News/Research

Revisited: BEARS 2015

17 Feb, 2015

Revisited: BEARS 2015

The 2015 Berkeley EECS Annual Research Symposium hosted a BCNM open house last Thursday on February 12.

Rama Gottfried showcased new interfaces for making electronic music out of acoustic instruments.

Will Payne showcased his team's project, Underglow, which focused on increasing walkability in San Leandro by creating lights underneath bridges that count the number of pedestrians walking through. An increased number of pedestrians would trigger a light display on the bridge.

Kyle Booten's project featured digital poetry, through creating a program that creates a different genesis story each time it was run, reiterating and building its own mythos.

Laura Devendorf explored "Being the Machine" by integrating human movement with 3D printing, challenging and complicating the roles that designers typically assign to humans and machines in making by having a person build a physical version of a digital model usually given to a 3D printer.

Naomi Bragin examined the structural relations of power that mediate the body's sense of motion, effecting and potentially transforming consciousness--a process she calls kinesthetic politics. Locating hip hop culture within enduring conditions of slavery and white supremacy, the commercial spread of street dance through television, film, and cyberspace reproduces the figure of the 'happy dancing slave' in complex ways.

Lark Buckingham showcased activity monitors and wearable devices with Babump, which poses as a business card holder to pick up signals from heart monitors. Employers can track employee cardiovascular data in real time, allowing employers to gauge employee health and mood during meetings.

Bonnie Ruberg displayed the games created by undergraduates at the Queerness and Games Design Workshop, which took place at Berkeley last year in September and October. These games, such as 'Ultimate Star Collector: Winner of the Universe', 'Hard Mode 101', 'That One Time You Left Everything That You Needed at Home', 'The Becoming', and 'The Convenience Store contingency', tackled everyday issues faced by queer students in insightful and exciting ways.