Choose your fashion preference based on popular brands and if you’re a guy or a girl. Site created with PHP as part of Intro to Computational Media.

]]> http://pixelpunchout.com/2010/08/socialdrinkster-2/feed/ 0 http://pixelpunchout.com/2010/08/967/ http://pixelpunchout.com/2010/08/967/#comments Tue, 24 Aug 2010 22:17:40 +0000 Cindy http://pixelpunchout.com/?p=967 StreetSnaps is a mobile street photography site where people can photograph the fashionably dressed in New York City and email their photographs directly from their cellphones. The StreetSnaps website will automatically take the photography emails and upload the content online based on the New York City neighborhoods indicated. See the stylistic choices of folks dressed in the East Village and Brooklyn.

StreetSnaps can be viewed in a regular web browser and is also viewable on the go – there is a customized mobile site for iPhone users (Mobile Safari via JQTouch).

She’s cute, she sings, but she’s not real. Instead, her voice is your instrument and you’re the composer/lyricist and through Hatsune Miku, you’re living through song too. Want to add vibrato? Change the pitch or warmth of the voice? You can here. Voice simulation taken on to another level. Her creator’s songs get replayed, resampled, and reborn into endless remixes, music videos, and parodies on Nico Nico and YouTube. She even had a real concert staged in Tokyo. Fujita Saki is the original voice of Hatsune Miku providing the foundation of the computer program that composers use. Hatsune Miku is the most recognized Vocaloid singer but there have been spinoffs. It brings up some interesting issues as Japanese singers have refused to contribute to Vocaloid software, saying they were afraid their careers would be endangered. Instead, the computer programmers behind Vocaloid dipped into Japan’s voice actor community to find talent. Aside from Fujita Saki, the other voices contributing to the different Vocaloid avatars can be tightly secretive – even more interesting, they sign the rights to their voices to be used in the programs. Would it be weird to hear variations of yourself singing unknown songs on the ‘Net?

Get a sampling of the different songs that people have created with Vocaloid: Hatsune Miku below.

This video is really striking because if I heard this playing on someone’s stereo, I WOUDLN’T be able to tell this was not a real person singing this AT ALL.

A very succinct and convincing way to quickly show people how your app works and what makes it so appealing (aside from the interesting UI/UX) to get them on board. I don’t have an iPad but gosh darnit, this isn’t helping me in the “gimme gimme” department of my brain.

via every.jelly.bean

As part of Team FarmBridge, I’m handling the web development and design as we gear up for the Microsoft Design Expo this mid-July in Redmond, Wa. Here’s a snapshot of FarmBridge.org. I’d like to give a shout-out to CSSEdit and Niall Doherty’s Coda Slider for being awesome. It’s the first time, I’ve really hand-coded a web design as thoroughly as I have (now I’ve done SocialDrinkster, StreetSnaps, etc but this was on a different level) on a front-end level.

The written content will be updated as we draw closer to showtime but if anyone’s curious to poke around, feel free. Just realize it’s under construction, sssssh.  Also, as a social media ninja, I’ve started up FarmBridge on Twitter and it now has its own Facebook Fan Page. Join us there too!

Chris O’Shea’s Audience installation with rAndom International for the Deloitte Ignite Festival at the Royal Opera House.

Personification of inanimate objects take an eerie, surreal turn with Chris O’Shea’s Audience Installation. Made up of 64 mirrors, the reflective installation reacts to a human presence by following their movements and displaying humanistic quirks. By using a multitude of mirrors that reflect back on the audience member, you have to ask yourself, who’s watching who?

I’ll let the artist explain: “When members of the audience occupy the space, the mirrors inquisitively follow someone that they find interesting. Having chosen their subject, they all synchronise and turn their heads towards them. Suddenly that person can see their reflection in all of the mirrors. They will watch this person until they become disinterested, then either seek out another subject or return to their private chatter. The collective behaviour of the objects is beyond the control of the viewer, as it is left entirely to their discretion to let go of their subject.”

Brian Jones and I were interviewed about SocialDrinkster by Matt Danzico, a BBC multimedia journalist who was touring the ITP Spring Show. Check out the audio slideshow, we appear around 2:49M among the other student projects featured. It’s our first press mention! So excited and feeling fortunate that I have this opportunity to showcase our mobile app to a broader audience outside of school.  Our website is linked on the bottom of the web page. Click below to see and listen.

BBC Audio Slideshow: Technology and art fuse in NYC