Here are the final documentation videos for my projects for Major Studio:Computation in the Parsons MFA Design and Technology program. The first two have been posted before in different videos, the third is new. Enjoy!

Speak to Me//Breathe: Documentation from Steve Varga on Vimeo.

BeatBoxxx 1.0: Documentation from Steve Varga on Vimeo.

BeatBoxxx 2.0 Documentation from Steve Varga on Vimeo.

Flowers made from dog toys and silk flower petals, attached to servo motors. A light (photo) sensor senses the light and the flowers either hid or come out. Inspired by the movie Coraline.

Digital Flowers from Steve Varga on Vimeo.

Here is a project using Arduino-generated sound.

Basically I wanted to combine an old school/do it yourself 80’s nerd feeling with the old-school/do it yourself 80’s break dancing/hip hop feel. I also wanted to create something that could be sold as a kit for a very reasonable price and would allow people to create their own custom beat boxes that would be uniquely theirs. I also see opportunity for releasing a line of artist-based boxes, either in somewhat limited quantities or as one-off truly custom units that could be sold for charity.

Beat Boxx is an interactive beat creator and recorder that allows users to lay down digital loops of blips and beeps or perform them live. Through the use of gesture based beat selection, users can choose to either perform live or record a sample and endlessly loop it. Simple and affordable, Beat Boxx is available as both a pre-made ready to go unit and as a user buildable/customizable kit.

Beat Boxxx! from Steve Varga on Vimeo.

Here’s a simple example using IR sensors with some LEDs to show the distance detected.

IR Sensor with LEDs from Steve Varga on Vimeo.

Here is my final prototype for my LED Time Based project. I totally reworked my project after a lot of user testing, and built everything from the ground up. I spent a lot of time doing the woodwork/templates, and the code as well.

Speak to Me/Breathe is a project that shows communication over time by displaying my incoming email messages in Braille format on a large LED driven interface. The project is both an exploration of Braille as a visual 6-bit binary form of communication vs its normal tactile form, as well as a commentary on information security and encryption. Now that everything in the world is connected through the internet, is any of our data completely secure? By displaying my emails in an encrypted form, they are readily available for anyone to read if they put in the effort to learn and use visual braille. For the most part my information is secure because this is entirely too much work for a lot of people, but those who are determined enough will ultimately be able to read my mail despite the encryption.

Speak to Me/Breathe: Part 1 from Steve Varga on Vimeo.

Speak to Me/Breathe: Part 2 from Steve Varga on Vimeo.

Here are a couple TED Conference talks that we watched for computation that I thought were extremely interesting.

David Merrill discussing Siftables…an new,insane, completely modular interface

Caleb Chung discussing his life’s work and Pleo

This is a crazy 3D animation using ping-pong balls to create music…obviously not possible in real life but makes me wonder how something much simpler could be created….
and here is a real life example that was shown to us by one of the creators (Dan Paluska) last year in Algo, created by several artists from MIT for Absolut Vodka

Definitely awesome to think of creating sound through mechanics…I hope I can apply this to something in the near future using servos/solenoids/etc.

First setup for pcomp breadboard! Power going through 5v Regulator and 2 capacitors, delivering 5v of power

First simple experiment programming Arduino directly rather than through Firmata/openFrameworks. Cycling through an array of LEDs in a row.

LED Sequence through Arduino from Steve Varga on Vimeo.