follow the mouse - I thought that would be a cool interactive "hello, world!" to put on my homepage,...

Research Questions

by | Sep 15, 2014 | ,

The following are questions I've been grappling with as I begin to narrow my focus for my M.A. Thesis research: 1. What are the socially defined boundaries between "work" and "play"? How can aspects of "play" and "playfulness" be incorporated into "work" activities?...