IMC EXPO

Marta Lwin, Teresita Cochran, Ty Whitfield, & Ramakrishnan Subramanian

Solar Wallpaper
Sustainable energy is the motivation and inspiration for this unique lighting product. The Solar Powered Wallpaper is a result of the efforts to bring together environmentally conscious design with a strong sense of aesthetics and the latest in innovative lighting technology. Designed to work both with solar power and conventional energy to bring beautiful lighting to your environment. Developed by Marta Lwin, with the help of Ty Whitfield, Teresita Cochran, and Ramakrishnan Subramanian during the Sustainable Energy Class at ITP. By embedding electroluminescent materials into the design pattern of the wall paper and incorporating a built-in light sensor, the wallpaper can respond to the lighting requirement of a room, acting as a decorative element when a room is naturally bright, and as a flat wallpaper light when the room requires more light. With power supplied either from a solar charged battery or standard electricity, it can also be manually controlled to increase or decrease luminosity. Sustainable, efficient, functional, and technologically sexy. The idea was inspired by the sustainable designs of Ross Lovegrove, Julian Lwin , and Droog Design. Special thanks to White Electronics for their generous donation of EL lamps.
Artist Bios
Marta Lwin Marta Lwin has a background as a new media artist. Marta has worked with new media installations, sculptural electronics, interactive animation, and web-based work since the late 90s. She has also worked on environmental issues with international organizations as a campaign production designer. Marta's main interest is the relationship between technology and nature. Her work has been exhibited in galleries in NYC, and internationally. Marta Lwin is currently a graduate Student at he Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU, and she collaborates on product and lighting design projects with a product design company, Lwindesign. www.metabreed.com
Teresita Cochran Teresita Cochran is currently a 2nd year graduate student at the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University. Her primary interest is in how to combine interactive technologies with alternative and sustainable forms of energy. In February 2004, she started an interest group called: Sustainable Minded Interactive Technology (SMIT) whose focus was to create and work on projects combining alternative energy with emerging technologies. http://stage.itp.nyu.edu/smit
Ty Whitfield In the summer of 2004 Ty Whitfield began working on his masters degree from NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program. Working on such projects as an interactive Chakras Doll, a Solar Wallpaper and interactive 3D spaces and installations. Prior to NYU, Ty spent several years as a manufacturing engineer at Gulfstream Aerospace, overseeing design, research, and implentation of new aircraft parts and tools. Along with these duties Ty also managed many of the department's IT functions and web design. Ty received his bachelors in Information Technololgy with a concentration in programming and a minor in graphic design. Both his work experience and education has led him to several job positions at IBM Corp., Comcast Cable, St. Vincent's New Hope, USA Group and NYU.
Ramakrishnan Subramanian Ramakrishnan is an Electronics and Communications engineer from Chennai, India currently doing his masters at ITP( Interactive Telecommuncations Program). His main interests include information delivery over Networks and Network protocols. Some of the projects that he has worked include Voice activated Remote Switching, Face recognition and Motion Tracking, and Networked musical performance. He is also a professional musician, playing/teaching for 5 years now.