I’m currently studying industrial design at Carnegie Mellon University with a concentration in physical computing. As a designer I work to create unique and engaging experiences that stretch our understanding of current product interactions. I am especially interested in the intersection of digital and physical worlds.
When I’m not working in my studio I enjoy, riding my bike (and sometimes falling off), discovering interesting music, exploring urban spaces, tinkering with electronics, playing guitar and, late night botanical garden visits.
This semester I hope to become more fluent in using code and software as a medium for my creative work.
https://twitter.com/flock_of_fishes
http://www.rachelciavarella.com/
Previous creative code work
Kim vs. Comet (Rachel Ciavarella 2014)
Created for Ali Momeni’s course, Hybrid Instrument Building, this project is an exploration in data creation through social media, focuses of public attention and the effects of digital communication on decision making. Using Processing, Twitter is scraped for the most recent tweets @KimKardashian and @ESA_Rosetta. These tweets are then sent over a serial connection through an arduino to be printed by either thermal printer.
Kim kardashian’s “internet breaking” photoshoot was released on the same day that human’s successfully landed on the Rosetta comet. I was intrigued by the sheer volume of media attention one event received next to the other and decided to physicalize this in the form of printed tweets.
I feel I was successful in unbiasedly presenting the viewer with information to pass judgement on themselves. There are a few technical changes I would make, such as, flipping the text so it prints right side up, adjusting the twitter scraping rates so I am not kicked off the network so often, and reducing the code to one processing sketch and the hardware to one arduino or ideally a raspberry pi.