Spatial distance has always been an obstacle to accessibly. Historically technological progress has advanced in the direction of reduction or eliminating distance and erasing the differences between far and near. This compression of space was first become more noticeable with the spread of telegraph and railroads. Now cyberspace delivers the ultimate annihilation of space by making every destination effortlessly accessible and making every point uniformly distance-less.

Back-Space, Wikipedia links

Back-Space, participant's navigation in Wikipedia

Back-Space

I believe access, nearness, distance and perspective play crucial roles in our ability to comprehend at both cognitive and aesthetic levels. Distance is a part of the bodily ground for cognition and a primary force behind element of aesthetic understanding of the world. It helps us determine what is reachable and reveals what is worth paying attention to.

Backspace explores how objectifying associations in a representation of knowledge using hyperlinks affects our interaction with this body of knowledge. Participants in Backspace use their bodies to do what seems playful and magical: to navigate Wikipedia by seeking and grabbing hyperlinks surrounding them in different distances.

In back-space participants stand or move in front of a large projection screen. Outgoing links from a Wikipedia article are projected for users in 3D and each link is placed in a distance from user according to its semantic relevance to the that article. The more relevant they are, the closer they become to user.

Participant’s body is captured using a Kinect camera and they can interact and grab links by using their body to navigate in Wikipedia. The effort needed to reach a link is proportional to the relevance of the link.

The content of each article they visit appears beneath the link cloud as a block of text. By navigating inside Backspace a city-like structure emerges from the history of navigation and user can bend to land down and look through the city they’ve just created.

Wikipedia is now more than just an encyclopedia. It is an interconnected representation of knowledge analogues to a limitless library with uncountable aisles of books, described by Jorge Luis Borges in his short story ‘Library of Babel’: “The Library is a sphere whose exact center is any one of its hexagons and whose circumference is inaccessible.” Similar to the library of Babel, any entry of Wikipedia can be considered as the center of this library, from which, one can wander forever from one article to another. In the ‘Library of Babel’ Borges states that the library is total; containing everything representable in every representational form. The destruction of some volumes of the library cannot possibly damage the aggregate of knowledge, since the lost ones can be recreated from its de facto facsimiles. ‘Absence’ is meaningless in an infinite library.
In a hyperlinked media, being connected is equivalent to being present; only a disconnected entity is inaccessible and therefore absent. In Wikipedia, as in Borges’ library of Babel, absence is unimaginable since all entities are interconnected with every conceivable connection. Even removing all links to an entry won’t disconnect it since it is still connected through search engine indices.

A Kinect camera is used for capturing user’s body. The environment is simulated in Processing, a framework for visual rendering, in 3D mode. The relatedness data is retrieved live from ‘Wikipedia miner‘ service. Links are connected to a reference point with a hidden spring that its length is equal to the relatedness of that link. Participants select hyperlinks with their right hand, they can grab it by closing their hands. By putting their hands on top of their head they enter to that article.They bend to look down at the city they have created. When they land down they see a landscape of the city in front of themselves and a gate, which is the description of the article they are in at that moment.

California College of Arts | MFA 2011 Exhibition:

back-space

back-space

back-space

Back Space in Kinect Hacks

Wikistalker, inspired by ‘Web Stalker‘, is a way of understanding a concept by only seeing the visualization of the meta-structure of its Wikipedia article.

In this visualization, a ‘sun’ is generated for each article. Each ray represents an out-going link. The length of each link shows the semantic relevance between those two linked articles based on ‘Wikipedia Miner‘ measures.

In the middle, in the category view tab, Wikistalker illustrates how links are related to the main entry based on how many categories they have in common. The category view mesh shows which links are ontologically related versus rays that show semantic relevance.

In Navigation View tab a short description appears in the middle and you can navigate in Wikistalker by clicking on links.

This project is implemented in HTML5 using processingjs and raphaeljs.

You can filter links by their relatedness using the sliding bar and sort them alphabetically or by relevance.

Circles on the end of the links are for articles that are mutually linked.

Live Demo. (Firefox Only)

Tutorial Player for Photoshop is an experimental technology that automatically generates step-by-step Adobe® Photoshop® tutorials from a sequence of actions recorded from the application. In other words, Tutorial Builder allows content authors to create tutorials just by demonstrating the appropriate sequence of steps in Photoshop. The resulting tutorials not only include text description and tool icons for the recorded actions, they also include all the code required to replay each step using the TouchSDK.

I collaborated as a User Experience Designer in this project. I designed and built the UI for Photoshop extention and Tutorial Builder iPad/iPhone App.

Landing Page- Portrait

Tutorial Page- Portrait

Dialogue Box- Portrait

Design Identity for Tutorial Builder App, based on Photoshop Logo. Ps logo looks like a closed book, Tutorial Builder should make that book open.

I designed all visuals as well as HTML and CSS files.

Brochure Design for Advanced Technology Labs.

Learning how to use complex software, such as Photoshop, can be a challenging task. Even experts spend a considerable amount of time improving their Photoshop skills in order to streamline workflows and keep up with new features.

How can we make the learning experience of Photoshop engaging, enjoyable, and serendipitous? 

In this project, we explore the potential of computer games as an answer to this question. Specifically, we developed Jigsaw, an extension for Photoshop that allows users to learn Photoshop while solving virtual jigsaw puzzles. We have developed a set of puzzles that cover key features of Photoshop including layers, selection, transformation, adjustment layers, and  layer masks.

The extension incorporates many game mechanisms such as performance feedback, hints, and a leader board. Our preliminary observations of user interactions with the game reveal  the great educational potential of playing the game as well as the challenge of making it fun and engaging.

Playing Jigsaw inside Photoshop:

The making process became a period of measuring, modeling, trialing and refining. We began by taping off the bus shelter in order to envision what we were making. Then we made cardboard prototypes which were later refined into the booth. This phase took approximately three weeks and we went through many models, most major shifts in design were due to decisions about how the user will interact with our project or large changes in the type of technology we would be using.

We tested our installation and spoke to some locals in the mission about their thoughts. There were a large range of reactions to the bus booth, but a vast majority understood the piece instantly and took a liking to it. One found the simplicity of the piece to be quite beautiful and sat quietly as she took in the experience. Others were so excited that they “tweeted” about it right away.

Projectors inside the booth connected to live streaming video feed from the 48-Line bus. We followed the bus to capture footage.

People are waiting to explore There, Already installation

There Already installation in Mission District San Francisco

There Already installation on Mission District, San Francisco

Portable installation.

Sensing the City Exhibition

Sensing the City Exhibition

Sensing the City Exhibition

Sensing the City Exhibition

This project combines this concept with the massive proliferation of image-making in digital age. The system contains an interactive surface for hanging frames. The placement and size of the frame is detected by the system and accordingly a picture is projected inside the frame. Images are chosen randomly from a selected locally stored or online gallery, or, access can be granted to other persons to post pictures inside those frames remotely using a web based interface, the way we allow friends to post pictures in social media.

The story goes like this…

To draw a rigid barrier between the domain of old fashioned frames and digital image manipulation, the interaction of user with the system is limited to placement of frames. Users can change the picture by moving and rotating and changing the placement of frames.

Making prototype.

Apart from this considerations, the final prototype is an amusing product to be used at home and brings moments of ironic amusement.

This system has a camera to detect the frames and a projector to project images inside frames. To detect the placement and orientation of the frames reacTIVision framework is used. Images are loaded either from a local image repository or from a web-based interface.

I collaborated with sepans in concept development and technical implementation.

Frameship in ‘CCA Far away So close Exhibition Spring 2010′

We feel that, among the voting populace, there is a knowledge gap between taxes paid and state services consumed. Additionally, there may be disconnects between how proper funding of state services can help lead to a healthy economy and a better standard of living.

California Constitution Visual Representation:

I created a mock tourist guide that associates the California Constitution with a tangle of highway interchanges: an intimidating experience for a foreign driver, and a far cry from 1960s-era representations of California highways as symbols of freewheeling pleasure. CCA News.

In order to understand concerns around the tax burden, we must first develop an understanding of the various perspectives people have. We first set out identify different classes, age groups, cultures, and political affiliations to target. Our primary research has focused on reaching out to target groups identified through interviews and an online survey.

Online Survey : http://ccalinder.wufoo.com/forms/california-taxes/

Overall, there seems to be lack of trust in California’s government to distribute tax money to the areas voters feel it is necessary. This results in a reluctance to any kind of tax reform, even though there seems to be agreement among most that California needs money to secure a better future. The top priority for most Californians seems to be education, and the least is prisons and administrative government services. Healthcare, the environment, and infrastructure are also of importance.

Creating a source which will allow people to engage with the tax system in California, rather than ignore it, will help California voters make more informed decisions in regards to taxes and reform.

As a team, we decided an exhibit, as a learning experience through interaction, would be the most effective format for our project.

Contemporary issues exhibition | CCA 2010

City game( my individual project) is an interactive game that reflects changes upon an urban neighborhood depending on the way the budget is portioned. Participants can use the budget bar to adjust the amount of spending in each of three categories: health and human services, environment, and education. The total budget is limited and constant, however, and each adjustment will affect the other variables.