I/O Brush

I/O Brush is a project from the Tangible Media group's at MIT Media Lab. The Tangible Media group's focuses on the design of seamless interfaces between humans, digital information, and the physical environment.
I/O Brush is a new drawing tool to explore colors, textures, and movements found in everyday materials by "picking up" and drawing with them. I/O Brush looks like a regular physical paintbrush but has a small video camera with lights and touch sensors embedded inside. Outside of the drawing canvas, the brush can pick up color, texture, and movement of a brushed surface. On the canvas, artists can draw with the special "ink" they just picked up from their immediate environment.

Tickle Salon

When a human being is gently stroking someones back, sooner or later tiredness and slackening will appear. Therefore Erwin Driessen & Maria Verstappen have developed Tickle Salon: a robotic installation based on the concept of automated stroking. A machine that is able to stroke you with an indefatigable attention and subtleness.
Tickle Salon is an installation that roughly consists of three parts: A robot attached to the ceiling, a bed standing on the floor and a human being lying on the bed.
The robot uses a suspended probe to grope and feel the surface underneath. Gradually, the robot develops an image of the body that is lying on the bed. Using its imagination, the robot is able to execute sensitive movements over the skin surface. It aims to be smart, smooth and unpredictable.
In the room, a human being is lying on a bed. In between the bed and the ceiling, a suspended feeler is attached to four threads. The feeler can be moved around freely by varying the length of the four threads. This is achieved by computer controlled stepper motors that wind and unwind the treads. The feeler can reach any position in three-dimensional space, in between the bed and the ceiling. At each moment in time, the feeler knows exactly where it is.

I actually never had the chance to try the machine. But it is something I would like to experience. I've met the artists who've done the project, they're a very nice couple, open and inspiring people. If you want to know more about the rest of their project you can visit here.

Have-A-Seat

Have-A-Seat is an interactive art installation addressing the issue of the need for personal space and public territory in public space.
Have-A-Seat is a seemingly normal sofa that deals with the behavioural patterns that arise when people in a public space try to create some personal space around them. Have-A-Seat emphasises these behaviours by enlarging the natural reaction of persons when two strangers sit down next to each other. At the same time the installation gives the users their desired personal space and so raising awareness of this unconscious desire of the users.

Have-A-Seat makes the participant and the viewer aware of the fact that two strangers are almost always looking for a distance between them. The sofa confronts the persons with their unconscious need and fulfills it at the same time. As soon as there are two persons sitting on the sofa the sofa 'breaks' apart and the two seats ride away from each other. As soon as one person leaves the sofa the two seats will come together and again form a seemingly normal sofa.

Have-A-Seat is created by Michiel Stade, Sylvain Vriens and Mika Igarashi.

Brix by Hehe

HeHe is a collective and a non-profit making organisation for production, founded in France by Helen Evans (United Kingdom, 1972) & Heiko Hansen (Germany, 1970).

Brix is a project composed of a wall of 'virtual' bricks and a camera that sees what is happening in front of the wall. When one puts a hand onto the active part of the installation (the eye of the camera), the surface reflects the image captured by the camera, in as many rectangular pixels. The image of the inter-actor slips onto the wall and after a few seconds, freezes as a photograph. Clever Brix, still under development, prefigures a new form of palimpsestual electronic architecture.