Time Series Analysis of Trending Topics: Taylor Swift & Ebola

I thought it might be interesting to plot two very different trending topics over time using Twitter Trending Topic data. I imagined the twitterverse would be caught up in a pop culture vortex anticipating Taylor Swift’s new album, but in fact, all it took was one Ebola case in the US to turn it into a massively trending topic. Ebola has […]

Meat is Murder tag recommender system for spambots

The first thing I think of when I hear recommendation system, is a music recommendation system. So I tried to make one using Instagram data, which is probably the wrong form of social media / tag, but I was curious to see what might happen. I set up a remote server and ran this script as […]

Sequencer Concept: WAAM

I’m really inspired by the Web Audio API. Anybody on a desktop web browser can just open up their JavaScript console, give themselves some oscillators, and make a modular synth. I’m also inspired by the web’s potential as an educational resource where you can learn by remixing other people’s work. For example, kids are learning how […]

Thumb Piano

Loading View on Instagram I made a thumb piano / kalimba / mbira / sanza / likembe / lamellaphone / out of tines from a sprung steel rake. It was very difficult to find a rake, since most people don’t have anything to rake here in NYC. I tried Home Depot, Ace Hardware, a few small […]

DRM for In Vitro Meat: The Carnoisser

John, Karam and I met up a couple times this week, and I think we’ve narrowed in on an idea. We’re interested in exploring the “open source / closed source” axis for a future of meat that could involve 3d bio-printing. We want to highlight the contrast between this technology’s rhetoric (potential to feed the […]

Terreform ONE

This weekend, I tagged along on a guided tour of New Lab and the Brooklyn Navy Yards, courtesy of Mitchell Joachim of Terreform ONE. Mitchell is an ecological architect who uses biomaterials to promote sustainable design. I had hoped to talk about his projects like the in vitro meat habitat (pictured below) but wound up hopping on a tour […]

Lamellophone

I’m going to make a thumb piano. I’m planning to use: – metal tines from a rake, or spring-tempered steel from here. The tines will average less than 10cm and I’d like to have 12 of them, which would make 120cm or about 4 feet. – resonant wood (I’ve been saving my oak) – bike spoke […]

In Vitro Meat + Plankton + Pumpkin Group Brainstorm

Themes: Energy How would this solve hunger / food scarcity / part of a bigger system of change? food chain ethics “natural” (w/ human involvement? over time vs. immediate lab results?) cloning organs / body parts for health immortal cells what happens if Future Foods succeed? to livestock (cattle? pigs?) to cultures where meat is […]

Sheet Metal + Oak

This week’s prompt was to make anything out of any two materials. I was overwhelmed by the options. I couldn’t pick two materials, let alone decide what I wanted to make. Ideally, the concept should come first. I had a bunch of ideas, but couldn’t commit to one. Instead I decided to let the materials guide me. I settled […]

Enclosure

I set about trying to turn this radio shack speaker into a guitar amplifier by adding my an amplifier circuit, a gain knob, an input jack, and an on/off switch. I thought that using an existing enclosure from the scrap shelf would be better than building my own, since I had some wood that was very thin […]