The Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago is featuring Botanicalls as part of its Smart Home: Green + Wired exhibit. The Smart Home is a real, three-story modular and sustainable “green” home in the Museum’s own backyard to teach about the ways, big and small, that visitors can make eco-friendly living a part of their lives.
Museum visitors are taken on a tour of the home. In the upstairs office, they get a live demonstration of a Botanicalls English Ivy, which makes a phone call to complaining about its thirst. Guests can also buy their own Botanicalls Kit on the exhibit’s web site. You can see the home and its talking plant in Chicago through January 4th, 2009.
Botanicalls is continuing with open source initiatives on several fronts. We’re applying for the Rhizome commission and members should remember to vote…for us…so that we can continue to bring humans closer to the natural world.
There’s also serious work underway to make kits available to the public, spurred along by an upcoming exhibition in Chicago. More announcements on that front soon. While you’re waiting, please vote!
Robofest is a “day-long event for youth exploring the creative world of robotics.” Kate, Jenny, Max and I were asked by Vision Ed Inc board president Marianne Petit to be judges for the DANCING WITH THE ROBOSTARS competition at Sony Wonder Technology Lab in New York City. The five competing teams of children each built dancing Lego robots, and choreographed routines for themselves to dance along with their creations. We witnessed a medieval swordplay performance, Hawaiian surfing dance, video game emulation, disco mash-up and a funk collaboration. The young inventors learned their robotics skills under the tutelage of Laura Allen, through Vision Ed Inc in New York. We loved it so much that we gave everyone a prize.
I’ve been working on an idea for an ITP class that explores the psychology of human decision-making, and applies this powerful science to interaction design. The best way to learn something is to teach it, so on Sunday I did the first run of an hour-long presentation on the subject at BarCampNYC3. I talked about biases, heuristics and Cialdini’s “weapons of influence” including social-proof, reciprocity and a host of other persuasive methods. The slides for this trial run gave a rough overview of decision-making psychology, after which we had a spirited discussion of examples and ethics. The next version is going to conclude with some compelling illustrations of real world applications.
According to their web site, “BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from participants.” This one was held on the campus of Polytechnic University in Brooklyn, probably soon to be a new division of NYU. Lots of interesting people came, including my hacker buddies from NYCResistor and a few intrepid presenters from Canada and even Europe.
The next version of my Designing Attraction talk should be presented ITP in a couple weeks, as a Friday lecture.
In case you hadn’t heard, we’ve made Botanicalls Twitter as a do-it-yourself example for people who like to–well–do it themselves. It’s the first step in making Botanicalls available to a wider audience, and the online press has taken note. In the last 48 hours, we’ve been graced by the attention of:
Make Magazine
CNet
Slashdot
Lifehacker
Gizmodo
Wired
…and even Business Week
Botanicalls Twitter would not have happened without both brilliant code and sage advice from Limor Fried. We also appreciate the support of Phil Torrone who inspired our Twitter venture and helped to make it a success. Botanicalls is a project from Kate Hartman, Kati London, Rebecca Bray and Rob Faludi.
Hey, bandwagons are for jumping on, so I created an ITP AlumniBlender Facebook application that dynamically displays all AlumniBlender headlines and authors. You can add it to your profile.
Thinking of making your own feed app? Try reading a bit of their getting started information and check out the great tutorial on HowToForge for specific resources, including the ever-useful Magpie RSS.
The ITP AlumniBlender put on quite a bit of weight over the holidays as I mined databases and tracked down more of our ilk. It’s now almost tripled in size with feeds from five continents and alumni that span 17 years of the Interactive Telecommunications Program. From sneakers to scaling, and from tempers to tweetups, there’s plenty to read with new content arriving daily. Enjoy.
