The final piece in the Emergence Exhibition is “Sniff” by Karolina Sobecka and Jim George. Sniff is an interactive projection: an animated dog follows passers-by, discerns their behavior as friendly or aggressive, tries to engage them and forms a relationship with them based on the history of the interaction. As the viewer walks by the projection, their movements and gestures are tracked by a computer vision system. Sniff is an exploration of the moment of engagement.
The title character of Ray Bradbury’s book The Illustrated Man is covered with moving, shifting tattoos. If you look at them, they will tell you a story.
New LED tattoos from the University of Pennsylvania could make the Illustrated Man real (minus the creepy stories, of course). Researchers there are developing silicon-and-silk implantable devices which sit under the skin like a tattoo. Already implanted into mice, these tattoos could carry LEDs, turning your skin into a screen.
The silk substrate onto which the chips are mounted eventually dissolves away inside the body, leaving just the electronics behind. The silicon chips are around the length of a small grain of rice - about 1 millimeter, and just 250 nanometers thick. The sheet of silk will keep them in place, molding to the shape of the skin when saline solution is added.
Philips, the electronics giant, is exploring some rather sexual uses:
It’s certainly rather creepy, but we’re sure that the inevitable next stage of playing adult movie clips on your partner’s back will be appealing to some. We, of course, are considering the geekier side of this tech. GPS, with a map readout on the back of the wrist would certainly be useful, as would chips that cover your eyeballs and can darken down when the sun is shining too bright.
tudenter fra Carnegie Mellon University som har utviklet spillet til Surface. Navnet på spillet er Surfacescapes og er et «proof-of-concept», dvs. en app som viser hva maskinvaren er god for.
The Internet Eyes website will offer up to £1,000 if viewers spot shoplifting or other crimes in progress.
The site's owners say they want to combine crime prevention with the incentive of winning money.
But civil liberties campaigners say the idea is "distasteful" and asks private citizens to spy on each other.
The private company scheme - due to go live in Stratford-upon-Avon in November - aims to stream live footage to subscribers' home computers from CCTV cameras installed in shops and other businesses.
Earlier this year at the TED conference, Pattie Maes from the MIT Media Lab's Fluid Interfaces Group showcased a wearable computing system that allows users to display and interact with the Web on any surface - including the human body. The video shows the system's main developer, Pranav Mistry, taking photographs with his hand, summoning up Amazon review data onto the cover of a physical book, displaying information about a person he's just met on their tee-shirt, and calling someone by inputting a phone number onto the palm of his hand.
Look out mobile phones, because in a decade's time wearable systems may be the primary means of accessing the Web!
I et pågående prosjekt ser Georgia Tech på muligheten for å videreutvikle Google Earth. Det jobbes med å kunne utnytte kamerainformasjon fra dagens mange utplasserte kameraer. Dermed kan det animeres for eksempel trafikkbildet forløpende, slik at du kan gå inn å se om det er kø på direkten via Google Earth, melder Engadget.com.
Metro Paris Subway kom med AR-funksjoner i en oppdatering i forrige uke, skriver Readwriteweb.
Readwriteweb er overrasket over utgivelsen, fordi det ikke var ventet at AR-teknologi ville være tilgjengelig på iPhone før ved neste oppdatering av iPhones operativsystem.
De nye mulighetene i programmet gir virtuelle skilt som svever over bildene gjennom mobilkameraet i sanntid, komplett med avstand og retning til forretninger og kollektivtilbudet i den franske hovedstaden.
Slik blir programmet presentert i en videosnutt som er lagt ut på Youtube:
The conception of this project consistently derives from its underlying architecture - the theoretic conception and visual pattern of the Hamburg Kunsthalle. The Basic idea of narration was to dissolve and break through the strict architecture of O. M. Ungers "Galerie der Gegenwart".
Resultant permeabilty of the solid facade uncovers different interpretations of conception, geometry and aesthetics expressed through graphics and movement. A situation of reflexivity evolves - describing the constitution and spacious perception of this location by means of the building itself.
A extended version of the documentation can be found here
Art Direction: Daniel Rossa
3D Operator: David Starmann Sound Design: Jonas Wiese
wonderfl is (was) a web-based flash development environment. The idea is: you type code into the web page, and compile it in the same page. A few seconds later, and your code is a fully functional demo sitting alongside what you've just written.
What's really great though is the ability for you to browse other user's source code, test it, and add to it. Add to that, the Funnel Server. Funnel is a set of libraries for Actionscript 3 (and Ruby and Processing), that provide a simple interface between these languages, and your hardware.
As an introduction to physical computing, without the hassle of spending time understanding the ins and outs, it is perfect. There are a good mix of simple and complex projects, look through them here.
A Tokyo-based company launched the Sinap Summer 2009 Project, creating a human-scale QR code out of sand on a Shonan beach, about an hour away from the capital. The finished result, along with several “making-of” photos and a video, appear on the project website. To date, almost 400 readers have left comments regarding whether or not their mobiles could read the code; a cursory glance at the results shows that most phones could.
In addition to creating the sand QR code, Sinap is teaming up with the Nishihama Surf Lifesaving Club to promote beach cleaning efforts. According to Sinap, the efforts to break away from information noise pollution and to rid beaches of disposable lifestyle goods (plastic bags, foam trays…) are complementary endeavors.
Control module We have developed and supply a ‘printed electronics control module’; this self contained unit consists of a power source, integrated circuit (I/O control and interaction flow), and sound transducer.
Integration The module is very simple to integrate with the printed item, in fact it’s almost as easy as putting a stamp on an envelope (but for now it’s not quite as thin).
Senses The integration of the module and the conductive inks enables the printed item and the user to communicate through the senses of touch, sight and sound.
Communication IPM enables communication between the printed item and the user, the direction the dialogue takes depends on each experience, essentially ‘what you get out depends on what you put in’.
"Locast is an innovative platform for sharing and discovering location-based user-generated videos and production quality multimedia content provided by RAI New media. It consists of a combination of Mobile and Wearable Computing elements supported by a distributed Web application. Locast is an innovative platform for sharing and discovering location-based user-generated videos and production quality multimedia content provided by RAI New media. It consists of a combination of Mobile and Wearable Computing elements supported by a distributed Web application. "
For more detailed information on how Locast works visit MIT MEL
Honda has a new GPS navigation system for Japan that taps into the police database and points out seedy areas on the map. The device can point out specific locations that cars have been stolen or broken into in the past, as well as generally sketchy districts.
The Situated Technologies Pamphlets series explores the implications of ubiquitous computing for architecture and urbanism. How are our experience of the city and the choices we make in it are affected by mobile communications, pervasive media, ambient informatics and other "situated" technologies?
A new generation of architecture that responds to building occupants and environmental factors has embraced distributed technical systems as a means and end for developing more mutually enriching relationships between people, the space they inhabit, and the environment.
Mer än 100 år efter att Adolf Loos skrev "Ornament und Verbrechen", ett manifest som effektivt bannlyste ornament och ornamentik från arkitekturen, gör utställningen "Ornamentets återkomst" ett första försöka att beskriva var det befinner sig idag.
ART AND CODE is a conference and online community focused on programming environments for artists, young people, and the rest of us.
The conference took place the weekend of March 7-9, 2009 on the campus of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA. It featured hands-on workshops and a symposium showcase for 11 different creative toolkits -- programming languages made by artists, for artists.
I've just been reading an awesome new publication by students from the Bartlett School of Architecture's Unit 11, whose instructors are Mark Smout and Laura Allen of Augmented Landscapes fame.
På samme måte som ordet «estetikk», er «sted» et ord arkitekter stadig vender tilbake til og benytter seg av i den retorikken vi omgir vårt daglige virke med. Særlig i diskusjoner der man skal argumentere for arkitekturens verdi, som for eksempel i møte med oppdragsgivere eller lokale myndigheter. Da bruker vi uttrykk som «stedets kvaliteter», «stedstilhørighet», «stedsutvikling». Til og med «stedskunst». Men hva er et sted? Er det en samling ulike objektive kvaliteter som knytter seg til et bestemt geografisk punkt, og som man kan analysere seg frem til ved en såkalt «stedsanalyse»? Eller er det et sekkebegrep som kan romme et antall subjektivt utvalgte deler av en opplevelse, som man kan benytte seg av i beskrivelsen av et prosjekt for å få sine samarbeidspartnere til å nikke gjenkjennende?
«Stedsutvikling» er også et av de operative begrepene som er begynt å dukke opp i diskusjonene om en ny norsk arkitekturpolitikk. Det lyder jo som et område der politikere og fagpersoner kan møtes. På Norsk Forms hjemmesider siteres p.t. Kultur- og kirkeminister Trond Giske, som ved åpningen av den nylig avholdte arkitekturpolitikkonferansen skal ha uttalt at «God arkitektur kan gjøre mirakler for et sted». Det han faktisk sa, hvis man hører på åpningstalen som også er lagt ut, var: «God arkitektur og planlegging kan gjøre mirakler for et område.» Område. Omgivelser. Sted. Kanskje ordvalget ikke spiller noen rolle. Men det er interessant at ordet «sted» stadig vekk sniker seg til en fremtredende plass i diskusjonen.
U_build er arbeidstittelen på et ambisiøst dansk utviklingsprosjekt som tar mål av seg å forenee byggeindustrien med spillbransjen for å skape en innovativt digitalt "prosess og dialogverktøy" for bygging.
Visjonen er at verktøyet kan bli en plattform for en kostnadseffektiv og ambisiøse brukerdeltagelse, som optimalisere utvikling og beslutningsunderlag for komplekse byggesager på tvers av verdikjeden. Videre kan det øke kvaliteten på det ferdige bygget, og danne grunnlag for brukerdrevet innovasjon i stor skala - både når det gjelder de enkelte byggene og byen som de inngår som en del av.
Microsofts Project Natal ser svært interessant ut, selv for en som ikke er særlig interessert i spill. Microsoft lagt ut en video viser hvordan dette virker:
Project Natal registrerer bevegelser, og ser i første omgang ut til å være en erstatning for de spillkontrollerne vi kjenner i dag.
Men hva er interessant med dette for en som ikke spiller? Jo, dersom kameraet faktisk er så presist som det loves, så burde det kunne benyttes ting jeg synes er spennede: For eksempel motion capturing og match moving for hvermansen. Dessuten bør det kunne realisere grensesnitt som vi har ventet på en stund....
Fred Kent lecture at University of California at San Diego concerning his work with the Project for Public Space (PPS). Thrilling stuff for urban renewal geeks, albeit with some really messed up lighting and shadows.
Dette er ikke en ny cyberthriller, men et fremtidsrettet innspill der intuisjon tas på alvor i kriminaletterforskning. Ingerid Rødseth ved Institutt for informasjons- og medievitenskap har forsket på hvordan bruk av intuisjon kan støttes i kriminaletterforskning. Hun har fått god hjelp av doktorgradsstudenten Tor Gjøsæter, som har programmert prototypen CrimeSceneAR.
- Intuisjon er bruk av ubevisst kunnskap. Det er en oppsummeringsfunksjon som kan tre i kraft når det er så mye informasjon at man ikke klarer å behandle den bevisst. Man får en intuitiv følelse av at noe er rett eller galt, uten at man vet grunnen til det. Ofte kommer man frem til grunnen senere, forklarer Rødseth til På høyden.
Hun har intervjuet flere kriminaletterforskere om hvordan de bruker intuisjon når de skal løse saker. Prosjektet hennes skal gjøre det enklere å dele intuisjon med andre, og gjøre det til et felles arbeidsverktøy for flere etterforskere.
An Investigation of the Public Library as a Community Meeting Place Fostering Social Capital in a Digital and Multicultural Context1
1. The general goal of the project
The project aims at investigating the possibility of developing public libraries in multicultural local communities into arenas
that are experienced as relevant for all groups
that can function as meeting places in the community promoting social capital
that fosters the critical mass of cross-cultural communication necessary for democratic processes?
The project relates to concerns regarding social cohesion and integration, community and social capital in the multicultural and digital society. These concerns prove themselves more important every day; cf. the riots sparked by the publishing in Western Europe of the Mohammed cartoons in 2006.
The public library is not only a place where knowledge and culture can be found and distributed, but also a public space. A public space is not a fixed form, but a physical sphere with few limitations concerning those who visit the actual territory. The quality of a public space is a result of many interwoven processes regarding questions of public policy, physical design, and service quality.
As both a public space and a centre of knowledge and culture, the public library has a potential for being a vital part of a local community. It is used by most segments of society and it is a junction where different cultures as well as different spheres of life - education, leisure & entertainment, work and business – meet. This research project is aiming towards understanding the role of the public library in the making of social capital. It is most likely that public spaces are essential in fostering local communities with high quality. The sense of belonging, the nurturing processes of making identity, the social bridging between members of a community, is depending on the existence of mutual ground – virtual and/or physical.
The ITU Gaze Tracker, developed by the Gaze Group at the IT University of Copenhagen and supported by the Communication by Gaze Interaction association (COGAIN), has been released. It aims to provide a free, open-source, low-cost alternative to commercial gaze tracking systems, and a starting point for people interested in the development of gaze tracking systems. A special effort has been put into designing an easy-to-use interface.
More information on the ITU Gaze Tracker and a link to download the software can be found in the Downloads section of the website. Other gaze-typing and gaze-controlled applications developed by the Gaze Group are also available.
IDEO Labs nye oppfinnelse, iCube, tar i bruk tre hvite vegger og et hvitt gulv for å skape en utrolig effektiv simulering. Sammenhengende, stereoskopiske bilder blir vist på de fire flatene. Brukeren må imidlertid ha på seg spesielle 3D-briller.
Kommunikasjonen mellom de fysiske objektene og iPhone-applikasjonen foregår ved hjelp av elektroniske, trådløse RFID-brikker (Radio Frequency Identification). En egen RFID-leser er koblet til mobiltelefonens bakside.
At nettopp iPhone er valgt som hjernen i løsningen virker ikke tilfeldig.
- Apples kommende operativsystem for iPhone (iPhone 3.0) åpner for utvikling av ekstern maskinvare og RFID-leser vil kunne være integrert i neste generasjons iPhone, skriver Martinussen.
Visitors to the Allard Pierson Museum will get to partake in "A Future for the Past," a swiveling iMac superimposes buildings and text onto two large pictures/murals.
"Edges" is a computer driven light installation projected on the geometry of a room. The idea is to make the geometry and architecture dominate the projection. The projection serves the underlying structure, it's like writing a choreography for the architecture. There is no post production or visual effects in these videos, it`s just a video camera filming the light installation.
Some basic observations on the difficult relation of public art, urbanism and political theory by Oliver Marchart
"Social space is produced and structured by conflicts. With this recognition, a democratic spatial politics begins." - Rosalyn Deutsche
As we know, "art in the public space" can mean at least two things. For one, art in combination with architecture and artistic urban outfitting; this is the traditional conception - among other things, a conception of space as a physical geographical urban and architectural space. Yet on the other hand, "public art" in the sense of more recent forms of "art in the public interest" (or "social interventionism", "community art", etc.) - not least in Austria - has also been developed into a secure niche in the canon of available art practices and forms. Sending Austrian artists, usually subsumed under this header, to the Biennale of Venice is just the keystone of sanctioning social interventionist art practices in art history (and could very well be their gravestone, too).
Hvordan forteller man en historie med rom? Da scenograf Bob Crowley lagde kostymer og kulisser til Verdis opera Don Carlos i operaen i høst, gjorde han middelalderens dystre Kong Filip II av Spania til medarkitekt.
Marcos Novak on "Transmitting Architecture: The Transphysical City"
The history of invention alternates between advances of transport and advances of communication, that is to say from transmitting the subject to transmitting the sign and presence of the subject, establishing a symbiosis of vehicles and media that leads from antiquity all the way to the present. Mode after mode of expression or perception have yielded to being cast across greater and greater distances as agents of will and power. Signal, image, letter, sound, moving image, live sound, live image, sense and action, intersense and interaction, presence, interpresence, telepresence, all express our awareness of other and elsewhere, and underscore our will to interact with the sum of what we know to exist simultaneously with us, relativity's complexities notwithstanding.
Sometime between now and 2010, the internet is poised to reach beyond virtual space and take root in the physical world. According to many futurist thinkers, almost every object you can see around you carries the possibility of being connected to the internet. This means that your domestic appliances, your clothes, the books on your shelves and your car in the driveway may one day soon be assigned a unique IP address, just as both computers and web pages are assigned them today, to enable them to talk to each other.
In the past month, a coalition of big technology companies, Cisco, Ericsson and Sun Microsystems among them, have formed the Ipso (IP for Smart Objects) Alliance with the aim of shaping a set of standards for the coming internet of things. "We could incorporate internet protocol (IP) into nearly everything," enthuses Geoff Mulligan, chair of the Ipso Alliance. "There's no reason why the internet shouldn't be in every single appliance."
How will emerging technology improve our productivity in the years ahead? What opportunities will arise from evolving trends and global change? Microsoft has collaborated with customers, partners, and thought leaders across multiple disciplines to develop scenarios that explore how long-term trends, customer challenges, and emerging technologies might converge to improve our lives, both at work and home.
As you watch this video montage from 2009, look for examples of how current prototypes may evolve in the years ahead.
It lets you get up close and personal with a wide range of popular locations including the Eiffel Tower, Golden Gate Bridge, Vatican City and Times Square. But I wonder how long it will take before somebody gets upset at seeing their face on Street View and tries to sue Google. This happened before when Google introduced Street View, and the company eventually opted to blur people's faces in all Street View cities to avoid legal action. If you look at the bottom left hand corner of the photo below, it seems that Google is not blurring faces in user-generated content at the moment.
Troika was commissioned by Artwise Curators to create a signature piece for the entrance of the new British Airways luxury lounges in Heathrow Terminal 5.
In response, we created 'Cloud', a five meter long digital sculpture whose surface is covered with 4638 flip-dots that can be individually addressed by a computer to animate the entire skin of the sculpture. Flip-dots were conventionally used in the 70s and 80s to create signs in train-stations and airports. By audibly flipping between black and silver, the flip-dots create mesmerizing waves as they chase across the surface of ‘Cloud’. Reflecting its surrounding colours, the mechanical mass is transformed into an organic form that appears to come alive, shimmering and flirting with the onlookers that pass by.
Installasjonen består av hele 41 000 LED-lamper, og mønsteret varierer slik at du nesten aldri ser det samme. Lagd av kunstneren Leo Villareal, som forteller om måten han jobber på her og her.
Mobile augmented reality is a phenomenon in which “real” and “virtual” experiences merge. The practical application of mobile augmented reality is taking on many forms, like Wikitude and Zcapes. Wikitude is an Android-based application which, based on your current GPS location and physical address, augments your physical experience with information drawn from an online database of over 350,000 points of interest. To gain a more comprehensive and deeper understanding of Wikitude you should watch the following video:
Spaces of Performance er tittel på en søknad sendt til NFR-programmet KULVER. Om dette blir et konkret prosjekt avklares høsten 2009. Prosjektoppstart blir i så tilfelle i oktober 2009, og prosjektet vil løpe ut 2011. Prosjektet ble ikke innvilget støtte
Prosjektet vil involvere HiB, NTNU, KHiB og HiNT. Spaces of Performance: new aesthetic forms, with special focus on interaction and mutual influence between aesthetic expression in virtual environments, among other things represented in special Internet publishing and in physical environments, such as street art and new architectonic expressions that make use of screen technologies.
Spaces of Performance is made up of five projects:
Space to Place – Locus & Platea: The aim here is to establish an overarching theoretical framework that will become the foundation for all of the projects. The point of departure is the division between locus and platea, a duality connected to how a place becomes meaningful.
Visual Expressions and Understanding of Place: This project explores how different visual expressions influence the impressions that users formulate when they are confronted with place-based expression. Here we will emphasize ‘un-authorized art’ that is often in dialogue with, but also in opposition to, commercial forms of expression.
How Places Learn: In this project, we will examine how different technologies connected to changing realities contribute to the development of the meaningful content of a place over time, especially with regards to the interaction of digital mediations and city space.
Spatial Presentation of Place: This project studies how spatial, web-based expression is used to express belonging to a place, and describe how these places are displayed. Empirical data will largely be connected with pure screen-based expression.
Documentary Cartographies: This project will explore the intersection of software of social networking, video sharing, digital storytelling and digital cartography. The project will study the different audiovisual documentary representations found in this intersection, in connection with the way place and identity are experienced and expressed.
Project Natal registrerer bevegelser, og ser i første omgang ut til å være en erstatning for de spillkontrollerne vi kjenner i dag.
