Bare CFL bulbs give off harsh light. Soften it with the Bright Idea Shade.

The Bright Idea Shade is a project of the Eyebeam OpenLab, by Sustainability Action Group members Michael Mandiberg and Steve Lambert, with Simon Jolly, Peter Duyan, and Oscar Torres. We are converting all of our silver tipped incandescent bulbs into CFL bulbs (as they burn out.) The problem is a bare CFL bulb gives off very harsh light. So we set about designing a lampshade for the bulbs. We started with the Universal Polygon Lampshade and made it fit a CFL bulb, built it out of heat resistant photo diffuser material (found a diffuser material that could be laser cut, and built a laser cutter template. Stay tuned for an instructable with all the templates and other goodness. Plus a DIY kit.

TouchKit is a modular version of the CUBIT multitouch system.

Bombs (from 2d mat board) were be placed in iconic locations of bomb threats in hopes of opening a discussion of what is terrorism vs. fear and how interchangeable are the words. Where is the line between rational and unrational occur? How does a society begin to learn to cope with the unknown by being logical?

Using computer vision tracking coordinate systems, helicopters paint abstract forms on a canvas laid horizontially.

 Project will be shown in July. 

shadow project utilizes motion tracking and kinetic robotics. The system of strings generates abstract forms of a user or mimics chaos in nature.

signs the world just might be ending.

updated constantly.

The text is currently being pulled from xml into openframworks dynamically displaying in real time peoples answers to the question ‘what would you take if you could only take one object out of a fire?’

the interface is then being projected onto a wooden board where I have laser cut a floorplan of the typical american house. The answers shift around depending on activity on the blog and gender specific answers (boys are black, girls pink)

what if we learned to live with ‘rodents’,
harmoniously.
they did us no harm, and we did them no harm?

we save millions a year, and stop killing them off
and we plant trees and flowers around our avenues instead of poison and traps?

The idea is not to build new 'green' buildings but rather take what we already have and make it sustainable for all. Why spend millions on new buildings when what we already inhabit is in need of repairs? What if we could in the process build faces for buildings which would allow for the elimination of poisons and damage done around and on buildings by rodents? Pigeons could nest inside the facades, in fabricated nesting boxes and those boxes would sense their presence and illuminate when they inhabited the spaces.

A flock of stark, white, static two-dimensional birds inhabit a tree. The birds’ physical negatives were modeled on the actual species that once inhabited Manhattan. According to a recent Audubon Society report, 20 species of birds are declining at a rate of 68 percent. Stop by the park for a vision of what once was.  Location: Clement Clarke Moore Park, 22nd St. and 10th Ave.  Installation dates: April 3-10 2008.

"the marionettes" is a networked puppet installation created with the new standalone (and soon opensourced) version of moviesandbox and displayed for the eyebeam reception for the shanghai media art fair symposium in new york

Two networked puppets can be controlled by hardware marionette controllers. Participants can interact with each other through their puppets without seeing each other in person.

The controllers are a bit more sophisticated right now, albeit not really tweaked enough in terms of distances etc... There are some more picture on flickr here.