I have successfully passed my qualifying MIT general exam, I am officially PhD candidate! The general exam is composed of three written requirements and one oral exam.

My committee is composed of:
Professor Hiroshi Ishii, PhD
Associate Director of the MIT Media Laboratory
Muriel R. Cooper Professor of Media Arts and Sciences
Program in Media Arts and Sciences
Main area: Tangible interaction techniques

Professor Joe Paradiso, PhD
Sony Career Development Professor of Media Arts and Sciences
Program in Media Arts and Sciences
Technical area: Technologies for body sensing and expression

Professor Edith Ackermann, PhD
Honorary Professor of Developmental Psychology
University of Aix-Marseille I, France
Visiting Scientist. MIT School of Architecture
Contextual area: Psychology, cultural artifacts and semiotics

The oral exam is here to: “show the mastery of the specific knowledge required (analysis), and the ability to think clearly and logically, and to extend ideas into new territory (synthesis)”. What is so great about this process is to combine three persons you highly admire, to think with you on “what could become a research framework”. You have 6 months after you sent the general exam proposal to fulfill the general exam requirements with the help of your committee. The committee was highly invested in the entire process, supporting my explorations of different directions of research, criticizing my experimentations in wearables, health care, toy design, and help me refine a potential framework throughout.

I passed the three written requirements in the form of a paper for each discipline and today I just completed the oral exam that I titled: “Grounding Interfaces: Shifting the body boundaries”.

Introduction ->link to the pdf.

Motivation ->link to the pdf.

Opportunities ->link to the pdf.

Vision ->link to the pdf.

Sensing Technologies ->link to the pdf.

Conclusion ->link to the pdf.

Here is my presentation in .pdf format!

Thank you to all my friends who helped me clarify ideas, refining the framework and letting me rehearse many times!

Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure

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I am currently working towards my General Exam, including the qualifying exams from MIT. I will be back on the blog right after! In the meantime, enjoy a beautiful last moment of Indian summer –taken with my camera phone…

Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure

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Obama and Biden tax calculator discovered on Annoying Design.
Yes I cannot vote because I’m French, BUT I must admit this tax calculator designed by Obama and Biden is pretty straightforward. Very much so for families under the 250,000 bracket …

A tax calculator is better than 1000 words
-> Link

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I am working with my friend Marisa Jahn on a new project. It will be super fun, artistic and hopefully design noir! More soon… but in the meantime I want to share her latest creation with Steve Shada, “Pleasurecraft“.

A kit for any klutz who wishes to woo a potential lover, ‘Pleasurecraft’ is a vehicular kit that choreographs gesture and landscape to produce an outting full of splendor and romance. The potential lover wil find PleasureCraft’s luxurious pullows and easy-to-reach champagne cooler irresistable. Suitors will love PleasureCraft for its easy-to-use instructions that make Romance easy - one, two, three!

The suitor begins when he/she steps in the boat and first begins to read the operator’s manual. Pictures indicate what to do next–comb the moustache, don the bowtie, bust out the TicTacs — then uncork the champagne, what tempo to follow, etc.

Often, a clumsy serenade can be attributed to an overwhelming amount of details and a failure to attend to the right ones in the right order. But PleasureCraft solves this problem through its built-in water wheel, perfectly callibrated to the RPM of the River Seine. By listening to the music and glancing at the operator manual, the suiter knows what cues to follow and when.

(‘Pleasurecraft’ questions the human agency in constructing the pictoral imaginary and an ethnographic examination of our species’ mating rituals.)

Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure
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“Stelarc Ken” by Zoe Khamsin.
Now children can play with cyborg toys!

Stelarc is a poet and scientist of contemporary times and his body, that he himself defined as ‘obsolete’, and others has defined as ‘posthuman’, is the end of the religious principle of body’s inviolability. Moreover he made a mutual correspondence between his body and his art, and this led to his iconic definition. The artist creation - ‘Stelarc Ken’ - builds upon the idea of iconic individuals being replicated in toy form.

Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure
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Another neat technique in the vein of SnOil, a physical display Based on ferrofluid that reacts to magnetism. Shade Pixel is a type of physical display that uses deformable skin to represent information.

It is very pretty, the dots on the white looks like steps in the snow. Notice how the sound from the solenoid works really well with the “clock” idea! A nice trick to deal with noisy technology. You can see a video about Shade Pixel here:

Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure

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In the series I love animation, I found this graffiti animation that is really fun to watch.

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure
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I don’t know why nobody thought of that before. You can now get rid of your books on the virtual space! Web sites sell books, second price books, offer people to sell their personal books, but no site aggregates the needs of users in coordination with students who wants to get rid of their past year textbooks or more recent used books.

Selling books online is a new concept and most people do not think to sell used books online. I am not sure of the competitive advantage with local resellers such as university associated bookstores, but this site that allows you to Sell TextBooks is really neat: you enter the ISBN number of your book and it offers you a price for it. If you don’t have a ISBN number for your book or if you’d like a deal for a specific book, you can just email the bookstore. You ship your books to the bookstore (shipping being reimbursed after 10$ of books are being sold to the company). A very convenient way to get rid of your textbooks and you can also check the price for any books you want.

They usually buy books that are in good or better condition, that have an ISBN and that have a demonstrated demand in the used book market. Books that they typically do not buy are: encyclopedia sets, magazines, music books, comic books, books that are in poor condition, romance series and western novels, outdated text books, outdated computer books and Time-Life books. I tried with a few books, unfortunately not all of them are popular, so it seems it would work best with university textbooks, but it is worth a try. So if you want to clean your desk or need a new series of textbooks, this is a place to try!

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A video on the beach by Keith Loutit that resembles stop motion (effect Tilt Shift) found on this super neat French blog Fubiz. The video animates beach lovers that shape like sharp color points using the fashionable effect called Tilt Shift, effect I used a lot to present my sculpture work, playing with a unusual depth of field, to create optical illusions and to give it a maquette look and feel. This effect is apparently also called smallgantics, popular effect based on a Thom Yorke music video.
For the amateurs of the animations with the beach, don’t forget to check “la plage” by Bokanovski.

Beached from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

Another video by Keith Loutit where the effect is even more stunning!

Bathtub III from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

A very satisfying video of human motions within the light. Large format camera and filmed in high definition, the video entertains the viewer with light coordinated with motions. It is pleasing and becomes satisfying to watch the dancer twisting and jumping throughout the streets, playing with water and flowers. The soundtrack is a nice add-on by M83 (You appearing, Lower Your Eyelids to Die With the Sun), Sigur Ros (Staralfur) et Besnard Lakes (Devastation). Enjoy!

Human Movement in Light from Jordan Clarke on Vimeo.

Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure

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