Preparing your SD Card for Raspberry Pi I’ve been tinkering around with a flexible little micro-processor called RaspberryPi for a few weeks now and would like to share some instructions on how to get it running. The Raspberry Pi is a $35 linux computer, it fits in the palm of your hand and is a handy bit of hardware for prototyping your... More
Designing in a Post Digital Era To understand the notion of ‘Post-Digital’ I have written this short formal essay to represent my perspective on a conceptual exploration I have been on with a few fellow professors over the past year. This is strickly my position in a mental exercise that Vjeko Sager, Duane Elverum and I agreed to participate in and... More
Getting Processing to listen to Arduino Currently with OSX Lion there seems to be a problem with Processing talking to Arduino, it turns out it’s a mismatch of RXTX libraries. When running my Processing sketch the following error can occur: WARNING: RXTX Version mismatch Jar version = RXTX-2.2pre1 native lib Version = RXTX-2.2pre2 1. Download the latest RXTX library from http://rxtx.qbang.org/... More
How Not To Sell A Bike I had the weirdest comical back-and-forth with someone trying to sell their bike to me, I thought it would be funny to share it. Here’s the quick backstory: I saw a posting for a bike for sale at the university that I teach. I tried a number of times to phone the number posted but... More
CBC Radio 3 Magazine In 2000, Haig Armen was offered a producer position to help create and develop CBC Radio 3 – a highly innovative initiative in the new media space, which aimed to attract a younger demographic to CBC. In 2002, CBC Radio 3 launched its online magazine. Haig and a small team worked weekly to design and... More
Lift Studios Website In 2005 Haig founded lift studios, an interaction design agency in Vancouver, BC. The studios’ goal is to create elegant usable interactive products for the web, mobile and touchscreens. Over the first 4 years the company has been recognized by the industry a number of times and continues to create exceptional work. The website’s goal... More
Vancouver Aquarium’s Beluga Touchscreen Kiosk In 2010 Haig Armen’s design firm, Lift Studios was hired by the Vancouver Aquarium to design and develop a touchscreen kiosk to accompany the Beluga Whale exhibit. The goal of the kiosk was to encourage children to explore the sounds that Belugas create and compare them with the sometimes-disturbing man-made sounds in their environment. The... More
UBC’s School of Architecture Website In contrast to the many brochure-style university websites, Haig Armen proposed that the School of Architecture present the work that is produced day-to-day by its community. The site features content contributed by faculty and students dynamically and fosters interaction, exchange and exploration within the sala community. The site has been received with great enthusiasm by... More
Aboriginal Sports Hall of Fame website In 2009 Haig Armen’s firm, Lift Studios was chosen to design and build a media-rich community website for the Vancouver Olympic Committee and aboriginal sports community. The website celebrates the accomplishments of Canadian aboriginal athletes, and provides a social network for aspiring young athletes to communicate with professionals in sports. The Aboriginal Sports Hall of... More
MIRROR project For the past five years Haig Armen has been creating music and motion graphics, and performing for a multimedia project called MIRROR that uses live and recorded media to create a kind of pyschosexual postmodern cabaret. By embracing the artificial and sentimental, MIRROR reflects the transitory, spectacular world of endless commodities, sex, advertising, and tabloid... More