Park(ing) Day

http://parkingdaynyc.org/

It was last weekend when I was working with my leftover energy to run a UbiComp workshop after a long nights of a proposal writing.  Since the workshop was about sustainability in Ubiquitous computing, the subject headline of the alumni list caught my eyes. If you are not familiar with The Park(ing) Day, please click on the link above. I think it’s beautiful. I wish I could hang out in NYC street in a small park in a parking lot.

Then, I thought how lovely it would be to have a parking spot turned into a small park here in Seoul. It would be tough though. There aren’t street meter parking lots here much. Well, I haven’t seen one. The parking lots in Seoul city are generally run privately instead by city. The only possible parking lot in the street is the one in the Hongik university area in Seoul. It’s usually packed with cars and people until 2 am but, if some people decided to leave their cars home and decorate the parking spots into a series of parks, it would look lovely and artsy as the neighborhood stands for.

People in Korea, some of them(many) own cars to show their status, not because they really need them. The public transportation here excels. You can get anywhere basically – faster and reliable and inexpensive. However, people prefer to bring their fancy cars to small streets of traffic jams so they can feel better about themselves. I’ve got asked several times why I don’t own a car like I should have one because of my profession. They almost think it’s not cool that I don’t own a car. Not that would effect me how I feel about having a car in a city where is full of air pollution and traffic jams. I usually answer them like this, “One less person with a car would be good for the environment and for the city.”

I have a driving license and if I really feel the need, I would drive. For example, if I live somewhere I won’t have public transportation and if driving is the only option of getting somewhere. Beside I can always rent a car if I want to drive.

 

Yearbook Yourself

OK, I’m supposed to write this 200 page long, 5 year plan research application but, I’m posting this quickly BECAUSE it’s cool & I haven’t posted for a while. (I know, I know – blame this long ass proposal but, I hope we get it so we can design research all the cool interactive physical computing projects with talented peers!)

This site, www.yearbookyourself.com is very simple but, brilliant.

It let you upload your own photo and composite with the hairstyles of the typical yearbook of different years in America, 1968 – 1988 or something like that. The above photo is if I graduated the highschool in 1968. So far my favorite but, I will play with it more when I procrastinating again… this thing is addictive.

Since when did yearbook became submedia online? Am I allowed to call it ‘Convergence Media’ or ‘Convergence Culture’?

 

A new citizen

A new citizen’s brunch

With Friends at The Magician celebrating my citizenship. (Sonia’s photo set)

OK. I did my oath ceremony in the morning of July 18th, 2008 in South District Court in New York City. I finally belong to somewhere because I’m legally a US citizen now. (Please note that I’ve been holding two different alien’s registration cards in both countries.) The process took about 6-12 months but, in order for me to make a decision to give up a citizenship where I no longer lived for the most of my life but, was born was still a hard one since it took me over 20 years. While waiting about 3 hrs at the oath ceremony, you realize that it’s a significant change. Obviously, it won’t change who I am nor where I came from but, it’s an action I took with a serious responsibility & it’s a significant change of my status. Now I will be saying I’m an american instead of saying a korean.

Beside some sentimental notes on being a new citizen passing my mind, I celebrated with some good friends who were able to make it to The Magician in LES, NY. Due to my frequent small to medium accidents and my nature of clumsiness, some were very nervous about me getting hurt again once I set up for another T.N.O.(Thursday Night Out) gathering. Sonia offered me to stay at her place to watch me over & she made me all american brunch with flags and banners, mmm, stars. (see above photo) The weather was scorching hot and we had no intention of walking more than two blocks out so we made some more ‘Bloody Hudson’ (a sweet Bloody Mary cocktail version by Hudson Hotel & she got the recipe!) Well, Bloody Mary is a full blog entry to write about one day. I’m just enjoying various kind of Bloody Mary in the US as it’s a rare find in Seoul to taste a good Bloody Mary.

 

wordle of this blog

A nifty java applet that can randomize your words.  I guess I’ve been using a word “see” & a korean word, “없는” a lot.

 

US Summer Update – Seattle>SF>NY

I guess I’m due for some simple updates on my summer in this blog. The end of semester went by really insanely fast as usual. I had no idea how I packed & left Seoul. It’s been already 2 weeks since I arrived in Seattle, drove down to Portland with my sister’s family to see my parents, playing 9 hole golf & flew to San Francisco for a weekend visit then, arrived New York City last Sunday. Somehow, during last a week or so, everyone around me wanted to go see artworks… I have no complain but, 4 exhibitions in a week is a bit a lot to take, don’t you think? Anyway, let me summarize a bit about them now.

Museum of Glass Arts, Tacoma, WA

My sister insisted that we visit this museum on the way to Portland, OR. I had no idea since when she had great interests in glass arts but, I was all up for it! Here is one photo of installation I liked. (it was hard but, I’ve managed to take a sneak shot of it.) They also have a stage where you can see glass masters in action. Yeap, it’s warm filled with heat.

ps. I’m still dumb founded about the fact that museum clerk asked me if I’m under 18 years old still. jeez.

San Francisco, Bay area

As all my family members live by the west coast, I begin to think about any place to live in the west coast. It’s a hard thought to be away from NYC but, since I am away from NYC now, it might be a good transition to think of SF as a future option? It’s cold during July though. The hills don’t bother me that much since I’m used to hills in Seoul. (Imagine hills like SF during winter time with snow & ice!)

Since I was visiting an itp friend, of course I ended up meeting other ITP peeps. Some I had classes with, some I’ve known the names. The thing is that everyone I met during this short visit were from New York. All of them! It’s like a course you take after New York or something? Anyway, it was chillest 4th of July I’ve ever had in the US. The San Francisco people told me that July is the chillest in Bay area, SF. Who knew? Beside unchanging weather which could be very boring, I really liked the Bay area, SF.

PS1, Elevator Installation

As a friend of mine was involved with this cool elevator installation artwork & he only said, ‘I built a button’ I had to see it with my own eyes. The light installation is on the ceiling of the elevator and you do see a large red button in the middle which is to stop this colorful movement of lights.

The last day of Takashi Murakami at Brooklyn Museum

O.K. I had to admit it that when my friend told me let’s go see Murakami Exhbition at Brooklyn Museum since it’s the last day of the exhibition, I was hesitant. Because I went to exhibitions two days in a row and it would be three days in a row and my feet were hurting apparently. But, I do like Murakami’s artwork so I dragged myself to meet up with my friend at the Brooklyn Museum. Wow, they changed fascade, lobby… it’s been over a decade since I’ve been there, shame to myself. (O.K. Brookland is a pain to travel to during weekend as we all know!) Not surprisingly, my friend got stuck in the subway station for over one hour on the way to the museum and I who hates waiting without deadlines were extremely annoyed. The show was about to close in one hour & I had to make a hard decision. To go in & meet him later. As it turns out, he just made it to the exhibition 50 min to close and we were able to find each other inside of gallery rooms.

I really loved this show. No wonder there were lines like a Disney Land ride line but, I didn’t mind at all because there were 2 floors of amazing paintings, murals, statues by Murakami. It was a through retrospective of Murakami. His vivid colors are very hard to transfer in a small camera but, here are some images. Happy ending.

 

BFA students project, “Hope” – a marionette project

“Hope” a marionette project by Joohyun Jin, Laewoo Kang (Digital Media Design dept. BFA, Hongik University)

This movie is a low resolution with lots of noise (as it was raining cats and dogs during the final presentation in Interaction Design Studio) but, you will get the idea. Below is their project site that has a better presentation. “Hope” by Joohyun Jin & Laewoo Kang

A little description about this project. The marrionette is hand-sewn by Joohyun Jin & the project was a collaboration between two students. The translated abstract is below.

사람과 사람사이의 갈등,
치유할수 없는 상처

슬픔과 악몽의 수확자,
그래서 깨어날수 없는 존재의 슬픔.

Conflict among people

untreatable wounds

Receiver of sadness and nightmares

Tragedy of un-wake-able being

I see that this project can be improved by more dramatic expression in sound on what they are trying express & cleaner mechanical presentation. However, over all it was an interesting project.

It was frightening to watch it move on late afternoon with pouring rain outside.

 

seoul update

bike @ bakery

파티세리. 비 patisserie, Bi is a small french bakery store across my building. I biked to Cinecube this afternoon to buy movie tickets then strolled a bit. It was a bit hot but, there were enough breeze to cool my sweat. This cute pastisserie has good sandwiches. I had an egg sandwich & capuccino. It was a lovely sunday afternoon.

Indian restaurant, Dal in Chungdamdong, Seoul, Korea.

I’ve been having Indian food craving so Jia took me to this newly opened Indian restaurant near Dosan Park area. There are several decent restaurants in this area. The prices are steep but, you never get disappointed.

Dal was also great. great food, great presentation. We sat at the balcony and talked some more about new book idea together. It was a lovely evening…until she drove me to my neigbhourhood.

Every road on the way to my neighourhood were all closed with the military policemen’s buses – again. I asked her to drop me off at the closest place where I could walk home. After walking along a wall of mp officers and buses, I found an open spot where they let me pass. It was so empty and quiet when I across the police line. I could walk through empty 16 lane wide roads which is usually filled with running cars. wow, it was so surreal – like NYC with black out in 2003. I felt like being in the eye of hurricane. In that surreal setting, I walked home leisurely. Oh, I eat beef anyway.

“I’m Not There” – Cinecube Theater

Are you a Bob Dylan fan? Then you should definitely go see this movie. This 135 min Mocumentary style movie was pretty experimental. It’s not the best film but, it was interesting enough to see how the director, Todd Haynes created 6 characters who are not Bob Dylan but has characters of Bob Dylan in different times and names. Still, not as interesting as Bob Dylan’s music itself but, it’s definitely worth watching it. I guess I liked this movie better than I would have… which means I had a good company to watch with. Someone who is like my long lost twin.

It wasn’t so bad tonight. I mean the rally. They usually block more streets than tonight. I passed by Sejong theater center and saw a policeman kindly taking some photos for tourists in the middle of military policemen and their buses. We couldn’t help not laughing. The breeze was really nice tonight. I wish I could have taken a long walk but, it was too late for that.

 

My new bike to stroll the city

I finally bought a small bike to stroll around the downtown of Seoul. It’s a 12 Kg, 16 inch wheels, foldable bike made by Benneton. Yes, it’s green & it’s fashionable. The problem is that I only have 4 days a week to bike around the city and with recent mass rallies in my neighborhood, it’s quiet difficult to ride a bike among 30-40,000 crowds – although when public transportation is blocked, it’s a good & only way to travel other than walking. On top of that, it’s been raining last few weeks right after I got my new bike. Funny, huh? It rained today as well. I was just about to go out & stroll the hood.

If you see a girl with pigtails riding a bright green bike a bit clumsily near Gyungbok Palace area in Seoul, that is me! Believe me, you won’t see that many grown up girls with pigtails…

 

The Mask of Emotion is being picked up by the western bloggers

Thanks to Jonah Brucker-Cohen & Make, one of the Digital Media Design students’ projects that I wrote about in last entry got some attention & interest.

Here is the Makezine blog: http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/06/emoticon_mask_will_make_y.html

& Gizmodo: http://gizmodo.com/5014085/emotion-mask-brings-kekekekeke-to-life

& Engadget: http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/06/mask-of-emotion-displays-your-feelings-via-led-emoticons-we-cry/

Hmmm… How interesting that it didn’t even take more than a day to spread words around!

Let me add my translation of their abstract from their blog site in English:

The idea of this project started with a question,
“What is the first media to communicate my emotion to the others?”

Perhaps it’s facial expression that is being expressed before one communicates his gesture or words.
It’s not that easy to hide feelings on facial expression. However, people don’t show their feelings to the strangers today. I often wonder about other people’s emotion when I am in crowded subway or in downtown street of Jongro, Seoul but, they all just stare at outside of the subway window or stare down at their shoes with emotionless face. Some just scan newspapers. They only look ahead while walking in the crowds. Modern urban people are limiting their emotional communication with others trapped in their own world. The mask is a tool to hide one’s feelings or oneself into. At the same time it is to bring out a communication with others by bringing out emotion loud with emoticons.

The Mask of Emotion is to reinterpret the look of mask in a modern term and to evoke communication with strangers by heighten the facial expression by LED emoticons. It is designed to research if emotion is positively received to the strangers when the wearer walks in the crowded street and interacts with urban citizen.

Some students might have felt like what’s the use for whenever I made them to document their design process as a part of the requirements but, I’m sure they will appreciate it later. Kudos to The Mask of Emotion team from Interaction Design Studio 1, 2007 class!!

 

Two wearable computing projects by BFA students ‘07

If you have been following what I’ve been doing, you must have noticed that I’ve been designing fashionable computing projects, integrating circuit boards into fabrics, light emitting parts, sewing clothings and etc. I’ve been also teaching Interaction Design Studio which is a 4 hour studio class that is made of mainly a short lecture, discussion & workshop or presentation. Although this class isn’t about wearable computing, I guess my background does influence some students’ works. There have been so far two wearable computing projects in my class last year.

One was final project in Spring semester – first semester I taught there.

The first one is titled, “Mask of Emotion” by Chisong Ryu, Changhee Kim and Jiyoun Kim. it’s an Emoticon Mask basically – it’s documented well at http://blog.naver.com/inter_mask. (sorry it’s in Korean)

I think this project really reflects today’s culture of emotional communication. It was a 5, 6 week assignment during first semester, 2007.

The second project I want to introduce is a more technically elaborated project called, “HearT-shirt” by Hyunsoo Hong & Jinyoung Lee- created during the fall semester in 2007. Here is also a nice documentation (sorry it’s in Korean again)

They integrated tiny surface mounting LEDs into plastic pearl buttons to attach on the T-shirts, which made me speechless as I could imagine all the work that went to solder hair thin legs. Hyunsoo later made DMDuino (Arduino clone for DMD students – limited edition) with Jinhwan Kim. (Those were hand soldered.)

Anyway, here is the photo. It uses Xbee Wireless communication to detect if they are located within 50 meter range . When they do, their shirts light up in a heart shape! The couple can find each other surprisingly when they are near with each other if they went to public places without planning to meet. It’s a fun concept. This was a 9 weeks assignment.