Created by created by Beetroot, PhotoBiennale- Sites is a retrospective presentation of the Photobiennale Topos festival displaying 2330 works-sites by 266 photographers from 36 countries. Toogether with developing the visual identity for the festival, the team also installed an interactive table, inviting visitors to browse the works by using a physical bright green wooden frame element and positioning it over one of  the 63 photographer names. When the visitor points at a specific presentation with the frame, a webcam installed at the top of the table, is watching the position of the frame and a Processing-Max/MSP/Jitter based software begins the slideshow of the presentation selected, projected in front of the table. This gesture responsive system is an interpretation of that massive amount of works, that groups them on an intelligent grid system, makes the visual contact with each work more feasible and attractive to any visitor.

Installation was installed at the Photography Museum of Thessaloniki.

For more work, see beetroot.gr + their blog.

Created by Joshua Noble, Chris Bierbower and Mette Lyckegaard, The Binary Counter is an interactive display and teaching tool for kids to explore the most basic building blocks of digital information: 1′s and 0′s. The team broke a byte into its 8 bits and gave each a physical and visual representation using motors and LEDs.

The Binary Counter uses movement to show the pattern of changing values for each location in the byte as the exhibit counts up. Kids watch as the card for each bit flips in front of them as they spin a large dial incrementing the decimal number on the screen. As they begin to understand the pattern, they can press corresponding buttons to change the value of each bit and see the resulting number calculated instantly.

This is a CIID Physical Computing project created under Massimo Banzi, David Gauthier and David Mellis.

Photos by Chris Bierbower

Created by Martin Bircher, “Type Case” is a low-resolution display embedded in an old printers’ type case with 125 rectangular pixels of different sizes. These are formed from the reflecting light of Processing controlled LEDs, embedded in each section of the case. Images are converted and fed to the case via arduino.

Due to the standardized fragmentation of its compartments, the density of visual information is decreased towards the objects’ centre. Viewed close by, it is nearly impossible to recognize more than a flicker – however after moving some distance away, it becomes distinguishable, that the lights and shadows give a representation of the latest headlines.

The Processing script is fetching an RSS feed of an online newspapers headlines. It stores the title and description of the ten latest entries into a variable and rendered in the serif font Caslon, which is scrolled horizontally on the top of the window. Every frame the pixels of the middle section of the scrolling text are stored in an array (1600 pixels) and displayed on the left. These pixels are then reduced to an array of 20 x 10 pixels (also on the left of the window). Since some of the compartments are the doubled or quadrupled size of the smallest units, these pixels have to be reduced again. On the biggest part of the window there is the simulation, which represents the gray scale values of each pixel of Type Case.

Project Page

Martin Bircher, born 1978 in Aarau, Switzerland, served his apprenticeship as an electrician and studied Fine Arts. In 2006 he migrated to Kouvola, Finland, where he works as a media artist and a full-time lecturer for Digital Media. The interest in his artistic work lies in combining antiquated items and cutting-edge technology in order to create objects with new purposes. (Cartes)

See also on CAN:
Parallel Image [Environment, Objects]
The Stealth Project [Environment, Objects]
Swarm Light [Inspiration, Events]

An interesting concept by this japanese team Prototype linking up 20 iPod Touches using a custom application to sync them together. Considering the price of an iPod touch, it does make is a pretty affordable multi-touch (mobile computer) display. Used in array with other touches running custom software, stripped off their corporate skin (ie remove outer enclosure), could result in some very interesting installation pieces. See movie clip below + proposal diagrams showing a very large number of them.

more on the iPod Touch Cluster

(via gizmodo)

ZOOMICA is an interactive clock app consisting of colorful digits that elegantly spin and expand revealing time. The conventional stopwatch and alarms are replaced by a fast and accurate beat counter. The hours are displayed spinning clockwise, while the minutes are shown spinning counterclockwise. Tapping changes colors and speeds up motion while sliding your finger gives you full control as if “scratching” back and forth through the visuals. Changing mode is done with a flick of the finger to either side.

Visual and graphic extravaganza that comes at $0.00 (free).

Platform: iPhone
Version: 1.0
Cost: Free
Developer: HoloGamma

Based on the idea that time is everywhere, Exquisite Clock is a clock made of numbers taken from everyday life – seen, captured and uploaded by people from all over the world. The project connects time, play and visual aesthetics. It’s about creativity, collaboration and exchange.

The exquisite clock has an online database of numbers – an exquisite database – at its core. This supplies the website and interconnected physical platforms. The online database works like a feeder that provides data to different instances of clocks in the form of the website, and installations, mobile applications, designed products and urban screens. All uploaded numbers are tagged according to a category selected by their creator, and are added to the growing database. People viewing the clock can then choose to view all types of numbers, or can make a selection to view only numbers from a specific category – a clock made of vegetables, or clouds, or garments etc.

The exquisite clock can exist as different physical installation variations, each using the numbers provided by the database. These physical installations might be LCD monitors hanging in a gallery space, tiny cellphone screens or large scale public monitors. These variations can also be reconfigured as interactive installations where users in the space also collaborate to feed images back into the database – the principle is that all instances of the exquisite clock access the single exquisite database forming a conversant network made by different perceptions of time. Already shown at a number of exhibitions, exquisite clock has taken varying shapes and sizes utilising different size monitors combined with visible circuit boards playing on the honesty of data exchange between the database and the display devices, also stripping traditional LCD computer monitors off their corporate branding shell exposing circuits boards.

To contribute to the project, take pictures of numbers, go to exquisiteclock.org click on the option upload in the main menu, choose the file you want to upload, select what number you wish to upload and tag your submission accordingly. Remember to crop and save your image following the dimensions (320 x 480), file size (120kb) and copyright restrictions described in the upload page in the website.

Through the free iPhone application clock in Submit Image, select your image from a preroll or use the camera to take a new photo. After selecting the photo select the number that refer to your picture, tag and click on submit.

This project was created and developed Joao Henrique Wilbert at FABRICA in 2008. Creative Direction: Andy Cameron.

Download the free iPhone app on:

www.exquisiteclock.org

MultiVid is a multi-screen synchronization playback solution for the iPhone and the iPodTouch. Instead of using a centralized video processor, MultiVid allows you to play videos simultaneously on a number of iPhones/iPod Touches.

Using a desktop application for both Mac and Windows you can transfer videos to the devices via WiFi and play them simultaneously. Devices are also aware of other devices running MultiVid so you can launch videos using one of the many devices. The desktop application also informs you which devices are online and which are playing what video.

Any number of MultiVid units can be synchronized. Sync accuracy is currently around 500 milliseconds and might be further improved in future versions of the software.

Currently under review at Apple, MultiVid should be available in the AppStore soon as a free download.

See videos below for more information.

MultiVid was created by Marco Tempest, magician and illusionist who uses computer-generated imagery in his performances. More about Marco..