Category: capstone2020

 
In a web essay, this capstone looks into whether technology, specifically text analysis, can identify opportunities for collaboration within sustainable urban problem-solving. To begin answering this question, I will ask if text as data analysis can be used to offer clear aid in communicating between the fields of urban planning and the technology industry, specifically when discussing the subject of technology companies physically moving locations into cities. These two fields are structurally separated by the primarily public sector of government in urban planning and the private tech industry, but as smart cities arise and the two become more involved in similar projects, cross-discipline communication will increase regardless of the societal structure. To test this method of initiating collaboration, I will apply a text analysis to a total of ten journal articles
and conference material papers: five urban studies articles and five technology and business articles discussing various cases of technology companies moving into cities. After an introduction, the literature review combines works on cross-discipline collaboration, collective intelligence, and public and private sector communication. Following the literature review, the method provides the data retrieved using ATLAS.ti for text analysis. Finally, I will include my analysis of that data, future plans, and final conclusions.

 
This project is a game to help amateurs learn more about music in a more interactive and interesting way. Many music lovers want to further explore the world of music, such as composing their own songs and making musical accompaniments and arrangements but are restricted by their limited knowledge of basic music theory. However, existing traditional music theory classes are not that playful and interactive, and also need a long time to learn. Other musical apps imitating the piano/guitar interfaces only allow users to get a sense of one instrument. Thus, to help users learn and explore music in an interesting way, this project will illustrate music elements vividly using cartoon-like interface and characters. It is not gamification learning, it is a game which hopefully can let players know more about musical elements during their leisure time. While gamification learning focuses more on how to design the learning methods and material by imitating game mechanics, my project is purely a casual game which provides a bit of learning value.
This game is developed using Processing and p5.js, and imitates the interface of Super Mario so that users can quickly understand how to play the game. The notes and chords will be visualized as cartoon symbols or figures, floating in the air or moving on the ground. When the user captures the cartoon figures, musical knowledge will be displayed on the screen, and total scores will be updated each time the user interacts with the game characters. After playing this game, users will get a sense of musical notes(C,D,E,F,G,A,B), possible/popular chords that can be used in composing a music piece, and might also be able to design a chord progression for a set of melodies.

 
Currently, there exist several ways of interaction during live streaming — Virtual Gifts, Comments Systems, or Danmaku Systems. However, all information or chats are totally wrapped up and mixed together. They are vaguely bound only to the streaming itself, rather than the specific topics inside. Survey shows that most users find it annoying when over 25% of the screen is covered by danmaku (a set of scrolling texts floating on the screen), especially when the texts are little related to the topic. So, when the streaming is covering large scale of topics or presenting complicated ideas or scenes, chats are completely garbled and hard to locate.
So, I designed Surrounds, which uses Google ARCore to detect and track objects in the streaming in order to categorize the ungrouped messages into various chatting groups. By using Firebase Realtime Database, the messages can be synchronized along with the streaming data and kept permanent. When the user opens a live streaming session, the application will automatically find objects on the screen and attach a clickable indicator on them. By clicking the indicator, the user will join a public group where all the messages here are specifically related to the object. This design allows users to receive only the intended information they are interested in, and hence reduce the spam of information.
Although the system is not perfectly designed and lots of other issues need to be concerned, it sophistically provides users a structured and clearer view of information during live streaming. It makes the users target the topic they are favor of and hence helps the users refine their inspiration on streaming.

 
The project is a multimedia interactive installation, taken inspiration from the social media app Instagram, that aims to reveal the negative feelings that are evoked by social media, including the pressure towards overexposure of user privacy and the anxiety towards the distancing of a social-media self and a true self. Simulating the browsing of Instagram user posts, the project basically detects the existence of audiences and responds accordingly, as the more people come to visit it, the messer the installation will end up with, because the infrared detection trigger system is connected to spray painters.
In our age, there’s no way for one to escape from social media. It is true that social media brings convenience to our daily life, however, with it also come various negative experiences. The vague boundary of privacy and publicity in social media which makes people feel insecure and overly exposed has long been a heated discussion, while the forming sharing and posting culture on social media has forced people to go through a self-filtration process where people gradually start to fake themselves on their personal accounts. Due to these reasons, it is common for people to live a masked life on social media where only beautiful looking things are recorded, while the true self that is behind the screen is often hidden.
Based on this life experience, the installation aims to reveal the true anxious emotions people are having that are hidden behind the screen and unseen on social media. The installation explores the exposure of privacy through social media by turning the once virtual and personal information largely public, and it physicalizes the two-folded life people are having online and offline, making the once internal emotions and pressures external and visible to all.

 
Trinity is an electronic music composition that I composed for my capstone project. The idea of this project initially comes from the number “three”. “Three”is a very crucial idea in the world of numerology. Some of this project is actually inspired by my research paper, which is about the Hollywood film music guru, Hans Zimmer. The most distinctive feature of Hans Zimmer’s music is the massive use of electronic synthesizers. Also, when he’s producing the music for Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Trilogy, there are three themes for Batman. The first theme that Nolan what is the theme of Batman, which is a very percussive electronic piece of music. The second theme that Nolan wants is the theme of the alter ego of Batman, Bruce Wayne, which is a rather sad but beautiful orchestral piece of music. But there has to be a third theme because the two split personalities of Bruce Wayne have to come to one entity in the end, for which Hans Zimmer created an electronic piece of music with some resemblance of the orchestral Bruce Wayne theme. His way of composing gives me a lot of inspirations. You can even argue that what I’m trying to accomplish in my capstone is an attempt to mimic Hans Zimmer’s music. But of course, compared to Hans Zimmer, I still have much to learn.
The software that I initially choose to work on my project on is a software made by Apple called Logic Pro X, which you can say is a fancier version of GarageBand. And the hardware that I used to make this project is a MIDI keyboard called Keystation 61 made by M-Audio. I made the first version of Trinity with Logic Pro X mainly. I find that the built-in digital synth pad and arpeggiators very helpful in terms of composing. Sometimes you can press several keys on your MIDI keyboard and the arpeggiators will automatically give you a tune. The second take of my composition is recorded with a software called Ableton Live, which is a professional electronic music production software. Here, I want to push the limits of the arpeggiator and created a more or less experimental take of the original version. And for the third version, I went back to Logic Pro X and this time I only use one synthesizer. Since we have experimented with so many different emotions in the previous takes, such as happiness or sadness. I want to go deep and experiment with something different with this third version, which is the emotion of fear or horror. Overall, you can say this project is like a kaleidoscope, which is something that has limited elements. But every time you twist it, you will always get something different.