Alley Interactive is a fully distributed digital agency building sites in journalism and non profits. I worked remotely with Alley for 2 years as a user experience developer
Technology used: Wordpress, php, HTML, CSS, SASS, postCSS, JS (ES6), eslint + stylelint, Webpack, angular, git
Launched features and provided site maintenance for clients including but not limited to:
Technology used: html/sass/js, NodeJS, git, jira
For the release of the Air Jordan 30th anniversary shoe I was a front end developer on the Air Jordan site. With each media event a new section of the site was released. Once the media events were over users were able to generate basketball nicknames for themselves and generate shareable gifs, videos, and sound files. The site was available in 12 languages and was responsive.
Technology used: html/css/js, NodeJS, Arduino, Johnny-Five, socket.io, git
Eve is the product of a week long product hackathon. With Eve we wanted to challenge the idea of what it would be like if even the baseline consumer level kitchen appliances were smart. We designed Eve to have a simple design with no buttons and all actions performed over the web.
Technology used: html/css/js, NodeJS, socket.io, Neurosky EEG, ThreeJS, git
A brainwave experience created with Dave Ruiz (art director) Anna Lin (creative technology intern) and myself. By using EEG we were able to create a visual experience that is unique to each user's brainwaves. The more the user focuses the more the distractions fade away until the user achieves mindfulness.
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Technology used: html/css/js, 3d printing, Angular, Bootstrap, git
When I first came to AKQA I was part of an apprenticeship program called The Forge. As part of the forge you are part of an interdisciplinary group of designers and coders. Over 3 months you shadow a mentor as well as get exposed to a variety of client work and work on a final project for the end of the program.
Project Fogg was my final project as part of The Forge. It was inspired by systems such as Flat Stanley where a paper figure is sent through the mail in order to go on an epic journey. For Project Fogg I had a small group of people 3D scanned with a Kinect and 3D printed them. I made jars for them to live in while being passed around from city to city.
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A piece created during a teaching assistantship with Gray Area Summer Immersive 2015
Technology used: html/css/js, NodeJS, Dymo SDK, Arduino, Johnny-Five, socket.io, git
Modern society craves instant gratification Every year, click bait articles and Buzzfeed listicles reach the top pages of the Internet. Meanwhile, books gather dust in basements of local libraries around the world, another year forgotten. The effort to publish a physical book and the effort to churn out a list of the "29 GIFS That Show Why Kittens Are Better Than Puppies" are exponentially different. Your favorite book is the work of many hands and disciplined crafts, while in the digital world we push an article out to quickly pull readers in no matter howlong they stay. This juxtaposition makes a book idling on the shelf that much more tragic.
Contained within this project is a database of text determined to be forgotten by combing through the basement of the Oakland Public Library and searching for books with no date checked out stamps, books with fresh spines, and books that were not even yet entered into the digitla catalog system.
This installation asks you to become an evangelist for those books, for they are not yet really forgotten, they are just idling waiting for the right person to kick start their journey. Press the button, take a sticker, and fill the world around you with thoughts no longer forgotten.
Technology used: Processing, Makey Makey
Over the course of 8 weeks, four Bay Area youth were awarded a Creative Code Apprenticeships to work alongside Matthew Ganucheau, Simon Chaffetz, and myself to develop an interactive artwork for the Dolby’s new Interactive Digital Art Wall. Over the 8 weeks we taught the youth Processing and Makey Makey and discussed how to use code + installation art as a means of expression and how to work as a team to present unified thought.
Gray Area + Dolby Youth ApprenticeshipsOver the course of 8 weeks, four Bay Area youth were awarded a Creative Code Apprenticeships to work alongside two Gray Area Creative Code artists and develop an interactive artwork for the Dolby’s new Interactive Digital Art Wall. PLEASE JOIN US ON JANUARY 13TH 630-830PM FOR THE PREMIERE OF THIS NEW WORK, RSVP IS REQUIRED: https://dolbygallery.splashthat.com
Posted by Gray Area Art + Technology on Tuesday, January 12, 2016
Technology used: html/css/js, Bootstrap, Wordpress, svn
I first met Conor Russomanno, co-founder and CEO of OpenBCI, when I was in my first year in the MFA Design + Tecnology program and he was in his thesis year. My very first studio project involved open source brain interfacing so our paths naturally crossed. I helped Conor do some design work with his original group which was then called the Brain Interface Lab. I also helped do some organizational and design work for the Brain Interface Lab's first brain hackathon
I spent the summer after grad school working at OpenBCI with Conor and Joel Murphy in their lab in Brooklyn doing everything from designing their logo, redesigning their website, front end development, and product photography.
I first worked with the Met Media Lab through a partnership with Parsons and the Met's dissability services department when I collaborated to prototype Raised Painting. I enjoyed working in the space so much I later went on to become an intern where I collaborated on a museum augmented reality piece called Tiles
Museum Accessibility
Technology used: Arduino, laser cutting
A collaboration with: Seungkyun Lee, Melanie Bossert, and Rachel Darmody
Press: Time Out: New York
Raised Painting is an interactive puzzle designed for partially sighted or blind individuals. It provides a playful, educational and transformative experience, helping the users develop a deeper engagement with an artwork.
Raised Painting is composed of 4 main components: the raised outline, the speaker, the puzzle pieces, and the textured parts. The raised outline gives the user the chance to orient themselves with the painting in a traditional setting, feeling only the literal interpretation of the content of the painting. The speaker allows the user to hear a verbal description of the puzzle as they interact so that the user may independently work though the puzzle with little to no assistance. The puzzle pieces allow the user to step by step unravel the narrative behind the piece of work as they find and place each piece in it’s correct location within the outline. The pieces each have a texture representing what type of item that piece represents. For example, the hand and face pieces will be the same texture which in that piece will represent skin.
As the user approaches the piece a verbal description of how to interact with the puzzle is given. After feeling the outline of the raised painting the user will then be directed to the side of the painting where they have the chance to begin interacting with pieces from the painting. The user is then encouraged to interact with the piece by picking up pieces to the side of the painting and receiving a verbal description of what that piece is. Once the user understands what piece they are holding represents they may then begin to feel the outline of the painting to place the piece in the correct position. As the user places each piece they slowly begin to uncover the narrative of the artwork. When all the pieces are placed the story behind the painting is complete.
Museum Augmented Reality
Technology used: OpenFrameworks, OpenCV
A collaboration with: Betty Quinn
Press: Met Blog
My partner, Betty Quinn, and I were inspired by the idea of algorithms in art. The Islamic art gallery at the Met contains many single tiles and incomplete fragments. What if we were able to see how these tiles originally looked when they purposely covered an entire wall? More interestingly, what if we introduced a participatory element into the gallery, by allowing visitors to generate new patterns? Sarah and I decided the best way to tackle these questions was with Augmented Reality. Augmented Reality uses technology to add to the world we see around us. In our case we began to work on an iPad app. Using the iPad we could take advantage of the device's built in camera and make use of a live feed of the original art works. Our semester long process ended in an iPad app that allowed you to search and identify various tiles in the Islamic gallery. Once the app identifies a tile you then have the option to edit and play with the tiles geometry.
Technology used: html/css/js, php, mysql, laser cutting
At the intersection between our lives and design which driver has the bigger impact? Do the objects we encounter and the objects we keep truly have a meaning until we give it to them? The objects we save are a small window into our lives, but the stories we attach to those objects are who we are. We are a glass bottle full of beach sand because we are full of adventure, we are the 100-year-old biscuit passed down generation to generation because we are proud of where we came from, and we are the shoes we saved because they might have actually saved us. In an age where material culture seems to define our lives we are simultaneously defining material culture. Hundreds of years from now when we are gone, as are all those who knew us, the relics of our lives will remain because they are preserved in the stories that surround them.
Relics is an installation designed to live in a public space. Its purpose is to preserve and place on a pedestal those stories that we attach to the important material elements of our lives. Users can approach the reliquary and listen to the stories of others, and if they are so inclined, use a mobile web app to submit stories of their own. Relics memorializes the moments, people, or things we wish to hold on to by materializing stories attached to our physical possessions and preserving them by placing them on a public pedestal.
Girls Write Now is a mentorship program that matches professional writers and media makers with aspiring writers from high schools all around the greater New York City area. The digital media mentorship program was a program launched in partnership with Parsons MFA Design + Technology program and the Mozilla Hive Network. With a team of fellow women technologists from the MFADT program we worked together to write curriulum around using technology to tell stories in uninque ways. In my 2 years at Girls Write Now we did semesers on ePublishing, Audio Journalism, and Visual Narratives. We taught our lessons to a wide variety of ages and skill level. This is the most fun I have ever had teaching as all the girls were so excited to learn and watching their excitement grow as they continued to explore was so incredibly rewarding. We also had a couple girls go on to win awards with the projects they made in our class.
Working at Girl's Write Now I had the pleasure of collaborating with: Carla Marín, Lauren Slowik, Meghan McNamara, Jackie Neon, Gabrielle Patacsil, Julie Huynh, Emily Coppel, and Sarah Hubschman.
In the last semester piloting the Girls Write Now Digital Mentoring program we taught ePublishing using InDesign. Girls learned how to use linking to make interactive stories and other important lessons about design, typography, and creative commons licensing. The final collection of all their work can be seen to the left in the Girls Write Now 2013 e-zine.
Audio Journalism was our first semester as the official Digital Mentoring program with Girls Write Now. We taught different ways to record and edit audio and create podcasts. We taught this as it applied to Journalism, Music Memoir, and Slam Poetry.
Spring 2014
For spring we were able to have a 100% return rate for all mentors and mentees, so building on top of our semester with audio journalism our spring theme was Visual Narratives. We taught basic HTML/CSS including embedding various media and sound to enhance the girl's work. The final pieces made by the girls will be presented at Write / Code / Speak - our interactive media showcase exhibition.
I'm always looking for new adventures and exciting oppurtunities to collaborate. Please feel free to reach me using any of the follwoing medias:
Phone 812.929.0747
Email SarahEWever@gmail.com
