Evolving in Brussels
On October 4th, a vernissage held concurrently in Second Life and in Brussels inaugurated that city’s first art space devoted entirely to art made in electronic media. Located in central Brussels, iMAL (Interactive Media Art Lab) Center for Digital Cultures and Technology boasts a group of workshops at the disposal of resident artists as well as more than 400 square meters of public space for events and exhibitions. The facility opened both its real and virtual doors with a three-evening series of events, including the dual celebrations, as well as audio and visual performances by French artists Pascal Baltazar and Mathieu Chamagne, who are known for their digital sound works created with custom gestual interfaces, and a demonstration of Danish artist Sven Konig’s instant video sampling software. Through October 14th, noted electronic music composer Kim Cascone is hosting a workshop titled ‘Genetic Laptop Music’ at iMAL. Each of the 15 participants in the project, equipped with a networked laptop running common audio software, perform a function within a composition process based on genetic selection. Audio is chosen from a ‘gene’ pool of open-source sound files, which are then recombined or ‘killed’ by participants. As the group of possible combinations narrows, a participatory audio work emerges. The workshop culminates with a public performance at the new iMAL space on October 14th. - William Hanley
http://www.imal.org/cascone_workshop/
Originally from Rhizome News
reBlogged by michael on Oct 11, 2007, 10:00PM
Book review: Verb Natures
Verb Natures (Amazon USA
Editor’s blurb: “What is fascinating is the inability to separate the real from the digital, because they already form part of the same nature.” So we said in the last issue of Verb. Here we explore how this fusion takes place. Buildings and cities grow, are transformed, and dissolve. How can this evolution be generated, controlled, enhanced or imagined? Is our environment programmable? How does the fusion of natural and artificial matter produce new architectural organisms, new environments, new natures? How does technology animate space, and how do users and programs animate matter? The fifth volume of Actar’s boogazine looks for a new definition of the organic.
A “boogazine”? It’s a hybrid volume designed to combine the flexibility of a magazine with the depth and format of a book. Published since 2002 by Barcelona-based editor Actar, each of the boogazines explores a specific aspect of current architectural production.
I wish they had kept the book habit to write a few lines about the editors.
The AlgorithmicSpace
Don’t be fooled by the term “natures”. Here, the “natural” often looks supernatural and its realization is most of the time informed by algorithms, strict geometry rules and other mathematical processes. The book is thus quite techy but even i could understand what the techniques are about. I found that it was actually the strong point of the book: the many images, graphics, interviews with the designers, researchers or architects and clear explanations of the vocabulary and building strategies made me feel very smart. I managed to get a deeper understanding of construction and design processes which i would otherwise find too arcane and sophisticated.
Beijing’s Watercube (more images)
The book focusses on over 20 projects, some are ueber-famous, others were new to me. I was particularly happy to get more insight on the Beijing National Aquatics Centre (nicknamed “the watercube”) or R&Sie; fabulous Dusty Relief in Bangkok. The book goes beyond buildings and looks at interactive rooms (Ada in Zurich), ports (Fugee Port in Taiwan), the artificial reconstruction of a natural mountain (the Dénia project on the Spanish coast) but also design projects such as Clemens Weisshaar & Reed Kram’s Breeding Tables which were launched 2 years ago (and with much press coverage and public wonder) at the Salone del Mobile in Milan. Oh, yeah! and there’s even some arty projects like the Brooklyn Pigeon Project.
A few years ago, architects Benjamin Aranda and Chris Lasch decided to record New York from the perspective of the movements of a flock of birds.
They equipped pigeons with wireless video cameras and microphones, turning them into satellites that fed images and sounds of the city below. As the architects explained in an interview for the book “In conventional satellite and aerial mappings of the earth, an enormous amount of effort is dedicated to squeezing out any trace of movement from the image and even from the environment.” (…) “So by reintroducing time into the map ours is in some ways a more accurate depiction of the world. But funny enough, this doesn’t make it any better map.”
More in this video intro and interview.
Originally from we make money not art by
reBlogged by michael on Dec 31, 1969, 4:59PM
Pocket Gamelan
Several posters were presented at the Mobile Music Workshop yesterday afternoon, a good opportunity to discover new projects and have a chat with their author.
Pocket Gamelan (PDF), developed by Greg Schiemer and Mark Havryliv, couldn’t make it to Amsterdam on time (seems to be somewhere in the caring hands of the post) but that won’t prevent me from mentioning it. The interactive musical interface allows non-expert performers to create microtonal music using bluetooth-enabled mobile phones. Players swing the handsets on the end of a cord in a circular trajectory. As the phone is swung it produces audible artefacts such as Doppler shift and chorusing which are generated as a bi-product of movement. The device works like a network of operations in which melodies and the speed at which they’re played can be altered.
Pocket Gamelan, draws on Schiemer’s “Tupperware Gamelan” instruments of the 70s and 80s. The custom-made electronic instruments, housed in plastic kitchenware, were designed for non-expert players and used in dance and performance (via.)
Image.
Related: the 1999 performance Improvisation for Two Altered Telephones.
Originally from we make money not art by
reBlogged by michael on May 6, 2007, 10:35PM
Forrester’s new Social Technographics report
Social Technographics
Mapping Participation In Activities Forms The Foundation Of A Social Strategy
by Charlene Li
with Josh Bernoff, Remy Fiorentino, Sarah Glass
Forrester just released a new report, titled “Social Technographics“.
Executive summary
Many companies approach social computing as a list of technologies to be deployed as needed – a blog here, a podcast there – to achieve a marketing goal. But a more coherent approach is to start with your target audience and determine what kind of relationship you want to build with them, based on what they are ready for. Forrester categorizes social computing behaviors into a ladder with six levels of participation; we use the term “Social Technographics” to describe analyzing a population according to its participation in these levels. Brands, Web sites, and any other company pursuing social technologies should analyze their customers’ Social Technographics first, and then create a social strategy based on that profile.
Author Charlene Li provides us with some more insight into the report:
“We group consumers into six different categories of participation – and participation at one level may or may not overlap with participation at other levels. We use the metaphor of a ladder to show this, with the rungs at the higher end of the ladder indicating a higher level of participation.
For example, 13% of US online adult consumers are “Creators” meaning that they have posted to a blog, updated a Web page, or uploaded video they created within the last month. […]
The value of Social Technographics comes when it’s used by companies to create their social strategies. For example, in the report we look at how Social Technographics profiles differ by primary life motivation, site usage, and even PC ownership.
The report also lays out how companies can create strategies using Social Technographics. For example, I’ve used the “participation ladder” to help figure out which social strategies to deploy first – and also how to encourage users to “climb up”, so to speak, from being Spectators to becoming more engaged.”
- Read full story
- Related blog post (by Ross Mayfield)
Originally from Putting people first by
reBlogged by michael on Apr 28, 2007, 2:02AM
RECONFIGURABLE HOUSE: HACKING LOW TECH ARCHITECTURE
By Usman HAQUE & Adam SOMLAI-FISCHER using sensors and actuators developed by the Reorient Team.
The Reconfigurable House is an environment constructed from low tech components that can be “rewired” by visitors. The project is a critique of “smart homes”,which are based on the idea that technology should be invisible to prevent DIY. Smart homes actually aren’t very smart simply because they are pre-wired according to algorithms and decisions made by designers of the systems, rather than the people who occupy the houses.
Originally from Networked_Performance by
reBlogged by michael on Apr 26, 2007, 1:41PM
Satis-fying Design
Japanese toilet manufacturer Inax has just released their 2007 Satis Asteo Washlet toilet, which is a good example of how toilet design seems to be taken more seriously in Japan than elsewhere.
Some features:
A) The toilet has an SD card, pre-loaded with Bach, Chopin and Mendelsohn. Once you show up to take care of business, a sensor activates the tunes, either to relax you or to prevent houseguests in your thin-walled Japanese apartment from hearing anything other than Bach, Chopin or Mendelsohn.
B) The smoothly-designed exterior of the basin is easy to clean, absent of the dust- and grime-collecting nooks and crannies present in many Western toilets.
C) Another sensor figures out whether you’re going to need the seat up or down (crikey, would love to know how this one works) and motorizes it into the appropriate position. After you leave, it automatically places the seat in the down position if it was up, preventing countless marital spats.
D) A nightlight in the bowl helps guide you during those 2am emergencies, though this feature may not be so desirable if you’ve had too much tequila and are making that other use of the toilet.
The (somewhat poorly Google-translated) webpage is here.
…
Originally from core77.com's design blog
reBlogged by michael on Apr 24, 2007, 11:49AM
Flash, Silverlight & The In-Between OS
This morning, Microsoft (re)introduced their WPF/E platform (Windows Presentation Foundation / Everywhere) as Microsoft Silverlight. Tim Sneath has a nice summary of the feature set.
If anyone doubted that Microsoft is gunning for the a piece of the Adobe Flash empire, there’s no denying it now. This is a relatively light, cross-platform runtime that will handle visuals, video and appears to upscale nicely from the HTML/Javascript world. It’s Microsoft’s version of Flash.
I think what’s emerging is a new territory that has seldom been acknowledged before: the in-between OS. It’s not web and it’s not your desktop. Now that the bandwidth and horsepower hurdles are out of the way, we’re seeing Microsoft acknowledge the power of a potently powerful little runtime. Adobe has focused on re-architecting Flash to go from “cool graphics engine” to a world class runtime. Apollo is how Flash ends up on your desktop. One of the key features of Silverlight is that all that code will elegantly work in the real WPF world (Vista).
For Microsoft, this is all about upsell. If they can get web developers to slowly peek their head into the WPF world, it’s a big win for them. Ultimately, they want you on Vista. This may well be where Adobe’s advantage lies: there is no “light” version of Flash. All the capabilties are everywhere. To really light things up in WPF, you need to be on Vista.
As for the learning curve, Microsoft doesn’t have to deal with any old baggage since this is new stuff. The result is a platform that will probably feel more familiar to HTML/Javascript/Ajax developers. WPF/E seems to build upon the same development paradigm that web developers have gotten accustomed to while the Flash/Flex/Actionscript world requires a fair amount of re-learning.
Oddly (but not surprisingly), the press (and Microsoft’s PR) seems to be focusing on the video features of WPF/E (cross platform, HD, etc.). This part of the story will be pretty interesting. I guess the day is coming when video will not require a browser open and an Internet connection. That’s a good thing.
Microsoft has always had a huge advantage when dealing with competition because they owned the arena (i.e. the operating system) and exclusively possessed the transit system (the precious OS API’s). That’s changing. The success and ubiquity of Flash is forcing Microsoft to think in a leaner, more portable, cross-platform way. Nobody should underestimate Microsoft’s skill or tenacity to compete, but in this case, they’re clearly the visiting team.
This posting is for those students who were asking me if Flash had a competing software. In this situation, Microsoft could actually make things very difficult for Flash. Go ahead, try to browse the Microsoft website using Mozilla.
Originally from Basement.org
reBlogged by michael on Apr 16, 2007, 8:01AM
Music textile
Music textile is a large tactile interface for playing electronic music.
Navigable score on music textile XYi
The XY position of the performer’s hand contact moving onto the surface of the fabric is transmited to a computeur via a 12 Bytes resolution Midi card. This allows 4000 by 4000 points resolution. Two conductive fabrics are fixed on a frame, each one weaved with conductive threads in a different direction. When the performer presses any point of the textile instrument, the upper layer connects with the fabric underneath and the current eletrical value is sent to the computer. 
The videos on the website are pretty impressive. Image gallery.
Developed by Vincent Roudaud and Maurin Donneaud.
Check out the interface during Malaupixel in Paris, the installation will be exhibited at Confluences, on April 16 to 21, 12h-21h.
Related: Sonic Fabric, a musical dress made of textile woven from 50% pre-recorded audiotape and 50% cotton; Sonic City, a wearable piece that enables people to compose music in real time by walking through the city; etc.
Via a place to bookmark/del.icio.us/add to your rss feed: Bioject, Jean-Baptist Labrune’s blog.
Originally from we make money not art by
reBlogged by michael on Apr 10, 2007, 10:34PM
Soundbytes - Part 2
Yesterday in Soundbytes - Part 1, i gave a brief overview of the art works installed on the ground floor of the Edith Russ Haus in Oldenburg (Germany) for the Soundbytes - electronic and digital soundworlds exhibition.
Let’s just get to the level below:
Akitsugu Maebayashi’s Metronome Piece is one of the highlights of the show for me. The artist went for a walk around Oldenburg bringing along a metronome. The clicks produced by the instrument work as ’sonar’ which detects information of spaces, and the echoes of tick-tick were recorded binaurally through microphones in the artist’s ears.
In the exhibition room, there’s a table, a chair and headphones. As you walk near the chair the light dims and you’re left with the sound of the metronome. Take the headphones and the experience becomes utterly strange. While you can still perceive the tick-tick (or people coming down the stairs above your head) coming through headphones, you’re suddenly wandering the streets of Oldenburg on the steps of Akitsugu Maebayashi. You hear people walking by and talking under the rain, a truck passing, etc. The first time i even looked behind me to check who was there (no one of course, just an audio illusion). Another layer of space and time was overlapping with what was going on around me.
Harar (annicca), by Thomas Köner (of the Banlieu du Vide fame), is projected in the adjacent room. The work is part of the Péripheriques trilogy which shows patterns in the moves of people in the streets and detects stories in their faces. The videos were shooted in 3 different cities (Harar, Belgrade, and a favela in Buenos Aires), original sounds from the filming location blend with imaginary sounds.
Annina Rüst was showing Rock ‘n’ Scroll, a sound remixing system which allows anyone to use the computer as an acoustic instrument for interventions into wifi-equipped public space. Both mobile phones and computers are connected using a VOIP software. The sound itself is a combination of standard macintosh and windows sounds, as well as sounds included in the Skype software, and pre-made drumloops. There’s also a delay effect that depend on how good the connection is.
There were free softwares to take away!
The person who starts the performance has the most control (over the drum loop and the right mouse-button to turn on the microphone while turning off the rhythm.) Other participants function mainly as triggers. But no one has a total control over the whole performance.
Image fluctuat
A computer was showing the website of micromusic, a low-tech music community initiated by carl (Gino Esposto), wanga (Paco Manzanares) and bacon (Michael Burkhardt), famous for their performances and compositions that use Gameboys or vintage Atari consoles. The micomusic.net website reflects their objective to build an online community where visitors can listen to and download music and chat.
There are two other projects which i like a lot but i’ll pass rapidly on them as i’ve blogged them before:
Jens Brand is showing G-Turns, the online version of the G-Players series, in an IKEA setting complete with price tags and a carpet with a wave-like pattern.
Visitor can lie in Kaffe Matthews‘ Sonic Bed and enjoy the sound properties of experimental electronic music throughout their body. There is also a video of the “making of” of the piece.
In conclusion i’d say that the exhibition is really good. There’s the fun, the loud, the introspective, the obscure, the aesthetically absorbing. It is not meant to be exhaustive but it gives an adequate overview of the many ways in which artists engage with sound materials these days. I guess i’ve been very lucky to visit the show on a quiet Thursday afternoon, i was able to enjoy each piece on my own without having to queue to be able to lay on the bed or having any sonic experience interrupted by other noises.
Flickr set.
At the Edith Russ Haus in Oldenburg, extended until April 29.
Related: Invisible Geographies: New Sound Art from Germany, an exhibition about the “physical” topography of sound at the Kitchen in New York.
Originally from we make money not art by
reBlogged by michael on Apr 11, 2007, 12:49AM
IFID: Mike Richter’s talk
Mike Richter’s talk launched the second day of the Innovation Forum Interaction Design conference. Richter is a professor at the University of Applied Sciences in Darmstadt focusing on media system design; his other job is iconmobile -a design, technology and content provider company for “the mobile world”- which he founded in 2003. The company grew very quickly and has now headquarters throughout the world (LA, Tokyo, London, Sydney, etc.)
He started by saying that the day before had been mostly about “innovation” and “explorative approaches”, he has to be much more down to earth. His work at iconmobile has to move within set borders, there’s innovation but it has to be do-able and marketable.
Very few people use data services: there’s way too much time investment and not enough return. Iconmobile is more interested in experience. A mobile phone is embedded into a value chain (device itself, GUI, services, network, operators, and third parties.) All these channels have to converge so his company cannot focus on the mobile aspect or the phone aspect only: it has to take other domains into account.
The company has to keep the balance between innovation and the objective to be commercially successful. Take for example QUAM. It was a 40 bilion disaster. The operator made it from scratch, it was very innovative. Too much innovative: the market was not ready.
Successful examples: Paris Hilton Mobile; TIMTou, a mobile variety of mySpace where TV, mobile and web converge; Starbucks selling music for mobile phones (pre-listening, coupons, backstage passes in exchange of 5 latte).
Technology is an enabler not a driver.
The most important criteria in mobile telephony for Richter is the user. They try to understand who he or she is and develops stereotypes scenarios. Helped by what they can find online. A website like “Hot or Not” provides them with precious demographic data for free.
Not the world of mobile phone is gigantic. You can take pretty any element of your life and add the term “mobile” to it: mobile keys, mobile tickets, etc. hard to keep the pace and look ahead. Besides any element in the mobile chain reacts with the others. You can’t focus on just one, you have to get the global picture. Even the music segment has to be sub-segmented. Iconmobile solution is structure, a kind of “industrial flow” where each one knows his or her place and role.
He ended by showing one of their successful projects, a mobilnovela called Mittendrin. Protagonist are aged between 14 and 25. Each of them have their own blog so that fans can interact with them, they are also reachable through SMS or MMS.
Bad snaps of his slides.
Originally from we make money not art by
reBlogged by michael on Apr 1, 2007, 9:10AM
