Liat Segal

The Originals Factory

2012-01-21T15:36:00.021+02:00

by Liat Segal & Assaf Talmudi

The Originals Factory is a work in progress fusing together and questioning digital, mechanic and plastic approaches to art, abstraction and originality. It is basically a DIY robot, built and programmed to create landscape paintings in the style of American abstract expressionism.
The computer system uses real time video input to control motor movement and pump actions to release paint drops on a large canvas. The drops are then drawn downwards courtesy of gravity, leaving thin colorful line marks.

The Originals Factory was first presented at the DLD Tel Aviv conference in November 2011.

The graphical language achieved by this mechanism is a language of lines. Instead of pixels creating the image, we get vertical graphical units, or Vixels.
Our mechanism allows us to control a few parameters for each such Vixel; its Horizontal position, length and color.

Other types of online data were used for prints, such as Google Trends and real time generated surveys.

Wrote about the project:

Make Magazine
Hackaday
Laughing Squid

IOIO-Android based Cellular Wall Printer

2011-05-08T12:10:00.074+03:00

What if people would expose and visualize their SMS text messages on buildings? If your Facebook status would be printed on a real, physical wall? What if you really checked in when you check in?
The wall printer takes the wall status concept back to physical dimensions.

Inspired by old-school pin printers, the wall printer is a manually held device using seven markers to print digital messages on any flat surface. Seven individually controlled servo motors move the markers up and down, drawing dots and dashes.
When you manually slide the printer over a wall, the servo motions are carefully timed to produce text messages.

Connected to a cell phone, the printer can be directly fed by SMS text messages, Facebook statuses, GPS coordinates or practically by any other digital data source.
It uses a IOIO board to connect the physical electronic parts to an Android device and control them from an Android application.

This project was done with help and advice by Ytai Ben Tsvi, IOIO inventor and friend :)

Wrote about the project:

Make Magazine
Engadget
Neatorama
Next President
Talk Android
Cube Me
Microsiervos (Spanish)
Creep.ru (Russian)
Androidworld.it (Italian)
Semageek (French)

Robotic drums party installation

2011-05-01T01:50:00.002+03:00

Robotic drumsticks were playing on steel barrels at an abandoned textile factory party, Bar Yochai, Tel Aviv.
Beats were generated automatically, at real time, according to the music played by the DJ.

The system listens to the music played, analyses it and controls the drumstick's beats accordingly.
People choose which drumstick play at any given time by making shadows on them.

Robotic Drums

2010-09-22T03:53:00.089+02:00

by Jonathan Rubin, Liat Segal & Assaf Talmudi

18 Darbuka drums and 36 robotic arms are controlled via wireless communication. Drum music is composed and played at a music sequencer on an iPad.

The project was presented at the Bat-Yam international biennale of landscape urbanism, September 2010, as a part of the 'Green to Blue' ecological street project, by Matanya Sack and Uri Reicher. During the biennale, electricity generated by wind turbines and photovoltaic cells was used to operate the robotic Darbuka drums. The drums were mounted on the wind turbines columns, creating a hybrid, digital-mechanic drumming circle, a futuristic-traditional acoustic space.

Thanks to Ben Handler and Eyal Talmudi for playing with us! :)

The making of...

So, what do we have here... 18 darbuka drums, each drum is played with two sticks mounted on servo motors and is lit by a super-bright 1W LED. We chose to use drum sticks mounted on servos (rather than the traditionally used solenoids) in order to achieve a powerful sound accompanied by a visual effect of a drumming circle.

Each of the 36 servos and 18 LEDs is controlled independently in real-time. In order to play (and light) our drums, we needed to control 54 channels wirelessly. To this aim, we built nine control units, each consisting of an Arduino and a XBee radio transceiver. Each unit was designed to control two drums (4 servos and 2 LEDs):

A master netbook, running Max/MSP, sends control commands wirelessly (via XBee radio transceiver) to all control units.

As a final touch, we added an iPad interface to give an easy and intuitive way to interact with the installation. OSC protocol was used for wireless communication between the master netbook and the iPad (via Wi-Fi).

Three modes for playing the drums in real-time have been designed. The Sequencer mode allows composing specific beats for each of the 36 drum sticks. At this mode users can design and play loops and when happy with a loop, save it as a preset. Users can shift between previously saved presets at Presets mode.
Users can also play the drums by 'hitting them' at a location based Intuitive jamming mode.

At both the Sequencer and the Presets modes, the user can control the BPM of the loop by either switching a dial or shaking the iPad at the desired tempo.
Additionally, the user can switch between parts of the loop (and either play the entire loop, 1/2, 1/4 or 1/8th of it).

Wrote about the project:

Make Magazine
Hack a Day
Haaretz (Hebrew)
PadGadget
PadMania (German)
VIPad.fr (French)

Virtual Physical Pong

2010-09-11T04:13:00.015+03:00

by Jonathan Rubin, Liat Segal & Hen Fitoussi

This version of the good old Pong game is played on a computer controlling motorized paddles (via Arduino) and a projected ball.
A feedback is received from the paddles in order to derive the paddles' position in the game arena.
This way, the projected virtual ball bounces once it hits the real paddle.
This demo was built in two days, during Geekcon 2010.

RiBOTa: The two legged mechanical rickshaw runner

2010-06-27T23:41:00.067+03:00

by Jonathan Rubin & Liat Segal

While the idea for RiBOTa originated when thinking of mutant vehicles for Burning Man, it quickly grew wings and... started walking.

RiBOTa combines a biped robot with an old-school rickshaw.

After leaving the drawing table, we went on building a small Lego working model. Now we work on building the real thing - a 3 meter long, two legged rickshaw carrying robot.
RiBOTa is going to have a relatively light aluminum tubes structure, powered by a diesel engine. We use motorized mechanical legs strong enough to have two people on board. Laser cut designs and many lights will be integrated to the bot's structure.

Augmented reality remote control car

2009-10-12T00:08:00.014+02:00

The car is controlled from remote via PC. It transmits real time video footage by an IP camera it has on board. Then specific markers that are identified at the video are replaced by animations at real time (augmented reality), making the game both physical and virtual.
The project was done during Out Of the Box Week #5 at Microsoft Israel Innovation Labs with Hen Fitoussi, Kfir Karmon Omer Ramot.

The project was also presented at the MS Think Next event.

DIY Multi touch screen

2009-10-11T22:24:00.018+02:00

Our low cost multi touch screen was built using the frustrated total internal reflection principle.
Total reflection occurs when light travels from a medium with a high refractive index to a medium with a lower one. The light is then trapped within the first medium.
In our case the Infra-Red beam of light, transmitted by IR LEDS, remains trapped inside an acryl surface, since the refractive index of the acryl is higher than that of the air surrounding it. When touching the acryl surface, light bounces off the finger out of the surface.

The touch-screen is composed of an acryl surface, a standard projector connected to a PC, a mirror, an IR-sensitive webcam and a foldable, portable construction:

The acryl surface is used both to display the PC output and to sense user's input.
The acryl is coated with diluted silicon which enhances the amount of reflected IR light due to user's applied pressure on the screen.
Then, a sketch paper sheet is placed on the silicon layer to protect and isolate it. A diffusing material is layered on top of the sketch paper. The diffuser is semi transparent, allowing quality projection, on the one hand, and blocking access visible light from the other side of the screen.

The entire surface is framed with an aluminum frame which has 112 IR LEDs drilled into. The LEDs' tips, sticking out of the frame, are coated with black silicon. This is done to reduce IR light spilling in the wrong direction.
To keep everything together and protected from short circuits, a wooden frame is applied around the screen.

The 112 IR LEDs in the aluminum frame are divided into 14 sub-circuits, each containing 8 LEDs and one resistor. The 14 sub-circuits are connected in parallel, producing a circuit that consumes 1.4Amps and 12Volts. It is powered by a standard PC power supplier which is short circuited to work without a motherboard.

The reflected IR light is detected by an IR-sensitive webcam. We used the Microsoft VX-1000 webcam. To make the camera sensitive to IR light we removed its internal IR Filter. To make it insensitive to visible light we applied several layers of burnt camera film.

This project was done as a part of the Out Of the Box Week #IV at Microsoft Innovation Labs, Israel, by Hen Fitoussi, Kfir Karmon, Omer Ramot & me.

Helpful Sites

NUI group
Instructables - Interactive Multitouch Display
Instructables - Back projection 56 inch multitouch television

Non Newtonian Fluids

2009-10-11T12:09:00.022+02:00

Rivers and creatures of cornflour vibrated on speakers...

Or as wiki describes... "A non-Newtonian fluid is a fluid whose flow properties are not described by a single constant value of viscosity"...

Silly Puppeteer...

2009-10-11T01:14:00.014+02:00

This puppeteer was first made as an Arduino demo for my Bezalel students. Since then, this roosterish creature got a life of its own... Using an Arduino, some photocells, resistors and servos.

Burning Man 2009 - Evolution )'(

2009-10-10T20:20:00.002+02:00

Every summer a wooden man is built in a Nevada desert. Around it a city raises on the dust. For one week a year, Black Rock City is the third largest city in Nevada - until the man burns....

I edited this movie using videos and photos taken by Jonathan Rubin, Dadi Segal, Inbal Bentsiony, Omri Shacham, Yariv Bash & myself.

A Bit About Me...

2009-06-18T17:16:00.008+03:00

Sweet Tech Studio

Located at south Tel Aviv, Israel, the studio is about making interactive projects, hardware, software and mechanics. Making connections between low and high(er) tech, physical and virtual mediums, design, products and people.
The studio is all about making.

Liat Segal

Under 100 words (not including links...) CV:
In the last few years, apart from working at the studio, I worked at the Microsoft Innovation Labs, at the Holon Institute of Technology's Interaction Lab and taught at the Bezalel school of arts and design at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem.
In 2007 I finished my M.Sc. studies at Tel Aviv University in the field of bioinformatics and machine learning. In 2005 I graduated the Tel Aviv University Interdisciplinary Program for Fostering Excellence. Read more about my education...

Resources & Suppliers

2009-05-01T15:48:00.033+03:00

Well, girls love shopping.. :)

electronic components, motors, sensors, batteries:

Pololu
Sparkfun
Radioshack
Electronics Goldmine
Parallax
Hobby King

ספקים מקומיים בישראל

erangalor@yahoo.com ערן גל אור
דאש אלקטרוניקה
www.4project.co.il

אריסטוק
הר ציון 26, תל אביב

מ. כהן אלקטרוניקה
וולפסון 57, תל אביב

אבן אלקטרוניקה
הר-ציון 22, תל אביב

יואב סימן-טוב
וולפסון 61, תל אביב

Some designs...

2009-01-01T22:36:00.000+02:00

Some printed works...

2009-01-01T22:01:00.011+02:00

These images are composed of multiple photos I took (printed on tin).

The following are wedding invitations I made for friends :)

GUIs & WWWs

2007-01-02T22:49:00.019+02:00

The site above was designed for the new Design & Computer Science combined academic program at the Bezalel academy of arts and design and the School of computer science and engineering at the Hebrew university of Jerusalem.

The Maayan Haim pharmacy website was built using Joomla content management system.

Education

2007-01-01T23:56:00.003+02:00

In 2007 I finished my M.Sc studies at Tel Aviv University, under the supervision of Prof. David Horn (physics) and Prof. Eytan Ruppin (computer science & medicine). My M.Sc research was in the field of bioinformatics and machine learning. In my research I dealt with the extraction of regulatory motifs from promoter regions in the genome and understanding aspects of the mechanism by which gene regulation occurs.

In 2005 I graduated the Tel Aviv University Interdisciplinary Program for Fostering Excellence. My undergraduate studies as a student of the program included an individually designed interdisciplinary curriculum. I aimed to acquire knowledge in various aspects of computational biology and machine learning; I have mostly studied mathematics, computer science and biology and got to taste a bit of economics, psychology, history & arts.

Paper:
Liat Segal , Michal Lapidot , Zach Solan , Eytan Ruppin , Yitzhak Pilpel, David Horn
Nucleotide variation of regulatory motifs may lead to distinct expression patterns
Bioinformatics Vol. 23, pages i440-i449.

Abstract
Motivation: Current methodologies for the selection of putative transcription factor binding sites (TFBS) rely on various assumptions such as over-representation of motifs occurring on gene promoters, and the use of motif descriptions such as consensus or position-specific scoring matrices (PSSMs). In order to avoid bias introduced by such assumptions, we apply an unsupervised motif extraction (MEX) algorithm to sequences of promoters. The extracted motifs are assessed for their likely cis-regulatory function by calculating the expression coherence (EC) of the corresponding genes, across a set of biological conditions.
Results: Applying MEX to all Saccharomyces cerevisiae promoters, followed by EC analysis across 40 biological conditions, we obtained a high percentage of putative cis-regulatory motifs. We clustered motifs that obtained highly significant EC scores, based on both their sequence similarity and similarity in the biological conditions these motifs appear to regulate. We describe 20 clusters, some of which regroup known TFBS. The clusters display different mRNA expression profiles, correlated with typical changes in the nucleotide composition of their relevant motifs. In several cases, a variation of a single nucleotide is shown to lead to distinct differences in expression patterns. These results are confronted with additional information, such as binding of transcription factors to groups of genes. Detailed analysis is presented for clusters related to MCB/SCB, STRE and PAC. In the first two cases, we provide evidence for different binding mechanisms of different clusters of motifs. For PAC-related motifs we uncover a new cluster that has so far been overshadowed by the stronger effects of known PAC motifs.

Work in progress - BlaBla

2005-09-21T16:17:00.002+03:00

by Liat Segal & Luka Or

What if every word you said immediately came to life? What if every conversation had a physical representation in the real world?
Imagine the ability to actually see and feel real conversations between people: the fluffiness of soft words or the power of a shout. BlaBla provides visualization of the voices we make by adding an augmented visual aspect to the audio experience.

Visitors enter a space were their speech gets visualized on the surrounding walls.

When people talk, visual residues of the speech are projected on the wall behind them.
The feeling is of watching the “shadow” of the speech rather than seeing a projection.

The experience is of a visually augmented physical space. A space were one can see one’s words and vocal interactions between people.

Work in progress - Pixel Machine

2004-02-06T18:12:00.006+02:00

by Liat Segal & Assaf Talmudi

The pixel machine is a simplified animation machine, moving LED ‘pixels’ up and down a string, using motors, and controlling the LED illumination (allowing dimming, full on and off or even color control, using RGB LEDs).

The machine has two layers of such moving pixels, creating images with some depth.
Each layer has about 30 motorized LEDs, allowing visualization of simplified images.

Animations can be created before the event or generated at real time in an interactive manner.
Such interaction can take into account the location and actions of the visitors.