Sfera, something I'll need monday...

By Hayat Benchenaa (with Garikoitz Iruretagoiena)
The Sfera is a radio alarm clock which hangs above your bed and wakes you in the morning by forcing you physically to get out of bed. When you set the alarm, the glowing Sfera gradually dims and the music gently fades out as you drift off to sleep. When the alarm chimes in the morning, the only way to silence it is to reach up and gently tap the Sfera. This action initiates the snooze function, but it also makes the Sfera rise above your head towards the ceiling. As it slowly rises away from your reach, you must stretch higher each time to gain another ten minutes of snooze. When it reaches the ceiling, you have no option but to reach for it and drag it back down to your bed – an action which switches off the alarm and forces you finally to get up.

levitated.net

Levitated.net contains visual poetry and science fun narrated in an object oriented graphic environment. The sketches and applications generated as a byproduct of research are provided online as open source Flash modules. These pages are attempting to fasten a usable structure around a continually evolving computational ecology, so that it may be observed and enjoyed by participants of the network.

For people who'd like to learn about Action Script or who are interested in evolving progammed system, it is a very good website to visit. For those who just want to have look... don't worry it is allowed too.

Pissoir

In a gallery, an urinal is sensitised to allow participants (both male & female) to draw using their urine. The resulting drawings are displayed in real-time in the gallery space, then automatically uploaded onto the internet.

The work Pissoir celebrates the private, intimate, DIY act of pissing as a creative activity. This work provides all participants with a virtual canvas, giving them the opportunity to draw/paint their own works of art. Urine incident upon a sensor is sampled for its unique pH level; thus each participant leaves his/her own colour pH signature. In addition to the installation apparatus, the artists provide a small device to assist women in urinating precisely.

Pissoir, by Allan Giddy & Steven Greenwoood, embodies the DIY culture in its most intimate & naive form.

Design by animals

Front is a group of 4 designers, Sofia Lagerkwist, Charlotte von der Lancken, Anna Lindgren and Katja Sävström located in Stockholm. They have a very interest approach of design. In their series "Design by animals" they asked animals to help them designing objects. And lucky they are, because they answered "Sure we'll help you'. So the 4 girls asked the animals to make something nice and so they did.
Rat Wallpapers: Rats have gawned on rolls of wallpaper. The holes compose a repetitive pattern that shows piece of the old wallpaper.
Insect Table: Paths in a piece of wood made by insects from a table top pattern.

To see more of their work click here.

The funky Handydandy

The Handydandy * consists of five Media-artists from Austria (Bauch Bernhard, Gross Luc, Kirisits Nicolaj, Savicic Gordan, Waldner Florian) making music on their mobile telephones instead of using usual Music-instruments. The mobile Telephones are used only as interfaces and they are connected, via Bluetooth, to a computer network, a virtual opposite to the "human network" music-band.

The entire instrument served by the musicians, is thus divided into the mobile telephones, the Bluetooth connections and the laptops acting together over WLan. Thereby different Feedback systems on social and digital level, which are used for the compositions, develop. The selection of this configuration makes possible to use not only the movement in space as temporally akusmatic category but also to connect the powerful aesthetics of a Rock performance with the intellectual requirement of the electronic music. The Handydandy is at the same time a RocknRollband and a computer network - music group.

* The name of the Band consists of the words Handy; this is the German term for mobile telephone, and Dandy.

Categories: sound, new media