The City of Lille (FR) commissioned the Rotterdam studio of media artist, architect and 2009 Dutch Design Price winner Daan Roosegaarde to build Lotus Dome (2011-2012), an upcoming living aluminum foil structure that ‘blooms’ in response to touch and warmth. A “futuristic view on the Renaissance”, Lotus Dome merges elements of architecture and nature into an interactive experience. Or, as the artist often refers to his work, “techno-poetry” – boom

Continue reading.... Lotus Dome [Objects]

[Photo: Anne Helmond]

Crackle-canvas is an ongoing electronics project of the Netherlands-based media artist Tom Verbruggen (aka token). This endeavour playfully challenges the conventions of artistic consumption by reimagining gallery space as an interactive musical playground rather than an arena of sullen observation. Each Crackle-canvasis a modular ‘synthesizer painting’ equipped with switches and knobs that allow rudimentary control over the sound generated by the device. While these objects can be played individually, things get considerably more interesting when they are patched together into a collaborative cacaphony. Verbruggen has developed several iterations of these devices that range from stark white minimalist surfaces to more colourful, user-friendly controllers complete with graphic prompts for novice operators. While there is an abundance of video documentation of the artist performing on arrays of these controllers, the work is most interesting when there is are participants involved – the above image from a recent exhibit in Paris speaks to the type of engagement these objects engender.

Continue reading.... Crackle Canvas [Environment, Sound]

It’s that time of the year when we slowly begin wrapping up the 2011. Before we say goodbye, lets take a quick moment to look back at some of the best and most memorable projects of 2011. There is no mechanism in deciding these and neither-nor all projects here are spectacular and magnificent but instead we feel they offer a brief insight and a form of introduction to what may lie ahead.

10. MIT Media Lab identity [Processing]

In 2010 MIT Media Lab approached TheGreenEyl and E Roon Kang to update their identity for the lab’s 25th anniversary. The team developed an algorithmic logo using Processing in an effort to capture the dynamism and diversity of the MIT Media Lab. The invisible grid around which different things happen symbolizes the environment the MIT Media Lab provides, academically, physically and intellectually.

9. Tele-Present Water [Arduino, MaxMSP]

Created by David Bowen, Tele-Present Water installation draws information from the intensity and movement of the water in a remote location. The wave intensity and frequency is scaled and transferred to the mechanical grid structure resulting in a simulation of the physical effects caused by the movement of water from this distant location. Elegance and ephemerality of data beautifully staged by David Bowen.

8. ExtraFile File Formats [Mac]

In the world populated by file formats and continued fight over ownership, open source and value of data, Kim Asendorf created ExtraFile, a conceptional software with practical usage. It’s main intention is to offer an alternative to the static system of image file formats. It is also an attempt to address an alternative image file format, a piece of art, far away from the mainstream and commercial standards.

7. Ping! Augmented Pixel

In the decade when videogames were born, everything virtual looked like rectangular blocks. From today’s perspective, the representation of a tennis court in the earliest videogames is hard to distinguish from a soccer or a basketball field. ‘PING! – Augmented Pixel’ is a videogame by Niklas Roy and one of the very few augmented reality projects that really explores the space between physical and digital. Niklas built a custom piece of hardware the intersects the signal between the video camera and television, inserting a classic style Pong game that you control using a finger positioned between the two mediums. Simplicity and ingenuity at it’s best.

6. Little Printer [Objects]

2011 wil be remembered as the year of thermal printers. Just as we have forgotten about the tech, a wave of projects have spread across the web. One that especially stands out is the Little Printer by BERG and giving us an “alternative” insight into how we may interact with digital information int he future. Little Printer may live in your home, bringing you news, puzzles and gossip from friends. Use your smartphone to set up subscriptions and Little Printer will gather them together to create a timely mini-newspaper.

5. Written Images [openFrameworks, Processing]

Although first launched in 2010, Written Images book finally landed on our desks, in it’s full glory it’s an unique artifact, printed in very limited numbers, is the first of it’s kind – a ‘programmed book’. Created in collaboration with more than 70 media artists and developers from across the world, Written Images is continuously regenerated for the digital printing process, offering each reader a unique experience. Each artist programed an image creating application that is generated for each print of the book.

4. Cascade [Processing]

Cascade is a by NYTimes R&D department that allows precise analysis of the structures that underly sharing activity on the web. Initiated by Mark Hansen and working with Jer Thorp and Jake Porway (Data Scientist at the Times) the team spent 6 months building the tool to understand how information propagates through the social media space. While initially applied to New York Times stories and information, the tool and its underlying logic may be applied to any publisher or brand interested in understanding how its messages are shared.

3. Particles [openFrameworks, Arduino, Events]

Particles was an installation by Daito Manabe and Motoi Ishibashi exhibited at the Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media [YCAM]. The installation centers around a spiral-shaped rail construction on which a number of balls with built-in LEDs and xbee transmitters are rolling while blinking in different time intervals. The idea was driven by simple desire to both understand and represent particle behaviour in physical form. Besides the sheer complexity of the structure installed, the position of each ball is determined via total of 17 control points on the rail. Every time a ball passes through one of them, the respective ball’ s positional information is transmitted via a built-in infrared sensor. During the time the ball travels between one control points to the next, this position is calculated based on its average speed. The data for regulating the balls’ luminescence are divided by the control point segments and are switched every time a ball passes on a control point. Fantastic work Daito + Motoi!

2. Communion [Cinder]

Earlier this year on show at the La Gaîté Lyrique in Paris and created by Universal Everything with FIELD, Communion is a room sized installation creating almost a 360º environment. The final piece includes an array or evolving creatures going through stages of development – evolution from simple to complex with human like properties with generative behaviours, deeply immersive and “a celebration of an audio visual synesthetic experience”. Read our special.

1. Solar Sinter [Objects, Arduino]

Solar Sinter by Markus Kayser is most definitely one of the most inspiring projects this year, aiming to raise questions about, energy and manufacturing. Markus designed a 3d printed that uses solar rays and silicia and heated sand to solidify it as glass in any shape or form. A combination of Arduino, ReplicatorG software, laptop computer and a bunch of custom made components, Markus took the printer to Sahara desert near Siwa, Egypt, for a two week testing period. CAN is proud to be the first to write about the project, the video on Vimeo now measures almost a million views.

Last year, onedotzero approached Joanie Lemercier of AntiVJ to be part of one of their event, a festival they organised at empac, upstate New York, with a selection of screenings, installations and live performances. The installation, now on show at the China Millennium Monument Museum of Digital Arts onedotzero event, has received fantastic feedback and high acclaim. Just as the team published video describing the project (above), we asked Joanie few questions about the installation.

Joanie: The original plan was to fly to empac to do a 3 weeks residency, to develop a new project from scratch, which would involve projection mapping onto objects, a sound track by minimal techno producer Sleeparchive, and potentially a live performance on the day of the opening. As the video explains, the original idea and schedule felt apart when the volcano erupted, and the 3 weeks long residency turned into just 5 days on site, to setup the installation and prepare a live performance…

Continue reading.... EYJAFJALLAJÖKULL [vvvv, Events, Environment, Inspiration]

Created by André Rangel and Anne-Kathrin Siegel, Syndyn is a physical game but also a visual environment where the players control all the audiovisual events that occur in the space/time of the game. They perform a live show and simultaneously produce a database of light drawn images.

The space where the event takes place is colored with light which is controlled by players movements. Their rackets and arms are decorated with electro luminescent wire and the shuttlecock (speeder) with a bright LED, providing vivid dynamic scenic effects.

In the beginning of each game, users choose on an iPod ™ touch device a soundscape associated with visuals and colors for the ambience lighting system. Syndyn rackets are equipped with sensors that detect each hit of the speeder. A radio transmitter system broadcasts the sensors data to the central processing unit (computer). The hits on the rackets are accompanied by synchronous real-time synthesized sounds, by an instant change in the ambience light color according to the previous players choices and by real time generated visuals.

In addition to this real-time audiovisual response, players can also take a visual memory of their game. A long exposure photographic camera covers the playing area. This camera registers the traces that represent the trajectories and movements of the lighting speeder, the lighting racquets and the lighting arms. The resulting drawings of light, can be automatically printed with photographic quality paper and offer to players. These images are automatically stored in a database that feeds a web photo gallery.

Literally the possibility of drawing with this game, gives Syndyn its original and innovative character: being simultaneously an artistic, sports, and entertainment event that merges aesthetics, physical activity, technology and entertainment.

via gamescenes.org

“feelSpace” is a research project undertaken by students at the University of Osnabrück’s Institute of Cognitive Science, supervised by Prof.Dr. Peter König. The project is based on the fascinating notion that the human brain is flexible enough to ‘learn’ a new sense.

The work conducted by the team at Osnabrück relies on the familiarity gained by long-term exposure to an artificial stimulus. To become assimilated into perceptual experience, the sensations provided by this stimulus need to relate in some way to the way we engage with our environment. For their experiments, they therefore chose to focus on navigation and in particular the orientation of the body with respect to the Earth’s magnetic field.

As recently featured in the BBCs Horizon documentary ‘Is Seeing Believing’ (see below), the “feelSpace” scientists created a belt that contained an array of vibration devices similar to those used in mobile phones. A built-in electronic compass identifies north and triggers the vibrator which is facing in the appropriate direction. In this way the person wearing the belt is provided with a constant tactile sense of the direction in which they are facing.

(video viewable in the UK only – iPlayer)

Udo Wächter, who wore the belt for six weeks, reported a shift in his perception and found that he began to intuitively navigate by this artificial sense. The implication is that given an appropriate device we might develop the ability to sense all kinds of environmental data currently outside our experience. We might, as Sunny Bains describes it, ”feel electromagnetic fields or hear ultrasound.”

Project Page

See also…
Dr Saski Nagel, ‘Beyond sensory substitution—learning the sixth sense’, Journal of Neural Engineering, Vol.2, No.4
Sunny Bains, ‘Mixed Feelings’, Wired Magazine, March 2007

Created for Converse’s 2010 Summer campaign by Super Nature Design, “Me Wonderland” is an art installation that uses Arduino as a physical interface to control a series of light sequences and sound sensor for user interaction.

ME allows us to escape our reality just in the moment of time. It illustrates the moment of what we were passionate about and our childhood discoveries. This sound and light installation expresses our self-discoveries and explorations in the world of our imagination which always brings us back to the memory lane of our childhood. The objects we used to play, the best moment we used to experience and the best childhood memory we are having have given us the whole fantasy and ideology of Wonderland.

Project Page
+more on converse.com.cn

Super Nature Design is a Shanghai-based multi-discipline new media studio. It specialises in interactive design, visual communication & media technology. It takes on challenges through experimentations in new media and physical computing.

Created by Sputnic, RACER is an analogue recreation of a computer racing game in the style of the classic WipeOut. The actions of the arcade player are directly reflected by the remote controlled model car in the level.
Live video image from the car’s perspective  is sent back to the arcade. It consists of a modified vintage arcade machine, a RC model car with a wireless camera, and a self-constructed racetrack/game level made entirely from cardboard.

The car is a 1:28 model as you get them in the shops. The only modification is a plate to carry camera and lights. On the arcade side there is a basic arduino microcontroller, the remote is controlled by a different controller, both communicate via a serial cable. One part of the job is to help out when the car crashes. Arcade and track are setup in seperate rooms. The installation is highly modular and can be set up in about three hours.

This project needs our help to continue. Please donate as low as €5.00 here.

racer.sputnic.tv

[via boingboing]

Niu Miao and Nicholas Hanna met while they were working at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. The idea developed from an earlier project, “Candle Stool”, by Niu Miao which explored an inverse relationship between a light-bulb and a candle.

In this installation the light from a candle is a continuously variable field that emanates from a point outward. The team enclosed a candle in a box covered with sensors. The sensors sample the light from the candle and are connected to corresponding cold-cathode light tubes in the space behind the box. At any given moment, a three dimensional cross section of the light from the candle is detected by the sensors and then amplified to fill the space of the room. The sensors invert the scenario where the shadow from the candle is translated into light in the room. This allows users to “create light” by moving their hands around the candle.

The artists designed a sensor element that embeds a photoresistor and electro-mechanical relay with a voltage comparison circuit. Nicholas writes that it allows for an extremely fast reaction time to changes in light from the candle and a fluid interactive experience. More than 3 km of wire, 182 sensors and a corresponding number of light tubes were used to complete the piece. See video.

For more information on the project, see nicholashanna.net

(via TriangulationBlog)

Augmented Shadow is a design experiment producing an artificial shadow effect through the use of tangible objects, blocks, on a displayable tabletop interface. The project plays on the fact that shadows present distorted silhouettes depending on the light. Augmented Shadows take the distortion effect into the realm of fantasy. Shadows display below the objects according to the physics of the real world. However, the shadows themselves transform the objects into houses, occupied by shadow creatures. By moving the blocks around the table the user sets off series of reactions within this new fantasy ecosystem.

This experiment brings augmented reality to the tabletop by way of a tangible interface. The shadow effect is an ‘interface metaphor.’ Second, the unexpected user experience results from manipulating the users’ visual perceptions, expectations, and imagination to inspire re-perception and new understanding. Therefore, users can play with the shadows lying on the boundary between the real, virtual, and fantasy.

The installation consists of a set of tangible cubes on a table with a displayable top surface. On the top surface of the table, a rear projection screen under an acrylic panel is installed. Under the table, IR light, IR camera, a computer, and a projector are installed. openFrameworks was used.

For more prototypes of the project, see here and for sketches see here.

Augmented Shadow was created by Joon Y. Moon, a programmer, designer who is exploring the realm of interaction, generative code and motion design on a basis of visual communication design. The project is a thesis project at the Parsons The New School for Design - Download .doc.

Credits include Katherine Moriwaki, Louisa Campbell, Marko Tandefelt, Loretta Wolozin, Zachary Lieberman, Anezka Sebek, Nick Hardeman, Stephen Varga, Uros Otasevic, Jenny Tsai, Yongsub Song, Namsoo.

(via @theowatson aka http://theowatson.com)