For the past few months, I have been collecting, sorting and storing seeds. Some are from my garden and some are from my walks in the neighborhood.

When I visited my friend Lissa’s garden couple of weeks ago, she gave me some Mexican Sunflower seeds from her garden. She knows that I have been hunting and gathering for seeds. Then she asked me “How do you keep track of your seeds? Do you photograph them?”

Actually, I have just been collecting seeds and putting them in different small bottles so far. I have been able to identify them without too much trouble. Photographing them seem to be a great and useful way to make sure that I don’t someday get them mixed up. (It is fun to take my Remington Typewriter out to do some typing too.) And hopefully, my little digital library of seeds would be useful to someone else as well.

Thank you Lissa for giving me this great idea to keep track of my seeds. I am looking forward to sowing them next year in my garden.

Click here to view the complete seed collection

Surface is an interactive video audio installation using a table with a contact microphone, and a video display. Ethan and I collaborated on this project (our first). You can see a short movie of the show above. It is an exploration of surface and location mediated through both video imagery and audio feedback. It consists of a series of macro photos of urban surfaces in downtown San Jose. The location of each surface is cataloged with latitude and longitude data. Organic materials are also collected from the urban environment (rocks, seed pods, branches, etc.) and form an interface into the exploration of place and surface. A platform is installed in the exhibition space where the collected materials are placed. A contact microphone is used to detect vibrations caused by tactile interactions with the organic material. The vibrations are amplified into an audio signal, which is broadcast into the space. Software algorithms detect changes in pitch and amplitude in the signal and use the data for two purposes. Short segments of audio input are recorded and looped, forming a rhythmic history of the interactions with the piece. In addition, the archive of macro photos (mapped with lat/lon data) are navigated and displayed through a video projection.

Image locations on Google Maps: http://tinyurl.com/2dthgt

Images of video projection in different phases of interaction. Please click on each image for larger view.