Photo of the first version of the boards

Description

The Scrapyard Challenge Jr. Noise Maker Kit is a simple electronics board and kit that teaches the fundamentals of electricity through sound composition and is simple enough that anyone can understand. What if teachers and after-school providers were as comfortable with electronics as they are with calculators, markers, books, and blocks? Would children then develop an innate understanding of electricity and interaction design? If kids could hack safe, low-cost computational boards, with simple in and outputs, would they begin to view themselves as makers and tinkerers? If tweens are given the tools to construct their own knowledge of circuits and switches would “sketching with hardware” become as much a part of their cultural practices as drawing, writing, posting, and re-mixing? Will these same children be better prepared and more disposed to future learning in chemistry and physics? Scrapyard Challenge Jr. explores these questions. Our team is part of the national movement to evolve STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) to STEAM, folding Art and Design into the rubric.

Photo of the kit assembled!

Buy The Kit Here:

Build The Kit! Instructables Link

Inside your kit, you’ll find all the parts you need to make your own noisemaker:

Parts List:

- 1 8-ohm speaker

- 1 1/8″ headphone jack

- 1 10kΩ potentiometer

- 3 resistors (2 1kΩ, 1 200Ω)

- 3 capacitors: .1uf, 4.7uF, 10uF

- 2 SPDT slide switches

- 2 LEDs (red, blue)

- 1 2.1mm barrel jack for power supply

- 1 LM7805 voltage regulator

- 1 555 timer IC, socket

- 1 9-volt battery enclosure with on/off switch

- 1 4-pole spring terminal

Video Documentation of the kits in action:

Photos of the Workshops

Details

The Scrapyard Challenge Junior Workshops are a new version of the Scrapyard Challenge Workshops which are intensive workshops run by Jonah Brucker-Cohen and Katherine Moriwaki where participants build simple electronic projects (both digital and analog inputs) out of found or discarded “junk” (old electronics, clothing, furniture, outdated computer equipment, appliances, turntables, monitors, gadgets, etc..). So far the workshops have been held 52 times in 14 countries, on 5 continents with 3 different themes including the MIDI Scrapyard Challenge where participants build simple musical controllers from discarded objects and “junk”, DIY Wearable Challenge where they create wearable tech projects from used clothing, and the DIY Urban Challenge where they work on public space interventions and other projects. The MIDI Scrapyard version includes a mini workshop where participants build simple drawing robots or “DrawBots” with small, inexpensive motors, batteries, and drawing markers that can also be connected to Serial or MIDI interface. At the end of the day or evening, the workshop participants have a small performance, concert, or fashion show (depending on the workshop theme) where they demonstrate and present their creations together as a group. No electronics skills or any experience with technology is necessary to participate in the workshops.

Description

“America’s Got No Talent” is a web-based data vizualization project by Jonah Brucker-Cohen and Katherine Moriwaki that continually synthesize and processes the steady stream of Twitter feeds for American reality television show media sources such as “American Idol”, “America’s Got Talent”, “America’s Next Dance Crew”, “The X Factor”, “America’s Next Top Model”, and more in the genre. The project highlights when and how these shows gain notoriety through social media and followers by dynamically displaying when tweets are sent and how much bias is gathered for each program based on retweets from followers as well as fans. Each show’s virtual presence grows in size based on the amount of attention it receives from social media users worldwide creating a measurement meter that ranks popular media on their social exposure, rather than their credit as viable media sources.

Video Documentation:

Screenshot

Details

“America’s Got No Talent” was created to highlight the increasing popularity of social media and how reality shows are gaining more notoriety from the Internet than actual viewers.The rankings are displayed in a horizontal bar graph in the shape of an American flag where small rectangles make up the larger “stripes” of the flag and each one represents a “tweet” sent that references one of six reality television shows that crowdsource the American population as their “contestants”.

1.American Idol
2.America’s Got Talent
3.America’s Next Best Dance Crew
4.America’s Most Wanted
5.The X-Factor USA
6.America’s Next Top Model

Description

“Marked Territory” is a physical Twitter client in the shape of a typical carnival strength meter. Participants utlize a large mallet to hit a strike zone that drives a typical carnival light meter to a higher level. Each strength level of the meter equals a “Retweet” of different types of Twitter users from the “Marked Terrority” Twitter account. The lower the strength of the user the client retweets childish celebrity gossip tweets such as those from Ashton Kutcher, Ellen Degeneres, and Paula Abdul while the moderate / medium levels retweet sports celebrities such as Lebron James, Serena Williams, and Shaquille O’Neal. The highest leevel of strength on the meter retweets important news stories from all major news networks (CNN, BBC, NBC, ABC, AL Jazeera, etc) such as those regarding international events, breaking news, political announcements, and other world events. Since the project is based on strength, a digital scale is built into the flooring where the user stands to hit the “strike zone” thus compensating for male and female strength differences.

Prototype

This early version of the project (.5 Beta) was made with recycled components such as an old pillow, baby swing joints and an airconditioner filter for the striking mallet, and two halfs of a discarded PC with a spring to function as a switch. The next version will more closely resembled the above diagram. This version was created at the R.I.P. workshop at the Banff Centre, in Banff, Canada.

Photos of Prototype

Installed at the Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff Centre, Banff, Canada.

Screen shot of Marked Territory Twitter Account

Group picture from Scrapyard Challenge Workshop at Sentient City, NY, NY.

Description

The Scrapyard Challenge Workshops are intensive workshops where participants build simple electronic projects (both digital and analog inputs) out of found or discarded “junk” (old electronics, clothing, furniture, outdated computer equipment, appliances, turntables, monitors, gadgets, etc..). So far the workshops have been held 47 times in 14 countries, on 5 continents with 3 different themes including the MIDI Scrapyard Challenge where participants build simple musical controllers from discarded objects and “junk”, DIY Wearable Challenge where they create wearable tech projects from used clothing, and the DIY Urban Challenge where they work on public space interventions and other projects. The MIDI Scrapyard version includes a mini workshop where participants build simple drawing robots or “DrawBots” with small, inexpensive motors, batteries, and drawing markers that can also be connected to Serial or MIDI interface. At the end of the day or evening, the workshop participants have a small performance, concert, or fashion show (depending on the workshop theme) where they demonstrate and present their creations together as a group. No electronics skills or any experience with technology is necessary to participate in the workshops.

This is an interactive map of everywhere we have run the workshop:

View Scrapyard Challenge Workshops in a larger map

Video Documentation of the Workshops:

In the digital age, networked communication platforms and mediums are becoming more and more user friendly and allow for multitudes of types of interaction, voices, and exchanges of images, sounds, and text, both synchronously and asynchronously. Messages can be sent, voices can be heard, and events can be realized with organization and clarity that never before existed. In particular, emailing lists have become important means of maintaining ties within groups, relaying important information among peers or collaborators, and forging a sense of community that transcends all national and cultural boundaries.

Currently, we are actively encouraged to join public email lists. Unless a list adheres to certain rules, is password protected, or made private, anyone with a valid email address can join the discussion. We are also used to conventions of email lists such as subscribe/unsubscribe functions, digest mode, broadcast mode, and public archives of threaded messages. BumpList functions like a standard, public listserv, but adds the constraints of limited membership (currently only 5 people can subscribe at once) and the urgency of forcing people to re-subscribe if they get bumped and want to continue the conversations, discussions, arguments in which they are engaged.

Rules

In the discussion there are no rules. BumpList is an open forum just like any other email list. However depending on how much you want to participate in the discussion, it might be to your advantage not to advertise your subscription to the list. The more people you encourage to join, the greater the chance you will be bumped. Currently only 6 people can be on the list at any one time, thus making it an exclusive place so make your voice count!

System

BumpList exists as an extension to the well-known, open-source mail manager, SmartList. By using SmartList, the project maintains all of the security and subscribe/unsubscribe features of the manager and runs with the robustness of a widely used and distributed application. When subscribing, each participant gets a preliminary email telling them they are subscribed. When they are unsubscribed, they receive an email telling them they were bumped and given an option to rejoin.

Picture of BumpList on display at Transmediale.04 (1/31/04 – 2/4/04)

Picture of BumpList on display at “My Own Private Reality: Growing Up Online in the 90s and 00s” (5/11/07 – 7/1/07)

Picture of BumpList on display at “The Art of Participation” @ SFMOMA, (11/08/08 – 2/08/2009)
San Francisco, California, USA.

“Black Offline People” shirt, Buy this shirt for $27.39 USD.

Overview

I designed these shirts as part of a collection of shirts that correspond to iChat status messages I’ve used over the past 8 years or so. The shirts say “I see Offline People”, “Yes, I’m Actually Offline”, “I am Currently Afraid of my Computer”, “Status:Mobile”, etc… You can buy the shirts at this link.

“White Offline People” shirt, Buy this shirt for $20.19 USD.

“Status Mobile” shirt, Buy this shirt for $19.19 USD.

“Yes, I Made Backups” shirt, Buy this shirt for $27.59 USD.

“I See Offline People Green” shirt, Buy this shirt for $24.74 USD.

“Actually Offline” shirt, Buy this shirt for $13.29 USD.

“Blue Actually Offline” shirt, Buy this shirt for $29.39 USD.

“Afraid of my Computer” shirt, Buy this shirt for $20.49 USD.

Description

• Wi-Fi Hog is personal system for a laptop or portable computer that enables people to gain complete control over a public access wireless network. The idea is presented as an alternative to the utopian vision of wireless networks being open, shared, and utilitarian for everyone. This project is a cautionary one, and comes as a reaction to the battle over free wireless spectrum where corporate pay-per-use and free community networks are fighting for signal dominance in public spaces. Wifi-Hog exists as a tactical media tool for controlling and subverting this claim of ownership and regulation over free spectrum, by allowing a means of control to come from a third-party.

• Aimed specifically at public wireless nodes, the WiFi Hog system exists as a laptop connected to a Portable Video Jammer (PVJ) that communicates to software consisting of a packet sniffer and wireless stumbler which monitors incoming packets from an open node. Only traffic originating from the Wifi-Hogger’s IP address may access the connection, otherwise the PVJ is switched on, blocking others from accessing the open node.

• The project attempts to discover if adding constraints on a network and making access to it more competitive and “territorial” changes the relationships between people who use the network.

Background
As mobile and wireless devices become more ubiquitous, free and public wireless nodes have gained high penetration. Free nodes are popping up in public parks, airport terminals, libraries, schools, and other venues worldwide. In addition to sanctioned spaces for the nodes, private nodes without encryption are leaking from offices and houses onto city and rural streets. Like any other urban space or public monument, despite public ownership and responsibility, there are still individuals and groups who make their voices heard. From graffiti street action to sit-ins and demonstrations, public space has become the ultimate open territory for everything from protests to social networking to memorials to private encounters. Since mobile technology has entered public space and brought private conversations and interactions along with it, there’s an interesting rift between what is deemed as an acceptable use of public space.

Looking specifically at free wireless access points, WiFi-Hog is a reaction to the public spaces they inhabit. If the option exists to connect and the network is made available then why can’t people use it in any way they want – even block it. WiFi-Hog is a personal tool to enable both private interaction in public space as well as social obstruction and deconstruction of shared resources. This approach could shift the idea of a network from a shared experience to one of individual connections between people and their link to the Internet – ie. the dissolution of LANs. The project is based on a similar idea of how property was acquired before zoning laws and how land was a public resource that had to be regulated (such as the Homestead Act of 1862 *see note below) due to people using it in ways that the public or government objected. My aim is to investigate how the same could be said about Wi-Fi networks, if they leak or pervade into public space they should be used in any way the person inhabiting that area wishes to use them.

Inside the jammer:

System
Since most wi-fi networks operate on the 2.4 and 5 GHZ band, Wifi-Hog uses a standard Portable Video Jammer (which also blocks wireless X-10 Camera signals), which is modified slightly to communicate with a PIC microcontroller and accepts power from a USB connection. The WiFi Hog software runs on the user’s machine (Mac OSX/Win 2K / XP) and functions as a packet sniffer / wifi stumbler to find any open wireless nodes and detect incoming and outgoing packets. The packet sniffer looks for outgoing and incoming packets with headers that include the local IP address of the WiFi Hog user’s machine. If these headers are found, the jammer is switched off, and the packets can flow freely. If no IP headers match the user’s machine, the jammer is kept on, blocking everyone else from accessing the node.

* Note:
The Homestead Act of 1862 in the USA provided that unoccupied public land be transferred to a homesteader after five years of residence. This was an act sanctioned by the government in the US to create a system of land grants to encourage settlers to develop the then uninhabited West. In effect, the Homestead Act was a pay off for settling in the region. Wifi-Hog is very different from this since it represents an almost ‘hostile’ takeover of this land. Imagine if you had lived on the land for 3 years, it was still in the public domain, but you had invested your life into it, and someone came along and fenced off the land with a fence you could not penetrate. In this case you do not have any legal right to the land, but you still feel as if it is yours since it has been in your custody for 3 years. This is a scenario closely linked to Wifi-Hog’s premise that a public wireless network maybe be partially owned or maintained by someone, but it can nevertheless be taken away and controlled.

Holding the PVJ device and microcontroller box:

Backview of PVJ device, laptop, and controller unit:

Backview of PVJ device and USB connector:

Screenshot of Wifi-Hog Software:

Wifi-Hog installed at Reclaim The Spectrum (3/13-19/06).

Wifi-Hog installed at FutureSonic (4/27/04-5/08/04):

Description

Alerting Infrastructure! is a physical hit counter that translates hits to the web site of an organization into interior damage of the physical building that web site or organization represents. The focus of the piece is to amplify the concern that physical spaces are slowly losing ground to their virtual counterparts. The amount of structural damage to the building directly correlates to the amount of exposure and attention the web site gets, thus exposing the physical structure’s temporal existence.

The project has been active in 9 countries (Ireland, Peru, Brazil, USA, Spain, Canada, Belgium, Germany, The Netherlands) to date.

Video documentation of the project:

Overview

The proliferation of web sites as virtual representations of physical locations has reached a saturation point. Despite the massive surge of bricks and mortar spaces (such as schools, businesses, organizations) maintaining online presences, there is still little connection between the people simultaneously inhabiting these spaces. Alerting Infrastructure! addresses this by connecting a physical space such as a building to its online counterpart or web site that represents this structure / organization by scanning access logs of web site for new unique visitor “hits” and translating each new site hit into physical output in the form of activating a large, pneumatic jackhammer.

Video of the project installed at the Irish Museum of Contemporary Art, 7/2009.

Alerting Infrastructure! drill @ Interactive Media Arts Laboratory (IMAL), 10/4/07, Brussels, Belgium.

With each new virtual hit, the jackhammer slowly destroys the walls of the physical building. Since web sites and virtual interfaces can garner an almost unlimited amount of “virtual hits” without showing any visible signs of decay or extended use, the project attempts to illustrate a fundamental reversal in role of physical spaces losing importance and relevance to their virtual counterparts.

Related Work:
Alerting Infrastructure! gains inspiration from other works that attempt to emphasize the temporal nature of physical structures and the social impact their inhabitants bestow upon them. One such work is Chris Burden’s Samson (1985), a mechanical structure of wooden beams set up so that when people enter a room through a turnstile, the beams are forced against the wall, eventually leading to the room’s collapse. This installation not only instills fear in the gallery visitor (because the walls could collapse at any moment) but also makes them question the fundamental relationship between the structure and the space it occupies. Similarly, the “Mural” robotic drill (designed by HoneyBee Robotics) from Diller + Scofidio’s exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in NYC, drills randomly placed holes in the wall of the gallery as visitors entered the space. The sound not only disturbs the pristine acoustics of the gallery but also reminds visitors of the temporal nature of the structures holding up and displaying the work.

Looking at the fundamental relationship between architectural space and its occupation, use, and subsequent decay over tiime, Alerting Infrastructure! is ultimately concerned with the potential role virtual participants can take in this process. In most cases, online visitors to an organization’s web site have no contact with the general public that is simultaneously inhabiting the physical space. The project emphasizes the importance of this connection to provide a link between people in both spaces and to express this in physical form. This way visitors to the physical space can get a sense of how many online visitors have come and gone and experience their presence as the walls slowly deteriorate.

System Diagram:

System

Alerting Infrastructure! exists as a PHP based hitcounter on the main page of the organization’s web site. On a local PC situated in the space, software reads the incoming hits from the site and sends serial output to a microcontroller for a specified time period. The microcontroller switches a TRIAC (AC current relay) to turn on and off a Pneumatic Jackhammer held up by steel cable from the ceiling of the space, and aimed at the wall. With each new hit to the site, the jackhammer is powered on and the wall is slowly chipped away. On the web site, a readout indicates to visitors the amount of damage they have caused such as: “Your visit has contributed to “Some Percentage” of the destruction of (this organization’s) physical building. Thanks for visiting.”

Picture from City Arts Center (Dublin) Install (9/03):

Picture of the jackhammer at the Garage Festival 2004
@ Straslund, Germany:

Thanks to Amy F. for the pic!

Picture of the jackhammer at Texelectronica 2006
@ Dallas, Texas, USA:

Thanks to Casey Reas. for the pic!

Picture of the jackhammer at Connected!
@ Dec 1-30, 2006, @ Breda, The Netherlands:

Thanks to Dennis. for the pic!

Another picture of the jackhammer at Connected!
@ Dec 1-30, 2006, @ Breda, The Netherlands:

Screenshot of the damage from AI at Connected!.
@ Dec 1-30, 2006, @ Breda, The Netherlands:

The AI drill at Laboral Center for Art and Industrial Creation – Launch.
@ March 30 – May, 2007, @ Gijon, Spain:

The AI drill @ Interactive Media Arts Lab (IMAL)
@ 10/4/07, Brussels, Belgium.

The hit counter on the Fundacion Telefonica Website
@ 11/17/07 – 12/24/07, Lima, Peru.

The AI drill @ BLIP! exhibition, Fundacion Telefonica, 11/17/07 – 12/24/07, Lima, Peru.

The AI drill @ Art.Mov Exhibition, Belo Horizonte, Brazil, 11/21/08 – 11/25/08, Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

Hit counter @ Art.Mov Exhibition, Belo Horizonte, Brazil, 11/21/08 – 11/25/08, Belo Horizonte, Brazil.

Alerting Infrastructure! @ Art.Mov Exhibition, Sao Paulo, Brazil, 11/28/08 – 11/31/08.

Alerting Infrastructure! drill and hit counter @ Techformance, ARCO Art Fair, Madrid, Spain 2/11/09 – 2/16/09.

Alerting Infrastructure! drill @ Refunct, Irish Museum of Contemporary Art,8/30/2009 – 9/28/2009

Alerting Infrastructure! drill @ Prospectives 09, University of Reno, Nevada, USA, 11/12-14/2009.

Screenshot from hitcounter for Prospectives 09 show: