An Open Source Wi-Fi Based Device Detection System - Michael Vartanian, proposal (Fall 2018)

Robotics and Programming Kit video (Fall 2016) - Kamran Kiyani; this is the video explaining his project, and he also delivered a website and the hardware described in the video

Retro Gaming - Raspberry Pi based video game emulator - Aditya Rawat

FigTree - an educational technology package that guides novice users through programming electronic hardware

FigTree. consists of a Visual Programming Environment (VPE), an electronic hardware kit and education material. Designed for beginners, FigTree operates as a browser-based wizard that sends instructions to electronic modules connected together in a circuit. Users learn to build Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices, modular robots and artistic projects that are personally important to them.

UMBOT: The exploration and development of an umbrella sharing system for my office

Forgot to grab an umbrella on the way into the office? UMBOT will keep you dry. When the weather shifts expectedly, UMBOT provides peace-of-mind and protection from the elements, with the chivalry one expects from a bundle of circuitry and code.  UMBOT was conceived after noticing that I was not the only one continually getting caught at the office by an unexpected storm, without an umbrella on hand. The solution I converged on uses a web application, WI-FI micro controller, and RFID event tracking to solve such problems as security, user accountability, and knowing how many umbrellas are available for use without being within eyesight of the receptacle.  The journey from conception involved learning Tessel micro controller development, Node.js, Jade/PUG templating, SQLITE, PCB design and fabrication, Socket.io, user testing of both digital and physical interfaces, and much more.

Film Creation

If These Trees Could Talk: A short documentary film about neighbors uniting to save their forest

In 1968, the first houses were developed among the trees in Castlewood Forest, a residential neighborhood located in far south Austin, Texas.  By the early 1990s, however, a contagious tree disease had taken root and spread through Castlewood and the adjacent subdivision, Oak Valley. Together with the City of Austin, the Castlewood Oak Valley Neighborhood Association (COVNA) spurred into action to try and contain the oak wilt and limit its devastating effects.  The goal of my project was to collect stories of my neighborhood’s 50-year history and share it in a film. After conducting more than 30 hours of in-person interviews, I have gained a greater sense of respect and profound appreciation for Castlewood Forest—the trees and the people.

The Floating World - Video documentary with graphic design and photographs about Japanese design

Take a journey into the past and the future with Japanese design, by examining how Japanese aesthetics have influenced creative thinking throughout the world. In the documentary “The Floating World”, architect and filmmaker Christopher Earle explores his decades long fascination with traditional and contemporary Japanese design. In doing so, he asks the question, “What is it about Japanese art, landscape, architecture, and design that fascinates non-Japanese viewers?”.  The Floating World will explore Japanese aesthetics, both modern and traditional, and its influence on 21st Century art, architecture, fashion, food, and product design throughout the world. The project will also examine how modern Japanese aesthetics draw from traditional Japanese sensibilities. To a lesser extent, the project will survey the influence of Japan on modern art and design throughout the world. The Floating World will combine video documentary with graphic design, and photographs to create a video documentary, as well as a corresponding website.

The Last Outcry - A Documentary lastoutcry.org

The Last Outcry is a short documentary created to educate a broad lay audience about the current state of our equities market structure.  For long, we’ve heard mention about “quarterly capitalism”, the situation that many CEOs and CFOs of public companies find themselves in when compelled to forego long-term opportunities for the sake of boosting share price short term.  These days, it could also be relevant to talk about a “microsecond capitalism”, that is, the vast majority of the trading volume that today is traded on a sub-millisecond level. This practice is fueled by a hard-and software arms race started by technologically savvy traders in the eighties.  Our documentary looks at how this arms race has escalated to affect every single trade made on the markets today.

Opinion Miner: Fine-grained sentiment analysis and dissection of unstructured user content

A wealth of unstructured opinion data exists online – data that was, until now, unusable. Such data is growing all the time. We add to it daily when we talk about our likes and dislikes on social media and elsewhere on the web. We do so in an honest and unsolicited manner, expressing our true feelings towards a brand, a politician, or a global event. Some software can tell you the overall sentiment users are expressing towards certain products, movies or events, but not how. The Internet offers mixed reviews of iPhone X, but is it the price, design, or the AI technology that is controversial? With Opinion Miner, you can dive into each aspect of a given topic and fully comprehend the drivers behind public sentiment.

Spotify Mobile Ad Selector

Mobile Ad Selector is a new interactive ad format to be built on Spotify’s mobile platforms. The new format seeks to both drive revenue for Spotify as well as improve user experience on the mobile free-tier. Mobile Ad Selector will be a dynamic view that integrates video, audio, animation, and user interaction. The project includes the preliminary designs, prototypes, user tests, and analyses of user and advertiser value.

JoltViz, earthquake data visualization tool http://joltviz.pro

JoltViz is an earthquake data visualization tool that focuses on modern user interface, user experience, and responsive design. The web application searches and returns earthquake information using published USGS API on earthquakes.  The three main features of JoltViz are earthquake distribution, graphical charting, and map projections.  Earthquake distribution shows the location of earthquakes grouped by magnitude. When the user hovers over a magnitude number, all earthquakes plotted on the map that has that magnitude are highlighted and animated.  Graphical charting can display either a bar chart or a line chart, in an hourly, daily, or monthly manner.  Map projections can make visualization more exciting and engaging for the users as they customize  how earthquakes are plotted on some of the more popular map projections.  This web app was built mainly using Javascript, CSS3, and HTML5, the ubiquitous technologies used to develop modern web applications. jQuery library and Bootstrap plugins are used to make it easier and simpler to code UI elements, while D3.js is used to code the mapping and charting components of the application. JoltViz makes earthquake visualization more interesting and highly engaging.

Tickle Wizard

Tickle Wizard is a WordPress plugin for omnichannel communication blasts such as custom notifications, alerts, announcements, and reminders. When WordPress was released in 2003, everyone used email to communicate. Tickle Wizard modernizes the WordPress communication footprint by adding chat, social, mobile communication capabilities.  The work in this project covers early phase UX planning, testing and discovery, including user flows, wireframes and a working prototype. While Tickle Wizard technology has the potential for broad application, a test case was developed around the communication needs of small to medium sized private schools.

CHZMONGR: an interactive cheese tracking and rating solution for cheese connoisseurs www.chzmongr.com

A cheesemonger is a seller of cheese, traditionally one well informed about cheeses. Many modern stores sell cheeses without offering consumers the benefit of such a knowledgable sales person. Consumers buy and taste various cheeses, but keeping track of what they have enjoyed or did not enjoy is a difficult task. Since artisanal and specialty cheeses can be costly, it is imperative to make purchases that align with your palate. The Chzmongr mobile platform provides users with cheese knowledge, confidence in purchasing cheeses, and entertainment through a keenly branded, easily navigable mobile site.  Chzmongr gives cheese lovers an accessible reference guide for planning and shopping. The site includes social aspects, so users can interact with their cheese loving friends and earn badges as they discover their favorite cheeses.

SBOT – A dynamic web portal for human resources administrators

A dynamic web application designed to guide new employees and HR administrators through the onboarding process.  The application provides a secure login, ability to read and acknowledge disclosures, download and submit required forms, and update personal information. It allow HR staff to update employee records, add new ones, upload blank forms, download or print completed ones, and have checklists available to keep track of what items have been completed and which ones are still outstanding.  The application leverages the Laravel PHP framework following the Model-View-Controller (MVC) paradigm.  The main technologies used include PHP, JavaScript, JQuery, HTML5, and CSS3. The project incorporates the Bootstrap framework for a responsive user interface. The application runs on Apache server, MariaDB database, with extensive use of GitHub for source control.

Finding Understanding: A website for individuals to understand & deal with depression www.finding-understanding.com

Depression is one of the most common mental illnesses in the United States affecting 16.1 million individuals over 18, or 6.7% of the adult population. A little over 1 in 10 adolescents are affected by depression, or about 12.5%. This is reflected in children as a whole, with anxiety disorders affecting about 1 in 8 children. Depression can arise in children as young as 2 or 3. Globally over 300 million people suffer from depression. Despite this prevalence, there are limited online resources for depression and many websites for mental health are static text page based and dry. This site seeks to address these issues by creating a more exciting online experience for providing information and resources about depression. Using jQuery, the Create JS suite, P5.js, AOS, Adobe Software, and more, this site presents information visually and interactively. Finding Understanding's purpose is to make information more digestible, accessible, and entertaining for individuals struggling with mental illness.

Maker Events Social Directory maker-events.com

The Makerspace Events website is a global, social directory for artists to post events where they will be teaching, attending, or selling their artwork. Artists can create a user account, build a profile and log in to their account to seek out events and friends. There is no central directory where an artist can go online to peruse upcoming events related to their craft or get information on craft fairs to determine if exhibiting at a particular fair is worth their time.  This directory will be used as a community resource for artists to seek out events and share event information. This platform is intended as a dynamic artist community network where the value to the user will grow with user input.

Majesty Foods Website https://majestyfoods.com

Majesty Foods is a food manufacturing company that has been in business for 20 years. While focusing onrapid growth and product streamlining, the company has not, until now, had the opportunity to focus on corporate image or have a strong internet presence. Their website graphics and information had fallen out of date and they needed an updated design and improved user experience.  Applying current technology and the latest web development standards, this project encompasses several key skills learned in the Harvard Extension Digital Media program. Redeveloping the Majesty Foods website involved using the Wordpress content management system platform, e-commerce modules and customer relationship management integrations along with creating new graphic content, photographing new images and filming and assembling an informative corporate video. This project aims to rebrand the company as a larger, national food service supplier of convenient, ready-to-eat meat filled products.

NEAMB.com - Website re-design with a user experience approach to online destination for member benefits

NEAMB.com is a website dedicated to providing benefits that improve the lives of members of the National Education Association (NEA), an association of teachers who teach Kindergarten through 12th grade in the USA as well as none-teaching staff that work in the education system. Despite personas being developed to reach target audience and increase member participation through strategic marketing communication, user engagement through the website remains stagnant year over year. As part of a new strategic initiative to target millennials who make up 25% of the marketable user base, the goal of the redesign was to select this persona as the website's primary user and mobile as its primary device for an improved User Experience (UX) design. The outcome of the project is that the website will grow its target user base and initiate repeat visits leading to conversion as a pleasurable UX leads to intention to return, and return visits leads to engagement and ultimately participation in member benefits offerings through the website.

Ifishent - An iOS application to improve employee productivity

The American business culture expects and rewards long hours at work. Overworking leads to numerous health issues and work inefficiencies. Ifishent is an iOS application to improve employee productivity by allocating time to individual tasks and prompting users when to take necessary breaks. The application will minimize overworking by creating a fixed time period to complete a specific task. Tasks entered into the application will be named and recorded. Relevant technologies required to create this application are HTML5, JavaScript, MySQL and PHP. The mobile application is constructed as a single page application and deployed on an iOS device. The API is written in PHP and hosted on Amazon Web Services.

Boston Fare Hikes - a navigational web exhibition of hiking destinations and green recreational spaces accessible by MBTA. www.bostonfarehikes.com

Taking advantage of public transportation not only reduces our collective carbon footprint, it also curbs traffic and saves money. Combining those benefits with the endorphin-boosting effects of exercise and nature, Boston Fare Hikes aims to make the Greater Boston area a happier place. The web application relies on Google Maps Javascript APIs to provide maps and public transportation directions, and it catalogs the hikes on an MVC framework.

Pretend Football League Website: A WordPress Application

I currently participate in a fantasy football league (the Pretend Football League) that requires a complex system of record keeping with a heavily manual component. With more than six years’ worth of data, and much more to come, this is not only time-consuming, but also allows for potential humor error and limited sharing of resources across league members. I would like to solve for both the data management and data access matters that currently plague the league. In doing so, I also aim to alleviate some of the heavy burden that is placed upon our commissioner in his role as gatekeeper to this information. This website will supplement our league site, and help to manage the intricacies and historical data pertinent to the keeper format of our league while increasing the transparency of league data.

Merchant Fraud Registry - Platform for small businesses to report and search for fraudulent customer purchases

The Merchant Fraud Registry is a platform for small business merchants to report and search for fraudulent customer purchases. The purpose of the registry is to allow retailers to search for a fraudster before processing a suspicious order received online. By finding previously reported fraudulent orders from the same customer, a merchant can proactively suspend a sale that would otherwise result in loss of product and income to the small business merchant.  Online small business specialty retailers such as those selling Jewelry, Electronics, and Tobacco products often carry expensive specialized products that are often purchased online through legitimate means using valid credit card. On occasion, the merchant receives an online order for a particularly valuable product, processes the sale in good faith, and after the customer receives the product, the customer contests their credit card charge for the product. Surprisingly, the merchant has little recourse, since the issuing credit card company generally sides with the customer and not the merchant as one would expect. This unethical practice unfortunately has little recourse from the merchant’s standpoint. The credit card’s issuing bank or financial institution often sides with their customer, the card holder, even after evidence is presented by the merchant of the valid authorized sale. The retailer/merchant therefore not only loses the product but also the revenue from the sale of the product(s) as well. There is currently no platform for merchants to collectively report serial fraudsters, who often continue to fraudulently purchase products on their valid credit card, with no intention of ultimately paying for the product.  The Merchant Fraud Registry will provide merchants a shared platform for reporting fraudulent customers and product sales that can be easily and quickly searched. The platform would rely on merchants to report fraudulent charges so that other merchants can search for details on suspicious product orders to prevent/cancel the order from processing before the product is shipped to a fraudster.

Social Media Directory for Wellesley College

How do you wrangle the social media accounts of more than 200 groups and departments? As departments at Wellesley College look for ways to connect with their constituents, many have moved to platforms like Facebook and Twitter. The directory gathers all of the accounts into one place and enables students, alumnae, prospective students, and others to see what Wellesley's diverse community is sharing over social. To encourage exploration, each listing starts with a photo, then opens to reveal recent posts, related groups, and links to the accounts. The site is built using Drupal, an open source content management system, in order to make the site easy to update and to integrate with Wellesley's current website.

DIYWebsiteDepot.com - A resource hub for web entrepreneurs who seek do-it-yourself solutions, courses, and referrals

DIYWebsiteDepot.com offers web development professionals a space to advertise their services. The most important and unique aspects of this website are the featured DIY Solutions. Where typical sites offer its audience advice articles, DIYWebsiteDepot.com offers users a proactive and fun approach to discovering solutions to their problems. Users are encouraged to participate in quizzes which will guide them to the correct solution. Many web do-it-yourselfers are unaware of the true cost and amount of work that may be ahead of them for their web project; DIYWebsiteDepot.com's quizzes and courses are provided to remove the mystery involved in the do-it-yourself process. It is our mission to turn our audiences DIY headaches into DIY success stories one quiz, course, or hired professional at a time.

Address Infinite - A digital address book http://www.addressinfinite.com

Whether it is a desktop computer, laptop or tablet, a single person owning multiple devices and/or computers is becoming very common. To work with multiple platforms some of today’s software and services may still require specific hardware or the purchase of multiple subscriptions. Address Infinite attempts to address the problems for one of the most common applications used today, the digital address book.  Capable of running on any modern Mac, PC or Linux desktop computer with an Internet connection, the goal of Address Infinite is to provide a well-organized and accessible address book that requires no paid subscription or single operating system. To accomplish these goals Address Infinite was created using the Java programming language, a cross-platform language, as well as leveraging a new technology called the “blockchain”. Address Infinite provides several useful features which include a contact list manager, note- taking, scheduling, historical logging and integration with third-party communication and mapping tools.  Address Infinite leverages blockchain technology to provide free data on a distributed platform. Address book information is never lost or inaccessible due to server outages and anyone can backup their data without need of a credit card to pay for a third party service.

Using Selenium WebDriver and Node.js to automate testing of an eLearning web application

Manually testing complex websites takes a lot of time and becomes tedious. I used Selenium, Node and Javascript to automate testing for a client with an eLearning web app.  The automated test script works for all the desktop browsers we support. Once it tested the existing features I connected it a messaging system called Slack so that stakeholders could see the results of testing. We now use it 5-10 times a day. Work that previously took about 80-100 hours per release can be done in less than 50 minutes and is accomplished in a consistently reproducible fashion.

Exploring Sound using a Modular Synthesizer, a Course for Beginners

Modular synthesizers are musical instruments that were popular in the early 1970’s and have experienced a rebirth over the past decade. While they are typically used for music performance, composition and sound tracks for film, they are ideal instruments for creating and exploring unusual sounds. This project considers the exploration of sound as a rewarding activity on its own. With a basic understanding of the modules found in a modular system, even those without a musical or technical background can enjoy developing and discovering new sounds. This course is ideal for those who are interested in learning how to use a modular synthesizer for exploring sound without the cost of purchasing a new system.

Trading Principles: A structured course to train beginner traders

In the United States it is estimated that at least half of baby boomers won’t have enough savings to retire. It is also unlikely that western governments will be able to provide any kind of relief as their pension, health and infrastructure liabilities grow beyond the capacity of the economy to meet them. In light of this, I have developed a course in infrastructure that attempts to reduce the learning curve for beginners to be able to trade equities, futures and options. The aim is to enable the learner (after practicing the principles in the course) to supplement their income over time.

The course focuses primarily on the technical aspects of trading which facilitates the process of choosing viable trade candidates. Later parts of the course also cover intermarket analysis that explains market cycles. Risk management is also covered. The course is designed to form a sound platform from which to build on and is therefore not exhaustive. Trading is inherently difficult. I encourage repetitive practice beyond simply completing the course since these principles take time to master. The course should reduce the learner’s learning curve by years. The means of deploying the course is via Canvas/Infrastructure since I believe is an optimal platform to combine video and textual instruction. Canvas also makes it easy to build quizzes and assignments. In summary, Canvas suits the aims of my project and the types of activities that the student will complete.

Media and educational technology website for the course "Using Canvas from the Technical to the Transformative: An effective tool for promoting learning and organizing course content"

This project has two components, a website designed for faculty and teaching staff at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a course developed for teaching staff to use the Canvas Learning Management System (LMS) to improve course organization and encourage student learning opportunities.  The website will help to establish an online presence for the Media and Educational Technology Services (METS) Digital Learning team and introduce the team and its services. The site will promote the “brand” of the team and provide some resources for faculty and teaching staff to improve teaching and learning.  The Canvas course encourages faculty and teaching assistants to move beyond the basics of Canvas to provide more opportunities for learning engagement outside of the classroom. A recent study conducted by Dahlstrom, Brooks, and Bichsel indicates that faculty are underutilizing their LMS while 56% of students are requesting increased use. Students at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health have also confirmed this by performing a self-initiated study of Canvas course site use and suggestions for better implementation. Since most courses do not utilize the more advanced capabilities of an LMS, this course addresses that gap to promote a more comprehensive use of the Canvas LMS including suggestions on how to use the tools in a course along with additional sources and best practices for further consideration. The course is intended to be used as a pilot for expanding LMS use at the Chan School.

UBIMLE: Using Business Intelligence to Measure Learning Effectiveness

One of the aspects of instructional design that has always interested me is evaluation of training programs to measure their effectiveness. Most projects that I have worked on have taken some sort of measurement, but it seems that once the data is captured the results are ambiguous as to: the efficacy of participant learning, the support that the learner is receiving from the organization, participant’s utilization of supplemental learning opportunities, and what changes need to be made to make learning experiences better. UBIMLE is an interactive dashboard application that uses measurements taken from participants of an application training class. UBIMLE employs current learning evaluations methods, statistical analysis, and data visualization to provide accurate, meaningful and actionable information about the effectiveness of learning experiences.  Beyond just initial reactions of participants after training, UBIMLE will collect data at different intervals from various sources to give us the best view into the end users learning experience. By providing this dashboard application I hope to help myself identify which pieces of the learning experience are the most effective, which ones need work, and what participants are doing with the learning they receive. I hope to share the lessons learned in this project to help others in my organization measure the effectiveness of the learning experiences they create.

Designed Prosperity

Designed prosperity is an online course website for a nonprofit organization called, Designed Future. This online training program provides learners with access to true financial transformation. The website allows users to access the course curriculum and find all the information about the course and read testimonials before deciding to buy the course. After users buy the course, they will have access to the course content that includes daily lessons, videos, and assignments.

Newbees Language Learning Application

This project is an online language learning web application, called Newbees, with the focus on back-end development with Django and Python. As a part of this capstone class, the goal was to develop a functional website where users can register, add a photo as well as other information about themselves and access the content of the web application when logged in. As far as the content is concerned, three languages (Slovak, Spanish and French) and three themes of vocabulary (Animals, Food and Places) were implemented. These flashcards as content will have a pronunciation button (powered by Google Text To Speech), favorite button to save specific vocabulary words on the user's profile to practice them later, visually nice images and simply implemented quizzes within the flashcards. The application is automatized and scalable for easily adding new languages and content.

LAD: Live Another Day http://luispinheiro.com/moodle

L.A.D is an online scenario-based game that aims to help UN staff learn and internalize procedures regarding an active shooter incident.  It uses a complex instructional design architecture to guide the user through several modules, each scaffolding on the next, as he/she strives to survive. During the game, the user is faced with several questions that will pose challenges both intellectual and emotional in nature.  The game was created using minimal and universally available technology, such as HTML5 and Javascript to maximize reach and availability in the UN community. Its minute size will facilitate distribution and it requires no external plug-ins. It can be viewed both desktops and mobile devices without any external plug-ins.  I hope this game will allow users to better understand and prepare for such critical situation and, hopefully, save lives.

Gallery in Context: A virtual tour featuring a small section of the Fogg Art Museum

Ideally, art is viewed in person. First-person viewing gives one a true sense of depth, scale and perspective unattainable while viewing art online. This diminished experience applies especially to objects intended to be viewed “in the round.” Fortunately, technological advances enable the viewers to virtually experience objects or places in more interactive and immersive ways.  The scope of my project will focus on creating a web application featuring a virtual tour of the Fogg Museum’s Courtyard and two first floor galleries: Room 1200, Modern and Contemporary Art, Midcentury Abstraction 1 and Room 1220, European Art, 19th-20th century, Collection of Maurice Wertheim, Class of 1906. Each gallery will have a dynamically generated timeline that juxtaposes artwork with significant cultural and historical events. Providing alternate ways to view and interact with the collection should create learning opportunities for the viewer, increase their level of engagement with the artwork and potentially motivate them to visit the Harvard Art Museums in person.  This project will utilize collection data via Harvard Art Museum API, 360°photography, and JavaScript libraries, such as ForgeJS and TimelineJS for virtual tour and timeline creation, to make viewing artwork, via the web, more interactive and immersive.

Hamilton Interactive Arts Project

The arts are a powerful tool that challenge students to think creatively, problem solve, and bridge the gap between core subjects by finding common ground where disciplines overlap. Yet, the positive impact of arts and creativity are often undervalued. Hamilton Interactive Arts Project integrates fine art with literacy and interactive multimedia, and exemplifies the value of art in education. This instructional design models the Understanding by Design Framework (UbD) and investigates how Visual Thinking Strategies can be modified and complemented with close reading to stimulate students’ curiosity, cultivate higher-order thinking, deepen comprehension of text, and set the stage for art production.

An Interactive Journey through Jacques-Louis David’s The Coronation of Napoleon http://www.napoleon.life

The interactive tour at Napoleon.life uses digital media and web technologies to tell the hidden story behind Jacques-Louis David’s painting, The Coronation of Napoleon. At the onset of the tour, visitors are tasked with one specific question: Is David’s painting “fake news”? This question serves to both focus and guide the learner during the rest of his journey.  Once inside the site, visitors are invited to click on a series of pins to learn about David’s painting through descriptive text, quotations, photographs, video clips and additional works of art. By using a wide range of media, the project aims to provide a more complete and compelling learning experience compared to traditional museum audio guides.  Napoleon.life is a custom-coded, fully responsive website that makes significant use of JavaScript and CSS3 animation allowing visitors to zoom, pan and experience the painting in a brand new way – up close and personal – from wherever in the world they may be.

If These Trees Could Talk: A short documentary film about neighbors uniting to save their forest

In 1968, the first houses were developed among the trees in Castlewood Forest, a residential neighborhood located in far south Austin, Texas.  By the early 1990s, however, a contagious tree disease had taken root and spread through Castlewood and the adjacent subdivision, Oak Valley. Together with the City of Austin, the Castlewood Oak Valley Neighborhood Association (COVNA) spurred into action to try and contain the oak wilt and limit its devastating effects.  The goal of my project was to collect stories of my neighborhood’s 50-year history and share it in a film. After conducting more than 30 hours of in-person interviews, I have gained a greater sense of respect and profound appreciation for Castlewood Forest—the trees and the people.

The Floating World - Video documentary with graphic design and photographs about Japanese design

Take a journey into the past and the future with Japanese design, by examining how Japanese aesthetics have influenced creative thinking throughout the world. In the documentary “The Floating World”, architect and filmmaker Christopher Earle explores his decades long fascination with traditional and contemporary Japanese design. In doing so, he asks the question, “What is it about Japanese art, landscape, architecture, and design that fascinates non-Japanese viewers?”.  The Floating World will explore Japanese aesthetics, both modern and traditional, and its influence on 21st Century art, architecture, fashion, food, and product design throughout the world. The project will also examine how modern Japanese aesthetics draw from traditional Japanese sensibilities. To a lesser extent, the project will survey the influence of Japan on modern art and design throughout the world. The Floating World will combine video documentary with graphic design, and photographs to create a video documentary, as well as a corresponding website.

The Last Outcry - A Documentary lastoutcry.org

The Last Outcry is a short documentary created to educate a broad lay audience about the current state of our equities market structure.  For long, we’ve heard mention about “quarterly capitalism”, the situation that many CEOs and CFOs of public companies find themselves in when compelled to forego long-term opportunities for the sake of boosting share price short term.  These days, it could also be relevant to talk about a “microsecond capitalism”, that is, the vast majority of the trading volume that today is traded on a sub-millisecond level. This practice is fueled by a hard-and software arms race started by technologically savvy traders in the eighties.  Our documentary looks at how this arms race has escalated to affect every single trade made on the markets today.