asli sevinc

Are you a history buff? Ever wondered how it would be like to have dinner with Marie Antoinette? Do you wonder what the Emperors used to eat at the Summer place during the Ming Dynasty? “If they can’t find bread, let them eat cake!” Table let’s you visit the tables of your favorite historic figures! Now you can travel back in time, transform your dining table into a refectory table of a historic figure of your choice and experience a dinner that actually happened at a time in their lives!

Our design team has teamed up with expert historians and culinary researchers to re-enact real meals of historic figures with the same menu items and guests they had on a chosen meal. The results of these extensive researches are then filmed into scenes taking place in their original locations, with servants explaining every dish that was served in that meal -to you, the guest of honor!-, in the company of exceptional character actors acting the historic figures and their guests. During the meal, your historic figure will tell you real stories about his/her lives, turning your dining experience into a feast of history!

Your table initially comes with 100 historic figures, including Napoleon Bonaparte, Abraham Lincoln, Genghis Khan, Suleiman the Magnificent and Mumtaz Mahal to name a few. More historic figures can be purchased for $1.99 from our website!

Technology:

Computer (Sensing): When you set your table and sit down, the computer will sense your presence and the system will turn on.

Sensing Device: The camera mounted on above your dining table.

Surface: The see through projection screen that will be activated once the system is turned on.

Display device: Rear projection behind the screen for the videos. Top projection on the table for the touch screen interface.

Computer (Graphics): Videos of the historic meals and the interface menu.

I made this piece in an effort to look at what technology means to me. For this particular project, I wanted to draw attention to our obsession with gadgets and how they seize to have any meaning after they are broken. But we still get a new one, even though we know it won’t last more than a few years. Because we just can’t seem to give them up!

The devices used in the video are all dead electronic devices. Even though they are essentially no different than any other piece of trash, I still keep them; possibly because of my obsession with objects! The camera is my first digital camera that fell and broke. The iPod was my first mp3 player, whose hardware crashed. The battery is the first battery of my laptop, which got drained completely.

I chose to shoot these images in the fire escape of my apartment to emphasize the meaninglessness of these objects. If they were working devices, I would never risk taking them out there!

The amazing music is by Camille, the song is called Katie’s Tea.

I just can’t seem to give it up. from Asli Sevinc on Vimeo.

I also want to post the video I put together from the footage I shot during the process of deconstructing a painting I made 7 years ago. This was for our first project: creating a collage of our personal identity.

Personal Collage from Asli Sevinc on Vimeo.

When we talked about ‘body’ as identity in class, one of the first pieces that came to my mind was Mika Rottenberg’s video installation called Dough. I’d seen it in the Shapes of Space exhibition at the New York Guggenheim Museum in 2007.

Rottenberg’s most pieces explore issues of identity in terms of body and self-image. Her ‘”video sculptures”, as she calls them, are quite complex, elaborate and unusual. Her subjects all have something eccentric about their physical appearance, mostly out of their own choice.

I found videos on Rottenberg’s works and a couple of her interviews online.

Here is a video of Dough. It’s very low quality and shaky, but it gives you the idea:

Here is an interview, where you can also see excerpts from her other pieces:

Here is a behind-the-scenes video of a project Rottenberg made for W magazine:

Global Game Jam and our game Lucid was reviewed by Clive Thompson from Wired magazine!

In his article Sweet Success, Fascinating Failure: 48 Sleepless Hours at Global Game Jam, Thompson writes about Lucid:

“In contrast, another Game Jam team developed a game called Lucid, with a supersimple concept: A little, dreaming boy floats upward, and you guide him past obstacles while trying to collect Lego bricks. The gameplay was pretty derivative; on paper, I thought it sounded dull. But they had a playable demo done in only 24 hours, which left them a full day for play-testing.

They nailed the physics perfectly: When you steer the little boy, you have good but not precise control, making what would otherwise be a too-simple game into a surprising challenge. Lucid became one of the most polished and enjoyable games of any Game Jam team worldwide.”

In his multimedia review Make It Quick, Play It Quick, Thompson mentions the art work, on which David and I worked together!:

“Lucid was one of the most polished games of the New York Game Jam because the team was large and diverse — game designers, programmers, music wranglers and an excellent artist who drew all the visuals by hand. The game literally looks like a pencil-and-watercolor picture.”

Awesome job Team Lucid! Kudos to Bruno, David, Matt, Merve and Rachit once again!

Most living rooms in New York have exposed brick walls. Because of their sectioned pattern, it is usually very hard to decorate them. Brick [Photo] Wall, tries to make use of that pattern and transforms your brick wall into an interactive installation, playing with the idea of social networks. The customized program acts similar to a journalist. It collects data on the interactions of your own social networks and detects any activity made on facebook, twitter, email, SMS, MMS and cell phone calls. The system then projects those interactions on your brick wall, using photos of your friends and family, highlighting the interactions between them with light. When a new interaction is made, a photo will appear and remain there for one hour. If there are no interactions, the system will be put to sleep mode. This installation involves a projector and a computer that processes all the information collected from your social networks.

Living Room with Brick Photo Wall

Brick Photo Wall

This weekend, I participated in Global Game Jam, a 48-hour game design event that took place in 53 locations in 23 countries. I teamed up with Bruno Kruse, Matt Parker, David Golan from ITP and Rachit Parikh and Merve Keles from the Computer Science program at NYU.

Our game, Lucid is about a boy trying to find his way to inspiration. The player has to control his thought bubble through a maze of blocks and collect Lego bricks along the way. If you bump him into the wall, he’ll wake up and the game is over.

Please play and rate our game Lucid at Global Game Jam’s website here!

Team Lucid!

Team Lucid at work!

Here is the pdf document for my first assignment for Spatial Media: CookArt.

Technically, how it works is that the blue colored cameras located above the food preparation areas, such as the sink, the countertops and the stove, are programmed to detect motion and color. When video starts tracking, the data collected is processed through an algorithm and translated into different sized and stylized brush strokes. The color of the paint is determined by the color of the ingredient you’re using. As  you are preparing and cooking the food, you are also painting and the projector projects it on the wall of the kitchen simultaneously. Every morning, the painting is reset to an empty canvas, so as to encourage people to cook more.

2 weeks into the semester, I finally found the time to write on my blog!

It’s been super busy so far. I’ve been shopping for classes, trying to finalize my schedule, catching up with friends.. But at last, I got into all the classes I wanted and got back on track with everything else. It’s going to be an amazing -and busy- semester, I’m so excited!

So, I’m taking Social Facts: Motivation with Clay Shirky, Spatial Media with Jared Schiffman, Technology as Identity with Ayah Bdeir, Big Games with Greg Trefry and Story Writing Workshop with Nancy Hechinger. Plus, I’m going to intern at the Reach Project under the Technology and Social Justice internship Program.

Throughout the semester, I’ll keep documenting and posting updates about my projects, so check back regularly!