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OSI Portfolio

OSI Portfolio Item

Audio Graffiti

For my midterm project, I hacked the sink in our 10th-floor bathroom.


The sink had an IR sensor with an exposed control box. I cracked that open, split off the power and sensor-data lines, and got it trigger a light show under the sink and play a sound sample from a speaker I attached under the porcelain. I left a record button hooked up to it, and, pretty soon, people were recording their own strange sounds and messages that would play every time someone went to wash their hands.

Renga Game Board

Renga Game Board

I've long been an admirer of the Japanese renga, a collaborative poetic form. One of the major drawbacks, however, is trying to remember the rules. Each person participating must write a two- or three-line stanza using a pre-determined subject, usually a season of the year. In an autumn renga, shown here, the first writer begins with a three-line verse about autumn. The next writer completes a two-line verse about the moon, which is usually related to autumn.

The game board above really nicely condenses these rules. Even though this was just a simple assignment, it solved a long-standing problem for me.

Journal Square Deli

Journal Square Deli

For our final project, my group was required to select a location, identify two groups there, and get them to interact in anyway we chose. We picked the deli inside the Journal Square PATH station. It turned out to be an amazingly difficult but rewarding project.

The Incredibly Boring, Dreadful Technology That Just Might Save Millions of Lives

The proprietors extend a further invitation to the world of technology as surveyed by one its most humble practitioners as he confounds the assembled with tales of a truly dreary technology that nevertheless possesses the potential to improve the standard of living among this planet's poorest citizens. The producers are indebted once again to the members of the freesound project who contributed samples of their efforts for the creation of this auditory presentation under the esteemed Creative Commons Sampling Plus license:

Machinima Design Jam

Inti Einhorn, Becky Heritage and I put together a crrrrazy physical-computing piece that uses clips pulled from the Sims game to re-enacted the famous (or infamous) Milgram experiment.

Here is a brief clip of what we have:

Research Assistantship

In the autumn of 2006, I was honored to be accepted into the Design and Technology department's research assistants' program. As an officially designated factotum, I've worked on:

  • CDT Department Website: Drupal and other backend hackery
  • Research Assistants' Website: All of it, pretty much. So, you know, if you hate it, I'm to blame.
  • OSI: Lots of cool things are in the offing, especially with Psiphon. Work done in my Design and Psychology class has produced some very interesting results. Check back soon!

Open Society Institute Collab Studio

The Open Society Institute Collab Studio provided us with several fascinating projects. So far, we've worked on:

  • Gadgets: blog/wiki software for journalists and NGOs
  • Psiphon: Censorship circumvention software using social networks
  • WordForge: On-line translation software for open-source projects

Bring on the noise?

The proprietors present this fine entertainment, being the podcast in which one Mr. Edwards expounds on noise, aural and digital, and how said noise ties together the coin toss, the credit card, and Guantanamo Bay. Humbly presented for your distinguished listening and with due thanks to the members of the freesound project who contributed samples of their efforts for the creation of this auditory presentation under the esteemed Creative Commons Sampling Plus license:

Copyright Mike Edwards 2006-2009. All content available under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license, unless otherwise noted.

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