Augmented reality: it's like real life, but better

Don't act too surprised if, some time in the next year, you meet someone who explains that their business card isn't just a card; it's an augmented reality business card. You can see a collection and, at visualcard.me, you can even design your own, by adding a special marker to your card, which, once put in front of a webcam linked to the internet, will show not only your contact details but also a video or sound clip. Or pretty much anything you want.

It's not just business cards. London Fashion Week has tried them out too: little symbols that look like barcodes printed onto shirts, which, when viewed through a webcam, come to life. Benetton is using augmented reality for a campaign that kicked off last month, in which it is trying to find models from among the general population.

Augmented reality – AR, as it has quickly become known – has only recently become a phrase that trips easily off technologists' lips; yet we've been seeing versions of it for quite some time. The idea is straightforward enough: take a real-life scene, or (better) a video of a scene, and add some sort of explanatory data to it so that you can better understand what's going on, or who the people in the scene are, or how to get to where you want to go.

Technology | The Observer

Augmented Reality i biler

Nettstedet Mashable skriver om General Motors tanker om hvordan ny teknologi kan forbedre biler og trafikk. GM ser for seg at en rekke systemer i bilen hjelper sjåføren: GPS-navigasjon, kamera som ser i mørke og bildeanalyse. Det hele knyttet til et display, integrert ifrontvinduet.



BMW vil også være med på utviklingen:



Via NRKbeta

Kravlende display

Dessverre er det bare et konsept utviklet av Julia Y. Tsao. Hun kaller det “Curious displays” og sier selv:

The project explores our relationship with devices and technology by examining the multi-dimensionality of communication and the complexity of social behavior and interaction. In its essence, the project functions as a piece of design fiction, considering the fluctuating nature of our present engagement with media technology and providing futurist imaginings of other ways of being.

og…

Curious Display “blocks” are tangible and tactile. They occupy and move through physical space, and are thus subject to the same spatial rules and limitations faced by any other physical objects. These constraints lend themselves to potentially interesting outcomes in terms of interactivity and negotiation. An abundance of questions quickly begin to surface–how do they move? How do they behave? Does this movement and behavior begin to allude to the development of a type of personality? How does one communicate with them? Where do they go when you’re not using them? What role do they take on in our daily lives?

Spennende og veldig kreativt. Jeg liker spesielt hvordan uttrykket “out of the box” nå faktisk er 100% sant. Les alt om “Curious displays” på Julias blogg.

NRKbeta

Illegal Art

Resirkulering av en gammel bloggpost, som synes relevant her...

Opphavsrettslovgivningen har blitt så omfattende at kunstnere må ha juridisk bistand for å finne fram i rettighetsjungelen. Å bruke deler av et kunstverk eller annet medieuttrykk for å skape noe nytt har vært en viktig del av kunsten, ikke minst den som kommenterer og kritiserer samtiden. Sjangre som collage, hiphop, og Pop Art hadde kanskje aldri eksistert om kunstnerne skulle forholdt seg til dagens opphavsrettslovgivning. Sitat- og kopiretten er basale rettigheter i et demokratisk samfunn, rettigheter som nå er i ferd med å bli ofret på grunn av internasjonalt press fra store økonomiske interesser.
Illegal Art er et tiltak som utfordrer det rådende regimet. Festivalen er sponset av magasinet Stay Free!, Internet Archives, Prelinger Archives og Center for Media, Culture and History ved New York University.

Se Illegal Arts artikkelsamling, mye interessant.

Skinput Turns Your Body Into a Touchscreen

Skinput makes use of a microchip-sized pico projector embedded in an armband to beam an image onto a user’s forearm or hand. When the user taps a menu item or other control icon on the skin, an acoustic detector also in the armband analyzes the ultralow-frequency sound to determine which region of the display has been activated.

You can check out more specifics on the technology behind Skinput in the paper the group will present [Warning: PDF link] in April at the Computer-Human Interaction conference in Atlanta.



Mashable.com

The Language of Landscape

The Language of Landscape argues that landscape is a form of language with its own grammar and metaphors and that all can learn to read landscape and to cultivate the power of landscape expression.

The Eye Is a Door is a call for visual literacy and a guide. Essays of photographs and words explore seeing as a way of knowing and photography as a way of thinking.

KNOWING WHERE TO STAND WEBSITE