Just Go To the ITP Winter Show Today (Or Watch This Video)

If you need an antidote to shopping or to the present day, the Interactive Telecommunications Program winter show at NYU, which ends today, is it. A healthy mix of science fair and technological crafts show, it’s riddled with web cams, infrared sensors, and other various interactive mechanisms. Some things move, some talk, some create sound, some analyze sound, some create light, some are just shown on LCD screens.

But most of them are quite playful and require audience interaction. There are even some performances. One girl who sings a rendition of the Beach Boys’ “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” while controlling beautiful visual patterns on a screen by stepping on a small foam pad and modding her voice.

There are pieces such as a song cabinet – inside the drawers are beautifully crafted mechanical musical instruments that play wonderful melodies; a light fixture that looks like a giant pixel that allows you to control its color range using 24 switches; graffiti made of moss that sings when you touch it; a snake made of plexiglass that rotates in an uncanny organic fashion; and a map of the streets of NYC based on brightness at midnight.

The show seems to be curated without regard to conceptual coherence, but rather in order to pack the floor with such a menagerie of projects, so that the range of sounds, lights and colors emitted from different projects overlap as little as possible, and so that crowds of hacker-lovers can mill through the densely-packed rooms and halls somewhat seamlessly.

Today’s the last day. Get to the 4th floor of 721 Broadway, starting at 5 PM. Or watch the video above, and then go.