Creating and learning Chinese Calligraphy is traditionally a solo process, with collaboration and exchange only possible when people are at the same location. To collaborate on an artwork, or for students to learn from instructors, people need to carry the calligraphy paper to a designated location in order to have meaningful exchange. This tool aims to facilitate remote collaboration/learning of Chinese Calligraphy, enabling Calligraphy lovers around the world to continue to learn and create Calligraphy despite location barriers.

As the physicality and tangibility of the brush, ink, and calligraphy paper are crucial to artistic creation, the remote collaboration problem cannot be solved through image projection or photo sharing. This system embeds sensors into traditional Calligraphy tools, maintaing traditional cultural heritage while creating new artistic possibilities for this digital era.

cindykao [attt] media.mit.edu
www.media.mit.edu/~cindykao
MIT Media Lab, Speech+Mobility / MS1

Expertise

★★★☆ Art
★☆☆☆ Architecture
★☆☆☆ Craft/Fabrication
★★★☆ Design
★★☆☆ DIY Electronics
★☆☆☆ Electrical Eng.
★☆☆☆ Mech. Eng.
★★★★ Programming/CS

Experience
Trained for 5+ years as a computer scientist, I have wide ranging skills in programming languages and research experience in Ubiquitous Computing and Wireless Sensor Networks. Stemming from my artistic interests, I’ve have training in sketch, watercolor and Chinese calligraphy since I was a child. These two interests have led me to participate in several interaction design projects, from where I gained experience in DIY electronics and design.

Why
I am interested in creating communication technologies with a good sense of humans, and the humanities. Tangibility is the way we learn and experience the world as children, and it still processes a certain magic and familiarity to us as we get older. I hope to expand the communication interface off the screen and onto the physical environment around us, and to explore novel communication opportunities. I hope to create objects for communication that leverage our five senses, and help us express the ambiguous and the poetic.