I love Tengu!

Last week I visited the Designersblock exhibition (100% Design, London) and I didn't resist and I bought Tengu.
Tengu is a character who connects to your computer's USB port. Tengu responds to sound, so if you play music then he looks like he is singing along with it.
http://www.tengutengutengu.com

Interactive Cube for vodafone

"IDEO designed the reception and an outdoor 4 meter cube display for the Vodafone headquarters in Lisbon. Visitors could play media using either their own mobile phones or interactive furniture. Tom Hulbert designed and developed much of the interactive furniture, software, hardware and electronics."

LED Bubble Wall for O2

"A network of 22 bubble displays covers a two story wall in O2s flagship store on Oxford Street, London. Text moves in patterns and behaviours, taking various journeys across the wall, changing speed, fading up and down, and appearing to scale and distort. An option to email or SMS to the display was included."
Credits: IDEO, Durrell Bishop, Tom Hulbert

Honda Advert - Energy

"things knew when they weren’t be used, wouldnt we save a whole load of energy"

Cutting-Edge Cloth

Today this event in Dana Centre explores the relationship between wearable technology and future fashion.
"we use renowned designer Hussein Chalayan’s 2007 collections as a springboard for discussion and hear from those involved at the cutting edge.
Future-fashion guru Suzanne Lee shares insights into the role wearable technology has to play within the field of fashion. Is it destined to remain on the catwalk? Or is there a way into the mass market for creations like those in the Hussein collections? Are they purely inspirational?
What do engineers have to do with fashion? Ask Rob Edkins, whose company 2d:3d worked with Hussein, putting together a series of mechanical dresses. Chat with someone who runs a ‘renaissance’ workshop… and find out what organisations like this do for future creativity.
Electronic engineer and designer Moritz Waldemeyer shares his experience of working at the interdisciplinary interface. What does the process of concept realisation look like in practice? How is technology being used to enhance methods of interaction with spaces and people? And where does fashion come into it all?"

Mobizines

"The Mobizines service is all about entertainment snacks for your phone. The latest news stories, film reviews, some juicy gossip or lifestyle tips - The Mobizines service is available to everyone as a way of taking their content mobile.
Lots of top print and online magazines as well as TV channels and record labels are now working with us to create mobile magazines and you can get them on almost any mobile, any time.
You don't pay for our service - just your phone network's standard data charges and you don't have to go online to read our mags - just download them to your mobile in a few seconds, and read them when it suits you. Plus, our service is not a WAP service, so it is quick and easy to download and fun to use."
http://www.mobizines.com

DE PROXÉMICA - Virtual Reality / Video Art Instalation

"Which is a security distance between people in public spaces?
Which is the minimum distance between two strangers so that a relationship can be established between them?
Can we have an active relation with images (in front of an ad, in a museum)?
DE PROXÉMICA is an interactive video-instalation that pretends to create a situation in which one can play with the relativity of time and space by means of the representation of an environment where social relations are at stake."
Andrés González Fernández y Gabriel Cruz Rivas

Handheld Projector by Xiang C

http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~caox/

Bubble Cosmos

Interactive art installation using soap bubble and CG image projection.
http://in5.jp/bc/

Khronos Projector by Alvaro Cassinelli

"The Khronos Projector is an interactive-art installation allowing people to explore pre-recorded movie content in an entirely new way. A classic video-tape allows a simple control of the reproducing process (stop, backward, forward, and elementary control on the reproduction speed). Modern digital players add little more than the possibility to perform random temporal jumps between image frames.

The goal of the Khronos Projector is to go beyond these forms of exclusive temporal control, by giving the user an entirely new dimension to play with: by touching the projection screen, the user is able to send parts of the image forward or backwards in time. By actually touching a deformable projection screen, shaking it or curling it, separate "islands of time" as well as "temporal waves" are created within the visible frame. This is done by interactively reshaping a two-dimensional spatio-temporal surface that "cuts" the spatio-temporal volume of data generated by a movie."

Peanuts as business cards

Holographic video projection in Catwalk

"Diesel’s Creative Team (under the direction of Wilbert Das) based the show on an aquatic theme entitled “Liquid Space” and brought together Barcelona animation studio Dvein – who worked on the CGI visual effects and 3D animations – and Danish multi-media production agency, Vizoo, who provided the innovative technology for the show, which they had created themselves."
source www.creativereview.co.uk

Alexander McQueen

kameraflageTM Technology

kameraflageTM is a Context-Sensitive Display Technology. I believe this amazing tecnhology could be very interesting in creative development.
How it works? kameraflageTM technology encodes a layer of information that can only be viewed by the human eye when looking at an image of the scene taken by a camera. No software needs to be installed on a camera-phone or digital camera for kameraflageTM to work.

kameraflage fashionTM:
kameraflage fashionTM forces people to think about the reproduction of images in the age of ubiquitous digital imaging devices. Kenneth Cole once said that "In cities everyone is on camera hundreds of times each day. Will you be dressed for it?". kameraflageTM is uniquely positioned to allow designers to create garments and accessories that speak specifically to those who are viewing through a digital camera viewfinder or who view the resulting digital image.
kameraflageTM allows for a new level of expression for those who are required to wear a uniform. Students at private schools and employees of chain-stores will be able to express themselves to their cameraphone toting peers. Will entities that seek to enforce dress-codes be able to combat this technology? Because it is only perceptible within the confines of mediated reality (cyberspace), yet exists in physical-reality, any attempt to control this form of expression will result in forcing people to discuss this decidedly modern grey-area.
The first hand-made prototype was worn by international model anina.net at the 2006 Fall Fashion Week in Paris, France

kameraflage billboardTM:
kameraflage billboardTM technology allows advertisers to place messages in new locations and situations. There are locations where it is currently inappropriate to place branded messages. This is true for historic locations, galleries, museums, etc. Using kameraflage billboardTM advertisers can place their messages in these locations without altering the naked-eye experience. As soon as someone takes a photograph your message becomes apparent.
Encourage audiences to seek out your messages. Build your brand around an interactive experience, where discovery, sharing and technology play a leading role
http://kameraflage.com

Camera Phones Account for 87% of Mobile Phone Shipments in 2010

InfoTrends Study 2006
"The primary drivers behind this explosion are improvements in imaging functions (i.e. image sensors, zoom, and auto focus); rapid declines in prices for this functionality; higher speed wireless bandwidth; and easier-to-use handsets, services, and peripherals."

Victor Szilagyi works

xBlocks

"xBlocks explores how elements of virtual and physical play could be more seemlessly integrated."

localHistories - leave your story after the beep

What if you could leave a message for a place instead of a person? localHistories proposes an easily deployable system of hacked answering machines to create localized oral history projects.
As partipants dial into the system to deposit stories, each node becomes active. If visitors are too far away, the nodes play all available stories simultaneously at low volume- in essence, replicating the audio qualities of a cocktail party. When visitors trigger a node's proximity sensor, the node isolates one of the many stories availble, and plays it at an audible level.
http://www.semiot.com/

Fashioning the Future: Tomorrow's Wardrobe - Suzanne Lee

"Fashioning the Future is a visionary and creative exploration of where fashion and clothing are heading, the very first guide to the 'future wardrobe' and the emergent technologies making it possible. Ten major themes embrace all kinds of clothing, from 'The Spray-On Dress' to 'The Talking T-Shirt'."

Softspace - Contemporary Interactive Environments

This Saturday I attended “Softspace” conferences, in Tate Modern.
"Softspace deploys new spatial systems including wearable computing, wifi, RFID and custom-designed digital software incorporating light, heat, sound and electromagnetic fields. These not only rely on people’s individual ways of interacting with them, but are enriched by narratives people contribute, creating new metaphors of use."

I was very impressed with the work quality of Jason Burges Studio.


Jason Bruges Studio, founded in London in 2001, creates surfaces, spaces and large scale interventions involving architecture, installation art and interaction design. Innovative technologies are adapted from a variety of industries and coupled with materials and fabrication techniques from the construction industry. http://www.jasonbruges.com

ClickSneacks

This work of Despina Papadopoulos is "part fantasy, part irony, the ClickSneaks subvert both the traditional attributes of a pair of shoes, and expose the multi-layered relationship we have with our clothes and accessories.
For the ClickSneaks the sound of the inspirational high heels has been recorded, only to be activated on each step the revamped sneakers take. Surface mount technology makes it possible to fit the necessary components in the sneakers: the original “click” sound is recorded on a voice chip, while a speaker, amplifier and an accelerometer acting as a “switch”, transform these seemingly normal sneakers into a flighty performance". http://www.5050ltd.com