Printball

The Printball is the latest project of Recyclism, aka Benjamin Gaulon, aka my boyfriend and DePonk. It is an inkjet printer made out of a paintball gun as a print-head. The Gun is controlled by a pan & tilt (using an Atmel Board controlled by Max/Msp).

It is a great project (and I'm not saying that because he is my boyfriend). The installation is really impressive to see it live, but you can still download the movie at Recyclism.com (in the project section --> click on video documentation) or you can click here.

Remote Furniture

Two rocking chairs are installed on the floor facing each other.The audience sees no interactions between chairs. The interaction is triggered when two people from the audience sit in the chairs and rock.
Each chair has a sensor and motor.These devices enable mutual interaction between the chairs. They allow one to feel the other's rocking action. The aim of "Remote Furniture," then, is to create direct and tactile touch.

Artist states:
I arrived at the idea by first considering the meaning of talking. Secondly, I wondered what kind of environment supports it and what kind of rules are behind it. In "Remote Furniture," two chairs facing each other represent the environment, and the type of interaction represents the rules of talking.

MonBelEngin

MonBelEngin was my first complete hardware programming... and let's be honnest the only one since. In my first year of Master degree at the Frank Mohr Institute of Groningen (NL), I've build a drawing machine out of 2 printers motors, 1 scanner, 1 floppy drive and 1 game controller... yes I've build a plotter out of junk. I decided while building it (... yeah for some practical stupid reason) that MonBelEngin would move the paper instead of having a classic plotter system, which should normally get the pen to move.
Click here to see the video (4 MB) or here for another video (2,7 MB).

Tissue

Tissue exposes the movements of autonomous software machines. Each line in the image reveals the path of each machine's movement as it responds to stimuli in its environment. People interact with the software by positioning the stimuli on the screen. Through exploring different positions of the stimuli, an understanding of the total system emerges from the subtle relations between the simple input and the resulting fluid visual output.

Casey Reas writes software to create drawings and live animated installations. His work explores the relationship between naturally evolved systems and engineered synthetic systems; often times, precise mechanical structures give birth to soft organic forms. He is also the other main developer of processing, a project which he initiated together with Ben Fry.

I just wish one day I'll be able to achieve such a high level in programming. I actually had the chance to meet him last year during the Sonic Acts X festival in Paradiso (Amsterdam). I was very surprised, because I was so impressed by his work that I thought I will meet "God" or something close to it. And he was just a nice guy doing his stuff... nothing extraordinary.... that was amazing! I just love when very talented people achieved to make you believ there is nothing extraordinary about what they're doing.

Proce55ing

Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and sound. It is used by students, artists, designers, architects, researchers, and hobbyists for learning, prototyping, and production. It is created to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context and to serve as a software sketchbook and professional production tool. Processing is developed by artists and designers as an alternative to commercial software tools in the same domain.

I've been using Processing for the 2 last years. It is a great tool . There is a strong community around to help and share their knowledge. If you want to start learning programming, this is definitely a great way to start.