Friday, February 20, 2009

Visualizing high-tech’s human-centered future by Ideo for Intel

Hussein Chalayan exhibition - Design Museum, London


Leading the forefront of contemporary fashion design, the twice named 'British Designer of the Year,' Hussein Chalayan, is renowned for his innovative use of materials, meticulous pattern cutting and progressive attitudes to new technology.

Exhibition in Design Museum include ‘Afterwords’ which explores the notion of ‘wearable, portable architecture’ in which furniture literally transforms itself into garments; ‘Airborne’ - bringing the latest LED technology to fashion design with a spectacular dress consisting of Swarovski crystals and over 15,000 flickering LED lights; ‘Before Minus Now’ a dress made of materials used in aircraft construction which changes shape by remote control and ‘Readings’ a dress comprising of over 200 moving lasers presenting an extraordinary spectacle of light.



Link to another post in this blog about Hussein Chalayan work

Friday, January 23, 2009

Golan Levin: The truly soft side of software

Engineer and artist Golan Levin pushes the boundaries of whats possible with audiovisuals and technology. In an amazing TED display, he shows two programs he wrote to perform his original compositions.

...took some jeans and made them play music, by Kin

Kin were approached by de-construct to help them realise an interactive in-store promotion for Tommy Hilfiger. To coincide with their new campaign ‘My Denim, My Music’, Tommy Hilfiger’s aim was to fuse fashion and music: both in their external advertising and through in-store promotions.


Tommy Hilfiger Interactive Audio Cassette from kin on Vimeo.

Kin developed a large-scale interactive audiocassette, to work as an in-store point of sale unit. 5 new styles of jeans were chosen, and a unique soundtrack was composed for each one by SkinnerBrosMusic. A specifically designed sticker on each pair of jeans instructs the customer to swipe the jeans against the giant cassette to ‘release the music’.

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Kin used pre-programmed RFID tags that were placed behind the stickers. An RFID reader mounted inside the cassette reads the unique tag number.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

GoCar



GoCar it's a tour guide…a talking car…a trusty co-pilot…and a local on wheels.
GoCar is the first-ever GPS-guided storytelling car - and it's available to rent right now!
Leave your guidebook behind and see the San Francisco, San Diego, Lisbon, Barcelona and Miami most visitors never see.



Your clever talking car navigates and shows you the way – but that's not all. As you enjoy the drive, it takes you to all the best sites and tells the stories that bring these cities to life.
These cars are smart. An on-board computer and a GPS-system do the thinking so you can actually relax and take in the beautiful cities. Best of all, the adventure happens at your pace. You can stop for photos, take detours, grab a coffee or break for lunch.

Walk Score


Walk Score help you find a walkable place to live by calculating a Walk Score for any address. Walk Score calculates the walkability of an address by locating nearby stores, restaurants, schools, parks, etc. Walk Score measures how easy it is to live a car-lite lifestyle—not how pretty the area is for walking.


Walk Score website also has the most "walkable neighborhoods" area.

JotYou


JotYou™ is location based messaging. Send a message to your friends so they get it when they arrive at school or the ballpark or the mall. Make up geo-games. Track a foot race or bicycle race. Stage a road rally with virtual checkpoints, and feed the directions as participants progress. Ever plan to pick up the milk on the way home from work, but drive right by the store and forget? Use JotYou™ to remind yourself as you pass by specified locations.

How it works: You send a message to one person or many people, and specify a delivery time and location using the map on the computer, or an address from your mobile. When they arrive at the location you specify, JotYou™ alerts them by "buzzing" their cell phone, and delivering the message.

LoJo connect

LoJo is a project launched by a team of Northwestern University graduate students to study the intersection of journalism and emerging location-based technologies.


What is locative storytelling?
Using the bouquet of emerging mobile and location-based technologies (from GPS-enabled mobile phones to interactive online maps), locative storytelling provides multi-media content that enhances a user’s connection to a given place. At its best, this kind of interactive media gives users increased entry points, and more control over, any given story, thereby enabling deeper and more vibrant experiences.

What are some examples?
If you’ve ever been on an audio tour of a museum or a city neighborhood, you’ve experienced locative storytelling. Other examples include Google mash-ups (user-enhanced Google maps that layer location-specific information over area maps) and GPS-based mobile games.

Soundwalks




Soundwalks is an audio tour company, producing audio guides in which the listener is able to step into the life of a narrator as they guide you through their neighborhood streets and local hangouts. Soundwalks mix fiction and reality in a cinematic experience giving the listener the impression of actually being in a film.



Soundwalk has created over 40 walking tours - over 20 in New York alone: from the birth of Hip Hop in the Bronx with Jazzy Jay and Africa Bammbaataa to a memorial walk in Ground Zero with famed author Paul Auster. Recently completed a three-city project for Louis Vuitton in China, featuring Gong Li, Joan Chen, and Shu Qi and a unique sound experience for the Channel Mobile Art Container, featuring the voice of Jeanne Moreau. Soundwalk also produced the official Sony Picture "Da Vinci Code" tour of the Louvre with Jean Reno.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

You Are Not Here

You Are Not Here (.org) is a platform for urban tourism mash-ups. It invites participants to become meta-tourists on simultaneous excursions through multiple cities. Passers-by stumble across the curious You Are Not Here signs in the street.





TheYANH street-signs provide the telephone number for the Tourist Hotline, a portal for audio-guided tours of one place on the streets of another. Through investigation of these points and with or without the aid of a downloadable map, local pedestrians are transformed into tourists of foreign places. Current walking tours include Baghdad through the streets of New York City and Gaza City through the streets of Tel-Aviv.

Photosynth


Using photos of oft-snapped subjects (like Notre Dame) scraped from around the Web, Photosynth creates breathtaking multidimensional spaces with zoom and navigation features that outstrip all expectation.

Sunday, January 27, 2008

How do designers address the immateriality and relatively new language of use of portable devices?


Six students from Design Products, Industrial Design Engineering and Interaction Design at the Royal College of Art have designed (2005) a landscape of concept furniture derived from the statue-like forms of people sitting, standing or leaning against walls engaged in playing the PlayStation Portable (PSP).



about the project

Head Tracking for Desktop VR Displays using the WiiRemote



source: adverlab

Reactive Cube


The reactive cube, like a piece of paper or computer monitor screen is a form of visual medium. It is a more visceral kind of screen, designed to transform digital images into apparently physical objects.

It works by projecting a two dimensional image through a three dimensional mass - in this case water mixed with a specially formulated emulsion. The emulsion is composed of micro-sized particles of oil formulated to stay suspended in water. The projected light is captured by the oil and appears to become a virtually real object.

Each version in the series is based on a particular form of interaction. Some cubes respond to sound, another to the force of a person breath and the most recent draws a line around the edge of a person's hand. In each instance the interface has been made as transparent as possible, avoiding technology that comes between the user and their experience of what happens in the cube.


Later versions of the cube were developed in collaboration with Tom Roope of Tomato Interactive and Andy Allenson of Romandson.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Skorpions


Skorpions are a set of kinetic electronic garments that move and change on the body in slow, organic motions. They have anthropomorphic qualities and can be imagined as parasites that inhabit the skin of the host. They breathe and pulse, controlled by their own internal programming. They are not “interactive” artifacts insofar as their programming does not respond to simplistic sensor data. They have intentionality; they are programmed to live, to exist, to subsist. They are living behavioral kinetic sculptures that exploit characteristics such as control, anticipation, and unpredictability. They have their own personalities, their own fears and desires.

Skorpions reference the history of garments as instruments of pain and desire. They hurt you and distort your body the same way as corsets and foot binding. They emphasize our lack of control over our garments and our digital technologies. Our clothes shift and change in ways that we do not anticipate. Our electronics malfunction and become obsolete.

Skorpions shift and modulate personal and social space by imposing physical constraints on the body. They alter behavior, by hiding or revealing hidden layers, inviting others inside the protective shells of fabric, by erecting breathable walls, or tearing themselves open to divulge hidden secrets.

Sunday, October 28, 2007

Greyworld


Greyworld goal is to create works that articulate public spaces, allowing some form of self-expression in areas of the city that people see every day but normally exclude and ignore.

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The Source, an eight storey high kinetic sculpture, is the new symbol for the London Stock Exchange. Every morning, millions of viewers around the world will watch the installation come to life, signifying the opening of the London Markets.

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Five bins and four benches have been injected with a magic serum of life so that they can break free from their staid and fixed positions to roam free in a public square in Cambridge.

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Railings plays on the simple pleasure of picking up a stick and running it along a set of railings to make a lovely "clack-clack-clack" sound. We tuned the railings so that when you ran a stick along them they played "the Girl from Ipanema."

Electroland


Electroland is a team that creates comprehensive and multi-disciplinary urban projects and scenarios. Electroland is a place where the vast network of electronic impulses and symbolic exchanges became tangible.

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This project consists of a luminous field of LED lights embedded into the entry walkway that respond to the presence of visitors; a massive display of lights on the building face that mirror the patterns of the entry; and video displays in the lobby and entry areas.

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Electroland has designed a unique Target branded interactive experience adjacent to the newly reopened Rockefeller Center top floor observation decks. The Interactive Breezeway engages pedestrians in an ephemeral interactive encounter where their position and paths are traced by colorful avatars and effects.

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This project features two glass pedestrian bridges designed as "Interactive Walkways," each with a field of LED lights embedded in resilient walking surfaces. Sensors detect the presence of people and the system triggers interactive light patterns on the walkway floor.

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Computer controlled colored lights fill 81 windows extending over 180 meters at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc.) Patterns are controlled by cellphone by any caller from any location, raising issues concerning private interaction and control of public spaces.

Toshio Iwai's work


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Toshio Iwai is a Japanese interactive media and installation artist who has also created a number of commercial videogames. In addition he has worked in television, music performance, museum design and digital musical instrument design.

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Friday, October 26, 2007

Wi-Fi Detector Shirt


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ThinkGeek product:
- Glowing animated shirt dynamically displays the current wi-fi signal strength
- Shows signal strength for 802.11b or 802.11g

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Thursday, October 25, 2007

Sony's Bravia Advert



Try them virtually


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"Glasses and contact lenses are noticeably big business all over Asia, so it’s no surprise to see a Japanese optician combining sales of spectacles with the venerable mobile phone.

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Glasses superstore Megane Top has just started a handy service where browsers of the frame selection on their mobile website can go one step further and try them on virtually."
Source: digitalworldtokyo