Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Volume





This is an immersive light and sound sculpture that reacts to presence. Interaction is based on proximity, so without any participants it lies dormant, waiting to be awoken.Each column contains a matrix of multicoloured LEDs and a speaker. UVA use custom written camera tracking software to watch people moving through the space.As this photo explains, infrared lights are used to illuminate the area, whilst a high mounted camera looks down from above.

The sound fitted perfectly, sometimes subtle, othertimes responding to your movements past each column. The garden is fantastic location for work like this, the water puddles creating reflection, shadows around the architecture changing and sounds travelling around the space. The colour gradient fades are beautiful, and the nicest part was the interlude between scenes. The lights slowly die down, then pulsate with white light and sound in anticipation for the next visitors.

Multi-touch interaction research




While touch sensing is commonplace for single points of contact, multi-touch sensing enables a user to interact with a system with more than one finger at a time, as in chording and bi-manual operations. Such sensing devices are inherently also able to accommodate multiple users simultaneously, which is especially useful for larger interaction scenarios such as interactive walls and tabletops.

Intimate transations





Intimate Transactions is an exciting new form of interactive installation that allows two people in separate spaces to interact simultaneously using their bodies. Each participant uses a physical interface called a ‘Bodyshelf’. By gently moving their bodies on this ‘smart furniture’ they instigate ‘Intimate Transactions’, which influence an evolving ‘world’ created from digital imagery, multichannel sound and tactile feedback.

This shared experience allows each participant to gradually develop a form of sensory intimacy with the other, despite the fact that they are geographically separated and cannot physically see or hear each other. As this highly immersive experience evolves, each participant begins to sense their part in a complex web of relations that connect them, and everything else within the work. In this way a subtle, indirect form of collaboration develops via an increasing sense of intimacy between sites. Participants may choose to act in different ways as they begin to understand how their actions affect everything within the environment AND the other Participant. Hence the work focuses participants upon understanding influences and relationships within the work's ecologies.

The work is designed to be experienced for up to 20 minutes. Both Bodyshelves should be occupied in order to allow a full experience for all participants. The ‘Bodyshelves’ are embedded with an array of sensors, which detect shifting balances of bodyweight and different types of backpressure.

Bridge by Michael Cross



“Bridge is a spectacular new site-specific design commission for Dilston Grove, London (Cafe Gallery Projects) by Michael Cross. Housed in a former church, (one of the earliest examples of poured concrete construction and a Grade II listed building), the piece comprises submerging two thirds of the inside of the church in water, and producing a series of steps which rise out of the apparently empty man-made ‘lake’ as you walk across them. Each step emerges one step in front of you and disappears back underneath behind you as you go. This ‘bridge’ is purely mechanical, the weight of the person on it depresses each step a little, this force activates a submerged mechanism which raises the next step.

The public are invited to walk out on it as if walking on water, eventually reaching the middle of the lake, thirty steps and twelve meters from the shore. There they will stand alone and detached, stranded in the middle of a plane of water until they choose to return the way they came. For some people this experience of being cut off and surrounded by water will be peaceful, for others terrifying. For some walking across the water will be pure childish joy, whilst others will be too scared to try”.

Akarium call

Semitransparent Design is a company based in Japan, a talented bunch of artists and designers, consisting of members Ryoji Tanaka, Toshiyuki Sugai, Yusuke Shibata and Hiroshi Sato. I first became aware of their work when I wrote about Motion Wall from Nanika (read post). Semitransparent created Snow Wishes for the same interactive interiors shop exhibit.
Akarium Call is a reactive light installation along the 1km long trendy fashion Omotesando avenue in Tokyo. 60 columns of light run both sides the length of the road, are 6m high and 1m wide. This is during a light festival 9th Dec - 8th Jan, the first light festival in 8 years.
Users phone a number displayed on the columns, their voice then controls the pulsating lights. The final version used volume mapping to brightness of light, with a subtle fade in and out, as to not create a strobe light effect. Earlier versions used more complex sound signal processing, but in this public space it was harder to achieve, and they wanted to create an instant synchronized response to the user.

Scents of space








An interactive smell system that allows for three-dimensional placement of fragrances without dispersion .The study of the human olfactory system has progressed rapidly in recent years. However, when architects use fragrance in spatial designs, they tend to do so merely for branding purposes or for suggestive advertising (e.g. pumping the smell of coffee out onto a street to attract people into a store). Such designs fail to pick up on the potentials for developing evocative and memorable experiences using the sense of smell. This project demonstrates how smell can be used spatially to create fragrance collages that form soft zones and boundaries that are configurable on-the-fly.
Airflow within the space is generated by an array of fans. Moving air is then controlled by a series of diffusion screens to provide smooth and continuous laminar airflow. Computer-controlled fragrance dispensers and careful air control enable parts of the space to be selectively scented without dispersing through the entire space.
Designed by : Usman Haque

Sky ear






Sky Ear is a one-night event in which a glowing "cloud" of mobile phones and helium balloons is released into the air so that people can dial into the cloud and listen to the sounds of the sky.
The cloud consists of 1000 extra-large helium balloons that each contain 6 ultra-bright LEDs (which mix to make millions of colours). The balloons can communicate with each other via infra-red; this allows them to send signals to create larger patterns across the entire Sky Ear cloud as they respond to the electromagnetic environment (created by distant storms, mobile phones, police and ambulance radios, television broadcasts, etc.).

Using mobile phones people can listen to the actual sounds up high, the electromagnetic sounds of the sky as well as streams of "whistlers" and "spherics" (atmospheric electromagnetic phenomena that are the audible equivalent of the Northern Lights). Of course, the action of calling the cloud changes the electromagnetic environment inside and causes the balloons to vary in brightness and colour.
Sky Ear is a project by Usman Haque financially assisted by the Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science and Technology.
Electronics & B2B network by Seth Garlock, Senseinate Inc. Software by Rolf Pixley, Anomalous Research Ltd.
Microcontrollers provided by Texas Instruments, Inc.
Carbon fibre tubing for framework by RBJ Plastics, UK.

Thursday, February 15, 2007

HypoSurface




HypoSurface is the World's first display system where the screen surface physically moves! Information and form are linked to give a radical new media technology: an info-form device.
The surface behaves like a precisely controlled liquid: waves, patterns, logos, even text emerge and fade continually within its dynamic surface. The human eye is drawn to physical movement, and this gives HypoSurface a basic advantage over other display systems.
As a digital device, any input (sound, movement, an Internet feed...) can be linked to any output (logos, patterns, text...) This offers full interactivity with an audience, and a simple User Interface allows HypoSurface to be 'tuned' to any event, its wide range of effects choreographed easily (by you…)

Augmented Reality Kitchen - Jackie Lee, Leonardo Bonanni, Ted Selker






The real world is not a computer screen. When can augmented reality and ambient interfaces improve the usability of a physical environment? We presents data from design studies and experiments that demonstrate the value for ambient information and augmented reality design. The domestic kitchen is used as a domain to place smart technologies and to study visual attention, multi-tasking, food-preparation and disruptiveness.
Food is the most important thing to our daily life. Preparing, cooking, sharing, storage and playing food has its social and technoligical culture. Design and Artifical Intelligence approaches were taken to re-creating the food environment. Re-designing the kitchen and re-defining its components provides alternatives of life styles. Adding machine intelligence to these activities can enhance the processes of human-to-human communication and human-machine operations.

BUMP remote sensing by Assocreation






In each of the two cities Linz and Budapest a foot bridge made of wooden planks are installed. If someone steps on a plank in one of the cities, an impulse released from the body weight is immediately sent to the other bridge. So a pulse can be felt in the other city, as the parallel plank lifts itself around 1 cm which releases a pounding noise. One can feel realistically the footsteps of strangers in a foreign city.

Bump produces a gap in the urban interface, a site at which one no longer has firm ground under ones feet. A wooden grating on the asphalt - maybe an excavation? But now there is knocking from below and the boards rise up. Below is another city, reflecting the same irregularity, linked via data transmission line. What is going on there? Undifferentiated mass movements, a stampede of hundreds of feet at rush hour? What about late at night: two or three pairs of feet. A percept ible rhythm. Perhaps a message? Or just a game? We sense the illusion of proximity: directly below the board which raises up, we presume a force which approximates our own. But there is the apparatus, the pneumatic piston, the control valve, the sensor. Closeness is only an illusion; the distance is not abolished. The thin pine board is a wall hundreds of kilometres thick. A casual encounter turns into alasting irritation of the sense of direction: west is below, below is east. How close can we get together?

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Hyperfabric designed by HMC media lab








HMC MediaLab created a special Hyperfabric installation for the Artytechs parlour this summer at the prestigious and exclusive Port Eliot literature festival. Taking place in a hidden dungeon underneath the stately home, visitors had the chance to come face to face with the magical and mysterious interactions.

Hyperfabric is a new interface that lets you reach beyond the screen. It's a very "touchable" surface, made out of an elastic-like fabric called "Hyperfabric". The screen warps like rubber, and can sense how hard your press it, where you press it, and you can even have lots of people using it at once. You really feel like you are going "through" the screen.
You can press, grab, twist, punch and play with the screen. It can even support your full bodyweight. The Hyperfabric screen is specially designed to communicate with a computer to generate interactive computer graphics, in realtime.
What this means is we can create beautiful, magical scenes. You can see sparks fly out of your fingertips. You can cast magic spells from your hands. You can press your face into the hyperfabric to release fairies, or stir up ghosts in the dead of night.
The Hyperfabric chamber was unlike anything else, a truly beautiful art piece 7 feet high. The interaction of directly caressing the screen really added to the wow factor, and the Hyperfabric's special tactile response technology allows for ultra-responsive generative art to emerge from your fingertips.
HMC MediaLab designed the hyperfabric after working with large scale touchscreens and touchtables. The team found that whilst they were very effective at controlling computers, they just didn't "feel" touchable. HMC MediaLab wanted to create something that you could really engage with, so it's perfect for adults and children of all ages and abilities.




Text Rain - Camille Utterback & Romy Achituv, 1999


Text Rain is an interactive installation in which participants use the familiar instrument of their bodies, to do what seems magical—to lift and play with falling letters that do not really exist. In the Text Rain installation participants stand or move in front of a large projection screen. On the screen they see a mirrored video projection of themselves in black and white, combined with a color animation of falling letters. Like rain or snow, the letters appears to land on participants' heads and arms. The letters respond to the participants' motions and can be caught, lifted, and then let fall again. The falling text will 'land' on anything darker than a certain threshold, and 'fall' whenever that obstacle is removed. If a participant accumulates enough letters along their outstretched arms, or along the silhouette of any dark object, they can sometimes catch an entire word, or even a phrase. The falling letters are not random, but form lines of a poem about bodies and language. 'Reading' the phrases in the Text Rain installation becomes a physical as well as a cerebral endeavor.
http://www.camilleutterback.com/movies/textrain_mov.html

HAPTIC SENSE..................

ANALYSIS


D - Tower


Son-O-House


Bix Matrix


Fresh water pavilion


ADA - the intelligent room


IEC - interactive communication experience


C a s e S t u d i e s ...............