computer-generated graphics, projection, Kinect sensor, keyboard

An interactive installation gathering and composing the collective history of us.

What do we remember? With information bombarding us from every direction, what kind of information stays in our mind? With a media environment controlled by the corporations and governments, is our memory still our own to build? This project attempts to reclaim the control of our own memory and construt a timeline of a personal preception of history.

A web-based platform would be an intuitive solution since it allows any number of users to input data any time, any where. However, the face that the piece would be contained in an arbitrary virtual space bothers me. The lack of physical interaction among users themselves, and between user and the piece is also not satisfying.

The first iteration of the installation works with multiple users simultaneously. Audience would reach out and pin point an entry onto the timeline, then use their phone to write. By matching the code displayed temporarily on the projection and the user input on the phone, the system would then gather the written text and display it according to the position the audience has located.

In order to create an emersive experience and allow multiple users to better interact with the project, an expansion in scale is a necessary step. A feasibility test was underway with multiple computers linked through wireless networking, each of those paired with multiple Kinect sensors.

The second iteration steps back and re-focuses the project. By allowing no more than one user at a time, the interactivity of the system can be more fluid and straightforward. I imagined the location of the system be in the living room of ordinary families.

mixed

A sound installation portraying an employee in a modern corporation and investigating his or her state of mind through interviews.

This project is about the graduate students graduated from the top programs of the top universities in Taiwan. After graduation, each of them went into the technology industry, to work as engineers, programmers, or project managers for big companies.

web, digital print

Nobody cares about what you care about 沒有人在乎你在乎的事 is the title of a single from the independent band Na Wo Dong Ni Yi Si Le 那我懂你意思了. This phrase points out the disconnection between people and also leaves a lot of unanswered questions behind it. What is it that you care about? Why is there nobody who cares? Why do you care?

vector graphics

Identity system design for the Alumni Association of National Experimental High School, Taiwan.

One major component of this project is a redesign of the typeface. Out of the the major Chinese typefaces we are using for print today, Kai and Ming are directly derived from traditional Chinese calligraphy. While Kai retains the strokes of calligraphy, Ming typefaces are designed following certain de facto rules. The result is a clean, industrial design, mechanical and almost algorithmic.

My design of typeface for this project, I believe, is an unique un-design of Ming. It re-references back to writing—the humanistic aspect of typeface design. It attempts to find balance between the cleaness of the horizontal-vertical strokes of traditional Ming typefaces and the natural structure of characters that is most common in handwritten Chinese. A 5% increase in type height gives the characters a slim appearance.

The original inspiration of the logo of the association comes from the abstraction of the word association itself. A full circle is a perfect symbolic representaion of an association. The pink color is inspired by the color of the uniform of the school.

Accompanying the circle are other three symbols that are geometrically minimal. The four symbols each representing Taiwan (and the location of the school,) experimental, alumni, and association. Collectively, they form a complete concept of the association.

While the original idea is aiming for a graphical interpretation, I also want to explore the possibilities in a more abstract approach. It leads me to the question of what is alumni? After graduation, each one of us would then leave the school, geographically and mentally, go into the world to live our life in full, becoming a member of the alumni. Based on this idea, a new design is born.

web

The second iteration of the information system for the public bus location in metropolitan Taipei.

chihaoyo.me/buss

Bus routes in Taipei are mostly in round ways, where at least at one end is a bus terminal, and the bus returns along the same route when it reaches the other end of the service. There are some buses that take different routes for in- and out-, north- and south-, east- and west-bound trips, which would make visually a loop on the map. Naturally, bus route diagrams should reflect these characteristics.

To represent the route of the bus graphically makes the diagram much less cramed with duplicated text, therefore easier to understand. By applying algorithms in parsing the route information, stops with identical names are combined, and a diagram can be generated for each bus line automatically.

Originally, parenthesis are used in names of nearby stops to differentiate them. In this design, parenthesis are removed and the text within are displayed in blocks with grey background color. To furthur reduce visual cluster, pictographs are designed to replace the commonly-used phrases such as metro station or intersection.

vector graphics

A typeface inspired by the work of Susan Kare.

Pixelated displays are compromises had to be made due to technological constraints and it has established aesthetics of its own. Retina displays in iPhones, iPads, and now Macs marks the beginning of the popularization of hi-dpi displays in consumer devices. Text and imagery are becoming more and more photorealistic. However, pixel fonts still has its place to displaying text in extremely limited number of pixels such as lo-dpi displays and large scale projection installations.

letterpress print

Design and make letterpress business cards.

Letterpress printing was highly correlated to the language people use and hence a highly localized industry. The machines could be imported, but the discipline of the work space must come from the ones who work within.

Taiwanese letterpress printers describe fonts differently from the westerners. In describing the size of fonts, instead of points, the fonts are numbered according to their sizes and the unit was Hao 號. For example, Chu Hao 初號, literally translated to the initial number, was the biggest metal type produced, equivalent to 42 pt. Then Yi Hao 一號, or Number 1, in 27.5 pt. Er Hao 二號, or Number 2, in 21 pt. The smallest size that is still produced today is Liu Hao 六號, or Number 6, in 7.875 pt.

There were mainly four different typefaces for chinese characters, Kai 楷, Ming 明, Hei 黑, and Fang Song 仿宋. The name of a font is formed by its size first, then its typeface, one character each. Chu Zheng 初正, for instance, where Chu was the abbreviation of Chu Hao and Zheng, stands for orthodoxy, was the name the typeface Kai used to be called, for it was the standard style of chinese writing. The Latin fonts, however, were usually made anonymously. The fonts were codenamed by their size and a suffix is added to distinguish different typefaces to make workers easy to identify. For example, Liu Hao Yi 六號一, refers to the first, and often the most used latin font in Number 6.

When facing a wall of characters, it was almost unconscious to look for the name of oneself. In this project, the font I chose for the name were Er Zheng 二正, which was Number 2 of Kai and the standard font for names on traditional letterpress business cards. The letters used for the email address was Liu Hao Liu 六號六, which was the Sixth of Number 6. I chose it over the standard First of Number 6 for its style closer to a classic serif font and its appropriate weight.

I am the designer, typographer, and printer of this project. I selected the type from the type shelves 字架, composited them into a forme, fixed the forme into the chase with furnitures and mounted it onto the press.

I decided that the embossing text should be the only visual element of this design, therefore I printed the cards without inking the press. Prints without the ink is an interesting idea.

vector graphics

An illustration based on the iconic profile of the original Macintosh (1984) to honor Steve Jobs, the architect of this era.

This illustration was not to imitate the look and feel of the actual Macintosh.

The most part of the process was invested on the making of the letters goodbye, which is the main idea and focus of this illustration.

vector graphics

An icon to celebrate the centennial of the Republic of China. (Yes, Taiwan.)

The icon was comprised of the letters roc and the number 100. The center of the icon is the national emblem of the Republic of China, with the ring slightly widened to be visually balanced in this canvas size.

vector graphics

A reinterpretation of the classic chinese type style Fang Song 仿宋.

This design was originally intended for the Fang Zheng Award 方正獎—the chinese type design contest held by Founder Electronics Co., Beijing, China, therefore the first 42 characters which was designated by the contest.

It may be more precise if to name this design Chang Fang Song 長仿宋 or Chang Song 長宋 as it would be called back in the traditional chinese letterpress printing. It was a variation of Fang Song, with a height of every character 1.5 times longer than its width, in contrast of the typical square outline of the traditional chinese type.

In typical chinese type design, characters are all contained in square boxes. I wanted this typeface to show the variable widths and heights of chinese characters, to write out the characters in a more natural, undistorted way.

web

An information system that organizes and presents the data of the matrices preserved by Ri Xing 日星 Type Foundry.

There are approximately 150,000 matrices currently storing in the wooden cabinets in Ri Xing Type Foundry. They are the last of traditional chinese letterpress. I wanted to establish a system to document the matrices consistently. Also, the system should be able to provide insights on this large collection of matrices. Users would also be able to send query to the system, and retrieve the information about the matrices that interest them.

The number one challenge documenting the matrices was to record the different ways of writing, or variants. Of a single chinese character, it was common to see multiple variants. This information must be documented. The CJKV Unified Ideographs 中日韓越統一表意文字 defined in Unicode would not suffice since most of the differences observed in the collection were not defined as separate characters. Further more, the variant would rarely be used by the public. To match a matrix with a variant character would cause difficulties in querying.

Started as a single-minded thought, I drafted a cheat sheet, which lists the common variants found in the matrices, referencing Standard Kai 標準楷書體, the standard typeface announced by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of China. It would serve as an encoding system for documenting the matrices. A matrix of variant could be matched with the standard character, then noted with the code which represents the difference.

The left part of the character Ji 即 has three variants, numbered 1 through 3, along with the standard numbered 0. Any characters containing that part, such as in the central part of the characters Qing 卿 an Gai 概 could use this code to denote the presence of a variant.

A familiar interface would be important to allow volunteers to join the documenting work. In the same time, the ability to collaborate and the flexibility of the date were also crucial to the proficiency of the system. A spreadsheet is natural when documentation of the matrices includes the location the matrices were on the trays of the cabinet. I decided to employee Google Spreadsheet as the interface for data input. It was similar to Microsoft Excel, which a lot of us already has the affordance built into our mind, yet available online in a consistent version for everyone, allowing collaboration between users and operating systems.

I had worked on the system for the documentation of more than 20,000 characters in the months of July and August, 2011 with all the variants noted. This project is a work in progress.

web

A mobile web interface and information system for the public bus location in the metropolitan Taipei.

chihaoyo.me/bus

To quickly query a bus line on the go, an optimized key pad is a much more suitable interface than an irritatingly long drop-down list or a search box for generic text input which the city government currently offers. With this idea in mind, I built an app for that.

The buttons are designed to have the size of 50 by 50 points on an iPhone Retina Display as the Human Interface Guideline of iOS by Apple Inc. suggested. The five colored buttons on the top of the key pad represents the shuttle bus lines for five major lines of Taipei Metro. The bottom two rows are for different categories of bus lines. The single solid circle represents the bus lines which runs on smaller size buses for access of more narrow roads and the mountain areas. The horizontal arrow represents the main lines 幹線 that runs through the city along one major avenue or boulevard. The line ended with two solid circles represents the shuttle bus lines.

The original plan was to create a native app for the iPhone. Only the UI kit of the iOS SDK did not want to cooperate with me and hence the web version.

This app was in closed beta for two months. Participants had responded positively. Nevertheless, the public transportation bureau of the city government decided to close its system on unauthorized information retrieval and refused applications from individual citizens. This app has ceased to function. The city government of Taipei employed a similar idea in the official app and made the interface terrible to use and look at.

web

A new web site of the Taiwanese Letterpress Association. It serves as the introductions of letterpress history, the showcase of the projects of the association, and a communicating platform for both the member of the association and the public.

raster graphics

A wedding invitation design based on the imagery of the Sun Moon Lake 日月潭 from an unconventional perspective.

The Sun Moon Lake make a natural metaphor of the bride and groom. In our traditional culture, men and women are, like the sun and the moon, the representations of Yin 陰 and Yang 陽. I first came up with the idea to connect the look of the lake with the names of the bride and groom.

I wanted to know the exact shape of the lake, so I opened Google Maps. The keyword "satellite imagery" popped into my mind right away. As a visual element aimed on a traditional purpose, it was unconventional, but also beautiful. For the newly weds, the lake marks the beginning of the next chapter of their lives. It would be the place where their new lives sprout and flourish. I would like my design to speak of that.

For the typography of this design, the latin typeface I chose was Archer. As the maker in H&FJ described:

Archer, the colorful slab serif. Sweet but not saccharine, earnest but not grave, Archer is designed to hit just the right notes of forthrightness, credibility, and charm.

It is perfect for a wedding invitation. The chinese typeface I used was Adobe Fang Song. Fang Song 仿宋 is one of four major traditional typefaces. It is not formal, as Kai 楷 is, nor is it contemporary, as Ming 明 or Hei 黑 is. Fang Song has the right kind of balance that I was looking for in this design. As for the name of the newly weds, I used Ri Xing Chu Zheng 日星初正, the Initial Number of Kai of Ri Xing Type Foundry.

I did not want to put ordinary text onto this invitation. Therefore, I wrote a short poem myself, to deliver the information about the wedding banquet in a unconventional, yet more traditional way.

The poem read: In the hundredth year of the Republic of China / The third day of July / At the lake of brightness where the precious jade is kept / Hearts will be bound together for all eternity / One o'clock in the afternoon / With respect a banquet is prepared / A kind request to you / That you and your family to join us. It was arranged vertically from right to left, to acknowledge the traditional chinese manner of writing.

raster graphics

A series of photos of everyday objects.

I like to record my life. I have a dozen of shoe boxes dedicated to the storage of my everyday objects. Small things that were iconic at the moment could grab hold of my attention. I think the objects around us really speak. They resonate with us, with our memories or experiences. They are words and stories, but tangible ones. They occupy space, they have weight.

For this project, I built a tiny studio for the shoot in my room.

I chose cardboard instead of fabric as the background of this studio. I like the texture of paper. The first thing to take the bullet was my (at the time) brand new iPhone 4. The design and the engineering of the phone was just too tempting to resist.

The next object I took was my watch back in the army. I bought it two days before I was enlisted and never took it off until I was discharged. It was water-resisting, thin, and durable.

I broke the light bulbs one day by accident. I was preparing to clean up but instead I lit up the remaining light, took up the camera and started to shoot. The result was amazing.

The shattered pieces of glass glow under the light. The arrangement was natural could never be possible to achieve deliberately by men.

This studio is currently closed due to maintenance.

web

A redesign of the personal blog that keeps record of everything.

chihaoyo.me/everything

We browse the web like never before. We bookmark web pages, favorite footages, take notes of good quotes. I wanted to build a place where I could easily keep record of everything that interests me. And the name of this project would be everything.

The first target was the favorites on major content websites. After I got through all the barriers of the APIs, the text version was born. It was originally the debug mode, but turned out beautiful.

I wanted all the items to be given the same space and arranged in a square grid. I believe this mesh up, or montage, had reflected part, if not all, of who I was.

I designed a set of icons that defines the scope of everything in this project. The icons were monochromatic and in the simplest form I found possible. I decided later to do an alternative design on the icon for books with color.

raster graphics

The power button of my cell phone stopped working and I decided to fix it myself.

And I find myself in an unfamiliar territory. Discovering a strange world under the surface.

vector graphics

A redesign of the route map of Taipei Metro, the mass transportion system in the metropolitan Taipei.

I believe that good design is essential to even the smallest part in life. It is important for designers to care, to create a better designed environment for the public. A system such as the Taipei Metro changes how the city operates, and the lives of millions of people living in there. As the system transports people, it could also transport good design deployed within the infrastructure and the trains of the system.

This design of route map emphasizes the relative positions between stations. It follows the strict 0, 45, and 90-degree constraints while maintaining the geographical proportion of the the most vibrant metropolitan area in Taiwan. I decided to include the Tamsui River 淡水河 for it is an important geographic signature of the area. Lines under construction or planning are included to give the viewer a complete picture of the future Taipei Metro.

In the official English version of the route map, the translation was rather lengthy and awkward. In this design, Pinyin was used for transcription through out. Names with corresponding phrases in English are properly and concisely translated. Abbreviations are used in commonly used phrases such as university and bridge. The translation of lines are adjusted with reference of the naming convention of London Tube. Thinner lines with the same color as the main lines are used to mark the extended lines.

This design does not indicate the transferring or terminal stations as I believe they are naturally inducible when the lines intersect or terminate. The stations are simple white circles sits within the line with no extra visual interference. As lines intersects, the later one would go over the early one with respect to the dates on which the line was operational.

Types of transportation to which passengers could transfer are shown alongside the station name. A new icon for the High Speed Rails was also designed to match with the standard set of transportation icons.

The typeface in this design was Avenir. It was geometric yet organic, brought a human touch to the design, softened the rigorous lines. The smaller x-height also made Avenir elegant and more serif-like comparing to other sans-serifs like Helvetica.

digital print

The annual concert of the Combined Logistics Command is a joint op carried out by multiple companies in the battalion of general affairs under the direct supervision of the commanding general.

For the band, the annual concert was the highlight of the year. It was exciting to have the chance to participate in the organizing of a formal concert. I was responsible for the graphic design of the concert.

I started from something I love: pixel art. This pixel soldier was wearing the dress uniform of the band, dark green with a shiny white peaked cap, holding a trumpet toward the front in his right hand. He was the bugler, the most important post in the band.

I saw the design of the invitation was of the most importance and designed it based on the rich traditions of our nation. The colors were red, navy blue, white, which were the three colors of our national flag The Blue Sky, White Sun, and Red Earth 青天白日滿地紅, and yellow, which was the imperial color. Based on the central horizontal line was the front facade of the National Concert Hall, a classical form of chinese architecture. This creates a visual horizon that divides the design in half.

The lower half houses the text of the invitation. The typeface I chose for the text in the invitation was Hua Wen Kai Ti 華文楷體 , the digital version of the most praised Kai in modern chinese printing and the standard style of chinese characters. Baskerville, a transitional serif typeface that represents the pursuing of perfection. I adjusted the wording so that each phrase would be of the same length. The golden spotlight from both sides lit up the text.

mixed

The Combined Logistics Command Military Band was one of the eight major military bands in Taiwan.

After boot camp, I became one of the trumpets in the band on November 19th, 2009.

Serving at the band was a very special experience for me. I was with the band performing in the ceremonial march—the rising and lowering of the national flag—both in the command headquarters and at the Presidential Office in the months of January and July, 2010. I was discharged on September 14th, 2010. A few months later, the band was dissolved in January 1st, 2011, preluding the dissolution of the command.

raster graphics

A series of photos taken during the twenty-one-day period before I report to the army.

The plan was to select one photo every day and make a series of twenty one photos, a short version of one of those 365-day series. In the process, I was forced to look for interestingness out of the ordinary and the routine. Moreover, I was forced to make the effort to enclose, with a camera, the honest presence of those which interested me.

mixed

On August eighth, 2009, Typhoon Morakot brought catastrophic damages to the southern Taiwan. There were over six hundred killed, eighteen missing. The village of Shao Lin 小林 was completely buried by the mud flood. Much of the landscape in Taiwan has changed ever since.

I joined an initiative in late August to help the cleaning of homes in Qi Shan 旗山 Town for two days and the next day in Lin Bian 林邊 Town with the volunteers called from all over the island by Tzu Chi 慈濟.

It was terrible, mud everywhere. The high-rise Lin Bian bridge was made the headquarters of Tzu Chi, and everywhere else was flooded. The sky was grey, the air was dusty and rotten. Divided into groups of ten, we were quickly assigned and led into houses. The mud was thick and hard to remove.

Talking with one of the marines, who was about the same age as I was, I was told that a large number of soldiers and marines had been stationed there for weeks. He told me that even the basics of living are difficult there, there is no clean water, food had to be transported from towns near by.

The smell of fermentation on its own was very hard to put up to. Let alone the devastated infrastructure, making the town literally a war zone. Looking at the seriously damaged community, the finish line of the way to recovery was nowhere near.

raster graphics

A photographic series on clothing fabric.

Clothing is the most intimate object in one's everyday life. It marks one's period of personality and memory. The color, texture, and the scent, the tension of the fabric stretching over the body. The transfer of ownership, the occasions which the clothing is worn. Events attached to the object, then to the people, to the vague and vivid emotion.

Apple iPod cable

A sculpture made of cable.

The Apple-made FireWire + USB cable for iPod was comprised of two 1.8-meter long cables. Having to charge my iPod and ended up putting a cable as such on my not-so-big desk was not a very good experience to have. It ate up the surrounding space and refused to be tamed. So I made it a sculpture. A rightful devourer of space.

This is also my first attempt on studio still photography.

mixed

Ri Xing 日星 Type Foundry is the only hot metal type foundry still operational in Taiwan. Letterpress quickly disappeared in Taiwan since the 1980's. Printers switched to faster automatic machines, metal types are replaced by phototypesetting and later DTP, type foundries all over the island closed one after another. The owner of Ri Xing, Mr Zhang Jie Guan 張介冠 however, was not a quitter. He sticked to the family business, dedicated to preserve the remaining knowledge and hardware of the letterpress, and the last complete set of hand-written and -carved matrices of the traditional chinese.

I am both proud and fascinated to write using countless traditional chinese characters. They are elegant and every character is a in itself a good story.

I had a solid training of hand-writing and chinese literature started young, thanks to my mother. In pre-schools and primary schools, kids would write repeatedly to practice the structure of the character and to master the use of pencil. My mom would always watch over me as I practice my handwriting. She would kept erasing those characters that she saw imperfect. The paper would became nearly wore-out as I practice over and over again, tried to remember every guideline she gave me to match her standards. I also remember that I was eager to learn more characters from books and street signs, when other kids in class were still using Zhu Yin 注音—the phonetic system for transcribing Chinese—in their writing.

I became a volunteer in the Ri Xing Letterpress Font Rehabilitation Project 日星活版印刷字體復刻計畫 in April, 2009. Mr Zhang initiated this project to make new matrices with the existing letterpress fonts, due to the damage occurred to the old matrices. This effort was to focus on one font particular, Ri Xing Chu Zheng 日星初正, a font originated from Shanghai, China, 1920, which was widely used in official and civilian printing through out the 20th century. The matrices in Ri Xing is the last complete set remaining in the world.

To make matrices, every lead type must be carefully selected from the shelve, assembled, printed, scanned, matched to computer characters, stored to a database, then inspected and renovated by volunteers.

wood, plastic tubes, wires

An installation that visualize the life of the famous German composer Richard Wagner.

It was a team project made in Contemporary cultures and theatre art, a general course I took in the National Taiwan University 國立台灣大學 instructed by Ms Fu Yu Hui 傅裕惠.

I proposed this idea to the team that we summarize the life of an important theatre artist along with his or her social interactions in a real object. The timeline of every person in this project would be represented by a flexible translucent tube. The tubes are separated from the start, tied together as an event occurred between the persons they represent, and grew apart as people would naturally do.

After a few discussions, the team chose Richard Wagner as the subject of the project for his influence to the theatre art and the complexity of his social life. Several key characters surrounding the life of Richard Wagner stood out such as his first wife and actress Christine Wilhelmine Minna Planer, his second wife Cosima Wagner, his proven true friend and the father of Cosima, Franz Liszt, and Friedrich Nietzsche.

I saw this project as a sculpture of three-dimensional information visualization. It made the life of Richard Wagner, and a short period of classical music history tangible. The submitting of this project was a fun thing to do. While carefully transporting our project to the office, people would ask: What's this? The team would then reply: An IV set.

computer-gerenated graphics, panorama projection, rear projection, glass, wood, paper, angle steel, mirrors

An interactive installation which represents the traditional chinese Weltanschauung of The heaven, earth, and people 天地人. It shows the interaction between these three parties which we saw as a dialog, formed essentially by the phrases that were created thousands of years ago and are still being used in our everyday life. There was also an essential quality of time in the concept so that the project was codenamed chrono.

video

This project was an invitation from Taiwanese calligrapher Dong Yang Zi 董陽孜. The coordinator of this project was Jiang Xian Bin 蔣顯斌, the co-founder of sina.com and the CEO of CNEX. The project was showcased in the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts from February 21st to April 26th, 2009 under the official title Dialog between Heaven, Earth, and All Beings.

Lin Pei Yin and I was both the principle designer and programmer in this project, joined later by Jaen Saul from Estonia as the mighty hardware and software hacker, the team was young and strong. It was an rare opportunity for any young artist or designer to be able to work in canvases of such scale. Being able to work inside a national museum in a 15 meters wide and 3 meters high panoramic display, I enjoyed every step of it.

The project began with a simple thought that to demonstrate the beauty of chinese calligraphy and emphasize on the relevance it has to the modern world. We decided that animated graphics would be the appropriate medium to approach to the mass majority and especially the younger generation. The calligraphy of Ms Dong interacts frequently with space. The subject to explore in this project is the possibilities of calligraphy interacting with time.

Look beyond the aesthetic value of calligraphy, it is the text within calligraphy that truly represents the essence of the chinese heritage. Our ancestors distilled their observation of the nature and created these classical sentences thousands of years ago. Despite the context has changed, these sentences are still widely used today. It really is a dialog that has lasted for centuries and hence the title of this project.

We chinese people view the world as the combination of three essential parties: the heaven, earth, and people. We believe that it is the perfect metaphor for this project. The three parties was metaphorically transformed into the form of an interactive table as the earth, surrounded by a panoramic wall as the heaven. With the presence of the visitors, the Weltanschauung would reappear itself within the exhibition site. People entering the exhibition could initiate the interaction by placing onto the table an object with a piece of calligraphy work by Ms Dong. The spirit of the calligraphy would then transform from the object onto the panoramic wall and present itself in the form of animated graphics. Groups of text would float onto the surface of the table, showing the origin of the phrase, the frequency of the phrase being used over time, and also the relating key words with containing paragraphs showing the contemporary meaning of the phrase.

Making of

The making of this project began in a secret lab set up in the study of my family's apartment. Prototypes of program were written, libraries for interaction were tested, and blueprint of the interactive table were made.

Interactive table

There were two alternatives we had: a round table with a donut-shaped display, or a rectangular table. We went for the rectangular design following the traditional chinese belief of rounded sky and squared earth 天圓地方.

Given the size of the exhibition site, the size of the table must be large enough to balance the space we have. In order to design the table in details before actually building it, I wrote a interactive program to optimize the reflecting angles of projection inside the table.

The construction of the inner structure of the interactive table followed. Large mirrors and the front glass surface were mounted. To see images and text showing up on the two-meter wide glossy glass was really stunning.

As the opening day drew near, the table was moved to the exhibition site, and the team settled in the staff dormitory of the museum. During the day we would run tests on the sensors of the table, communicate with the carpenters who were making the exterior of the table and the panoramic wall, consult with the panoramic projection specialist, or have one of those numerous discussions about the interaction people would have with the exhibition. At night we would distill our thoughts, and fine-tune the program in each of our rooms.

Tangible interface

We wanted the interface for this object be tangible. To achieve that, we had to address two issues simultaneously, which were the form of the tangible interface and the invisible detection mechanism behind the design. I decided to use reacTIVision, the open source library for object detection that powered Reactable. The detection mechanism is facilitated by the fiducial markers which a camera under the table could recognize and distinguish.

The performance of this mechanism was key to this project. For months we had been searching and experimenting on cameras, lens, IR filter and lighting. For the material of the marks, we were determined to make it as transparent to the user as we could. Pei Ying and I went to stores of car supplies for window films.

The form of the interface went through several iterations before the decision was made to use traditional chinese scrolls. The original thought was to take the form of a traditional chinese thread-bound book. All the pieces would be in one book. When the user turns a page, the system detects that, resulting in a different presentation. Cards were also one of the options. Scrolls were the optimal solution for the concern of implementation.

The goal of this project was to explore the possibilities of the form of chinese calligraphy. Through digital media, this project intended to convey the beauty of chinese calligraphy to the people of the younger generations.

web

A redesign on the process of recording a volleyball match and the visualization of the record.

As former captain of the department's volleyball team, my teammates and I were trying to find a more detailed way to record the matches. Instead of aggregating all the spikes, digs, and sets, we wanted a way that the actual process of a match could be recorded so that a pattern could be analyzed and used to improve the performance of the team.

raster graphics

An experiment that to recompose a photo with the addition of the facial expression people would have on it.

computer-generated graphics, projection, mobile phones

An interactive experiment that allows people to draw using their physical presence.

It was a team project made in the Nightmarket workshop 夜市工作坊 2008 at NCKU 國立成功大學. Held on August 14th to 18th, 2008, the workshop organized by Jackie Lee 李佳勳 and sponsored by the MIT Media Laboratory and various academic and industrial bodies in Taiwan.

Night markets are special to Taiwanese culture. Vendors would gather in a large, open space such as a parking lot or a street. Families, students would gather for the delicious and inexpensive drink, food, and games.

Having visited the famous Hua Yuan night market 花園夜市 in the city of Tainan 臺南, the team decided to add some interactions into the games in night markets.

By leveraging the GPS in smart phones, a simple game was designed. Visitors of a night market could leave traces signaled from their phone while they walk, run, intersect or chase with other participants. It was an empty canvas for anyone to participate. The result would be a collaborative drawing.

In this project, I was the main programmer. The phones we had required the code to be written in Python, which I had no prior experience with.

raster graphics

A self-initiated experiment to record my digital footprints by screenshots.

Personal computers are centric to the life of many of us nowadays. As all of our actions appears on the screen, it is, in a sense, curated by each of us. It displays all kinds of things that are near or dear to us. It is a mosaic of one's (digital) life formed by one's habit and even the unconscious mind.

I started this experiment as an alternative way to write diary. The screen honestly reflects our action, screen shots are quick, direct, and truthful to the moment, much like photographs of the virtual world.

computer-generated graphics, screen, keyboard, mouse, knob

An interactive installation for children to sit on the grass and play with the fundamental elements in design.

This installation is a team project. It serves as part of Magic Garden—an exhibition of digital interactive installations for the third Taiwan International Children's TV & Film Festival. I created Letter Cut, one of the five programs which comprise the installation. The exhibition was in the Dun Nan branch of Eslite Bookstore, from March 28 to April 8, 2008.

The team was originated from the Nightmarket workshop 夜市工作坊 in 2007, led by Taiwanese media artist Teng Chao Ming 鄧兆旻. I joined a friend of mine who was on the team but was unavailable around the time of the exhibition.

It was my first step into the world of design and interaction and my first time to work with a group of people who share with me a common language. Design was no longer an vague idea that I kept to myself, but an real scenario which I could bring up and raise discussions. It was liberating to me.

The idea of Letter Cut was to make paintings with letters. To decompose the letters, overlooking their functions as letters and to use their simple forms. Users could manipulate the letters with various input devices. Pressing the keys on the keyboard, dragging the mouse, and turning the knob would have different effects on the final painting.

This would later led to my research on the mathematical form of Bezier curves, and a new version of Letter Cut which allows arbitrary cuts.

mixed

The volleyball team of the Department of Information Management, National Taiwan University 國立臺灣大學.

For five years, the team is the most important part of my everyday life. It is more than a sport or a competition, but a devotion and a precious memory.

Before college, I would describe myself as an introvert—few friends, not good at sports as I concentrated my time on thinking and writing. When college came, I moved to the city of Taipei. Away from home, I was eager to explore my potential. After orientation, I attended my first team practice in the Affiliated High School of National Taiwan Normal University 師大附中 in the summer of 2004, before the first semester even started. From that day on, I spent every single Saturday morning on the team practice, despite the rain or (sometimes) even typhoon.

I was captain of the team in my junior year. The team is like a family to me. Despite all the conflicts, the ups and downs, many people I met there have become my dearest friends.