Solyaris by Beat Raess is an “exploration into organic information design to visualise movies, actors, directors and their relationship”. The application for iPad made in Cinder allows you to search the entire Open Movie Database (TMDb) collection for movies, actors or directors. Expand nodes to gather information about their connections. Learn about the cast and filmography.

Continue reading.... Solyaris [iPad, Cinder]

Visual Complexity is a site maintained by Manuel Lima which collects projects that deal with complexity in information. Not always about communicating clarity the site’s predominant focus was acknowledging beauty that exists in complex representation of information and data. Within a year of it’s launch, Visual Complexity began to attract large readership, following closely every post were thousands of readers, often reblogged and quoted. Manuel became a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, nominated by Creativity magazine as “one of the 50 most creative and influential minds of 2009″ and prior to becoming Senior UX Design Lead at Microsoft Bing he has worked as a Senior User Experience Designer at Nokia and Senior Interaction Designer at the leading digital agency R/GA. He has also spoken about information visualization at numerous events such as TED, Lift, OFFF, Reboot, VizThink, IxDA Interaction, Royal College of Art and others.

The book Visual Complexity: Mapping Patterns of Information is Manuel’s voyage of trying reveal patterns that exists amongst designers, researches and scientist that employ innovative mixes of colour, symbols, graphics, algorithms and interactivity in a attempt to clarify and often beautifully, what would otherwise be a clutter of data. 

Continue reading.... Visual Complexity: Mapping Patterns of Information [Books]

In addition to Dromolux we wrote about few months back, Ludwig Zeller has just completed two new pieces as shown at this years RCA Design Interactions end of year show. These pieces, part of the “New Needs in an Augmented World” collection, are Introspectre and Optocoupler. They are a series of products designed for a speculative future information society where one finds it difficult to consume information.

Optocoupler

The purpose of this device is to relax the user’s mind and to get away with restless thoughts. Designed as an isolation chamber, the OPTOCOUPLER shows a light stimulation at a frequency that matches the beta waves of the brain. The more intense the external stimulus the more likely the brain will adapt to it.

In a world of increasing bandwidths and communication we all face the necessity to process more information. But the human evolution is developing much slower than the speed growth of our information technology. Where the DROMOLUX device was helping seniors in the futures to maintain or increase their cognitive ability – something that will be painful to loose for them – the OPTOCOUPLER is designed to help to relax one’s mind. For instance after a day full of information processing.

The device uses an array of 3×3 RGB LED matrices and 9 Rainbowduinos. The original firmware has been hacked by Ludwig and David Chatting, with initial hints and code from the great Rainbowduino wizards neophob and Scott Christopher. The box features a headphone socket in order to use additional auditive signals as well.

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Introspectre

Recognising the problem of focusing when we do things, with Introspectre Ludwig explores our habits of dealing with information in the form of hypertext associations, instant gratification through search engines and permanent access to these. This device is also using neuro-feedback, but not to calm down, but in order to help its user to focus on a task. An EEG headset picks up the brainwaves, which are then analysed for the degree of attention that the user is paying at any moment. This data is then sonified and played back through a speaker that is meant to be sitting next to its user as a desktop device.

Ludwig was building from earlier work from the ITP in New York. They found out that the toy headset “MindFlex” by Mattel features an EEG amplifier/processor IC by NeuroSky that is identical to a developer version they sell, but much cheaper. That headset can be read via serial quite easily, so I was able to get its attention data into Max/MSP.

Also important to mention that these prototypes were developed to a point where the concept can be experienced in an interesting way. His main focus is to speculate about scenarios of future information societies, so the objects are meant to be visualisations of these ideas, not actual scientific proposals.

For more information see ludwigzeller.de/project/new-needs

Dromolux:

Beta is a fictional prototype by Lukas Franciszkiewicz addressing media influence and the decision making shift from individual to computer. Lukas divides interaction with the computer into three needs: finding and consuming information, the use of communication and mediation, and the automation of processes. The three objects represent these, handing over decision making to the computer in the particular sphere of operation. In addition, the objects plays a part in this relationship, how it’s interacted with and the primitive instincts it promotes.

If we assume that the amount of information we feed into the grid, the computer increasingly carries more power of decision, we give up control of the technology. Output, input and process are the functions of the object and refer to the formal characteristics of the blocks. The reduction of concrete and transparent structures constitutes the possibility of the occurrence of this relationship. Motivated human irritation open the demand for a change of perspective and awareness to make restrictions. The physical change of the screen is both a break and brings with it new freedoms, but offered only a replacement of one paradigm against the other.

The project film will be exhibited at the “Körpersichten” Exhibition from 01.06. – 24.06.2011 in Kiel (www.muthesius.de).

Project Page

See also We Play Bodies [Inspiration, Objects] – ‘Behaviouristics Test Lab …

Bestiario, a Barcelona Spain based start-up, has been exploring new interactive visualization paradigms over the past 5 years. The result of this effort is the creation of IMPURE, a visual programming language aimed to gather, process and visualize information.

With impure is possible to obtain information from very different sources; from user owned data to diverse feeds in internet, including social media data, real time or historical financial information, images, news, search queries and many more. Impure is a tool to be in touch with data around internet, to deeply understand it. Within a modular logic interface you can quickly link information to operators, controls and visualization methods, bringing all the power of the comprehension of information and knowledge to the not programmers that want to work with information in a professional way.

Infosthetics explain the event-based development structure consisting of 5 modules.
1. Data Structures, which hold data coming from a data source (e.g., Number, String, List, etc.).
2. Operators, which have 1 or more receptors that enable the system to perform a specific operation (e.g., addition or subtraction).
3. Controls, which act as dynamic filters (e.g., interval selectors).
4. Visualizators, which receive data structures from operators or controls and visualize it. They usually return emitters on selected visual objects that can be used as input into another module.
5. APIs: Allows real-time communication with information sources such as Google, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Delicious, Ebay, etc.

Impure is a web application. Current version: alpha 0.9. See more screenshots of the user interface, and some resulting data visualizations. Impure is still in private alpha version so account creation will be in a waiting queue.

impure.com

(via infosthetics)

Outnumbered, a brief history of imposture, 2009, is an installation that generates a moving image using a found panoramic photograph from 1936. The installation is computer-controlled and generates an aleatoric narrative using an extensive database of people who, in some way, are associated with imposture.

Project Page

The programming is done in Max/MSP. For the moving parts (spindle, rails) IGUS were used.
The installation is currently on display at the Manifesta8 biennial in Murcia, Spain.

Jasper Rigole (°1980, Bruges) is a Belgian artist who graduated from the film department of the Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent (KASK) in 2004. In December 2008, he finished a two-year post-graduate course at the Higher Institute for Fine Arts (HISK). Currently he is working on a PhD at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent (KASK). His work includes single screen video works as well as installations. His main project at present is the ‘International Institute for the Conservation, Archiving and Distribution of Other People’s Memories’ (IICADOM).

(via pietmondriaan)

Created by Christian Marc Schmidt & Liangjie Xia, Invisible Cities is a information mapping project that reveals social networks present within the urban environment. The application, built using Processing, allows realtime mapping of activity on Twitter and Flickr by displaying intensities and geographical relationships of twitter conversations. Data is displayed by location and hills and valleys are displayed representing areas with high and low densities of data.

Invisible Cities maps information from one realm—online social networks—to another: an immersive, three dimensional space. In doing so, the piece creates a parallel experience to the physical urban environment. The interplay between the aggregate and the real-time recreates the kind of dynamics present within the physical world, where the city is both a vessel for and a product of human activity. It is ultimately a parallel city of intersections, discovery, and memory, and a medium for experiencing the physical environment anew.

The application is still in development and should be available for download sometime in the future. To stay in touch, sign up for general news and future software releases here.

Project page

Christian Marc Schmidt is a German/American designer and media artist, educated in Europe and the United States and currently residing in New York. Christian earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Parsons School of Design in New York, and attended the Yale University School of Art in New Haven, where he graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in 2004.

Liangjie Xia is a media artist and programmer presently based in New York City. His work explores alternative forms of communication through innovative applications of technology, his experiments vary from interactive data visualization, mobile applications to physical installations. He loves and contributes to open source projects, and hacks with whatever is handy. Liangjie recently received Master of Professional Studies degree from Interactive Telecommunications Program of NYU.

(Thanks Josh)

Invisible Cities (Italian: Le città invisibili) is also a novel by Italian writer Italo Calvino, and a worthy read.

Sosolimited is an art and design consultancy formed in 2003. The group specialises in interactive installation and audiovisual performance. They create immersive works that play on the immediacy of live media. I had a pleasure of hearing Sosolimited speak at the recent OFFF conference and with some scepticism of their more recent commercial work was very fond of the work they’ve been doing in the area of live media. Their presentation was focused on the evolution of their live media project – reConstitution, describing different iterations of the software created to allow real-time interpretation of live television. More of an outsider view than creating an impact, Sosolimited acts as a mediator with their software capable of extracting and reformatting information from live TV. Of course, this at times creates new narratives that do not necessarily represent the discussion at hand nevertheless they allow for a new way of understanding, selecting and reinterpreting voice, sound and image. The new meaning is left over to the spectator to contextualise, compare, make sense of or reject all together.

The kicked off back in 2004, named reConstitution, it was a three-part live audiovisual remix of the US 2004 presidential debates. A hybrid of video art and public service, the piece represented a shift away from the polarized manner in which people approach political artwork. Sosolimited designed a piece of software that allowed them to sample the television broadcast in real time, extracting the video, audio, and closed captioned text. The software consisted of a series of modes, each of which transformed, analyzed, and reassembled these pieces in a distinct way. The transformed visuals were projected into a large screen and the audio was played through a PA system. Some aspects of the broadcast were obscured while others were highlighted and analyzed, all intended to augment the raw information contained in the television signal. A clean version of the candidate’s voices was always present in the audio mix, so as to maintain the legibility of the debates. Every word spoken by the candidates was catalogued, analyzed, and displayed, integrated with the transformed video signal. The visuals would react to the physical movement of the candidates as well as the words they spoke.

In 2008, once again for the new wave of presidenial debates, Sosolimited organised three performances in three cities (ReConstitution2008), each coinciding with the live broadcast of the debates. The software was redesigned to further enhance the translation. Through a series of visual and sonic transformations the team reconstituted the material, revealed linguistic patterns, exposed content and structures creative alternative understanding of the debates while they were being watched. Over 1500 people attended our three performances in Boston, New York, and Washington D.C. See more images/videos here.

In 2010, their longest performance to date (the long conversation); nine hours, was held during the Transmediale Festival in Berlin at the Haus der Kulteren der Welt. The performance occurred in parallel with the “Futurity Long Conversation”, which was a nine hour lecture and debate series involving 21 speakers in an auditorium. There were two speakers on stage at a time, with one of them being swapped out for another every 20 minutes. On a separate stage at the opposite end of the HKW the team had typists transcribing the words of all the artists, designers, and authors who were speaking, and sent the text streams to the analysis software. The visualizations of the conversations were projected on the screen behind the typists. The words of all the participants were matched to lexical databases, and sorted by topic, tense, and certitude. Soso displayed realtime statistics of all the speakers and used a dozen or so different transformational modes throughout the night.

Most recent iteration of Sosolimited’s software was for 2010′s UK Parliamentary elections which included American style live debate between the party leaders. Having enjoyed the US Debate remix, ReConstitution, the organizers of the FutureEverything festival in Manchester invited Sosolimited to do something similar for a live audience in the UK. With fully integrated LIWC text analysis libraries to track things like emotion and self-reference in our software, the show was streamed live on TV, a first for the team, on April 29th – Prime Numerics.

Whether the project creates an insight into what the world leaders “mean” is somewhat debatable. Extracting words out of their context and interpreting facial expressions may only begin suggest new narratives disconnected from their origin. The fact of the matter is that most of these political debates are no more than theatre, created for public and press media to feed on. The truth is that we, without the additional software, create meaning depending on our social standing, education and what might be most relevant to us. Sosolimited’s segmentation nevertheless does provide an insight into how machines interoperate  live television but whether we can relate to these machines is altogether another matter. What is true, shown here, is that popular media is a spectacle that should be celebrated whether this be in the form of entertainment, critique or even a new form of self discovery.

Made with ACU, a C++ MIT library / openGL.

Interpalazzo, a collective of media artists, Martin Hesselmeier, Andreas Muxel und Carsten Goertz teamed up with composer Marcus Schmickler to create an autoreactive installation; Revolving Realities.

The installation plays with our sense of reality by continually causing us to perceive and experience a place and an object in new ways. Its surfaces projected with different images, textures and animations, the object becomes a mirror of changing realities. As a result, a kind of real virtuality arises to confront virtual reality. A modular light installation issuing from the sculptural object reworks the space. Cords of light pass through the 600 m2 of surrounding space, intertwining the surrounding area with the centre. Ideas are seized upon and returned; the space is transformed into a sound box that enters into a reflexive dialogue with the sculpture. The object, the space and the beholder form a communicative unit

Curated by Mike Meiré, the installation is the latest instalment in the Dornbracht Edges series featuring projects in which architecture, design and art intersect.

See more behind the scenes images here.

links:
www.meireundmeire.de
www.interpalazzo.com
www.piethopraxis.de (Marcus Schmickler)

Photography: Hartmut Nägele, Uwe Spoerung, Tim Giesen

…is a collection of projects forming Stefan Kuzaj and Jochen Winker‘s barchelor thesis at the Univesity of Applied Sciences Schwabisch Gmund.

Quote:
There are four essential parts in making abstract information experiencable: information itself, relevant senses, fitting emotion and a direct reference of the presentation to the information. With our method you can not only design fitting media, but also check existing media for its potential. To demonstrate the systematics, we built three interactive installations. By using them you become an interactive diagram in a virtual mirror, cause virtual water-pollution in a water-basin or compare the time you have to work in different countries to buy a big mac or some bread. All of these installations show a different approach of immersive data transfer.

Created with Processing and vvvv