NuVu invites you to our Winter 2012 Exhibit that will be held at our new space in Cambridge. The event will showcase students’ projects from the Winter “BRAIN” trimester. Come listen to the sound of your brain, play games with your brain, test our products that will help you focus, and witness the debut of our viral video.

On display will be a mind pod, games, interactive installations, a virtual puppet show, a cute robot with a mind of its own, a robotic tripod, a plant holder that looks for the most light, a smart toilet seat, and many more.
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It’s Friday, it’s Friday, it’s review & presentation day at NuVu! What a Friday it was. Leading up to Friday, we had a closed reflection circle, thinking about where we had been the past two weeks, and appreciating this moment of coming together to create something. It was a moment to cherish, and we did. The final reviews of the term ended in a spectacular finish. NuVu student Robert Alper was on the decks, making sure the sound flow for the day was smooth and flowing. Adam Steinberg and Jeff Marx (with Raghava KK there in spirit) marked the start of the two studio presentations, and within each session, there was an abundant supply of electronic audio collages, viral video parodies and laughter, and an overall journey filled with learning.

Full house for Review/Presentation Day

The Viral Video studio gathers and prepares for their presentation

DJ Robbie rocking the studio with some rumbling bass lines

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Today, NuVu students and coaches Jeff Marx and Adam Steinberg spent the morning bringing their viral song to life in a recording studio in Somerville. Each verse was practiced and recited again and again and again, each time with more energy and precision. At one point, all 24 NuVu’ers came together to sing the chorus element. It was undoubtedly the first time the historic Somerville studio had witnessed 24 singers melodiously reciting the lyrics of a viral musical!

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In the process of creating something, anything, the only thing that is expected is the unexpected. Monday morning at the studio began filled with uncertainty: where are we headed? what’s the point, really? why are we doing this? The same questions that began the process continued through relentlessly. After a lunch time of conversation and quick brainstorming, the coaches decided on a new plan of action for the day, and the later part of Monday transformed into progressive steps forward. Was it talking about the circumlocutious Monday morning path or deciding on a new course of action that eventually led us to clarity, well, we simply don’t know, but what we do know is that we simply had to go down that path nonetheless.

Listening to some melodies for inspiration

NuVu coach Raghava KK leads a brainstorming session on creating the storyboard for the first verse

NuVu coach Jeff Marx looks over the twelfth iteration of the lyrics

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For the past week, NuVu has been infused with some of the most diverse creative people who are at NuVu coaching two exciting studios, Viral Video and Mind Music. We are thrilled to have Raghava KK (World-renowned contemporary artist, TED 2010), Jeff Marx (Tony-award winning musical composer/lyricist) and Adam Steinberg (Songwriter/Musician/Producer/Engineer) all under our studio roof, guiding the students through a collaborative process of creating brainwave-infused original musical compositions and viral videos.

Viral Video Studio

NuVu coaches Jeff Marx and Raghava KK talk about their collaboration with NuVu students.

Brainstorm about viral videos on the internet.

Max creates internet celebrity cartoons for the visual component of the video.
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Today was an exciting day at the studio. The studio was filled with robots roaming around the concrete floors and climbing up glass walls! There were also plenty of interesting experiments to share from the past weeks that de-bunked or at least put into question many commonplace assumptions! It was Friday Presentation/Review Day, and the students had plenty of interesting findings to share with the audience of their work from the past two studios (The Quantified Self and Sense, Think. Act).

Pre-review, trouble-shoot pow-wow

Catch Me-bot, or I’ll spray you with silly string!

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The Quantified Self community began in San Francisco by people who were interested in self knowledge through self-tracking. They also shared a keen interest in gathering and sharing this knowledge and experiences with others. The community has spread to other cities across the globe, with monthly meet-ups for people to share data they are tracking about their body and personal investigations and research into their bodies, minds, and selves. People’s inquiry stretches from personal genetics to ways to digitize and track information, from how to self-diagnose to how to self-experiment with data and statistics.

Michael Nagle, head of the Boston community of The Quantified Self, has been at NuVu the past two weeks coaching a design studio called “The Quantified Self” where students have been doing different QS style experiments. This past Wednesday, The Boston Quantified Self Meetup was held at NuVu, and in addition to presentations made by QS members, NuVu students presented their work from the studio, including topics from trying polyphasic sleeping and measuring the effects with the Zeo to measuring social interaction in costumes ranging from Cosmo-magaazine-attractive to wheelchair-bound to seeing the effects of texting while driving. A couple of Zeo team members were in the house at the QS meetup and donated a Zeo Mobile to the Polyphased group to assist in their experiment (Thank you Zeo!) As Michael said, “Their (NuVu students) enthusiasm for self-experimentation is what inspired the idea of doing a session devoted to getting people experimenting. I hope it rubs off on us.” Read the rest of this entry »

In the “Codes of the Brain” studio last week, students Liam Brady and Noah Jallos-Prufer created the iMat, an interactive game/art piece made using an EEG headset, one Kinect motion-tracker and a common projector. As Liam and Noah described, the iMat “directly relates to both one’s mind and body, delivering a fully dynamic experience.” The iMat is controlled by an easy-to-use interface and includes 3 different playable modes with no “max players” limitation.

Below are excerpts from Liam’s and Noah’s blog. Read the rest of this entry »

For the past few weeks, we have been dissecting sheep brains, hacking EEG headsets, capturing tons of sleeping data through the Zeo, capturing movement and dance, designing interactive art projects for people with synesthesia.

This past December, NuVu students attended and volunteered at the INK Conference in Jaipur, India and piloted an Android smartphone educational app they developed in cooperation with Sesame Workshop for children living in slums and other low-cost neighborhoods around India. NuVu alumni Tess Anderson kept an ongoing blog during her travels and talks about her experience as part of this India Workshop.

Inspiring INK

by Tess Anderson
12/07/11

Being at INK I was so inspired and had so much to say about everything that I felt as if no words would describe the way I was feeling…It was an overflow of amazement, inspiration and determination. I was amazed at how people like Babar started his own school at age 8 with kids in his backyard. I was inspired by people like Aisha who was brave enough to talk in front of the world about how she is dying. I was determined to make changes in the world like John Hardy has with his green school. The INK conference made me want to do more with my life. It opened my eyes to realizing how much is out there in the world and the impact people can have on the world. As a child, I always thought that when people said they were trying to “save the world” they were just kidding or pretending to be a big shot. But, after listening to such powerfully inspirational men and women, I have started to grasp the understanding of what it actually means to “save the world”.

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