除了紐約大學互動式電信專案的季節性展示之外，你很難在紐約找到一個活動，在一個屋簷下就有這麼多新奇的藝術和技術實驗。今年的春季演出週一和週二在曼哈頓下東區的蒂希學校舉行，也不例外：ITP的學生繼續在一個奇特而令人興奮的新媒體邊緣的後院裡玩耍，創造各種各樣的新奇玩意兒、軟體和想法，推動人們對我們迅速發展的科技領域進行新的對話。

該劇最不尋常的一個專案就是在沒有實際運用它所描述的技術的情況下展開這樣的對話：Guilherme Costa和Stephanie Kleinman的“GoogleBooth”將搜尋引擎重新想象成一個巨大的、不透明的立方體，充當一種神祕的資訊亭。查詢被寫在一張紙上，透過“搜尋”郵件槽，然後在稍後的某個時間透過第二個槽返回結果。在窗簾後面偷看一眼，可以看到一個孤獨的女人，盡職地在成堆的參考書中搜尋，四周貼滿了貼在牆上的文章剪報——這是一種透過研究和學習來慶祝失去的學習藝術，在搜尋欄的範圍內重新設定了背景。

Plenty of other projects do still embrace the conveniences of modern tech, however. Down one hallway we found some software that allows participation through voice calls on mobile phones. "UP," a collaborative game seemingly inspired by the film of the same name, involves getting a house to rise into the clouds by having players call a number on their cell phones; each connected call generates a balloon, which the players fill with air by blowing into their receivers.

Nearby, "Call Your Sequencer," a more complicated project with a similar idea: each caller controls a horizontal track within an 8-step music sequencer, allowing them to turn individual steps on and off by hitting the corresponding number keys on their phone. You could also change the pitch and shuffle the software instrument being used by pressing pound and star.

Behind the sequencer sat perhaps the most unusual device at the show, at least in function. Marko Manriquez's "Burrito b0t" uses a series of extruders, an air pump, and custom Makerbot-based machinery to 3D print an edible, customizable permutation of the ubiquitous Mexican delicacy. The contraption — which for better or worse was not feeding anyone with liquified burritos during the show due to the noisiness of its air pump — was created as a slight against assembly line labor practices and mass-production in the fast food industry (but also, Manriquez says, as a genuine reflection of his love of gastronomy).

The showing was almost overwhelming in scope, with every possible nook and cranny of the Tisch building's 4th floor occupied by some curious interactive contraption or presentation. Though if I had to choose a highlight, I'd point to Deqing Sun and Inessah Selditz's "Plinko Poetry," an interesting take on the classic game of chance which uses news tickers and a color-tracking camera to c***truct a string of absurd non-sequiturs. The text, pulled alternatingly from the New York Times and Fox News twitter feeds, is assembled with the help of the camera, which tracks the position of the player's translucent red token as it falls past scrolling news tickers. The device then tweets the resulting poems, which often come out reading suspiciously like real headlines ("Freedom clues Divided: Toddler Killed secretary Profit superheroes.") and sometimes even catch an errant hashtag, with humorous or unsettling results ("Unit daughter, Diets of Next in Abortion #KentuckyDerby").

The "Thing Synth" can turn any object into a tunable instrument, with surprisingly precise control.

Close by to the elevators, arriving visitors could hear the whirs, clangs, and clicks of "Bricolo," a mechanical music system made up of sensors and solenoids that integrates physical objects into digital sequencing environments. One of the system's components, the "Thing Synth," can turn any object (in this case, an old book) into a tunable instrument with surprisingly precise control. Its creator, Nick Yulman, hopes that this will eventually enable more electronic musicians to make use of robotic instruments.

Wandering in unawares, one might confuse parts of the show with a kind of high-tech carnival. While a great deal of projects focused on digital fabrication and data visualization (one amusing example had fabricated sex toys from volumetric graphs of the Republican presidential candidates' approval ratings) there were also plenty of motion cameras, Arduino boards, and accelerometers turning ordinary things into extraordinary digital attracti***. A software-reactive drumset, a playground swing that doubled as an interactive audio installation, and a gesture-controlled Kinect game that lets you (with some effort) conduct a virtual chorus were among the whimsical pieces on display.

ITP has long been an incubator for these kinds of experiments, and several of this year's projects have already sparked a great deal of discussion. The widely-covered Kickstriker, a satirical but unnervingly prescient platform for crowd-funding wars, and the previously-noted Descriptive Camera, which uses Amazon's Mechanical Turk to output text descripti*** of the scenes it captures rather than photos, are just a few examples dealing with issues that we should expect to be talking about later.

Look below for more photos from the show, and check ITP's website for a complete list of projects.