Translator II

Translator II: Grower is a small 'rover' vehicle which navigates around the periphery of a room. It hugs the room's walls and responds to the carbon dioxide levels in the air by drawing varying heights of 'grass' on the walls in green ink. The Grower robot senses the carbon dioxide (CO2) level in the air via a small digital CO2 sensor. This sensor is mounted high on a wall of the exhibition space and sends data wirelessly to the robot. The number of people in an exhibit space breathing in oxygen and exhaling CO2 has an immediate effect on the sensor. The robot takes a reading of the CO2 level every few seconds and in response it draws a vertical line in green ink on the wall. The line height pertains directly to the level of CO2 (and therefore also the people traffic) in the space. The more CO2, the higher the line is drawn - the maximum height being 1ft. Once Grower completes a line, it moves forward several millimeters and repeats the process. By the end of the process the bases of all the walls in the space are covered with fine green lines which together resemble a cross-section of a field of grass.

Sabrina Raaf is a Chicago-based artist who works in both experimental sculptural media and photography. She is a producer of creative machines - machines that independently make art when cross-pollinated with human interaction

Neon Organic

Neon Organic is a project from Marius Watz, also author of the Universal Digest Machine. I urge you to have a look at his work, it is for me very inspiring.

Neon Organic is Animation for multi-screen projection (Java2D) of growing Curves, twisting and branching, forming tangled webs that resemble neuron pathways. The neon-like colors turn the shapes into explosions of light, before dissolving back into nothing.

The project was originally created for the facade of the Vattenfall head office in Chausseestr. 23, Berlin as a followup on a previous animation for the same facade. The piece opened on 27 August, and was voted the audience favorite out of 3 animations. As a result, it will run for 6 months on its own before being shown in rotation with the two others.

Since the Vattenfall show a new version has been developed for single-channel or multi-channel use.

Marius Watz is a Norwegian artist who's coming originally from the graphic design field. As an artist he's actually focusing on computationally generated form. His work has been shown at many international festivals.
More Marius Watz :
generatorx.no
unlekker.net
evolutionzone.com
processing.unlekker.net
playpuppy.com

Brainball

From Smart Studio
Brainball is a game that goes against the conventional competitive concept, and also reinvents the relationship between man and machine. Instead of activity and adrenalin, it is passivity and calmness that mark the truly successful Brainball player. Brainball is unique amongst machines since it is not controlled by the player's rational and strategic thoughts and decisions. On the contrary, the participants are dependent on the body's own intuitive reactions to the game machine.

At first glance, Brainball seems similar to a traditional two player game - two people challenge one and other and take their respective positions at each end of a table that is laid out with two goals and a little ball. The rest of the game's equipment is more special. Both players wear a strap around their forehead that contains electrodes and is wired up to a biosensor system. This system, that is used to measure the body's biological signals, is tightly fastened to the frontal lobes and registers the electrical activity in the brain - so called EEG (electro encephalo gram). The players brain activity is graphed in a diagram on a computer screen so that the public can easily follow the players mental processes during the match.

The brain waves that move the ball forward, increasing the chance of victory, are called alpha and theta waves. They are generated in the brain when one is calm and relaxed. A considerably stressed player will therefore lose. The matches outcome is rarely obvious since the transition between calm and stress, and vice versa, can occur quickly. Often, the ball will roll backwards and forwards for a few minutes before the game is concluded. In this way, Brainball is an exciting and social game where the audience can follow the match by watching the ball on the table, the graph on the screens and the more or less relaxed expressions of the players.

Click here to find out about the commercialized version.

aqueous by Zai

Aqueous is a meditative space that encourages perception of small things.

On entering the installation, one initially sees faint lights but as the eyes adjust to the darkness, glows of light on the ceiling and watery sounds gradually become noticable. The installation presents itself differently depending on amount of the time spent in it as well as number of people present.

Water droplets fall from the ceiling through the installation space into 25 water-filled tubes that are approximately tuned in an equal-temperament scale spanning two octaves. Each tube sits inside a water vessel to collect excess water and is lit from the bottom by an LED, creating a glow of light in the ceiling that shimmers and flickers when the water surface is distorted. The release of droplets is hidden above the ceiling, allowing the ceiling to act as a canvas.

The actuation of the droplets is controlled by a computer program, whose algorithm constructs note sequences that resemble noise at times and music at other times. The installation is imbued with musicality through the use of rhythmic and tonal structure. But because of the physics of the installation, the volume and timbre of each drop vary since the droplets do not always fall in the same exact location. Perturbations during droplet formation, atmospheric disturbances and water surface conditions inside the tube all affect the nature of the resultant sound. The chance occurrence in aqueous is a combination of computed randomness and nature.

Day Six

"Day six" an interactive installation created by Masamichi Udagawa and Sigi Moeslinger of Antenna Design."Day six" is an object activated by the visitor's breath, which plays on the creation myth. Visitors are invited to breathe various randomly selected qualities into their own image via a pair of abstracted nostrils of a mirror. When blowing, one can watch oneself exhaling and inhaling a swarm of images representing qualities such as youth or beauty.

Asamichi Udagawa and Sigi Moeslinger have also developed "blowing gently…". It is a reflection on the ephemeral nature of daydreaming. The memory of a nostalgic childhood trinket, a soap bubble, serves as the inspiration for the central interface, provoking the subtle action of blowing. Visitors become an integral part of the installation, as it is their breathing which unfolds a chain of visual events. By blowing at different lengths and intensities, visitors create and inflate male and female creatures, which subsequently seems to float off into space. Each creature has an individual behavior which causes different reactions when colliding with one another. Eventually all creatures fade away and disappear into a void.

RemoteHome

O.K it's not a new project at all. But it's good to remember great ideas... and it's a way for me to be sure I won't loose the bookmark again.

The RemoteHome is a communication system that connects homes in two different cities. Tobi Schneidler, who developped the project, describes the project as “a home that stretches beyond borders and helps friends to stay in touch, literally, through tangible and sensual communication.” Discreet sensors are placed in objects around the house and transmit messages to users at the other end through the Internet. He explains, “These messages subsequently surface on the opposite end as tactile and visual cues on furniture and other physical surfaces.” For instance, “ambient scribbles” on an interactive light table will affect a wall of lights placed in the alternate apartment.

In 2003, apartment models were set up simultaneously at the Science Museum in London and at the Raumlabor in Berlin. At these exhibitions, distant audiences were able to interact with each other in real time. The audiences liked the idea of being connected and “appreciated that communication is built into the tactility of objects instead of through intrusive items such as video walls or cameras.”

In time, Tobi Schneidler expects that the residents of the RemoteHome will begin to recognize the nuances in the signals sent back and forth. “The artifacts respond to the way they are used,” he explains. “The devices react to a combination of different effects and are not simply an on/off transmission.” For instance, the force with which one resident sits on the couch in one apartment will be able to be felt and interpreted by a resident on the couch in the other apartment.

Source: Randi Greenberg

Coco Rosie

I just came back from a concert at Whelans (Dublin) and I'm so happy-excited about what I've seen I just neede to share it. Coco Rosie was on stage tonight and it was just briliant, refreshing, amazing!
Some would say Bianca's voice sounds like a cross between Beth Gibbons from Portishead and Billie Holliday after a long night of drinking and crying. Sierra's opera-trained voice soars in the background as an eerie counterpoint to the spacious piano and harp melodies. The music is as soothing as a lullaby and as challenging as a modern art exhibit."
I would say ther's no word to describe precisely how you feel after such experience... you just have to see it.

www + object = netObject

I always thought I'd like to create an object (or at least have one) that unable me to surf on the internet, and which wouldn't be a computer. I'm dreaming about any support (wall, clothes, piece of paper, desktop...) transforming itself in a web browser... and I found what I was looking for.

netObjects speculate with eight fictional characters fascinated (or maybe obsessed) with different types of content. netObjects are designed for them, as stereotypes of media consumers. The collection reappropiates everyday objects for the home that present real time information from the web: archetypes whichrelate to the content they embody. netObjects are intended as real products for today, for everyday use by people who seldom get online through the computer screen. They propose an alternative way to enjoy online content at home. The collection has been conceived as an attempt to question the role of networked appliances in the domestic environment.

Exhibition consists of eight interactive prototypes, eight photographs, and a video with testimonials of the eight characters of this story. The project was developed by Hector Serrano.

Aperture

aperture is a facade installation with interactive and narrative displaying modes. Consisting of an iris diaphragm matrix, the facade's surface with its apertures' variable opening diameters is enriched by a dynamic translucency, that creates new imagery as well as a new channel for communication between inside and outside.

Analogously to the process of taking a photograph, people standing in front of the wall are exposed to the aperture grid, just like to photographic film. The duration of the image fading out, as the apertures close, is itself a reflection of how long a person has been standing in front of aperture.

Reminiscent of motion photography as initially developped by Eadward Muybridge, the single phases of a movement—a person walking along the intelligent surface—the single phases of the movement are captured and displayed by aperture.

City Gaze

For a period of 18 month media installation SPOTS will convert an office block located at downtown Potsdamer Platz Berlin into one of world´s largest media facades. Commissioned by the agency »Café Palermo Pubblicità« the large scale matrix made up of 1800 conventional fluorescent lights was designed by the architect/ artist office realities:united, Berlin for the client HVB Immobilien AG
‘City Gaze’ (Die Stadt hat Augen) is an exhibition that pursues a unique concept. An office building on Potsdamer Platz is being transformed into a seeing object. From 24 November to 28 February 2006, SPOTS, a light and media installation that has been integrated into the building’s facade, will be presenting new works by internationally renowned artists that have been created especially for this location and this medium. The show will launch with a work from Berlin-based artists and architects realities:united – who also have overall responsibility for the development of the light and media facade – in collaboration with the artist John deKron.

Definitely something you have to see, if you're lucky enough to live in Berlin.

Collabolla

Collabolla (by Jennifer Bove, Simone Pia and Nathan Waterhouse) is the first videogame where you have to sit astride a big inflatable ball (like the "Spacehopper" balls that were popular in the '70s) to send commands to the computer through your body movements. Another novelty is that the two players don't play against each other but co-ordinate with each other to combat a common enemy. That's how it gets its name ‘Collabolla’ - expressing a spirit of collaboration rather than competition.
(photo: Walter Aprile)