The New School will be celebrating innovative alumni and student projects at the SXSW Interactive Trade Show, taking place March 9-12. Visit us at booth 1240 to experience these projects and learn more about The New School's collaborative programs that focus on digital and interactive design, wearable technology, new media, and film.
Particle Mace is an arcade-style game for up to four players that pays homage to classic space shooters, but with an innovative--and unruly--physics-based weapon. Players control a tiny ship in an extremely hostile universe, and must defend themselves as long as possible by swinging a collection of trash particles that are tethered to the ship. Players must navigate around the many hazards while building up momentum to smash their weapon into foes.
The game began as a graduate homework assignment at Parsons. It evolved over multiple iterations into an exploration of how particle physics (attraction and repulsion) can form the basis of interesting game mechanics, and how they can be used to create a simple system that supports complex tactics. Over time, what was most compelling about the prototype led to the mace mechanic used in the final game.
Heart Pillow is a transhuman artifact that reproduces a person's heartbeat remotely and in real time. As one user wears a heart rate sensor, another user can feel the pillow pulsate at the same rate from a distance. It was made to be used in long-distance relationships or to connect newborns to their mothers.
The project allows the very pulse of life to be transferred into an everyday object - in this case, a pillow - making it serve both as an extension of the user's body and as a simulation of life itself.
Heart Pillow was shown at NYC Media Lab Future Interfaces and at FILE Sao Paulo 2013.
Mobile Tones is an interactive installation that brings people together through a collaboration in the creation of a musical piece. Using a mobile device, each participant contributes a single note to a collective, impromptu musical jam session, connecting with other people in a playful exchange. Audiences simply join the network, are assigned a note within a scale, and use their smart device to play the note. The display screen prompts each player when to play their note, and rewards them with an on-screen visualization of their contribution.
The Mobile Tones interactive experience is a new way to connect audiences and create a network through the act of creating a single melody. It also references human relationships with our devices, offering an opportunity to actively engage with others in the physical world through their device's interface.
"Signs of Sandy" is a multimedia storytelling project documenting Hurricane Sandy recovery efforts through sound, web, and site-specific media.
The project employs the use of Google Glass footage and audio interviews recorded in a Rockaway Beach neighborhood to reveal "signs of Sandy" that linger more than a year after the devastating storm. digital memory site of curated photographs, stories, videos and interviews recording the effects of Superstorm Sandy, funded in part by a Civic Engagement Grant awarded by The New School for Public Engagement.