Mobile Audience

Mobile Audience Published!

2011-12-31T17:23:00.003+01:00

The Mobile Audience
Media Art and Mobile Technologies

Edited by Martin Rieser
With an Introduction by Howard Rheingold

Rodopi, Amsterdam/New York, NY 2011. XV, 481 pp.
(Architecture – Technology – Culture 5)

Online info: http://www.rodopi.nl/senj.asp?BookId=ATC+5

The convergence of mobile technologies and ubiquitous computing is creating a world where information-rich environments may be mapped directly onto urban topologies. This book tracks the history and genesis of locative and wearable media and the ground-breaking work of pioneer artists in the field. It examines changing concepts of space and place for a wide range of traditional disciplines ranging from Anthropology, Sociology, Fine Art and Architecture to Cultural and Media Studies, Fashion and Graphic design.

Mobile and Pervasive media are beginning to proliferate in the landscape of computer mediated interaction in public space through the emergence of smartphone technologies such as the iPhone, cloud computing extended wifi services and the semantic web in cities. These dispersed forms of interaction raise a whole series of questions on the nature of narrative and communication, particularly in relation to an audience’s new modes of mobile participation and reception.

These issues are explored through a series of focused essays by leading theorists, seminal case studies and practitioner interviews with artists at the cutting edge of these technologies, who are extending the potential of the medium to enhance and critique technological culture.

By emphasizing the role of the audience in this nomadic environment, the collection traces the history and development of ‘ambulant’ artistic practice in this new domain, creating an essential handbook for those wishing to understand the dominant global technology of the 21st Century and its implications for Art, Culture and Audience.

Contents

Howard Rheingold: Introduction
Martin Rieser: Overview

Section1: Towards Hybridity. A History of Audience Mobility

Erkki Huhtamo: Pockets of Plenty: An Archaeology of Mobile Media

Susanne Jaschko: The Temporal and Spatial Design of Video and Film-basedInstallation Art in the 60s and 70s: Their Inherent Perception Processes andEffects on the Perceivers’ Actions

Martin Rieser: Forgotten Histories of Interactive Space

Adriana de Souza e Silva: Art by Telephone: From Static to Mobile Interfaces

Section 2: Critical Issues in Mobile Art
Critical Contexts andDefinitions

Mary Griffiths and Sean Cubitt: Mobile/Audience: Thinking the Contradictions

Jon Dovey and Constance Fleuriot: Towards a Language of Mobile Media

Beryl Graham: Snapshots from Curating Mobility

UnderstandingPublic Spatialisation

Martin Rieser: Beyond Mapping: New Strategies for Meaning in Locative Artworks

Anke Jacob: Digital Media and Architecture—An Observation

Mirjam Struppek: Urban Screens as the Visualization Zone of the City’s InvisibleCommunication Sphere

The Creative User

Debbi Lander: Future Physical: The Creative User and theme of response-ABILITY

Andrea Zapp: ‘A Fracture in Reality’: Networked Narratives as Imaginary Fieldsof Action and Dislocation

Section3: Case Studies
Locative Art

Josephine Reid and Richard Hull: What Makes Mediascapes Compelling?

Valentina Nisi, Glorianna Davenport/Valentina Nisi, Mads Haahr and GloriannaDavenport: Hopstory/Media Tales of the Liberties

Drew Hemment, John Evans, Mika Raento and Theo Humphries: Loca: ‘LocationOriented Critical Arts’

Usman Haque: Invisible Topographies

Jonah Brucker-Cohen: Wifi-Hog: The Battle for Ownership in Public WirelessSpace

The Creative User: The User as Co-creator

Paul Sermon: Puppeteers, Performers or Avatars: A Perceptual Difference inTelematic Space

Christa Sommerer and Laurent Mignonneau: Mobile Feelings: WirelessCommunication of Heartbeat and Breath for Mobile Art

Victoria Fang: The Living Room

Arianna Bassoli: tunA and the Power of Proximity

Margot Jacobs: Engagement with the Everyday

Cati Vaucelle: Between Improvisation and Publication: Supporting the CreativeMetamorphosis with Technology

Anthony Rowe: Developing Creative Audience Interaction: Four Projects bySquidsoup

Wearable Computing

Lisa Stead, Petar Goulev, Caroline Evans and Ebrahim Mamdani: The EmotionalWardrobe

Katherine Moriwaki: Social Fashioning and Active Conduits

Laura Beloff: Wunderkammer: Wearables as an Artistic Strategy

Section4: Artist Interviews

Locative
Fiona Raby: Flirt and Mset

Teri Rueb: Trace, The Choreography of Everyday Movement and Drift

Matt Adams: Blast Theory

Steve Benford: Mixed Reality Lab

Drew Hemment: The Politics of Mobility

Wearables

Joey Berzowska: Memory-Rich Garments and Social Interaction

Annie Lovejoy: Heart on Your Sleeve

Contributor Biographies

Glossary

SelectedBibliography

Nesta and the Internet of Things

2011-11-23T17:20:00.001+01:00

The Internet of Things

Usman Haque, director Haque Design + Research Ltd, founder of Pachube.com and CEO of Connected Environments Ltd
Matt Jones, Principal at design consultancy BERG

With everything from our phones, to fridges, boilers, energy meters and the television demanding attention from us in the 'internet of things', we will need to change our approach to information interaction.

See: http://www.nesta.org.uk/assets/events/demanding_devices_design_and_the_internet_of_things Video

Tagwhat

2011-11-10T15:43:00.001+01:00

www.tagwhat.com

Using Tagwhat, stories — text, videos, photos and audio — pop up on their physical locations. So you might, for instance, learn that a movie was filmed in the cafe that you’re sitting in. You can also browse virtually and see a map of where that story is located. When you see something you like, you can send a virtual postcard to friends and family.

Unlike Broadcastr, a startup that uses a similar concept to pin audioclips to location, the stories aren’t crowdsourced. Rather, they’re placed by the team and contributed by brands like the Associated Press and the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Theoretically, this should weed out the junk. But it also means that if you don’t live in one of the handful of cites that Tagwhat covers, there might not be any stories where you live for a long time. And if you do, they’re still few and far between.

Re-blogged from mashable.com

HoloDesk: 3D graphic interaction

2011-11-04T11:08:00.003+01:00

HoloDesk is a novel interactive system combining an optical see through display and Kinect camera to create the illusion that users are directly interacting with 3D graphics. A virtual
image of a 3D scene is rendered through a half silvered mirror and spatially aligned with the real-world for the viewer. Users easily reach into an interaction volume displaying the virtual image. This allows the user to literally get their hands into the virtual display. A novel real-time algorithm for representing hands and other physical objects, which are sensed by the Kinect inside this volume, allows physically realistic interaction between real and virtual 3D objects.

HoloDesk: 3D graphic interaction

Camille Utterback permanent public artwork

2011-09-24T11:29:00.027+01:00

Active Ecosystem (SMF) opens at the Sacramento International Airport

Camille’s latest permanent public artwork - Active Ecosystem (SMF) opens to the public on October 6, along with the new airport terminal. Commissioned by the Sacramento Metropolitan Arts Commission, this piece marks the first collaborative artwork between Camille Utterback and Michelle Higa.

The artists worked with an incredible team including Barry Threw, Masako Miyazaki, Meghan Jean Kinder, and Andre Salyer to realize this technically challenging piece.

Active Ecosystem (SMF) consists of a series of 14 LCD screens mounted across the glass surface of a three-story elevator shaft in the airport’s new ticketing hall. Animations controlled by the rise and fall of the elevator depict changes in different ecosystems, linking the human movement within the airport to the environment outside.

Since Active Ecosystem (SMF) is pre-security, you can also see the piece anytime after the airport opens on October 6.

The Street Museum-new app

2011-07-20T09:41:00.000+01:00

Following on from the success of award-winning app Streetmuseum™, the Museum of London has joined forces with AETN UK ’s flagship channel HISTORY™ to develop a new app which gives users the opportunity to see Roman London as it was 2,000 years ago.

Streetmuseum Londinium will direct users to locations across London where they can immerse themselves in the sights, sounds and remains of Roman life. At the city’s peak in AD 120 approximately 25,000 Romans lived in London , leaving much behind to explore today.

Users can digitally excavate Roman artefacts, including leather bikini briefs and an ancient manicure set, which tell the stories of life in Londinium. Using their finger to dig and by blowing on their iPhone, users will gradually reveal the objects where they were first found in the capital.

Key Roman sites in London , such as the amphitheatre at Guildhall, will be brought to life through augmented reality video – produced by HISTORY – which will overlay scenes of Roman London against today’s modern backdrop. Soundscapes will also allow users to listen to the hustle and bustle of the forum or the sounds of ritual incantation at the Temple of Mithras .

All these immersive experiences will be brought together on a new map of Roman London – compiled and produced by Museum of London Archaeology – which will be superimposed on a modern map of the capital, allowing users to see how the city has changed and grown over the last 2,000 years.

Vicky Lee, Marketing Manager for the Museum of London , said: “The success of Streetmuseum has shown that museums can bring history to life in new and exciting ways, taking their collections to the streets rather than relying on visitors coming to them. Now, with the launch of Streetmuseum Londinium, we’re going a step further, allowing iPhone users to unearth evidence of Roman London as if discovering these artefacts for the first time.”

Charlotte Allibone, Marketing Manager from AETN UK , added: “HISTORY is an exciting TV brand that brings history alive in people’s everyday life in entertaining and engaging ways. Through Streetmuseum Londinium, we wanted to inspire people to know more about their city and to have fun with history.”

To celebrate the app’s launch, HISTORY is dedicating a whole day of programming to Roman history with Roman Empire Sunday, taking place on Sunday 31 July, 6am – 8pm, with the premiere of How Nero Saved Rome at 7pm. Key programmes includes Roman Invasion of Britain The True Story, Gladiator, Gladiators: Back from the Dead, Cities of the Underworld, Rome’s Hidden Empire, Colosseum: Rome’s Arena of Death, Rome’s Lost Legion and How Nero Saved Rome. Visit www.history.co.uk for the full schedule.

Both Streetmuseum and Streetmuseum Londinium were produced by creative agency Brothers and Sisters. Kevin Brown, Digital Director for Brothers and Sisters, said of the new project, “The new application builds on Streetmuseum's ground-breaking innovation with the introduction of experiential firsts: a unique augmented reality video experience and virtual artefact excavations. Once again, we've redefined the parameters of experiencing history beyond the traditional audio tour or exhibition, giving users a taste of Roman London, either on location or from the comfort of their own home.”

Launched in May 2010, the original Streetmuseum brings the Museum of London ’s extensive art and photographic collections to the world, guiding users to over 200 sites across London where hidden histories of the city dramatically appear.

Users can look through their phones and see the past emerge, locked as an overlay across the present scene. These can be viewed as ghostly alignments, or the archive images can be brought up and explored in detail, along with information about the Museum’s photographs and paintings. So far 200,000 people have downloaded Streetmuseum worldwide, from Argentina to New Zealand .

Streetmuseum Londinium will be free to download for iPhones and iPads worldwide from 25 July 2011. Visit www.museumoflondon.org.uk/apps for more information.

Third Woman in New York

2011-05-17T17:20:00.000+01:00

OVERVIEW

The Third Woman film-game explores the theme of pervasive global threats of bio-engineered terrorism in the 21st Century. Participants interact with the film by voting on choices based on moral and emotional perspectives embedded in the film.

An interactive Mobile Video Game using sensing (via QR codes) on phones capable of using barcode reading software. Text options are sent after scanning. Choosing one causes film materials to be sent to participants’ mobile phones and also casts a communal votes for a large screen selection. Photographing a QR barcode on a costume automatically downloads a text and when selected, a video clip presents thematic content by progressively revealing the chosen layers of a multipath contemporary film drama.

INTERACTIVE COSTUME PERFORMANCE

The Model-Performers, The Algorithmics, wear interactive costumes printed with QR-code images. They weave in algorithmic patterns across the stage, freezing in poses to trigger instructional visuals. Spilling off stage into the audience, the performers invite people to play the film-game and create new versions of the film determined by communal voting. Participants playing the game become part of The Third Woman Interactive Performance.

Models mingled with the audience to enable the scanning of QR codes on costumes. These released text options which allowed the previewing of multiple versions of the same scene on smartphones.

The coherence of the experience depended on a user successfully choosing from the texts delivered to their smartphone. There are nine options possible at each choice point. Choosing one allowed a user to review a version of a film scene on their smartphone.

The main screen counts down during the scanning process and morphs a QR code image into a film-related image and displays the texts as they are selected by the audience. The selection of a text automatically cast an audience vote for the most popular scene version to be played on a larger cinema screen in the venue. In such a way the audience constructed the choice of scenes which are shown as a completed film at the session end.

The Third Woman interactive Performance & film-game was held at Galapagos Arts venue in Dumbo Brooklyn New York on 8th May 2011

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

Homage to Graham Greene
Film clip "THE THIRD MAN" (Carol Reed 1949) by CANAL+IMAGE UK LTD

FILM-GAME THANKS:
Nita Tandon for the idea of “Vienna Underground”
Anna Dumitriu for the idea of “Miazma”
Eeva Kaipainen for “Virus-Art”

FILM-GAME PRODUCTION SUPPORTED BY:
Aalto University, Research group aivo AALTO, Helsinki, Finland
Aalto University, Department of Media, Medialaboratory, Helsinki, Finland
Arts Council of Finland
AVEK / The Promotion Centre for Audiovisual Culture, Finland
Bath University Computer Science, UK
NY Art Projects LLC
Södertörn University, Department of Media Technology, Sweden
University of Applied Arts, Vienna, Austria

FILM-GAME PRODUCTION:
OBLOMOVIES OY in association with IOCT / FUSE MEDIA/ De Montfort University, UK © 2009

Further information:
www.thirdwoman.com
www.nyartprojects.com

Immaterial Light Painting

2011-04-09T19:20:00.000+01:00

This new film is about investigating and contextualising WiFi networks through visualisation. It is made by Timo Arnall, Jørn Knutsen, Einar Sneve Martinussen. The film is a continuation of explorations of intangible phenomena that have implications for design and effect how both products and cities are experienced. Matt Jones of BERG has summarised these phenomena as ‘Immaterials’, and uses sociality, data, time and radio as examples. Radio and wireless communication are a fundamental part of the construction of networked cities. This generates what William Mitchell called an ‘electromagnetic terrain’ that is both intricate and invisible, and only hinted at by the presence of antennas (2004, p.55).

Investigating WiFi

In order to study the spatial and material qualities of wireless networks, they built a WiFi measuring rod that visualises WiFi signal strength as a bar of lights. When moved through space the rod displays changes in the WiFi signal. Long-exposure photographs of the moving rod reveal cross sections of a network’s signal strength.

WiFi outside the Oslo School of Architecture and Design

The measuring rod is inspired by the poles land surveyors use to map and describe the physical landscape.

Urban Digital Narratives: Athens

2011-03-31T12:13:00.000+01:00

Martin Rieser will be conducting another locative media workshop in Athens in early April 2011 to test the Empedia software, developed under an sKTP with Cuttlefish Multimedia. He will also participate in a one day symposium at the Centre for Research in Athens, sponsored by the British Council, Intalot and HTC

Rethinking the Mobile Web: Best discourse on mobile web design

2010-12-24T11:45:00.001+01:00

This is really the best slideshow on mobile web design I have come across-if we adapt our design habits to some such standards surfing on mobiles will become far more intuitive...

Riverains at Illumini Festival Shoreditch

2010-09-11T17:11:00.000+01:00

'Riverains'
Martin Rieser with Collaborating artists Ximena Alarcon & Kasia Molga
Programming in Layar: Gareth Howells
Programming for Empedia locative system: Cuttlefish Multimedia, Phil Jones and Sean Clarke

Riverains creates a story trail along Old Street and Shoreditch High Street, accessible through user's mobile phones. It maps both the imaginary underground world of the Riverains and London's history onto the urban landscape.

Notionally, Riverains are souls tied to watery energies, running under our cities in rivers, cables, sewers, tunnels and caves. They travel unseen by these invisible routes and cluster around sites of their past experience.

Through GPS location sensing and QR barcode code reading, participants can use their mobile phone to discover this hidden underground world, which will correspond to real locations in Shoreditch. These align with the sites of past events such as the Ripper murders. Participants can use the Riverains voices to find those sites and fully experience these narratives.

Two new applications were developed for this event including a Layer tour and an new iphone app: Empedia , which will soon have a specific Riverains tour.

Kasia Molga especially revised her Mirror of Infinity mobile texting installation (Pictured) to complement the project.

http://www.pervasive.org.uk/projects/riverains

Inside Out at Phoenix Square

2010-09-11T16:47:00.000+01:00

‘Inside Out – Sculpture in the Digital Age’ is a compelling international touring exhibition featuring 46 miniature sculptures produced in resin using 3D printing technologies, the title is also the theme for the exhibition which focuses on emerging digital design techniques - and features an exchange of objects with Australian artists via the internet. Co-curated by Professor Martin Rieser and Claire Smith (Melbourne University and Art Technology coalition) , it is showing at Phoenix Square Leicester through September and October 2010

Mobile Audience: Touchable Holograms

2010-07-19T08:51:00.000+01:00

Mobile Audience: Touchable Holograms

Touchable Holograms

2010-07-19T08:50:00.000+01:00

Japanese researchers at Tokyo University have developed a demonstration of touchable holograms using two wi-motes and ultra sonic waves which can be directed onto a tracked user's hand to give a real sensation of touch from a virtual object. Virtual switches in hospitals may be the first application for an hygenic virtual control interface.

The Third Woman-Interactive mobile film installation in China

2010-07-08T21:49:00.000+01:00

Professor Martin Rieser mounted the Third Woman interactive mobile film http://www.ioct.dmu.ac.uk/Third_Woman accompanied by an opening performance intervention with workshop students directed by Vienna Underground collaborators Anna Dumitriu and Margarete Jahrmann in the great hall of the Fine Art Academy in Xian

DAW: http://www.digitalartweeks.ethz.ch/web/DAW10/Overview

Third Woman Installation http://vimeo.com/13183454

Emotion Sensing Phone

2010-04-13T14:31:00.002+01:00

FuChat is an environmentally friendly Emotion Sensing phone which monitors body temperature and tone of voice to gauge what emotional state you are in. If you realize you are already annoyed at something prior to making the call it will alert you and make the effort to calm down before talking.

Fuchat also displays text at the back so that when hung on a door handle, it could display words such as “Busy” or “Do not Disturb” much like as you wish. The phone is constructed such at the base is wider and weighted for free-standing. Also it can handle both landline calls and VoIP call and also display weather conditions via internet feeds.

Source: techchee.com

Emotion Sensing Handbag

2010-04-13T14:29:00.000+01:00

The LadyBag makes sure you ladies will never forget your keys, mobiles or any important gadget before you leave the house. Developed by a team of six women at Canada’s Simon Fraser University, the LadyBag uses RFID technology to detect items in the bag.

If something is missing, the LadyBag will show the item’s icon on the outside LED display. A smiley emoticon lights up when you’re ready to go. To let the bag know what it should look for, each item to be tracked needs an RFID tag insert or attach to it. It’s kind of a reverse application of the shopping RFID technology which beeps when you go outside the shop without paying for your item, this one wants the item to stay inside!

Also, the LED display on the outside of the bag reflects the owner’s emotional state using emoticons. The bag determines your emotional state through your interactions which are registered via physical sensors

Bubelle Emotion Sensing Dress

2010-04-13T14:15:00.007+01:00

The Bubelle Dress is made up of two layers, the inner layer contains biometric sensors that pick up a person’s emotions and projects them in colors onto the second layer, the outer textile.

As futuristic as the Bubelle Dress might seem, it is entirely logical. We select clothing not only for protection and functional purpose but very often following our emotion and personal individuality.

Lucy McRae, Body Architect at Philips Design, who leads this project, said, “A garment can be a highly complex interactive electronic or biochemical device that is more responsive to subtle triggers like sensuality, affection and sensation.”

Bubelle Emotion Sensing Dress

The Bubelle Dress changes the look instantaneously according to our emotional state and our personality: "No need to rush for a dressing room before going from one event to the next, no need to settle for something generic because you can’t change between parties."

Philips Design has given us a glimpse into the far future but this future looks very bright and emotional from the fashion perspective.

Mirror of Infinity 3.0

2010-03-14T21:55:00.004+01:00

Combining traditional forms and computational media, London based artist Kasia Molga attempts to both metaphorically and literally engage viewers in a dialogue with hyperlinked landscapes. Using a newly conceptualized public library space – the Idea Stores of Tower Hamlets borough in London – she exhibits a digital interactive installation, “Mirror of Infinity 3.0” which can be viewed and experienced in two places at the same time and allows the public to participate in collaborative “online” creation. Single stars represent each SMS received from the public and revolve slowly , unfurling texts on their celestial tracks across a map of Tower Hamlets, using a Flash -based interface and PHP database linked to a mobile service provider.

Ocean of Light

2010-02-06T13:22:00.008+01:00

Anthony Rowe and Squidsoup are showing Ocean of Light at the Kinetica Art Fair. The work is an interactive array of 7000 LED programmable lights in full colour, capable of displaying animation and volumatic data. Developed in conjunction with the Institute Of Creative Technologies at De Monfort University and funded by the TSB. It responds dynamically to inputs including sound from audience interaction.

OhGizmo! CES 2010 Samsung Projector Phone Gives A Glimmer Of Hope That One Day They Won’t Be Monstrous

2010-01-23T19:13:00.005+01:00

OhGizmo! [CES 2010] Samsung Projector Phone Gives A Glimmer Of Hope That One Day They Won’t Be Monstrous

Andrew Liszewski wrote:

While they had little to no information about the phone itself, the good people at Texas Instruments were showing off this unnamed Samsung phone (I believe the model # 9600 was thrown around?) since it features a built-in DLP-based projector. While it’s not as thin as the Nexus One or the iPhone, it’s still remarkably compact given there’s a projector crammed inside! And a decent one at that!

Now a crumpled piece of copier paper isn’t the most ideal thing to use as a projection screen, but to be honest it’s pretty close to real world conditions. I mean if I was at my desk and wanted to show someone something via the projector, it’s probably the first thing I would reach for. And the projected image was suitably bright with decent contrast, so we’re definitely getting there!

(ohgizmo)

Audiomobile

2010-01-23T13:27:00.003+01:00

AUDIOMOBILE invites you to explore “Sonic Maps” while driving around in a comfortable vehicle that encourages dialogue between a random assortment of passengers and that is equipped with a multi-channel audio system and GPS positioning system. As various urban scenes pass by, GPS coordinates allocated to the vehicle’s current geographic position trigger audio files: retrieved from an archive of sound clips, looped ambient sounds, and narrative elements created by six artists, this creates a constantly changing soundscape that becomes audible in the passenger area.

The position of the vehicle in the city not only determines the selection of sounds but also the direction (loudspeakers) from which the sounds reach the passengers’ ears. This creates the impression that the sounds emanate from very specific points in the urban scenery and grow louder or quieter depending on the vehicle’s distance to the mapped areas.

Soundwalk

2010-01-23T13:19:00.003+01:00

Soundwalk Iphone apps are available for a variety of tours across the globe mixing fiction and reality in a cinematic experience

Hear about Here

2009-06-27T13:58:00.004+01:00

[HERE]SAY WATER STREET- [murmur] St. John's, Newfoundland
a story cartography

St. John's is a landscape not only of streets and buildings, but of human experience -- this is what makes up the unique character of the city. The place is full of stories. Where most maps offer you a satellite view or a graphic layout of the street grid, This is a story map.

[HERE]SAY features personal stories set in specific locations in the Downtown. If you a walk on Water St and look for the [HERE]SAY signs on the light poles. You'll see a phone number and a 3-digit code. Dial the number on your mobile phone, punch in the code, and hear a story about the spot where you're standing.
If you can't get to Water Street, you can choose a location on the web map and listen online.

Blue Code

2009-03-30T11:53:00.002+01:00

Blue Code:

"Blue Code. 2008
Blue Code consists of two interactive panels: a handwoven display of 384 LEDs (pictured here) and a second woven panel with 8 pairs of conductive squares. When two of the squares are connected, the pattern scrolling through the display is changed. The piece can be reconfigured in 256 ways, each triggering one of the different weave structures that have been programmed into the memory of the microcontroller."

LED array woven into black fabric featuring scrolling patterns.256 different weave structures are programmed into the microc-controller and changes can be triggered by the activity of the viewer.

Handwoven linen fabric, 384 LEDs, basic stamp microcontroller.

Landprint | Kitchen

2009-03-30T11:45:00.003+01:00

Landprint project 2007. from KIBU on Vimeo.

The aim of the Landprint project is to reproduce subtle patterns and photos by combining various species of plants with programmed robotics.

Plants and flowers that spawn seem to make continuous patterns with their various colours and shades seen from a distance. With the use of programmed robotics for the planting and cutting of plants, we can manipulate the evolving patterns, to render photo-like, delicate images.

Dobpler ınteractive Led Wall | Skjelvik Design

2008-12-30T19:18:00.004+01:00

Dobpler ınteractive Led Wall | Skjelvik Design

The system is an interactive LED wall installed in an Oslo subway which interacts with the public, every movement creating a reaction, leaving a impression of an environment that 'keeps an eye' on the public, with no intrusive video surveillance involved.

The Dobpler System is consisting of modules sized 430 x180 mm. The modules are incorporated in a buildings exterior using opal hardened safety glass, or by the usage of polycarbonate in less demanding environments.

They may be arranged in compact grid to create a homogenous surface with a LED every square 50 mm or aligned in rows etc. By reversing the LED's on the production stage, a transparency effect is created, showing on the outside the inside movements of the building or visa versa using a double glass wall. A mixed effect is also possible. Please feel free to contact the designer for questions and possible scenarios.

Contact: Skjelvik Design Olso

Swinxs, RFID for Children

2008-12-30T19:05:00.004+01:00

A Dutch company, Swinxs is developing a physical RFID-based console with RFID wristbands for children. They claim to be encouraging physical activities and ‘stimulating imagination’.The console includes versions of Tag, multiple Quiz games, Hide and Seek and Charades. The base-station connects to the internet for uploading scores and downloading content. The movie on their home page demonstrates some of the simple game mechanics.

It seems that many of the games are about measurement, tracking and timing of otherwise person-to-person negotiated activities. In this way the product becomes more about tagging people and measuring their activity, particuarly when combined with the wristband attached to the body rather than tagged objects.
This might sound insignificant, but the difference between tagged objects and tagged people is quite pertinent, particularly as this is intended as a playful, learning environment for children. The kinds of learnings that are achieved through a digital system that tracks you rather than the objects you manipulate could be very different.

Artivists and Mobile Phones: The Transborder Immigrant Project | MobileActive.org

2008-12-30T18:26:00.002+01:00

Artivists and Mobile Phones: The Transborder Immigrant Project | MobileActive.org

Ricardo Dominguez calls himself an "artivist." Half political activism and half art, Ricardo's projects blur the boundaries between the aesthetic and the political. "We always view our activism within the frame of art and the poetic," said Ricardo. Ricardo was part of a team that was recently awarded the Transnational Communities Award for a Transborder Immigrant Tool that uses GPS-enabled mobile phones to help immigrants crossing the border between Mexico and the United States.

MobileActive recently had a discussion with Ricardo on art, activism, and mobile phones. Ricardo, a researcher in the Calit2 lab at the University of California at San Diego, was given the award along with colleagues Brett Stalbaum, Micha Cárdenas and Jason Najarro. The project seeks to create a way for immigrants to orient themselves while crossing the border between the United States and Mexico, which is traversed by thousands of immigrants each year. The device seeks to reduce the number of deaths along the border by helping immigrants locate resources such as water caches and safety beacons.

The idea for the project arose from a program called the Virtual Hiker, a project of UCSD visual art professor Brett Stalbaum. "Brett gets lost even going to his house," joked Ricardo, "so he started working on a locative media project called the Virtual Hiker...He developed an algorithm that took into account a certain terrain, and created a virtual trial or hike based on those algorithms." By using GPS, the program created virtual hikes and would orient the user towards certain landmarks. Brett was able access "the kind of utility cloud that GPS offers," said Ricardo.

The Virtual Hiker program led the team to question ways that GPS technology could be used to help immigrants crossing the border. "We asked ourselves, what were the spaces of necessity or danger on the border, and how could we plug in this new element of the GPS structured cell phone?" said Ricardo. The answer to that question was the Transborder Immigrant Tool.

The tool is built on a Motorola i455 phone, which offers several advantages. Not only is the phone cheap -- about $40, according to Ricardo -- but no service is required for GPS functionality. "What we needed was a really inexpensive telephone, one that we could crack the GPS system, and one that would accept new algorithms."

The team took language into account when designing the application. "We needed to design the interface in a way that would be somewhat universal in terms of the community that would be crossing the border," he said. Many of the migrants are from indiginous communities, and wouldn't necessarily speak Spanish. The end result was a navigation system that looks like a compass. The phone also vibrates in response to certain landmarks, like water or a highway. The vibrations allow the user to concentrate on the surrounding environment instead of constantly looking at the screen of the phone.

Ricardo sees even the interface of the phone as having artistic value. "We were trying to think of many layers of communication -- iconic, sound, vibratory," he said. Additionally, the program helps the user not only avoid getting lost, but helps him or her find a more aesthetic route. "The algorithm would look at it not just in terms of a map or a politics but by suggesting the most aesthetic crossing," he said. Eventually, the people using the tool to cross the border would form an imaginary "mass desert painting" or "walking art," Ricardo said. "All the immigrants that would participate would in a sense participate in a large landscape of aesthetic vision."

Colony

2008-12-04T10:17:00.001+01:00

A multiplayer performance at Colony, an interactive urban art environment. Using an iPhone, download the free Colony app from the App Store. Up to thirty people may simultaneously play the urban art environment and feed energy the media creatures that inhabit it. Each of the totems in the networked sculpture may be played like a musical instrument responding to touch with light and sound. People without iPhones can participate as the artwork responds to your presence as you walk along the forested path.

TRegister for the event via colony [at] iconica [dot] org by sending your name and email address. You need to bring an iPhone or iPod touch loaded with the Colony app to participate.

More information and how-to-play at iconica.org/colony/

Start Time: December 12 at 8:00pm
End Time: December 12 at 9:00pm

Location: Colony at Life.Lab, Digital Harbour
Street: Corner of La Trobe Street and Harbour Esplanade
City/Town: Melbourne Docklands

Launch

Colony ::: Troy Innocent 2008
weathering steel, acrylic, computer-controlled light, 12-channel sound, interactive installation, iPhone web app

Colony is part artificial lifeform, part icon of a digital media landscape. The weathered totems use light and sound to communicate with one another in response to human presence. Affect the colour and sound patterns of the artwork by walking through the environment or playing the totems with your iPhone.

The work draws upon Innocent’s digital media arts practice that explores the connections between artificial systems such as language and natural processes abundant in life.

launch :::
Colony was launched on September 18th, 2008.

download :::
Version 1.0 of the Colony software may be downloaded here.

location :::
Colony is located in the garden behind Life.lab on Harbour Esplanade in the Melbourne Docklands.

Nokia develops navigating system based on image recognition, landmarks

2008-10-31T18:36:00.003+01:00

Nokia, the world’s biggest mobile phone supplier, is developing a new kind of navigation instruction system for mobile phones. With landmark-based navigation you won’t even need to know your address or cross streets to get directions. You just take a picture of a nearby landmark, like the Golden Gate Bridge, with the camera in your mobile phone. Then, Nokia will match your photo with other landmark photos in its mapping database, and tell you where you are. Instructions to your destination are given by red arrows added to pictures, text or voice.

The picture is sent to a server and there matched to the right picture in the database, and you get the instructions to your phone. In Nokia’s “mobile tourist guide” feature you get even further information on the landmark, for example that the Golden Gate Bridge was completed in 1937 and it has the second longest suspension bridge main span in the US.

You may not even need to send a photo to the database, they may be automatically downloaded to your phone. “When you arrive in a new place, the GPS in your mobile spots where you are and sends you a smaller database of pictures of the landmarks in your surroundings. This way the service works faster,” Research Fellow Kari Pulli of the Nokia Research Center in Palo Alto, Calif

(Venturebeat)

RFID on Japanese Graves Make Mourning Loved Ones Easy

2008-10-31T17:42:00.005+01:00

Links:
picturephoning.com: Japanese Graves Make Mourning Loved Ones Easy:

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=XTIXIWok7Zo&eurl=http://www.kilian-nakamura.com/blog-english/index.php/japanese-graves-use-technology-for-limited-space/

Burial plot prices are skyrocketing in Japanese cities, so one company built a facility that uses RFID technology to help store the dead. At Nichiryoku, mourners visit a “prayer area” where they swipe RFID cards to have the cremated remains of their loved one are lifted up from an underground storage vault.

[Gear Fuse via Trends in Japan]"

2008-10-31T16:34:00.001+01:00

eRuv: A Street History in Semacode

eRuv is a digital graffiti project installed along the route of the former Third Avenue elevated train line in lower Manhattan. The train line, dismantled in 1955, was more than just a means of transport; it was part of an important religious boundary — an eruv — for a Hasidic community on the old Lower East Side. Using semacodes, the former boundary is reconstructed and mapped back onto the space of the city. Pedestrians with camera phones can then access location-specific historical content linked through the semacodes.

What is an eruv? An eruv (pronounced ey-roov) is a structure erected around orthodox Jewish communites throughout the world. It usually consists of a series of poles connected by a cord that circumscribe an urban neighborhood, often incorporating existing municipal infrastructure such as utility poles and electrical wires. They are erected with the permission of local authorities and in accordance with the lengthy and complex set of architectural laws set forth in the Talmud. The construction of eruvin (or eruvim, plural for eruv) stems from the observation of Shabbat, the weekly sacred day of rest (Friday sundown to Saturday sundown) that includes a prohibition against carrying objects outside of one's home, or private domain. The reason Jews construct eruvin is, according to most Rabbinic authorities, that the shared public space within an eruv is considered the private domain of a community. In this way, observant Jews can carry their keys or prayer books on the Sabbath while acting in accordance with sacred principles.

EMobilArt Athens

2008-06-04T16:33:00.003+01:00

Marcus Novak at workshop

I am currently participating in the European Mobile Lab for Interactive Media Artists (e-MobiLArt). It is a project tailored around the process of collaboratively creating interactive installation artworks. Such mediated environments may involve the use of ubiquitous computing, communication networks and mobile or locative media technologies. Participants in this project will be artists and scientists who are active in creating interactive media art or pursuing innovative interdisciplinary research and wish to collaborate in order to create interactive media artworks.

The e-MobiLArt project aims to provide selected participants with a multicultural, interdisciplinary context, by supporting their travels, collaboration and the exhibition of their work. Selected participants will form groups and work together in order to develop their projects. During the project, three workshops will take place in three different European countries. In these workshops, participants will be provided with necessary technical, theoretical and curatorial support and will be aided in starting and developing their collaboration.

The resulting interactive installation artworks will be exhibited in at least one museum or gallery space, with the support of a team of established curators and theorists, active in the intersecting fields of art, science and technology.

Project partners and sponsors

The e-MobiLArt Project has been funded with support from the CULTURE 2007 Programme of the European Union. It is co-coordinated by the University of Athens (Greece). The co-organising partners are: the University of Applied Arts Vienna (Austria) and the University of Lapland (Finland). Associate partners are: Leonardo/OLATS (France), Group Haute Ecole ICHEC Saint Louis (Belgium), State Museum of Contemporary Art – Thessaloniki (Greece), The Academy of Fine Arts - Katowice (Poland), Cycling74 (U.S.A.), and I-CubeX (Canada).

Curatorial committee

Roger Malina, Nina Czegledy, Annick Bureaud, Christiana Galanopoulou

After a day of interesting artist's presentations we grouped to discuss direction and thematics. The gist of the discussions are summarised below:

Thematic: PASSAGE

Groups

1 Transformation Voyage Threshold Procession Perception Growth Time Excerpt Passing through Migatory Expectations Stages Conclusion?

2 Sisyphus Airport Turbulence Mourning No Place Hospital Impermanence Instability Feedback

3 Migrations Diaspora Transitions Local-Remote Context Action/Reaction Time/Space Physical/Spiritual Mediatime/Experiential Chance Nutopia

4 An Environment that Performs through the Transmission of Loss
Vitual –Physical loop of transmission

5 Endless Duration/Space Timeless Places Ignorance to Knowledge Loop Experience/ Observation No Return Blackout Active/Passive Through the Rabbit hole/ Wormhole

6 Waiting Thresholds Fragment Excerpt Process Overlapping (2 states) Travel Mapping Ephemerality Disappearance Process of Interaction Therapeutic Perception of Time After-Images Disparity

7 Here is the Answer Embodied Noise Emergent/Heuristic Boundaries Mediation Interface Embodiment Novel Subjectivities Passage as Expansion Healing a Wound / Rupture Where is the Answer?

8 Fleeting Non-solid Variation Reflection Outside the Lines Deletion Disappearance Geologies/Habitats Reinvention(NOT) Enforced/Drives Solidification

9 Mutual Public Behaviours Gifting Remote/Local Technology Physical/Spiritual Summoning Presence Magical Flashmobs Information Flow and Changes Threshold Transmission Loss/ Lossy The Machine is speaking You (Baudrillard) Giving up Control Meaning through Context Liminal Space Transition Evolutionary

10 Neutral Network Over-determination Fuzzy Dynamic/Adaptive Collaborative/Negotiated Dialectic Liminal Transition Zone Tipping Point Fear of Change Ritual Rules Organism “Create a path by walking” Oneness Complex

ZERO ENERGY MEDIA WALL

2008-05-17T12:39:00.004+01:00

ZERO ENERGY MEDIA WALL

GreenPix is a groundbreaking project applying sustainable and digital media technology to the curtain wall of Xicui entertainment complex in Beijing, near the site of the 2008 Olympic Games. Featuring the largest color LED display worldwide and the first photovoltaic system integrated into a glass curtain wall in China, the building performs as a self-sufficient organic system, harvesting solar energy by day and using it to illuminate the screen after dark, mirroring a day’s climatic cycle

The Media Wall will provide the city of Beijing with its first venue dedicated to digital media art, while offering the most radical example of sustainable technology applied to an entire building’s envelope to date. The building will open to the public in May 2008, with a specially commissioned program of video installations and live performances by artists from China, Europe and the US.

See:
http://infosthetics.com/
GreenPIX: Home

FLARE facade

2008-04-29T14:56:00.008+01:00

FLARE facade - animation still

The FLARE system

FLARE is a modular system to create a dynamic hull for facades or any building or wall surface. Acting like a living skin, it allows a building to express, communicate and interact with its environment.The FLARE system consists of a number of tiltable metal flake bodies supplemented by individually controllable pneumatic cylinders.

Due to the developed pattern, an infinite array of flakes can be mounted on any building or wall surface in a modular system of multiplied FLARE units.

Each stainless steel flake reflects the bright sky or sunlight when in vertical standby position.
When the flake is tilted downwards by a computer controlled pneumatic piston, its face is shaded from the sky light and this way appears as a dark pixel.

By reflecting ambient or direct sunlight, the individual flakes of the FLARE system act like pixels formed by natural light

The system is controlled by a computer to form any kind of surface animation. Sensor systems inside and outside the building communicate the buildings activity directly to the FLARE system which acts as the buildings lateral line.

We Tell Stories

2008-04-17T10:51:00.002+01:00

We Tell Stories

Penguin have launched an experimental storytelling site using a combination of Google Earth and digital Storytelling. Six authors have written work especially for this medium. The 21 Steps is told by following the story as it unfolds across a map of the world. You follow the trail by clicking on the link at the bottom of each bubble.You then click on any green markers you see for extra features. Once you have read all the pages in the current location you can continue the story by clicking 'Next'.

KMA Installation :FLOCK

2008-04-16T15:29:00.002+01:00

FLOCK: KMA Installation

Flock is an installation inspired by Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. Set out of doors, after dark, Flock uses the physical presence of participants and passers by to illuminate enchanted ghostly dancers. Following any one of these will take you on a journey where fantasy and reality merge, moving you simultaneously through both the physical space and the dancers' virtual swan world.

Each person’s pathway is intricately connected to the group as a whole - ultimately creating a co-ordinated corps de ballet of pedestrian performers, as engaging to the bystander as the participant.

Made in collaboration between digital media artists KMA (Kit Monkman & Tom Wexler) and choreographer Tom Sapsford, Flock was commissioned by the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) with the support of ROH2 at the Royal Opera House.

Flock premiered in London's Trafalgar Square on the evening of Thursday 1st February 2007, and toured across 5 venues in the South West of England in November of the same year.

Troika | art and design studio | Cloud | Sms Guerrilla Projector

2008-03-16T16:03:00.007+01:00

'CLOUD' - A DIGITAL SCULPTURE FOR BRITISH AIRWAYS TERMINAL 5

Troika has been commissioned by Artwise Curators to create a signature piece at the entrance of the new British Airways luxury lounges in Heathrow Terminal 5.

In response, they created ‘Cloud’, a five metre-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. We were fascinated by their materiality, by the way they physically flip from one side to the other. The sound they generate is also instantly reminiscent of travel, and we therefore decided to explore their aesthetic potential in ‘Cloud’.

By audibly flipping between black and silver, the flip-dots create mesmerising 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 from both above and below.

photo © Alex Delfanne/Artwise Curators 2008

The sculpture is located in Terminal 5 in the atrium hall which leads to the British Airways First Class Lounges. The brief from British Airways was open and simple: to create a signature piece that will mark the entrance of the First Class Lounges and signify the transition between the busy shopping floor and the calm and serenity of the lounges.

The piece works on the metaphor of clouds, and the contrast which exists between the busy, hectic airport experience, and the calm, luminous and ethereal world which is discovered as we fly through this dense layer.

Another inspiration came from the old electromagnetic flip-dots which were used in railways and airport signs from the mid 70s. Those signs, with their characteristic flicking noise which instantly reminds us of travel, represent to us a golden age of technology, when analogue and digital started to merge. The indicators, dots which can flip from one side to the other with an electric impulse, have a fantastic materiality, a physicality which more modern technologies often lack, de-materialised into the virtual.

photo © Alex Delfanne/Artwise Curators 2008

"We dreamt of applying this redundant technology to our sculpture, to create a sort of living organism, a cloud which we could animate, exploring the aesthetic potential of the flip-dots.

As the flip-dots flick we are instantly reminded of rippling water, of the mesmerizing movements of snakes and schools of fishes. We chose for that particular reason to create one side of the dots as silver mirror, to accentuate this feeling.

The project took 8 months in development, manufacturing and installation. Troika was responsible for the concept, design, executive design and engineering, project, production and installation management, and over-viewing all the operations from start to finish.

We would like to thank British Airways and Artwise Curators for giving us the opportunity to create our most ambitious works to date, Mike Smith Studio for the manufacturing of the sculpture, Pharos Architectural Controls, and Alternative Access for the installation."

URBAN SONAR

2008-03-16T13:01:00.006+01:00

URBAN SONAR | background:

"Urban Sonar is a personal space monitoring system that senses an individual's experience as they move through the urban environment and records that information for review at a later time. Turning the gaze both outward and inward, negative space surrounding the individual and their heart rate are used to visualize a lived experience through quantitative data.

The sensing system is integrated into a wearable device. Ultrasonic range finders are mounted in the front, back, and shoulders of a jacket, measuring the empty space or proximity to solid forms on all sides of the body. Conductive fabric strips are strapped around the fingers and serve as the contact leads for a heart rate monitor that registers pulse. The remaining electronic components are housed in a pocket inside the jacket. Sensor data is fed into a microcontroller that interprets the values and transmits them serially via Bluetooth. The data is received and recorded by a Bluetooth-enabled mobile phone. Once the session is complete, the log file is uploaded from the mobile phone to a server where it is interpreted as a time-based visualization. This visualization displays an accelerated, aerial view that simulates the ebb and flow of the user's personal space and heart rate as the values fluctuate during the period of data logging.

Considering both the body and its movement through space, Urban Sonar is a mobile, wearable, logging system"

Contact: info@urbansonar.com

Socialbomb

2008-03-16T12:54:00.002+01:00

Socialbomb

Socialbomb is a game about social circles and quantified reputation scores. The current version is designed to accommodate 30 players. Each player is awarded points for being near players with higher reputations, and penalized for being near players with lower reputations. Bonuses and penalties are applied according to overall social promiscuity and status. The player with the worst reputation score is the 'Socialbomb.' Their score will have the most negative impact on a social circle.

Socialbomb is designed to be played in real-world social environments. Players are given small devices that house a microcontroller, a radio transceiver, and a numeric display. When two players come within conversation distance, their scores are slowly averaged. This is reflected on the numeric displays, which serve as a constant reminder of who outranks who and what effect players will have on each others' score. The algorithms that determine the score are not simple, however - interactions involving multiple players are reflective of the group average. Longer conversations are worth bonus points, and superior social networking skills can reap exponential rewards down the line by increasing a player's social momentum. Conversely, if a player is anti-social and aloof, they will soon begin losing points. If they're not careful, they can become the 'Socialbomb,' and will have great difficulty finding receptive companionship in the game.

In addition to the score displayed on the players' device - recent scores, bonuses, and penalties are visible on a public leader board. This hub provides a public record of interaction data. Players can check their overall game standing and strategize to improve their social rank by seeking out the most popular players in the game.

Socialbomb was created by Michael Dory, Adam Simon, and Scott Varland at NYU's Interactive Telecommunication Program (ITP).

For any questions: contact@socialbomb.net

Geosimulation :: Innovative geospatial research

2008-03-16T12:44:00.002+01:00

Geosimulation :: Innovative geospatial research

Modeling crowd behavior
Project overview

This is an exciting time to be studying crowds. A confluence of developments of relevance is forming. Technologies are being introduced with unprecedented rates of development and uptake and with unforeseen influence on the ways crowds interact with the city. Data and the dataware that generates them are available in new forms and in new quantities. New perspectives on old views are reshaping the way we theorize. A new policy environment exists for consideration of downtown environments, and crowds as their lifeblood—old topics of downtown revitalization are being revisited, and new foci related to homeland security and defense are coming to the fore. All of this is taking place under the umbrella of new emerging trends and behaviors in a larger societal context. Nowhere is this more relevant than at the micro-scale, on the streets, in and around our downtowns, and among the crowds of people that populate and energize our environment. For cities, a new appreciation of urban geography is gathering steam, an urban geography of the micro-scale, where pedestrians swarm in social and anti-social networks; where innovative Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) are being deployed at street-level, digitally-enabling crowds through networked computing. Embedded in urban infrastructure and in the very products we consume, the same technology allows cities to think about—and process—the people that pulse through them.

The goals of this project are to build a reusable platform for modeling human behavior, action, and interaction in social and anti-social crowds, for the purposes of simulating a variety of behavioral, human, and urban geography scenarios. Methodologically, the tool-smithing for this project is advancing on the idea of Geographic Automata, which are used as the building-blocks for modeling crowds from the bottom-up. Modeling tools are being tightly-coupled to space-time Geographic Information Systems and social network analysis, for visualization puposes, but also for behavioral analytics. Substantively, simulations are being constructed around a variety of theory-driven scearios, with strong practical currency: human activity spaces, navigation and wayfinding in urban environments, complexity signatures in dynamic and adaptive socio-spatial systems, rioting and civil violence, hazards and emergency evacuation, crime and defensible space, retailing and business geographics, among others.

Dr. Paul M. Torrens, ASU School of Geographical Sciences, torrens at geosimulation dot com

twists and turns: Stublic

2008-03-14T14:04:00.003+01:00

twists and turns: short description

twists and turns
The exterior of the Uniqa Tower in Vienna has been equipped with a LED-grid, a wide-meshed net of picture elements capable of receiving video-data, witch are fitted into the gaps of the building's facade. An interplay between the architecture and the electronic data feed changing over time, evolves: The building does not simply serve as a screen or message-board, as is commonly the case with electronic billboards, but becomes an integral part of the urban landscape as abstract, constantly modulating architectural form. At first, the electronic data corresponds to the architectural structure of the tower, but during the course of its choreography, repeatedly detaches itself from the concrete shape of the building, establishing new spaces which dynamically interweave. Ever new virtual layers are thus added to the building.

location of the buidling:

Untere Donaustraße 21, 1029 Vienna

Mobile Vision control Technology

2008-03-12T14:39:00.004+01:00

GestureTek Inc | Computer Vision control Technology:

GestureTek Mobile Is Overall Winner at the 2008 Mobile Innovation Global Awards at the GSMA’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona

The company wion the prestigious award for popular gesture-controlled mobile gaming and navigation software

"BARCELONA, SPAIN – (February 13th, 2008) – GestureTek Inc., world leader in computer vision control technology and provider of state-of-the-art gesture-based interactive solutions for over twenty years, today announced that the company’s mobile business unit, GestureTek Mobile, has been selected as the Overall Winner at the GSMA’s Mobile Innovation Global Awards at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The Award was presented to GestureTek at the Global Mobile Awards gala evening at Barcelona’s National Palace, in recognition of the company’s innovative gesture-controlled mobile gaming and navigation software.

GestureTek’s EyeMobile Engine® takes mobile gaming and navigation to new heights. This software-only solution uses the existing camera on a mobile device to deliver a gesture-based interface to mobile applications. An entertaining and intuitive alternative to conventional button interfaces, EyeMobile allows users to do anything they would normally do with their mobile device, such as play games, answer calls, make menu selections or scroll, pan and zoom in on photos, simply by shaking, rocking or rolling their device. With the EyeMobile Engine, handset manufacturers can offer all of the benefits of gesture recognition technology, without the expense and real estate of adding specialized hardware. The EyeMobile Engine Application Programming Interface (API) also provides application developers with the means to integrate motion control into their applications, much as they do with current conventional controls, such as keys and buttons."

GestureTek Mobile is a business unit of GestureTek Inc., the world leader, pioneer and patent-holder in computer vision and gesture-recognition technologies for information, presentation and entertainment systems. The company’s software lets users control interactive content, access information, manipulate special effects or immerse themselves in an interactive 3D virtual world, simply by moving their hands or body. GestureTek is the inventor of the EyeMobile Engine, the world’s first software-only solution that provides cell phone users with the ability to play games, scroll menus, navigate maps and browse web pages simply by shaking, rocking or rolling their cell phone. GestureTek Mobile developed the first gesture-recognition software to be embedded on DoCoMo, Verizon and Windows Mobile 6 mobile devices, and is the first company to deploy a market-ready gesture-controlled mapping application on a cell phone. For more information visit www.gesturetekmobile.com.

LocoBlog - Location-Based Mobile Photo Blogging

2008-03-12T14:29:00.003+01:00

LocoBlog - Location-Based Mobile Photo Blogging

LocoBlog is a mobile phone application and web site which supports location-based mobile photo blogging.

In order to use LocoBlog, you'll need a Bluetooth GPS receiver and a compatible handset. To begin blogging, Install the application, then Register yourself as a user.

Moport

2008-03-08T12:29:00.002+01:00

moport--mobile phone reporting

"MOPORT.org is a free service for generating and sharing mobile phone reports. This site allows people to collectively report in real-time using mobile phones (or digital cameras and computers). Recent events moved us to create this service. The most dramatic was the unsanctioned release of hundreds of photographs detailing the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers. These images, along with reports by Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker and other media accounts, pushed the US government to publicly address an issue it had largely suppressed. The official response was less than forthcoming, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld even tried to shift blame to the mere existence of the cameras and photographs rather than administration policy. Rumsfeld charged: "People are running around with digital cameras and taking these unbelievable photographs and then passing them off, against the law, to the media to our surprise when they had not even arrived at the Pentagon. " Of course, if these images had arrived first at the Pentagon, they would have surely never appeared in newspapers and on televisions around the world. So, as we have seen before—and as we will continue to see as long as we live in a free country—the camera can be a powerful check on those in power."

"Taking pictures is only half the story; circulating images and making sure people see them is the other. As the primary distributors of world information, the news media has at times fallen asleep on the job and forgotten its journalistic ideal of objective reporting. For example, a full 40 years too late, former editor of The Lexington Herald-Leader and the current editor of The Los Angeles Times recently admitted: "It has come to [my] attention that the Herald-Leader neglected to cover the civil rights movement. We regret the omission." We regret and pay dearly for this omission too. Overlooking uncomfortable or difficult facts is sadly even more of an issue today in the US as media becomes increasingly consolidated and controlled by corporate interests.

With this in mind, we built MOPORT.org to take advantage of consumer electronics and easy distribution methods so that anyone with a camera phone (or a digital camera and email) can be a reporter. These tools could potentially balance powerful vested interests and keep the media honest through simple, but tested, means. Of course they could also become a platform for upskirting, test cheating or celebrity stalking like some other moblogs. Quite honestly we don't know what to expect. We look forward to seeing exactly what unfolds!"

Kansas LED Moon Sculptures

2008-02-23T16:15:00.003+01:00

The Moons , a Percent For Art Project by Chris Doyle, consists of three circular LED screens suspended over a seiers of gardens in the plaza at the Sprint Arena in Kansas City. The videos depict over 600 people from Kansas City flying across the screens. They run 24 hours per day and change with the seasons.

Performing Space | Digital Arts & Humanities

2008-02-23T16:03:00.003+01:00

Performing Space

This event was aimed at researchers in humanities areas like geography, architecture and urban studies and was an opportunity to lay the basis for future collaborations and explore new research processes.

New types of communication networks based on wireless interactive ICT technology are transforming our understanding of contemporary public and private space. They are increasingly being explored by live media artist through events like the Radiator Festival (Nottingham), First Play Berlin and Dis-locate (Tokyo). Within other humanities subject areas new insights into the changing nature of public space are being addressed.

The research aim of this hybrid workshop brought together a range of humanities researchers and artists to examine how the common ground between these disciplines can be developed through examining ICT wireless network strategies borrowed from the work of artists; and conversely how the development of research, particularly in the areas of geography and architecture, can inform the artists` research and development.

The workshop took place at the Nottingham Trent University, School of Art and Design.

Speakers included:

Professor Steven Benford. Steve Benford is the Professor of Collaborative Computing at the University of Nottingham where he co-founded the MRL. He is a co-investigator of the Equator IRC. The Mixed Reality Lab at Nottingham University has worked with artists like Active Ingredient and Blast Theory creating innovative pervasive work using wireless and mobile networks for interactive work within cities around the world.

Professor David Crouch David Crouch is Professor of Cultural Geography, Leisure and Tourism at the University of Derby, and Visiting Professor of Geography and Tourism at Karlstad and Kalmar in Sweden. He is editor of Leisure/tourism Geographies [Routledge 1999] and Co-editor of Visual Culture and Tourism [Berg 2003]. His work particularly addresses our new understanding of how we perform space from the position of a geographer.

Jonathan Hale. Jonathan Hale is an architect and associate professor at the University of Nottingham. He is author and editor of several books and articles in the area of architecture, the body and technology. He is currently developing a collaborative project with the Vienna based
artist/choreographer Cie. Willi Dorner and the Mixed Reality Lab at Nottingham University's School of Computer Sciences, having worked with
the same team in 2006 on a commission for the nottdance06 festival.

Angharad Wynne-Jones, Director of LIFT (London International Festival of Theatre) will talk about ‘the Lift’ The Lift, is a new concept in performance space where artists from around the world and the people of the city can gather together to share stories, exchange knowledge and imagine and rehearse new futures. The process of working and developing its design has been with architects AOC and 200 east and south-east London residents who are representative of the people who will use the Lift http://www.liftfest.org.uk/

Professor John Newling. John Newling lives in Nottingham where he is currently Professor of Installation Sculpture at The Nottingham Trent University. Newling has an international reputation and has installed works across Europe and the USA. He has pioneered working with information in site specific contexts and the use of online camera monitoring networks. e.g. Chatham Vines
www.john-newling.com/

Heath Bunting.
An artist looking critically at identity and the city in the context of digital networks. He recently exhibited the next stage of The Status Project in Nottingham. Heath is preparing works examining borders and identity to be shown at both the Institute of Contemporary Arts and
Tate Modern in 2008.
http://status.irational.org/
http://irational.org/cgi-bin/cv2/temp.pl

Mirjam Struppek
Based in Berlin and works internationally as urbanist, researcher and consultant. She is President of the newly formed International Urban Screens Association (IUSA) and a member of Public Art Lab, Berlin. With a background in Urban- and Environmental Planning she has internationally lectured and published essays with a special focus on the livability of urban space, public sphere and its transformation and acquisition through new media.
http://www.urbanscreens08.net/

urbanscreens08.net - About Urban Screens Melbourne 08

2008-02-23T15:58:00.001+01:00

About Urban Screens Melbourne 08

Urban Screens Melbourne 08 at Federation Square, is the third, ground-breaking international conference and multimedia exhibition in a series of worldwide Urban Screens events. It will mark the official launch of the International Urban Screens Association.

The event will promote a lateral trans-disciplinary approach to exploring the global transformation of public culture in the context of large new multi media precincts such as Federation Square and various networked forms of urban screens. It will build on the successful events held in Amsterdam in 2005 and Manchester in 2007 and will be the first Urban Screens held in the Asia-Pacific region.

Through an integrated program of keynote lectures, panel sessions, workshops, curated screenings and multimedia projects, it will bring together leading Australian and international artists and curators, architects and urban planners, screen operators and content providers, technology manufacturers, software designers and public intellectuals.

CONFERENCE: MOBILE PUBLICS

USM08: Mobile Publics will be exploring the changing relations between urban screens, culture and cities. By engaging a wide range of stakeholders with distinctive interests in media and public space, USM08: Mobile Publics will promote new multi-disciplinary frameworks for understanding innovative public uses of technology, media and art in contemporary cities. Key themes include:

* the growing role of urban screens in shaping the ambiance of contemporary public space, and the new forms of agency created by media-dense environments
* future directions in mobile and screen media, and the potential of novel interfaces to support new modes of social interaction and community building
* the function of public art in positioning strategies for creative cities, and the capacity of large screen precincts to serve as focal points in urban regeneration projects
* the emergence of new forms of cross-cultural exchange and the construction of transnational public spheres

Important Records: FIVE ELECTRICAL WALKS

2007-12-14T18:25:00.000+01:00

Invisible/Inaudible: FIVE ELECTRICAL WALKS
Electromagnetic Investigations in the City

Christina Kubisch is a first generation sound artist of the highest order. Kubisch has been working with electrical induction since the late seventies and in 2003 she began her Electrical Walk installations. Listeners wear specially built headphones that reveal electro-magnetic radiation eminating from the technological world around us. 5 Electrical Walks is her first collection of compositions untilizing material recorded during Electrical Walks.

“Electrical Walks is a public walk with custom-made sensitive wireless headphones by which aboveground and underground electromagnetic fields are detected, amplified and made audible.
The transmission of sound is accomplished by a built-in set of induction coils which respond to the electromagnetic waves in our environment. The palette of these noises, their timbre and volume vary from site to site and from country to country. They have one thing in common: they are ubiquitous, even where one would not expect them. Light systems, wireless communication systems, radar systems, anti-theft security devices, surveillance cameras, cell phones, computers, streetcar cables, antennae, navigation systems, automated teller machines, wireless internet, neon advertising, public transportation networks, etc. create electrical fields that are as if hidden under cloaks of invisibility, but of incredible presence.
The sounds are much more musical than one could expect. There are complex layers of high and low frequencies, loops of rhythmic sequences, groups of tiny signals, long drones and many things which change constantly and are hard to describe. Some sounds are “global players”, they sound much alike all over the world. Others are specific for a city or country and cannot be found anywhere else.
Electrical Walks is an an invitation to a special kind of investigation of city centres (or other locations). With the magnetic headphone and a map of the environs, upon which the possible routes and especially interesting electrical fields are marked, the visitor can set off on his own or in a group. The perception of everyday reality changes when one listens to the electromagnetic fields; what is accustomed appears in a different context. Sound can transport you to different time areas, sound can transport you through your knowledge of space. Your brain is trying to get together what you hear and see in new ways. Nothing looks the way it sounds. And nothing sounds the way it looks.
The five compositions on the CD are based on numerous live recordings of electromagnetic fields, made between 2003 and 2007 in the cities of Birmingham, Chicago, Taipei, Paris, Bremen, Riga, Tokyo, Madrid, London, New York, Berlin and others. The sounds have not been altered electronically or by other means. “

- Christina Kubisch, July 2007

Constraint City, body as a living map

2007-12-12T15:37:00.000+01:00

Constraint City, body as a living map

Constraint City, body as a living map
Gordan Savicic's project Constraint City - The Pain of Everyday life, exploits in a brilliant way the electromagnetic waves generated by the wireless networks spread all over the urban territory, mapping them out on his own body thanks to a jacket equipped with servo motors. A work that embodies torture and a playful game of pain, where the digital signals reveal their strenght by proportionally tightening in the chest of the jacket wearer. The access points are detected by a wi-fi enabled Nintendo DS Lite console, booted with a Gentoo Linux release, kinetically translating the radio waves. The interaction pushes the urban networks intangible reality to the individual's body, letting it physically experiencing the codes of the new digital architectures. The maps detected by the system are acquired also by a GIS (Geographic Information System), which keeps tracks of the former routes, and assigns values to the different signal strenghts and so to the intensity of the consequent bondage. This is certainly a new way of experiencing the city in its most invisible manifestations, following the playful movement of a libertine psycogeographic derive. The conceptual load here implies alternative interpretations, such as cyber Christological visions, viae crucis made by wireless checkpoints which inflict 'media-eval' tortures along the way to our daily Golghota. Actually Constraint City seems to show us how city life is like cattles' lives, where we get branded according to the place we are passing by. A life actually made out of surveillance, where the panopticon has become a wearable device and at the same time a map of the territory carved and bordered onto our bodies.

Reblogged from Neural: Tony Canonico

Urban Computing and Its Discontents

2007-12-10T18:48:00.000+01:00

Urban Computing and Its Discontents at The Architectural League NY (14 Dec)

Urban Computing and Its Discontents
Situated Technologies Pamphlet series
launch and panel discussion

Adam Greenfield, Mark Shepard and Eric Paulos

Friday, December 14
7:00 p.m.

The Architectural League NY
The Urban Center
457 Madison Avenue
New York, NY

A reception and panel discussion celebrating the launch of the Situated Technologies Pamphlet series (buy or download). Adam Greenfield and Mark Shepard, co-authors of Situated Technologies Pamphlet 1: Urban Computing and Its Discontents, and Eric Paulos of Intel Research, will consider how ubiquitous computing may change urban life in this panel discussion launching the series.

This fall the League launches a nine-part publication series--co-edited by Mark Shepard, Omar Khan, and Trebor Scholz--to be published over the next three years, exploring the implications of ubiquitous computing for architecture. Born out of the three-day symposium presented by the League, the Center for Virtual Architecture, and the Institute for Distributed Creativity in October 2006, the series will consider how our experience of the city and the choices we make in it are being affected by mobile communications, pervasive media, ambient informatics and other "situated" technologies. How will the possibility of designing increasingly responsive environments alter the way architects conceive of space? What do architects need to know about urban computing and what do technologists need to know about cities? Situated Technologies Pamphlets will be edited by a rotating list of leading researchers and practitioners from art, architecture, technology, and sociology.

For more information about the Architecture and Situated Technologies project, visit www.situatedtechnologies.net

Admission is free for League members; $10 for non-members. League members may make reservations by emailing rsvp@archleague.org or by calling 212-980-3767. AIA and New York State continuing education credits are available.

Magic Bike :Wireless Access Bike

2007-12-01T19:25:00.000+01:00

magicbike is a mobile WiFi (wireless Internet) hotspot that gives free Internet connectivity wherever its ridden or parked. By turning a common bicycle into a wireless hotspot, Magicbike explores new delivery and use strategies for wireless networks and modern-day urbanites. Wireless bicycles disappear into the urban fabric and bring Internet to yet unserved spaces and communities. Mixing public art with techno-activism, Magicbikes are perfect for setting up adhoc Internet connectivity for art and culture events, emergency access, public demonstrations, and communities on the struggling end of the digital-divide.

Weaving Internet Infrastuctures into Cultural Fabric

Magicbike aims to weave wireless infrastructures into an existing mobile and socially active cultural fabric, bicycle culture. Bicycles are extremely versatile vehicles that travel many places inaccessible by automobiles and other forms of transportation. Bicycles are also traditional symbols of political movements ranging from the women’s movement in the latter 19th century, to the labor movements of the early 20th century, through today where bicycles are held in high esteem as a clean, energy-efficient alternative to a global dependence on oil and urban sprawl. Since WiFi is an emerging technology based on open standards it is malleable. Superimposing WiFi technology onto bicycle culture pushes the technology towards the particular needs, tastes, and motivations of bicyclists. Wireless and computing technology gain from becoming more (mobile and) bicycle and street friendly. The culture around wireless is also influenced by century-old cultural trends of political consciousness, social responsibility, and physical health.

Bicycle Hotspots Tech Description

Magicbike turns common bicycles into WiFi hotspots. The end effect creates bicycles that broadcast free WiFi connectivity to their proximity. The technology behind this is not complex. Magicbike is simply a creative configuration, or reconfiguration, of widely available computer, bicycle, and WiFi gear. WiFi antennas mounted on the bike's frame feed into a laptop embedded into a specially outfitted bicycle side-bag. The bike's embedded laptop is configured to be a wireless repeater and hotspot. The bike receives its uplink connection either from the cellular network or from far-off WiFi hotspots (with the help of its mounted antennas). With this uplink connection from any one of various sources, the bike is able to serve-up its own Internet connection.

A Magicbike hotspot operates like standard hotspots, able to serve up to 250 users in a radius of 30 meters indoors and 100 meters outdoors [although its antennas can increase the hotspot’s accuracy and range]. A group of bikes can repeat and/or bridge the signal down a chain of wireless bikes. Meaning, a bicycle gang can snake into subways stations or across hilltops to provide Internet connectivity to (fringe but) vital communities and spaces ignored by the traditional telecommunications industry. A grassroots bottom-up wireless infrastructure can be formed and pedaled to any place accessible by bicycle.

Wireless Bikes as Art Objects

Wireless bikes are a tacitly surrealistic Ready-made that playfully reframe our assumptions about the interplay of technology and art. The tradition of Ready-made objects in modern art is credited to start with Marcel Duchamp’s “Roue de Bicyclette” or “Bicycle Wheel,” his first “Ready-made.” The bicycle’s role in art seems to be that of a transcendent object acting as a vehicle to interface conceptual and material existence, virtual and real existence, if you will. At first, “wireless bikes” seem like an incongruous montage and technological farce. But, importantly, this technological farce out performs the market in providing Internet access to vital urban spaces. As art out-maneuvers commerce, we see that our technological boundaries are products of our imagination and not truly technological at all. Riding down the streets or parked, these bikes become beacons for play and inquiry. They ignite our imagination about the boundaries of bike and computer, mundane and hi-tech, street protest and online activism, mediated play and spectacle.

Artist Bio

Yury Gitman is a wireless and emerging-media artist. He engages WiFi, web development, hardware hacking, and the culture around wireless to create expressive pieces and art interventions. He has exhibited work with Eyebeam and The New Museum among many others. Noderunner, a wireless game he co-created was awarded the Ars Electronica Golden Nica for Net Vision in 2003.

ART COM - Duality

2007-11-23T18:15:00.000+01:00

ART COM - Duality

For a new building complex in downtown Tokyo, ART+COM has developed an artistic installation. It is located on the bank of an artificial pond at the exit of the metro station Osaki. The project deals with the duality between liquid / solid, real / virtual and water ripples / light waves.

Pedestrians walk over a 6 x 6 meters large LED plane, installed right on the edge of the water. The LEDs are covered with translucent glass diffusing their light. With their steps, the passers-by provoke virtual waves on the LED plane, computed in real-time. When these waves hit the edge of the pond, they are extended into the water as real ripples.

Contrary to the usual practice of art in public space, the installation aims at creating an identity for the space, being based on the space. Passers-by flowing from the metro station are offered a moment of contemplation.

WiFi Camera Obscura - Adam Somlai Fischer, Bengt Sjolen & Usman Haque | folly

2007-11-17T17:16:00.000+01:00

WiFi Camera Obscura - Adam Somlai-Fischer, Bengt Sj�l�n & Usman Haque | folly

An interpretation of the traditional camera obscura that uses an antenna fabricated from an empty can of Japanese wasabi horseradish. This is mounted on a robotic head to scan the environment and uncover the increasingly present wireless networki signals in our environment.

Usman Haque has created responsive environments, interactive installations, digitali interface devices and choreographed performances. His skills include the design of both physical spaces and the software and systems that bring them to life. He was a researcher at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea, Italy, an artist-in-residence at the International Academy of Media Arts and Sciences, Japan and has also worked in USA, UK and Malaysia. Until 2005 he was a teacher in the Interactive Architecture Workshop at the Bartlett School of Architecture, London.

exhibitions: Version 1 at Waves in Riga Aug 25 - Sept 17, then Version 2 at Perimeters, Boundaries and Borders in Lancaster, UK from Sept 29 to October 21 2007

urban interface | oslo Friluftskino - Experiments in open-air surveillance cinema

2007-11-17T13:59:00.000+01:00

Michelle Teran:Friluftskino - Experiments in open-air surveillance cinema

An after effect of the consumer use of wireless surveillance technology is the production of images. These video images, incidental in nature, are easily intercepted while walking through the streets with a video scanner, creating an alternate journey into the non-places of the city created through surveillance use. Spatial boundary conventions of private and public, inside and outside are challenged by the reality of the radio transmission which moves beyond walls and onto the street. By accessing these images one is also offered a view into how the public depicts and represents itself through the use of these readily available technologies and a glimpse into the ways the city itself is redefined and restructured through migratory and economic flows and shifts.
Traffic traffic detail

For ‘Frilufts Kino‘, the city of Oslo provided the source and the projection surface for an open-air cinema. Once a day, for a period of seven days, different places throughout the Oslo districts of Grønland and Grunerløkka will be used as locations for a ‘Frilufts Kino’. Using a powerful video projector and video scanner, live surveillance intercepted from wireless CCTV cameras will be captured and then rebroadcasted upon the city walls.

The live transmission will ideally lasts as long as a feature length film. The extended time of the intervention is intended to allow one to contemplate the live image which, contrary to being titillating and action-filled, is actually empty and still, a place of non-action. They are spaces to be filled, through subtle shifts that take place within the observed scene, or through the viewer’s own physical or imagined intervention.

Born in Canada, Michelle Teran is a media artist currently living and working in Berlin. Within her practice she explores the interplay between social and media networks within urban environments and creates performances, installations and online works that are concerned with issues of communication, surveillance, psychogeography, presence, intimacy, social ritual, collaboration and public participation.

Mobile Trans-Siberian Express

2007-11-17T12:53:00.000+01:00

mobicast is an experiment in the delivery of temporally relevant ('live') video from mobile devices. It is a platform developed by artists Adam Hyde (New Zealand), Luka Princic (Slovenia) and Aleksandar Erkalović (Croatia), commissioned by Minna Tarkka and M-Cult (Finland), and implemented for its first trial by Sophea Lerner (Australia), Netta Norro (Finland), Adam, and others who particpated in the "Capturing the Moving Mind" conference aboard the Trans Siberian Express in September 2005. mobicast was initially developed during a residency at MAMA Media Lab (Zagreb, Croatia).

mobicast was initially developed to overcome the problem of delivering live video from a moving train to the internet. Traditionally this is the domain of OB (Outside Broadcast) technologies or expensive vehicular satellite uplink hardware. However mobile phones are now very capable remote broadcast environments. Many modern phones record images, video, audio and allow the editing and transfer of these media through wireless data networks (eg. GPRS) with almost global coverage. The quality of these recorded media have generally been considered 'low-fi' but fidelity is increasing and importantly, the expectations of networked media are becoming more appropriate. Once upon a time there was a mythic "broadcast quality" threshold all media had to pass before being accepted by broadcast organisations and (theoretically) audiences. However, now there are active calls for content generated by "on the spot" accidental observers by large scale media organisations. The tide and scale of remote media is changing. The nature of experimental media on this type of platform is the intentional playground of mobicasting. With this emerging new type of media witness cultural forms are also emerging. Multiple networked media phones is in itself a platform for collaborative cultural development and opens interesting doors for experimental media.

Active Ingredient game wins international prize

2007-11-09T20:28:00.000+01:00

Active Ingredient game wins international prize

Based on the prototype 'Ere Be Dragons, Heartlands is a unique game which uses mobile technology and the player's heartbeat to create a virtual world.
The game is targeted at people who enjoy computer games, taking the activity from the sofa and out onto the streets.

People who play Heartlands are encouraged to adopt a healthier lifestyle. Working in conjunction with the London Sports Institute, the game is based on discovering and working with your optimum heartbeat.

Active Ingredient beat 140 companies from around the world to win the International Nokia Ubimedia Award for Future Technology.
Active Ingredient were praised for their innovation using new technology.

The team are now working on a new game which combines computer games, theatre and social networking.

Cherry Blossoms

2007-10-31T15:01:00.000+01:00

Activated Boston Zones from Baghdad reported civilian deaths

"Alyssa Wright, from the Computing Culture group at MIT, has created a fantastic performance/project called Cherry Blossoms. The idea is raise our awareness of the civilian war deaths in Baghdad. Inspired by Paula Levine's Shadows From Another Place: Baghdad <> San Francisco project , which imagines the effects upon San Francisco, had the bombs which fell on Baghdad been destined for the American city. Cherry Blossoms is a backpack that uses a small microcontroller and a GPS unit.

Recent news of bombings in Iraq are downloaded to the unit every night, and their relative location to the center of the city are superimposed on a map of Boston. If the wearer walks in a space in Boston that%u2019s correlated to a site of violence in Baghdad, the backpack detonates, releasing a compressed air cloud of confetti, looking for all the world like smoke and shrapnel. Each piece of confetti has the name of a civilian who died in a war based on lies.

blogged from:we-make-money-not-art.com

floating.numbers

2007-10-30T23:43:00.000+01:00

ART COM: "floating.numbers “10 5 = God. The power of signs” – the title of the special exhibition in the Jewish Museum which commissioned ART COM to produce the “floating.numbers” project. The central element in this exhibition is a 9-metre long interactive table with a mass of numbers flowing in a continuum on its surface. Individual digits appear randomly at the surface of this stream of numbers and, once touched by a visitor, surrender their secret in text, pictures, films and animation. "The significance of the numbers materialises from the various perspectives of science, religion, art or one’s outlook on everyday life"

Light-Emitting Roof Tiles

2007-10-30T19:44:00.000+01:00

Light-Emitting Roof Tiles

The roof has historically focused on one primary function: keeping out the elements. New technologies, as present in Light-Emitting Roof Tiles, allow the integration of additional functions within roof surfaces. Manufactured by Lambert Kamps, the transparent roof tiles are integrated light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and designed to display text, pictures, and other graphical content in multiple colors. Information may also be animated, such as with an illuminated news trailer. Light-Emitting Roof Tiles also come with their own self-supporting solar-photovoltaic power system.

via transmaterial/Interactive Architecture dot Org

Moorfield Eye Hospital, London

2007-10-30T12:43:00.000+01:00

Moorfield Eye Hospital, London

A stunning lighting scheme has recently been designed, supplied, installed and programmed by Lightscape Projects, part of the Light Projects Group, for the Richard Desmond Children Eye Centre which forms part of the Moorfields Eye Hospital in London, UK.
The new building, designed by architects Penoyre & Prasad, is illuminated on the south side using RGB color changing LED lighting supplied by Light Projects and Tryka.

The LED lighting illuminates the façade by casting light on the underneath of the freely-placed, folded aluminium louvers, which the team has nicknamed “seagulls”, according to Light Projects’ Roger Beckett.
The building has an outer glass curtain wall, with the seagulls positioned on a tensioned cable net about 0.75 m away to protect the building from solar gain.
The LED lighting fixtures are positioned on gantries at each floor level. A total of 64 fixtures were used, including linear fittings and others to fit around the uneven shape of the building. Beckett says that the fixtures are about 80 mm from the glass wall and their light is directed towards the underside of the “seagulls”, with an angle of 50-degrees to the horizontal.

All the light goes away from the glass to prevent direct glare affecting the occupants. “The lighting is designed to be very comfortable for people inside the building,” says Beckett. The lighting system is controlled via a DMX 512 controller, using a Light Projects-designed program to create shifting light scenes with an imaginative mix of subtle colors. Beckett comments, “This project demonstrates how the improving synergy between architects and lighting designers can come together to turn building facades into magical events.”

Via: ledsmagazine

Energy Harvesting Derive : by Christian Croft and Kate Hartman

2007-10-30T11:17:00.000+01:00

Energy Harvesting Derive by Christian Croft and Kate Hartman

The Energy Harvesting Dérive combines new modes of pedestrian movement with alternative energy research goals. The project hacks the recently popular Heelys roller sneaker to transform it into a platform for generating electricity from human motion.
Rather than reducing harnessed energy to the practical chore of battery charging, this work applies its energy towards a more playful application in hopes to promote discussion in the realm of sustainable energy development and alternative transportation design.

Electricity harvested from rolling powers a microcomputer and lcd display embedded on the shoe to deliver random directions for a pedestrian to follow. Arrows and text show up on the screen display telling the wearer which direction she should travel next -- North, Northeast, Southwest, etc. Depending on the speed of rolling, a directive appears on the screen every 15 to 20 feet. These directions drive the wearer to follow a random zig-zaggy path that mimics in physical space the mathematical simulation of the random or drunkard's walk. The design motivation behind the sneakers' functionality is also informed by the Situationist practice of the dérive. Locative add-ons to the existing prototype such as GPS are feasible, of course, but the intention of these shoes is currently to incite their users to get lost and explore territory outside of their typical transport routines. The shoes force their owner to make choices about whether or not to challenge urban obstacles or interrupt automobile traffic when instructed to move in seemingly hard to traverse directions. Participating in an Energy Harvesting Dérive thus fosters an exploration of the city and its flows. It reveals the impacts of urban planning decisions and encourages users to act out and playfully brainstorm alternative modes of transport and energy.

The National Library of Belarus

2007-10-13T21:05:00.000+01:00

LedLightRay : architecture

The new Belarus library received the LED lighting treatment- The National Library of Belarus, an architectural diamond, is lit at night in stunning fashion by 4646 color-changing RGB LED fixtures.

In 2006, Minsk received a new architectural symbol – a brand new building to house the National Library of Belarus. The twenty-three storey library is designed in the form of a rhombicuboctahedron (diamond) and symbolizes the enormous value of knowledge that mankind has stored in books.

The building is covered by glass panels and during the day all 24 sides sparkle as a real diamond. Architects Victor Kramarenko and Michael Vinogradov, authors of the building, wanted to preserve and convey this vision at night.
Professor Viktor Kramarenko describes the challenge: "In the evening, the sparkling effect vanishes. External flood type illumination of the building is not effective, since glass panels reflect light into space.

A total of 4646 color-changing LED fixtures were installed all around the building, effectively creating a monitor with 25x25 meter sides and 62 meters in diameter. As a result, spectators are able to observe a fantastic show with incredible dynamic plots from hundreds of meters away. It is an extraordinary creative venue for lighting designers.

The Anemix :: 3D Effects Lighting System

2007-10-13T20:58:00.000+01:00

"The Anemix :: 3D Effects Lighting System
TheANEMIX is a new lighting system that creates unique 3D effects in space. It's a panel composed by a luminescent and a reflective layer, which can be modified to create a wide range of visual effects. The designers chose OSRAM LED technology to be the light source of this system, as it's efficient, small and with a very low cost of manteinance. The glass-aluminium technology was developed by GLASSTECH, a specialized glazed Chilean company. This modular system can also be customized. The technology used to make the shapes matrix and modular dimensions allows anyone to design their own Anemix. In this way and depending on the format and dimension, it can be used as object, as a communication or mood light surface or as an architectural element.

via http://www.geekologie.com/2007/05/theanemix.php

Reprojected, Munich September 2007

2007-10-13T20:38:00.000+01:00

Reblogged from Mediaarchitecture

Reprojected was on display on the “Seven Screens” in Munich, an installation consisting of seven double-sided state-of-the-art LED-steles, each one of them measuring six metres in height. It transfers and reworks the actual spatial situation of the piece’s site.In contrast to common filmic language, “reprojected” takes a distanced point of view, which exclusively focusses on the shadows of computer-simulated people. They attain visibility only by means of a light source, which is moving in virtual space between and across the steles.

The video projected onto the “Seven screens” plays with the perception of the space between and introduces a distance between the depicted events and the installation.

Uniqua Tower Media Facade

2007-10-13T20:32:00.000+01:00

The Uniqua Insurance Company built a new headquarter in Vienna´s 2nd district. The Facade of the Tower is constructed as a double layered glass facade. In between there is enough space to situate the LED modules. The spacing between the vertical LED stripes is identical with the construction grid of the main facade. The resolution is not that high, but good enough to display photographic imagery. The special artistic content was done by Mader Stublic Wiermann. The technical part was done by lichtkunstlicht and Barco. The diplay is not bright enough to run during daytime; it´s just being used during nighttime.

Resolution: about 40 000 Pixel

Additional Information:

http://www.ledsmagazine.com/articles/news/3/5/17/1

Tactical Sound Garden [ TSG ] Toolkit

2007-10-13T20:23:00.000+01:00

Given the ubiquity of mobile devices and wireless networks, and their proliferation throughout increasingly diverse and sometimes unexpected urban sites, what opportunities - and dilemmas - emerge for the design of public space in contemporary cities?

The Tactical Sound Garden [TSG] Toolkit is an open source software platform for cultivating public "sound gardens" within contemporary cities. It draws on the culture of urban community gardening to posit a participatory environment where new spatial practices for social interaction within technologically mediated environments can be explored and evaluated. Addressing the impact of mobile audio devices like the iPod, the project examines gradations of privacy and publicity within contemporary public space.

The Toolkit enables anyone living within dense 802.11 wireless (WiFi) "hot zones" to install a "sound garden" for public use. Using a WiFi enabled mobile device (PDA, laptop, mobile phone), participants "plant" sounds within a positional audio environment. These plantings are mapped onto the coordinates of a physical location by a 3D audio engine common to gaming environments - overlaying a publicly constructed soundscape onto a specific urban space. Wearing headphones connected to a WiFi enabled device, participants drift though virtual sound gardens as they move throughout the city.

Lecture and workshop in Buenos Aires, Argentina

2007-10-13T13:23:00.000+01:00

Research and Arts
Lecture and workshop series 2007-2008

"Participatory Design of Interactive Games for Cellphones, Public Spaces and Extreme User Scenarios"
David McIntosh
October 23-30, 2007

The cell phone has become the most popular and widespread medium of communication in the world and is producing profound changes in the way in which we experience, occupy and move through physical and public space. On one hand, constant mobile access to virtual space via the cell phone enhances individual subjectivity while converting the physical space we find ourselves in into a form of "nowhere." On the other hand, cell phone services connect the deterritorialized individual user to a global virtual network of commercial audiovisual products for consumption, another form of "nowhere that is paradoxically everywhere in the world. In this context, the needs and desires of specific located and embodied user groups must be taken as crucial elements in any participatory design process for new cell phone uses, taking into account not only conventional uses, but also extreme use scenarios, including people with memory loss, loss of sight and loss of mobility. This new and developing dynamic between physical/ corporeal/public/local space and mobile/virtual/global space underpins David McIntosh's recent research and creation work at the Ontario College of Art & Design, Toronto, Canada.

In this workshop, McIntosh will present his experiences with the design of the interactive cell phone game "The Haunting," which combines the narrative logic of the land with the mobile locative interactive potential of the cell phone and with the collective actions of a group of players. He will also present a series of other design approaches to artistic and social uses of cell phone networks. Participants in the workshop will develop an understanding of the underlying technologies for mobile interaction design, including GPS, Bluetooth and WiFi. Workshop participants will employ this framework for cell phone interaction design to identify potential user groups in their immediate local context. In this design process, we will examine a series of cell phone interaction design issues including: writing and designing for specific physical spaces taking into account the geographical and historical specificities of the site of interaction; constructing coherent narrative logic across a range of technological devices; interaction design that promotes user experimentation and innovation; and the re-imagination, re-invention and re-metaphorization of the cell phone for innovative applications.

More information about CEIArtE – UNTreF: http://www.ceiarte.untref.edu.ar/

Web Urbanist Architectural Light Graffiti: Projection Bombing Images on Urban Surfaces

2007-09-30T15:18:00.000+01:00

Web Urbanist Architectural Light Graffiti: Projection Bombing Images on Urban Surfaces

Have you ever considered the possibility of graffiti without vandalism? There is an impressive variety of legal urban street art, from light art to reverse graffiti. There are also eco-friendly leave-no-trace forms of illegal urban expression, such as urban exploration or guerilla gardening. Architectural light graffiti, or projection bombing, falls somewhere curiously in between.

The set up is simple: a programmed sequence (created in realtime or ahead of time) is fed through a high-powered digital projector. The Graffiti Research Lab has developed a sped-up video depicting the setup and projection resulting in the patterns above, as well as other creative and interactive displays.

TIME TRANSLATIONS

2007-09-23T16:08:00.000+01:00

TIME TRANSLATIONS

Time Translations–an interactive installation by Nell Breyer– transforms the World Financial Center’s southern pedestrian bridge from a temporary structure to an animated performance space through the projected movements of passers-by. Cameras capture the constant movements along the bridge in real time, which are then processed by computer, and projected into the space as beautiful, ephemeral drawings on the walls fo the bridge. The daily activity of walking to work is visualized as a kind of dance in which pedestrians become performers.

Nell Breyer is currently a Research Affiliate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Center for Advanced Visual Studies. She was a fellow at the Artist Resource and Media Laboratory (ARM) at Dance Theater Workshop in 2003. From 2000-2002, Breyer conducted research on digital video technologies at The Media Laboratory for Arts & Sciences at MIT. She holds an M.Sc. in Cognitive Neuroscience from Oxford University and an M.S. in Media Arts & Sciences from MIT.

First published on Turbulence 2006

Lev Manovich

2007-09-15T11:51:00.000+01:00

Lev Manovich

I am currently at Urban Interface Oslo -a two day symposium and Public Art Exhibition curated by Suzanne Jaschko. Lev Manovitch's Keynote today argued that the interface has developed into a meld of hardware and software which is spectacular, seductive and performative, epitomised by the i-phone and the LG Chocolate Mobile. The older concepts of utility and efficiency have dissolved into a leisure oriented design aestheic which is playful and colourful.

Camille Utterback, Abundance

2007-09-13T06:47:00.000+01:00

Camille Utterback, Abundance/01SJ 2008 San Jose

01SJ 2008. In San Jose, California,Zero 1 will launch a new Festival of digital arts.
On June 4-8th 2008 the world's most innovative artists will gather to share their latest work. In advance of the Festival Abundance by Camille Utterbeck, a dynamic abstract commission based on public movement around the City Rotunda will be unveiled on 28th September 2007.

"Abundance" is a temporary, large-scale, site-specific public interactive installation created by Camille Utterback for the San Jose City Hall Rotunda and Plaza. In this piece, a dynamic, abstract animation in an approximately 80’ wide x 60’ tall projection on the west side of the City Hall Rotunda will change and evolve based on pedestrian movement in the Plaza. Unlike Utterback’s previous room-scale installations - which focused on individual’s gestures and trajectories - "Abundance" will respond to larger pedestrian patterns such as groups of people coming together and dispersing. The shift to larger group patterns is appropriate for the larger scale of the work, but also intended to focus attention on public civic space as a site of productive mingling and tension between groups. For this installation Utterback will also attempt to respond to the building’s architecture – using specific physical elements of the Rotunda's projection surface as input to the drawing system. The animation may "bounce" or change when it encounters a transition between glass and aluminum on the facade, for example. The fluid, organic imagery of Utterback’s work will create a subtle subversion of the bold geometry of Richard Meier’s edifice. Similarly, by providing a way for participants to temporarily inscribe their movements on the façade of City Hall, "Abundance" will humanize and personalize the site, altering participants' sense of ownership and belonging to a space that is already theirs as a public civic space.

Burble London: Sept 16, 2007

2007-09-03T15:42:00.000+01:00

Burble London: Sept 16, 2007

Burble London: September 16, 2007, Holland Park, London

Burble London, open to the public to celebrate London Fashion Week, will lift-off at 8pm sharp on Sunday September 16, 2007 at Holland Park, London. It appears as a "golden spectacle", part of the Moët Mirage evening, commissioned by Moët & Chandon.

The Burble is a massive structure reaching up towards the sky, composed of approximately 1000 extra-large helium balloons each of which contains microcontrollers and LEDs that create spectacular patterns of light across the surface of the structure. The public, both audience and performer, come together to control this immense rippling, glowing, bustling 'Burble' that sways in the evening sky, in response to movements of the long articulated interactive handle bar at the base of the structure. The ephemeral experience exists at such a large scale that it is able to compete visually in an urban context with the buildings that surround it.

Driftnet :: a squidsoup project

2007-08-22T14:22:00.000+01:00

Driftnet :: a squidsoup project

Driftnet I

Fly Like a Bird

A project by squidsoup.

Imagine flying like a bird through a musical composition that surrounds you, immerses you and reacts to your presence.

Driftnet is a confluence of two ideas – bird-like flight, and a spatialised, navigable musical environment.

At one level, it experiments with intuitive methods for freely navigating 3D virtual space. Users are invited to ‘fly like a bird’ to navigate through a virtual space. Using NO worn equipment - just by flapping their arms/wings and tilting their arms and bodies – people can intuitively (and amusingly!) navigate freely in virtual space. The metaphor used harks back to childhood play, imitating birds and planes in the playground.

The virtual space is regarded as the notation paper for a spatial, navigable musical composition – we use it to create immersive and responsive virtual spaces that can be explored both visually and aurally – an area we have been exploring with our project “Altzero” (www.squidsoup.org/altzero) since 2000. Sounds become reactive agents, visualised within the space and with behaviours that respond to one’s presence. By moving through the space, participants are able to navigate the musical composition, as proximity and relative position directly affect what is heard.

The immersive experience, and the slightly tongue-in-cheek flavour of the interface, are both enhanced by the use of anaglyphic red/cyan specs to create a strong illusion of 3D depth.

Driftnet I was exhibited at Shunt (London Bridge, UK) from 13-22 June 2007 as a public trial. The first prototypes were shown at Future of Sound events at SAGE (Gateshead UK) and Goldsmiths (London UK) in early 2007, as part of a Cybersonica artists' showcase.

Driftnet is a collaborative project by Gaz Bushell, Anthony Rowe and Ollie Bown.

Graffiti Research Lab L.A.S.E.R. Tag

2007-07-15T19:22:00.000+01:00

Graffiti Research Lab L.A.S.E.R. Tag

The main event of the GRL Rotterdam tour - 'L.A.S.E.R TAG'

In its simplest form the Laser Tag system is a camera and laptop setup, tracking a green laser point across
the face of a building and generating graphics based on the laser's position which then get projected back
onto the building with a high power projector.

A production of the GRL, Agent Watson, Bennett4Senate, and Huib Van Der Werf. This Weapon of Mass Defacement is brought to you by the rouge nation of the Netherlands and the Atelier Rijksbouwmeester.

Flock

2007-07-15T17:24:00.000+01:00

Flock

Flock is a new installation inspired by Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. Set out of doors, after dark, Flock uses the physical presence of participants and passers by to illuminate enchanted ghostly dancers. Following any one of these will take you on a journey where fantasy and reality merge, moving you simultaneously through both the physical space and the dancers' virtual swan world.

Each person’s pathway will be intricately connected to the group as a whole - ultimately creating a co-ordinated corps de ballet of pedestrian performers, as engaging to the bystander as the participant.

Made in collaboration between digital media artists KMA (Kit Monkman & Tom Wexler) and choreographer Tom Sapsford, Flock was commissioned by the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) with the support of ROH2 at the Royal Opera House.

Flock premiered in London's Trafalgar Square on the evening of Thursday 1st February 2007 and continued (evenings only) until Saturday 3rd February.

The Crow Road

2007-07-13T17:20:00.000+01:00

A GPS-based interactive tool based on the real geography which inspired Iain Banks' novel The Crow Road. Developed by Professor Martin Rieser and Dr Tim Middleton at Bath Spa University. Programmed by Amy Bonham, using Flash Lite mobile programme complete with video, audio, text and still image related to each location mentioned in the novel and cross-referenced to the exact position of the user.

Iain Banks examined the work during the Bath Literary Festival and personally endorsed the project. The completed project will be beta-tested on PDAs and mobiles with the Scottish Tourist Board on location in the Western Highlands.

Mark Amerika

2007-07-13T17:17:00.000+01:00

Networked_Performance

Mobile Phone Video Art Classics by Mark Amerika :: E:ventGallery, 96 Teesdale Street, Bethnal Green, London, E2 6PU :: July 14, 7 - 10pm :: Followed with music by dj duo Telethesia, 10pm - midnight.

Mark Amerika’s recent artwork has investigated the emergence of digitally constructed identities, theoretical fictions, meta-histories, and collaborative networks. In his new artwork, Mobile Phone Video Art Classics (MPVAC), the artist composts various art personas and artworks into a narrative sequence of mobile phone video images that conjure up both the spirits of the past as well as hauntological actors of the present. Part DVD installation, part Powerpoint presentation, and part blog performance, MPVAC reedits art history using low-tech mobile phone technology and simple iMovie software. Starring Salvador Dali, Bruce Nauman, Mark Amerika, Nam June Paik, Baby Jane Holzer, Susan Sontag, Marilyn Manson, and Madonna as themselves

First posted on Network_Performance 13th July 2007

Sundance Short Films for mobiles

2007-06-10T15:14:00.000+01:00

Sundance Short Films - About the Project

World premiere at the 3GSM World Congress

Designed as a new way to bring compelling, original short films to new and broader audiences, the Sundance Film Festival Global Short Film Project presents five mobile shorts by some of our favorite independent filmmakers.

This collaboration between Sundance Institute and GSM utilises mobile technology to share independent shorts with film lovers around the world and represents the continuing evolution of the Sundance Film Festival’s mission to create platforms and build audiences for independent film.

“I’ve always felt that anyone who is truly interested in independent film should pay attention to shorts. They are often an indication of what’s coming down the creative pike.” -- Robert Redford, Sundance Institute President and Founder

QR Reader

2007-06-10T11:35:00.000+01:00

The Kaywa Reader is a 2D Barcode Reader to install on your mobile phone. Once installed, you can scan 2D Barcodes and the content of the 2D Barcode is then immediately resolved on the phone.

2D Barcodes (QR Code, Datamatrix) can hold several types of information:

* an URL, respectively a mobile site's address
* a SMS message
* a phone number
* any kind of text
* an email address

The URL is certainly the most interesting type of information which can be encoded. After scanning the 2D Barcode, you get a connection to the mobile site.

Dotmasters

2007-06-09T17:37:00.000+01:00

Cash in the Swiss Banksy | c6.org

Graffiti is an act of vandalism. Does making the subject of that criminal damage an image of merit question its classification as a crime? Can beauty be used to damage property? Is the vandalism of a white wall greater than the vandalism of the image?

As the worlds of graffiti and fine art collide the dividing lines become blurred. The crime becomes a valuable commodity steeped in credibility for those involved.

In the heart of the banking world c6 launch their mobile art market at the Cabaret Voltaire on saturday the 16th of April. An accompanying workshop shows the methods and technologies behind the stencils and their web sales.

Several Mona's placed strategically throughout the city will be active points of sale via mobile phones. Simply sms the accompanying code to the phone number at that location to purchase a print. Each customer will be issued a unique price based on the amount of sales from that place. It pays to buy early prices start at £6 with editions rising in cost by the same value with each purchase. i.e. Edition 1 will be priced at £6 and edition 10 at £60.The QR code used is accessible at http://reader.kaywa.com/

Institute of Unnecessary Research

2007-06-09T17:27:00.000+01:00

Bio-tracking:

"Bio-tracking is a mobile phone based exhibition using GPS (Global Positioning System) and a leading edge new smart phone software (suitable for Nokia Series 60) called Socialight downloadable via www.socialight.com which enabled the placement of virtual sticky notes around various locations in Brighton. The exhibition was part of Brighton Photo Biennial Fringe in 2007. Visitors could download the software and wander around the sites receiving text messages, sound files and images straight to their phones, in fact due to the nature of Socialight the exhibition is still live and can be viewed now."

Anna Dumitriu sampled and cultured various locations in the city of Brighton for normal flora bacteria and moulds, revealing this incredible, unseen and sublime world to us through a series of beautifully enhanced digital micrographs. Luciana Haill, Ian Helliwell Ollie Glass and Juliet Kac created a series of sound works to accompany the images. Microbiologist John Paul wrote scientific text descriptions of the microbes.

The images created a kind of dialectic, bringing together the pure emotion of the sound responses and the analytical texts. Philosopher’s such as Schopenhauer have written much on music’s ability to capture and express emotion “ as an immediate objectification and copy of the whole will as the world itself”.

By bringing in the use of GPS in the initial creation of the work, mapping the locations where the microbiological swabs were taken, the work drew together the microscopic and the macroscopic, drawing a thread between the satellites orbiting the earth and the bacteria at our feet.

A guided walk around the sites took place in September 2006, bio-hazard precautions were unnecessary but were taken anyway. We also carried GPS to track our route and a geiger counter to take unnecessary radiation readings

Marc Owens-Avatar Machine

2007-06-09T17:22:00.000+01:00

Avatar Machine

Marc Owens
Avatar Machine
2007
Plastic, aluminium, textiles, electronics

The virtual communities created by online games have provided us with a new medium for social interaction and communication. Avatar Machine is a system which replicates
the aesthetics and visuals of third person gaming, allowing the user to view themselves as a virtual character in real space via a head mounted interface. The system potentially
allows for a diminished sense of social responsibility, and could lead the user to demonstrate behaviors normally reserved for the gaming environment.

Tactical Sound Garden [ TSG ] Toolkit

2007-06-09T17:15:00.000+01:00

Tactical Sound Garden [ TSG ] Toolkit

Tactical Sound Garden [ TSG ] Toolkit

Given the ubiquity of mobile devices and wireless networks, and their proliferation throughout increasingly diverse and sometimes unexpected urban sites, what opportunities - and dilemmas - emerge for the design of public space in contemporary cities?

The Tactical Sound Garden [TSG] Toolkit is an open source software platform for cultivating public "sound gardens" within contemporary cities. It draws on the culture of urban community gardening to posit a participatory environment where new spatial practices for social interaction within technologically mediated environments can be explored and evaluated. Addressing the impact of mobile audio devices like the iPod, the project examines gradations of privacy and publicity within contemporary public space.

The Toolkit enables anyone living within dense 802.11 wireless (WiFi) "hot zones" to install a "sound garden" for public use. Using a WiFi enabled mobile device (PDA, laptop, mobile phone), participants "plant" sounds within a positional audio environment. These plantings are mapped onto the coordinates of a physical location by a 3D audio engine common to gaming environments - overlaying a publicly constructed soundscape onto a specific urban space. Wearing headphones connected to a WiFi enabled device, participants drift though virtual sound gardens as they move throughout the city.

Participatory Urbanism

2007-06-05T22:19:00.000+01:00

Participatory Urbanism

Urban Atmospheres' Participatory Urbanism presents an important new shift in mobile device usage - from communication tool to “networked mobile personal measurement instrument”. We explore how these new “instruments” enable entirely new participatory urban lifestyles and create novel mobile device usage models.

In the spirit of Urban Computing, Participatory Urbanism is the open authoring, sharing, and remixing of new or existing urban technologies marked by, requiring, or involving participation, especially affording the opportunity for individual citizen participation, sharing, and voice. Participatory Urbanism builds upon a large body of related projects where citizens act as agents of change. There is a long history of such movements from grassroot neighborhood watch campaigns to political revolutions. It is not a disconnected personal phone application, a domestic networked appliance, a mobile route planning application, an office scheduling tool, or a social networking service. Participatory Urbanism promotes new styles and methods for individual citizens to become proactive in their involvement with their city, neighborhood, and urban self reflexivity. Examples of Participatory Urbanism include but are not limited to: providing mobile device centered hardware toolkits for non-experts to become authors of new everyday urban objects, generating individual and collective needs based dialogue tools around the desired usage of urban green spaces, or empowering citizens to collect and share air quality data measured with sensor enabled mobile devices.

Our mobile devices are more than just personal communication tools . They are globally networked, speak the lingua franca of the city (SMS, Bluetooth, MMS), and are becoming the dominant urban processor. We need to shatter our understanding of them as phones and celebrate them in their new role as measurement instruments. Our desire is to provide our mobile devices with new “super-senses” and abilities by enabling a wide range of physical sensors to be easily attached and used by anyone, especially non-experts.

We argue there are two indisputable facts about our future mobile devices: (1) that they will be equipped with more sensing and processing capabilities and (2) that they will also be driven by an architecture of participation and democracy that encourages users to add value to their tools and applications as they use them.
x

Personal, Mobile Air Quality Measurments
an example of Participatory Urbanism

Millions of us carry a mobile device such as a mobile phone with us everyday. For all of its computational power and sophistication it provides us very little insight into the actual conditions of the terrain we traverse with it. In fact the only real-time environmental data it renders is a narrow slice of the electromagnetic spectrum with a tiny readout of cell tower signal strength using a series of bars
s

The World Health Organization estimates that 2 million deaths each year can be attributed to air pollution - that’s more deaths than those resulting from automobile accidents. Presently, citizens must defer to a small handful of civic government installed environmental monitoring stations that use extrapolation to derive a single air quality measurement for an entire metropolitan region. This sparse sensing strategy does little to capture the dynamic variability arising from daily automobile traffic patterns, human activity, and smaller industries. Are we to believe that the park, subway exit, underground parking lot, building atrium, bus stop, and roadway median are all equivalent environmental places?

We collected two weeks of environmental data from taxicabs moving across the city of Accra, Ghana that illustrates the wide air quality fluctuations. The taxi mounted tube air sampler with carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen dioxide sensors exposed and packaged are shown below. Also, several individuals collected data throughout the day using a body worn setup containing similar air quality sensors and GPS unit also shown below.

Ubiquitous Sustainability: Technologies for Green Values

2007-06-03T09:23:00.000+01:00

Ubiquitous Sustainability: Technologies for Green Values

www.sustainableinteraction.net

Workshop held in Conjunction with the Ninth International
Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (Ubicomp 2007)

September 16th, 2007, Innsbruck, Austria

======================================================================

This workshop will explore how Ubicomp research can intersect with
values and practices linked to environmental sustainability. Growing
concerns about resource depletion, global warming, and environmental
degradation have led increasing numbers of people to reconsider their
actions and the impact they have on the planet. This upswing in public
interest in making positive change for the environment has substantial
implications for how the Ubicomp community frames and executes the
design of technologies in realms as diverse as energy conservation,
healthcare, home systems monitoring and automation, environmental
monitoring, community planning, and social networking. The goals of
the workshop are to gain an understanding of emerging practices in
which technologies align with emerging environmental values, and to
distill a set of challenges for the Ubicomp community that are
synchronous with those developments.

-----------------------------------
Topics
-----------------------------------

We encourage submissions exploring the relationship between Ubicomp
and environmental sustainability. We ask authors to pick one of the
following three options:

1. Describe and discuss a project of your own in which Ubicomp
technology follows environmentally sustainable principles or
supports environmentally sustainable values.
2. Consider one of your own projects (either former or current) that
is related to Ubicomp and critique it from the point of view of
environmental sustainability. If the project had been conceived or
designed with environmental values in mind, might it have been
different? If so, how? What if anything might you have done
differently, or what might you do moving forward, if you
considered sustainable issues in your project?
3. Propose a possible research agenda for environmental sustainability
in Ubicomp.

Park View Hotel

2007-05-31T09:45:00.000+01:00

Park View Hotel
Park View Hotel stretches between the Cesar Chavez plaza in downtown San Jose and the neighbouring Fairmont Hotel. Using specially-built pointing devices, audiences in the park can access interior hotel spaces, by "pinging" them optically. Once found and hit (two different modes on the scope) the interiors release their properties into a wireless network... the color of the interior propagates stochastically, leaking out of the building skin, jumping across the street, and entering some street-lights in the park below. In this way, the park enjoys a certain neighbourly access to the hotel, inverting the usual character of the relationship.

This project was the result of a residency at Sun Microsystems Labs, where I was (according the residency brief) working with SunSPOTs, small "programmable object technologies" which are a simple-to-use prototyping platform for embedded technologies, or the so-called "Internet of Things".

9 Evenings Reconsidered at the Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery (Montreal)

2007-03-03T13:02:00.000+01:00

In 1966 EAT-10 New York artists worked with 30 engineers and scientists from the world renowned Bell Telephone Laboratories to create groundbreaking performances that incorporated new technology. Video projection, wireless sound transmission, and Doppler sonar - technologies that are commonplace today - had never been seen in the art of the 60's.

Originally presented at the MIT List Visual Center (Cambridge, MA, U.S.) in 2006, 9 Evenings Reconsidered: Art, Theatre, and Engineering, 1966 will be featured at Concordia University’s Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery from March 9 to April 21, 2007.

Organized by independent curator Catherine Morris, the exhibition will showcase extensive archival material associated with this event and offer various viewpoints of the 10 performances presented at the 69th Regiment Armory in 1966. The Foundation has loaned a number of objects and materials from its 9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering fonds to the exhibition, including, among others, a sample of the factual footage produced by Alfons Schilling, stage props, technological components, and technical drawings by engineer Fred Waldhauer.

Conferences and panel discussions will also be held during the 9 Evenings Reconsidered exhibition, among them:

Wednesday, March 21, at 5:30 p.m.: When Artists and Engineers Meet: Divergencies in Concept and Process. Panel discussion with professors Joey Berzowska, Ana Cappelluto, Sudhir Mudur, Reza Soleymani and Leila Sujir. Moderator: Sylvie Lacerte.

An illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition. For more information, please consult the Web site of the Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery:
http://ellengallery.concordia.ca/

MOBILE MUSIC TECHNOLOGY 2007

2007-03-01T11:32:00.000+01:00

Submission Deadline
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP
ON MOBILE MUSIC TECHNOLOGY 2007
6-8 MAY 2007, AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS

http://www.mobilemusicworkshop.org/

Submission deadline: 12th March 2007

Combining music and mobile technology promises exciting future developments in a rapidly emerging field. Devices such as mobile phones, Walkmans and iPods have already brought music to the ever-changing social and geographic locations of their users and reshaped their experience of the urban landscape. With new properties such as ad hoc networking, Internet connection, and context-awareness, mobile music technology offers countless new artistic, commercial and socio-cultural opportunities for music creation, listening and sharing. How can we push forward the already successful combination of music and mobile technology? What new forms of interaction with music lie ahead, as locative media and music use merge into new forms of everyday experiences?

This series of annual workshops began to explore and establish the emerging field of mobile music technology in 2004. This fourth edition of the Mobile Music Workshop in 2007 offers a unique opportunity to participate in the development of mobile music and hands-on experience of cutting-edge technology.

This year’s workshop is hosted by STEIM and Waag Society in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and partners with the Futuresonic Festival in Manchester, England, taking place later the same week. The programme of the workshop will consist of keynote presentations from invited speakers, peer-reviewed paper presentations, poster sessions, in-depth discussions about the crucial issues of mobile music technology, demos of state-of-the-art projects, break-out sessions and live events. Registered participants will take part in hands-on sessions conducted by leaders in the field. In addition to traditional presentation sessions, the programme includes events open to a general audience, facilitating the presentation of artworks and technological breakthroughs to a wider public.

The Mobile Music Workshop sets the stage for a collaboration that brings together leading institutions in both experimental electronic music and mobile media. STEIM (the studio for electro-instrumental music) is a centre for electronic music production well known in the performing arts. STEIM promotes the idea that Touch is crucial in communicating with electronic and digital arts technologies, a vision that over the years has given birth to physical, sensor-based musical instruments. Waag Society is a research and development institute in the fields of networked art, education and creative industries. Waag develops platforms for artists to reach society through networked collaboration, media streaming, and locative media.

CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS AND WORKS

We invite practitioners, artists, designers, hackers and researchers from all areas, including music, technology development, new media, sound-art, music distribution, cultural/media studies, locative media and industry to submit work and register to attend.

Don't miss this chance to help shape the mobile music landscape of the future!

Participants are encouraged to submit their work in mobile music technology to the categories below. The partnership with the Futuresonic Festival (http://www.futuresonic.com/) allows those coming to Europe to make a single trip to attend both events.

Papers

We invite submissions of workshop papers presenting new projects, approaches or reflections exploring the topic of mobile music. Potential submissions could include but are not limited to mobile music systems or enabling technologies, interface design, legal issues, user studies, ethnographic fieldwork, social implications, art pieces and other areas relevant to mobile music.
Accepted paper authors will be given a time slot during the workshop for presentation and discussion of their work.

Format: up to 8 pages in ACM SIG publications format (shorter papers welcome). For templates, see http://www.acm.org/sigs/pubs/proceed/template.html

Posters

We also invite the contribution of posters that document work-in-progress projects or ideas in similar areas of mobile music technology as the papers.
Posters will be on display during the duration of the conference. We will arrange a poster presentation session where attendees will be able to discuss the works with the authors.

Format: 2 pages in ACM SIG publications format

Demonstrations

We also invite submissions of work to the demo category. Besides encouraging paper and poster presenters to bring a demonstration as a complement their presentation, we encourage submissions of stand-alone demos of mobile music systems or enabling technology. Their implementation should be ready enough to be demoed, and will possibly be shown to the general public during open sessions depending on their robustness.

Format: 2 pages in ACM SIG publications format.

SUBMISSIONS

Please email your submission as a PDF file in the appropriate format to submissions@mobilemusicworkshop.org.

In the subject line, state MMW SUBMISSION followed by PAPER, POSTER or DEMO and the name of the main author.

Submissions will be peer-reviewed by a committee of international specialists in the fields of mobile music, interactive music, and locative media.

DEADLINES

Submission deadline: 12th March 2007
Notification of acceptance: 2nd April 2007
Registration deadline: 16th April 2007
Final submission deadline: 16th April 2007

REGISTRATION & FEE

This year’s workshop will have both closed sessions for registered participants and sessions open to the general public. The number of participants for the closed sessions of the workshop is limited to 50 places. Accepted submitters are given priority, other participants are accepted on a first-come first-served basis. Registered participants will have automatic access to all sessions of the workshops.

The closed sessions of the workshop will be charged both a regular and a reduced student fee, similar to the last edition’s fees.

Registration deadline: 16th April 2007

The open sessions will be advertised in more detail closer to the event. The fee for the open sessions will be event-based.

Scheduling and registration fees will be coordinated with Futuresonic to allow participants to easily attend both events.

ORGANISERS

International Steering Committee

Atau Tanaka (Sony CSL Paris, France)
Frauke Behrendt (University of Sussex, UK)
Lalya Gaye (Viktoria Institute, Sweden)

Local Organising Committee

Kristina Andersen (STEIM, The Netherlands)
Robert van Heumen (STEIM, The Netherlands)
Ronald Lenz (Waag Society, The Netherlands)

MORE INFORMATION

For more information about the previous and up-coming workshops, the ACM SIG publications format as well as travel and accommodation information, please consult:
http://www.mobilemusicworkshop.org/

Minature Video Projector

2007-02-24T20:09:00.000+01:00

Researchers at Germany-based Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft have developed miniaturized video projector technology suitable for use in cost-sensitive embedded and mobile device applications. The technology substitutes a single mirror with two-axis rotation for the million-mirror "microarrays" used in previous approaches to projector miniaturization, according to the company.

Previous designs for miniaturized video projectors have utilized million-mirror arrays that can be tilted in a single plane, and are evenly illuminated, according to Fraunhofer. Such "microarray" projectors operate by rotating the arrays toward and away from the light source, thereby producing light and dark pixels that combine to form the projected image.

The microarray approach has two key drawbacks, according to Fraunhofer. The very nature of its design precludes miniaturization; plus, it costs too much, making it unaffordable in consumer device applications.

To circumvent these problems, Fraunhofer researchers developed projector technology based on a single mirror that rotates around two axes. Based on this approach, the company says it can create a projector roughly "the size of a sugar cube."

Remapping the Universe

2007-02-17T19:04:00.000+01:00

Remapping the Universe

In this video, Jeff Han and Phil Davidson demonstrate how a multi-touch driven computer screen will change the way we work and play.

For the video, here's a direct
http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid271543545/bctid422563006

Jefferson Han, a pale, bespectacled engineer dressed in Manhattan black, faced the thousand or so attendees on the first day of TED 2006, the annual technology, entertainment, and design conference in Monterey, California. The 30-year-old was little more than a curiosity at the confab, where, as its ad copy goes, "the world's leading thinkers and doers gather to find inspiration." And on that day, the thinkers and doers included Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) gazillionaires Sergey Brin and Larry Page, e-tail amazon Jeff Bezos, and Bill Joy, who helped code Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ:SUNW) from scratch. Titans of technology. It was enough to make anyone feel a bit small.

Then Han began his presentation. His fingertips splayed, he placed them on the cobalt blue 36-inch-wide display before him and traced playful, wavy lines that were projected onto a giant screen at his back. He conjured up a lava lamp and sculpted floating blobs that changed color and shape based on how hard he pressed. ("Google should have something like this in their lobby," he joked.) With the crowd beginning to stir, he called up some vacation photos, manipulating them on the monitor as if they were actual prints on a tabletop. He expanded and shrank each image by pulling his two index fingers apart or bringing them together. A few oohs and aahs bubbled up from the floor.

Suppressing a smile, Han told the assembled brain trust that he rejects the idea that "we are going to introduce a whole new generation of people to computing with the standard keyboard, mouse, and Windows pointer interface." Scattering and collecting photos like so many playing cards, he added, "This is really the way we should be interacting with the machines." Applause rippled through the room. Someone whistled. Han began to feel a little bigger.

But he was far from finished. Han pulled up a two-dimensional keyboard that floated slowly across the screen. "There is no reason in this day and age that we should be conforming to a physical device," he said. "These interfaces should start conforming to us." He tapped the screen to produce dozens of fuzzy white balls, which bounced around a playing field he defined with a wave of the hand. A flick of a finger pulled down a mountainous landscape derived from satellite data, and Han began flying through it, using his fingertips to swoop down from a global perspective to a continental one, until finally he was zipping through narrow slot canyons like someone on an Xbox. He rotated his hands like a clock's, tilting the entire field of view on its axis--an F16 in a barrel roll. He ended his nine-minute presentation by drawing a puppet, which he made dance with two fingers.

He basked in the rock-star applause. This is the best kind of affirmation, he thought. The moment you live for.

Six months later, after TED posted the video on its Web site, the blogosphere got wind of Han's presentation. Word spread virally through thousands of bloggers, who either posted the video on their sites or pointed to it on YouTube, where it was downloaded a quarter of a million times. "Uaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhwwwwwwwwwwwllllllllll I want one!!!" whined one YouTuber. "Just tell me where to buy one," said another. "Holy s--t. This is the future," cried a third. Han's presentation became one of YouTube's most popular tech videos of all time.

Mobile Music Workshop

2007-02-17T13:53:00.000+01:00

FOURTH INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP
AMSTERDAM, THE NETHERLANDS, 6-8 MAY 2007

INTRODUCTION
Combining music and mobile technology promises exciting future developments in a rapidly emerging field. Devices such as mobile phones, Walkmans and iPods have already brought music to the ever-changing social and geographic locations of their users and reshaped their experience of the urban landscape. With new properties such as ad hoc networking, Internet connection, and context-awareness, mobile music technology offers countless new artistic, commercial and socio-cultural opportunities for music creation, listening and sharing. How can we push forward the already successful combination of music and mobile technology? What new forms of interaction with music lie ahead, as locative media and music use merge into new forms of everyday experiences?

This series of annual workshops began to explore and establish the emerging field of mobile music technology in 2004. This fourth edition of the Mobile Music Workshop in 2007 offers a unique opportunity to participate in the development of mobile music and hands-on experience of cutting-edge technology.

One Block Radius-GlowLab

2007-02-17T10:32:00.000+01:00

One Block Radius, a project of Brooklyn artists Christina Ray and Dave Mandl [known collaboratively as Glowlab], is an extensive psychogeographic survey of the block where New York's New Museum of Contemporary Art will build a new facility in late 2004. Engaging a variety of tools and media such as blogs, video documentation, maps, field recordings & interviews, Glowlab creates a multi-layered portrait of the block as it has never been seen before [and will never be seen again]. This website is an interactive archive for the project, which will continue to grow over time as we build a dense data-map of the block. The information collected is organized into three categories: observation, interaction & response. Click on each category to begin exploring the block.

Lincoln Schatz: Commission for One Arts Plaza, Dallas, Texas

2007-02-08T19:14:00.000+01:00

Lincoln Schatz: Commission for One Arts Plaza, Dallas, Texas

Dallas developer Billingsley Company has commissioned a new large-scale interactive work for the entrance of One Arts Plaza, currently under construction in the heart of Dallas’ Arts District. The building is situated on the museum campus opposite the Dallas Museum of Art. The artwork is scheduled for installation in March 2007 and will preview at bitforms gallery nyc in January during a solo exhibition including other recent work.

This commission presents Schatz with an opportunity to advance his explorations in the creation of memory and the idea of reality as perception. It will experiment with how reality is defined and whether revisiting an image of oneself on-screen can affect memories of a particular event. Focusing on the phenomenon of how multiple observers can experience the same thing and come away with separate and distinct memories of it, two independent memory works will be installed in the entrance of One Arts Plaza. They will both be born at the same time, establishing their own unique memory of that space over the next eight years.

While standing between the two works, viewers will see themselves on both screens juxtaposed with video memories unique to each screen’s perspective on the past. At this point the viewers and the screens enter into a feedback loop whereby the works and viewers are each developing and affecting the others’ memories of that point in time.

Rhizome 8/02/07

Minority Report Interface to Google Earth

2007-01-28T11:35:00.000+01:00

Minority Report Interface to Google Earth

Picked up via the ever impressive Oogle Earth Blog is the news that Atlas Gloves were developed by Dan Phiffer and Mushon Zer-Aviv part of the ITP - NYU’s Interactive Telecommunication Program. They have developed a pair of 'Atlas Gloves'. The gloves are a DIY physical interface for controlling 3D mapping applications like Google Earth. The user interface is based around a pair of illuminating gloves that can be used to track intuitive hand gestures like grabbing, pulling, reaching and rotating. The Atlas Glove website has a video of the interface in action as well as details on how to build you own from a pair of ping pong balls, led lights and a webcam.

P O R T A B L E P A L A C E: camera lucida

2007-01-18T18:05:00.000+01:00

V2 presents Camera Lucida: Sonochemical Observatory
By Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand

Thursday 25 January until Saturday 3 February, 2007

"Camera Lucida" is an immersive spatial art work creating a fleeting ephemeral materiality by intersecting ultrasound with hyperlight … in essence creating an unstable sonic aurora. Developed in collaboration with numerous physics research labs the 'observatory', a transparent gas-filled chamber, converts sound waves into visible light by employing a phenomenon known as sonoluminescence. Here, gaseous micro-bubbles injected within a fluid medium are blasted with ultrasound causing them to implode, at which point they become as hot as the sun and release light energy in the form of sound waves. By modulating, or 'playing' the ultrasonic transducers attached to the glass chamber an ever-changing sonochemical environment, visible only within a sheath of extreme darkness, emerges.

Belarussian/American artist duo Evelina Domnitch and Dmitry Gelfand’s practice creates cross-disciplinary art works that integrates physics, chemistry and computer science with philosophical practice. With the /Camera Lucida/ they work to harness wave phenomena, both as sound and light in order to examine intrinsic questions of spatial perception and
perpetuality. Having dismissed all forms of fixative and recording media, Domnitch and Gelfand's installations exist as unstable, ever-transforming phenomena offered for observation.

http://www.portablepalace.com

First Posted by Rhizome 18.01.07

Center for Architecture New York

2007-01-17T22:30:00.000+01:00

Interactive light installation

January 12 — March 10, 2007
Visual Echo
Gallery: Gerald D. Hines Gallery

This interactive light installation acts as a meandering ribbon of light by remembering the colors visitors wear. While also recording the rhythm and frequency of visitors, the ribbon transforms the viewer's perception of space. Using cutting edge LED tiles, this work by Jason Bruges Studio demonstrates exciting new potentials and questions how light, space and color can interrelate in architectural space.
Organized by: The AIA New York Chapter in partnership with the Illuminating Engineering Society, New York Section (IESNY), the International Committee AIA New York Chapter, and the Royal Society of the Arts

Exhibition Underwriters:
Color Kinetics, SKYY 90

Interactive waterfall: Charles Forman

2007-01-14T22:58:00.000+01:00

"The visuals in a space affect the mood. The form can affect behavior and attention. Personally, being a minimalist, I don't care much for paintings on the wall. I think that space should be functional and it should serve an effective purpose.

In this case, a new children's hospital contracted some visual displays to be built. The lobby of the hospital is very open and white, lit by phasing colors on the arced ceilings and walls. To the left is a very thin waterfall running over a display. The thought was that the display under the waterfall was a perfect opportunity to create an interactive toy for children.

At first, the display was supposed to be an array of high definition plasmas. However, due to budgetary restrictions, a more cost effective display consisting of 3-inch by 3-inch bright 30-bit pixels was purchased. Obviously, the resolution was much less than that of an array of plasmas. In fact, the resolution in this case was 15X55 pixels. However, I was really excited about it.

Because the display was so low resolution, the limitations dictated that the visuals be simple and ambient. This was interesting because the display could not be thought of as a computer display, but more like simple wallpaper, or animating bathroom tiles.

Interaction-wise, it was thought that people should be able to affect the visuals of the display by their movement directly in front of the waterfall. This was done with an overhead infrared camera that measured the changes in people's movements. When people move in front of the display, something happens on the display.

Because of the aesthetics of the space, the container of the display itself, and the visual resolution limitations of the display, a ripple-tank seemed like a perfect application/toy. As people move in front of the display, they affect the location of ripples of virtual water colors. The more they move, the faster the colors phase, encouraging children to be more active and playful. When there is no or little activity in front of the waterfall, the display phases simple rainbow colors and ripples lightly. It becomes a nice wall piece that blends into the space and is active only when you engage it. The interactive application is simple and effective.

The framework of the system was built so that multiple applications can be developed and run on the displays. Future application ideas include defined games, body painting, gaseous form manipulation, interactive agents, etc.

The project was produced with MVMT [http://www.mvmt.us]. The display units were Versa Tiles created by Element Labs [http://www.elementlabs.com]. The project was produced for Hackensack University Medical Center, Children's Center, New Jersey [20 Prospect Ave., Hackensack, NJ, 07601]."

Charles Forman // Media Artist

Vibrating vest could send alerts to soldiers

2007-01-13T19:11:00.000+01:00

A wirelessly controlled tactile display, consisting of a 4 × 4 array of vibrating motors that is mounted on a waist band or on the forearm. this tactile display can be used as a navigation aid outdoors, as experiments have proved that 8 different vibrotactile patterns can be interpreted as directional (e.g. stop, look left, run, proceed faster or proceed slower) or instructional cues (e.g. "raise arm horizontally", "raise arm vertically", "hop") with almost perfect accuracy.

- tech - 03 January 2007 - New Scientist Tech