ITP Workshops: Observation, satellites, infrared sight, underwater ears

August 25, 2025

I led four sessions at ITP Camp 2025, preserved here.

On Observation

A presentation and a discussion about observation: what we observe, how we do it, and what it means.

We’ll talk about the history of weather stations, borrow ideas from birdwatching and science, and learn about tech tools for observation: from optics to machine learning.

Portions of this talk made it into my presentation at WHY2025.

Intro to Satellite and Aerial Imagery

with Brandon Liu

Make some maps with expensive sky cameras… for free!

This session is a general introduction to finding and using satellite + aerial imagery, including:

Examples of creative projects using imagery

Finding free images online, through Google Earth, ESA Sentinel 2, USDA NAIP, Microsoft and other catalogs

Basics of raster file formats

Differences between imagery types: raw RGB images, mosaics, aerial, and SAR

DIY Infrared Vision Goggles

Did you know you can already see in infrared?

In this session we’ll make very DIY, very low-fi infrared goggles (and talk a little bit about light and color along the way.) These goggles work by blocking visible light, but allowing infrared light through. After your eyes adjust for a few minutes, you will be able to see the world in infrared. They need a lot of light, so they only works in direct sunlight. When we’re done building, we’ll go outside to test them out.

Anoushka S. presented some photos taken through the infrared goggles at the Show All Things show.

Make Hydrophones and Contact Mics: Internal and Submerged Resonance

In this workshop, we will build contact microphones and hydrophones. With these tools, we can listen to the internal resonances of objects, and hear underwater.

We’ll talk quickly about how these mics work and how the sounds you can capture differ from what we hear with our ears. Then we’ll go over the construction process, including the simple amplifier circuit we’ll need to build for the piezo. The rest of the workshop will be hands on construction.

The construction process is now documented online.

Show All Things Show

I exhibited a few different projects at the Show All Things show:

A Medium Year, a calendar of personal, environmental, and avian observations throughout the year 2024. This later became part of a presentation at WHY2025, and is now released publicly.
Hundreds of bicycles
An interactive sonic playground for hydrophones and contact mics

Thanks to all the counselors for documentation photos!