Smiles in Motion , by Danish artists Kjell Yngve Petersen & Karin Søndergaard, are a set of chairs designed for augmented relationships between two people, enabling them to converse with each other by turning speech into movement.

Speech and sounds produced in the audible spectrum by the two visitors are converted into vibrations, through motors placed in the seats of the chairs. As a visitor is perceiving what is spoken in the form of vibrations, he is also shown the mouth of the other visitor on a monitor fixed in a globe. The visitors "hear" each other through vibrations, synchronized with the images of the movements of their mouths. And so may converse through vibrations and smiles.

Smiles in Motion is on part of a series of installations which include also Mirrechophone, I think You - You think Me, and The Different Stories of a Bride and Groom.

Via we make money not art

The show includes a number of new hacked Nintendo game cartridges - the work that Arcangel has become known for - and a number of new works in the medium of video. In the former group are a fully interactive Ipod programmed for the Nintendo system and an absurdly slowed down version of Tetris . ["Slow Tetris" is one of those instantly funny titles--you pretty much get the piece in 3 syllables. It...is...very...slow. In the existential angst category are "Japanese Racing Game," which removes the racecar and obstacles and leaves only the pulsing white highway divider receding to infinity, and "Space Invader," which subtracts all the invaders except one pitiful, descending combatant.] In the latter group are "Sans Simon," a video of Simon and Garfunkel in which the artist uses his hand to hide Simon's presence [actually it's both hands in silhouette, cast by an unseen, insane person struggling to keep Simon's face blacked out as the camera changes angles and switches from closeup to long shot of the singing duo. Always one beat behind the cut and only marginally successful as censorship, these desperate moves were hilarious--everyone in the room was laughing, probably trying to envision the guy who hated Paul (or loved Art?) to this degree.] and "Geto Boys/Beach Boys" in which videos by the two eponymous bands are played side by side creating an oddly harmonic synchronicity.

[...] Arcangel is interested in keeping the possibilities of collaboration open, as well as in continuing to reach out to other cultural fields for inspiration, fusing autonomous artworks with temporary and net-based actions. The show at Team, for example, marks the launch of Dooogle.com, a search engine which only yields results about Doogie Howser, M.D. [More "no exit" angst--no matter what you punch in the same 15,900 results for Doogie come up.] Also available is a new piece of software called T.A.C. (Total Asshole Compression), a program which increases the size of any file passed through it.

The table of the day.

In the Sur la table installation, by Osman Khan, actions that occur on/over a table (placing objects, eating food, hand gestures, etc ) are amplified through projection.

A camera above the table captures events occurring on/over the table. A computer processes the image so that non-white objects seem to stream their color down. This image is then projected back onto the table. Thus, a historic timeline of events over the table is visualized as a continuous flow of images.

The installation works with a single or multiple tables. Multiple tables are networked via UDP, so that the images stream from one table flows on to another and so on. The tables can be placed next to each other or in geographically diverse places.

I saw the work at Ars Electronica and wasn't that much impressed, I couldn't really see the point beyond the technological challenge. But reading the artist's presentation, I though it got interesting: The installation also explored the notion of consumption. Visitors are encouraged to eat and drink, consuming the visually enticing elements (the colored foods) on the table, returning the tables to their blank state and thus ending the installations visually dynamic performance.

In the end, despite their mother's best teachings, visitors prefer to play with the food, treating the table and food elements as a dynamic Still Life, mixing colors and forms and altogether forgetting about eating.

(video)

Sorry my Japanese is a little rusty, otherwise I’d give us all a full translation of the site. However I do know these captivating photos are indeed of Tokyo’s G-Cans Project-- an underground water draining system to help prevent the overflow of major waterways during the wet typhoon season. Just seeing the sheer size and design of this construction through these photos, which almost look illustrated, is amazing. I can only imagine what construction and upkeep of such an immense and interesting system like this must be like. It's also a free tourist attraction, presumably only during the dry season. --Josh Spear

We’re definitely getting one these Piñatas (which were apparently last redesigned sometime around 1991) for Engadget’s first birthday party coming up in March. Except instead of candy we’re going to fill this sucker up with USB flash drives and iPod shuffles.

[Thanks, Il Postino]

Glowlab attended the first New York screening of the new film Quality of Life, and we're crossing our fingers that this movie makes it into theaters soon.

There's a good article in the SF Chronicle about the film. From the synopsis: "Meet Michael "Heir" Rosario and Curtis "Vain" Smith, the most prolific and talented graffiti writers from the Mission District in San Francisco. At age ten, in a desperate search for fame and identity, the young friends began writing their names on surrounding urban landscapes. More than a decade later, the duo have evolved into a brilliant team of street artists. The two have covertly decorated the canvases of concrete and steel throughout the Bay Area. However, when Heir and Vain are arrested for painting, their secret identities are revealed and creative outlets are abruptly severed. "

“The Mario Movie,” Deitch Projects, New York City, January 2005

Cory Arcangel (Beige) and Paper Rad

This is a group effort, so let me first introduce the principle actors. Paper Rad: Benjamin Jones, Jacob Ciocci, and Jessica Ciocci. Beige: Cory Arcangel, Paul B. Davis, Joe Bonn, and Joe Beuckman. They work in collectives for the same reason that punks play in bands: it’s funner that way, and it’s easier to make more noise. There is the Lennon/McCartney question of who is responsible for what, and I can’t make head nor tails of it. But from what I know Ben and the Paper Rad kids have a shameless affection for dirt-style, fan fiction comics about Garfield and Howard the Duck. And then there’s Paul who I am told once entered the DMC turntable competition under the DJ name “Spin Laden.” (He advanced through the opening heats, a challenge in itself, before being thrown off for scratching in the Notorious B.I.G. lyric “Time to get paid / blow up like the World Trade.”) The clothes that the Paper Rad kids wear they sew themselves. Cory wears them too, I think, when he’s not wearing pizza-shaped animal pullovers knit at home with his other chums. And on more than one occasion, I’ve been present when, sauntering past a stray guitar, in a Kmart aisle or friend’s house party it doesn’t matter which, Cory has spontaneously tapped out the full arpeggios of Eddie Van Halen’s “Eruption” with ten fingers at full frills. Then there was the music performance in Brooklyn when the Paper Rad three sat cross-legged on the floor performing a pretend recital on some Sony “My First Laptops,” while the music was droning on prerecorded throughout. I thought electronic music was the one thing you didn’t have to lip-sync? Oh well. Here’s how I understand it: I’ve done way more ecstasy than Beige and Paper Rad put together, but they’ve done way more acid. And that makes all the difference. As Ben scribbled in a comic once, “Can one be tanned at night by stars?”

But it gets weirder: “The Mario Movie,” Deitch Projects, New York City, January 2005. There is not much a rational person can say about a psychedelic rave fantasy, with messed up graphics, with castles floating on rainbow colored clouds, with dance parties and raves in underwater dungeons, all starring Mario the plumber who does little more than weep through the tumult. And the whole thing plays live off a hand-soldered video game cartridge. Gosh. But if I may observe one thing it would be merely the following: this is the real deal. Which is to say that it’s not the real deal. This is computer code. But what you see is not what you get. To watch the code itself would bore to distraction. Instead this code runs on a video game console that converts it into sound and image. The game console is the Nintendo Entertainment System, known affectionately as “the NES” to every youngster lucky enough to receive one for Christmas in 1985. (Raised by hippies in Oregon, we were not so fortunate.) The NES is a magical device, for given the proper code it can synthesize any sort of video signal from scratch. This is not the sort of video made with a camera and edited on a computer, mind you. How do we know? First, the compiled Mario Movie is 32 kilobytes in size, or about twice as long as the few paragraphs you are reading now. Even compressed, a ten minute video is roughly a thousand times larger. Second, the movie runs directly off the customized game cartridge pushed into the socket of the NES console—without, Cory is keen to observe, altering the factory-soldered graphics chip shipped on the original ’80s cartridges. “Yo sound the bells / school is in sucker,” MC Hammer would come to say a few years later. “U can’t touch this.” This is the real deal.

Because of this, computer art is more like sculpture than like painting or video. In making the work computer artists actually fabricate the substrate of the medium, they don’t apply things to surfaces or use prefab tools to move images on a screen. The code is the medium. So in writing code, and running it, the computer artist builds the work from the ground up. It’s all math and electricity. To engineer the soundtrack, Cory pokes the audio registers on the NES’s chip in specific frequencies. When he does they chirp. To get the video, he writes hundreds of lines of code, code like “lda $2002” (translation: load the value from memory position 2002 into the “a” register in the processor), or like “jsr vwait” (translation: jump ahead to the subroutine called “vwait” to stall for a few milliseconds while the television’s electron beam repositions itself). What appears on the screen is the image of pure data. It is, in a manner of speaking, what numbers look like (if they could). Translation: this is not video art. Maybe call it math art, geek art, whatever. The Mario Movie makes tedium profound, and the other way around.

They say everything becomes interesting in the long run. Super Mario Bros might be nostalgia to you. But it’s not to them. All media is dead media, that’s what Paper Rad and Cory understand. It’s all garbage from the beginning—so don’t yearn for a time when it was otherwise. When you understand media as trash then there is no nostalgia. If there is any shred of longing that remains in the work, it’s not for our childhood friend Mario. It’s for an acid high, for a simulated hiatus in a far off land that no one has ever been to. It’s for watching a cartoon schmuck trip rather than you. It’s nostalgia for raves sucked from the fevered brains of raver-haters. Everything is as new as it is old. Everything is as sucky as it is good. This is the movie.

— Alex Galloway, January 12, 2005 3:08:50 PM EST

Another Kono Takashi exhibition, this time at the National Museum of Modern Art.

I quite enjoyed last year’s Kono exhibition at the GGG (even bought the GGG produced book). The MOMAT show is until February 27.

Gravity as an interface of perception

Artist Mikami Seiko and architect Ichikawa Sota see gravity as an interface of perception, claiming "the interface itself exists inside us."

Their installation Gravity and Resistance presents the dynamic processes of the interactions between gravity and resistance: a dialogue between the body and space.

Each participant becomes "an observation point," and another participant joins to make "plural moving observation points." The number of participants at a time is not limited.

Sensors detect instantly and continuously the changing position, weight, and speed. Based on the relations among participants' dynamics, GPS in the sky above the site, and changes in the space, another space is created by light, sound, and images.

Implicit in the resistance of gravity is the social dynamic / collaboration among the participants as active agents creating the gravitational traces. See more detail on their site.

David Choe can be described simply with two words: pure talent. He has done work for many impressive and interesting clients, such as DC Comics and Toyota. He has designed shoes, t-shirts, toys, books, and even a hotel room in downtown San Francisco. He works with paints--sculpts, draws, works in acrylics, water colors, spraypaint, photos, and anything he can make art out of. His site hosts a very impressive collection of his work. Not bad for a fella that dropped out of art school and now gets asked to speak at universities all the time. His future plans? He wants to illustrate the Bible and paint the entire Great Wall of China, for a start. --Josh Spear

Kraft said it would alter the mix of products it advertises on TV, radio and print media that are viewed primarily by children 6-11, including "many popular cartoon programs," toward products that meet proposed 2005 U.S. Dietary Guidelines, and to "phase out advertising in these media for products that don't."

Over the course of 2005, Kraft said it would completely phase out ads for a wide variety of kids-oriented products, including its Post cereals line, its Lunchables brand, its cookies and Kool-Aid drink mixes and snacks in media aimed at children. The company also said it would continue existing policies of not advertising in media with a principal audience under age six. (MEDIAPOST)

Got the following from Octopus Dropkick:

Still trying to load the clip – it’s taking ages. I absolutely loved Appleseed (I review it in this week’s edition of my anime column at Tokyo Q).

Update: The trailer looks terrific! It’s a very intriguing blend of CG animation in what looks like a real-world setting. I cannot wait to see the finished film.

Ross Mayfield's Weblog

IBM Opens the Patent Market

Steve Lohr reports that IBM is open sourcing 500 patents.

John Kelly, the senior vice president for technology and intellectual property, called the patent contribution "the beginning of a new era in
how I.B.M. will manage intellectual property."

Perhaps for more than just IBM -- competitors may have to follow, um, suit.  While 500 patents is a drop in the bucket for the largest portfolio (40k), this is a significant move and part of a broader strategy to commoditize their inputs, pool risk, leverage a lead in services and change the game.

"This is exciting," said Lawrence Lessig, a professor at Stanford Law School and founder of the school's Center for Internet and Society. "It is I.B.M. making good on its commitment to encourage a different kind of software development and recognizing the burden that patents can impose."

Amazing things happen when self interest is in group interest.

The show includes a number of new hacked Nintendo game cartridges - the work that Arcangel has become known for - and a number of new works in the medium of video. In the former group are a fully interactive Ipod programmed for the Nintendo system and an absurdly slowed down version of Tetris . In the latter group are Sans Simon, a video of Simon and Garfunkel in which the artist uses his hand to hide Simon's presence, and Geto Boys/Beach Boys in which videos by the two eponymous bands are played side by side creating an oddly harmonic synchronicity.

[...] Arcangel is interested in keeping the possibilities of collaboration open, as well as in continuing to reach out to other cultural fields for inspiration, fusing autonomous artworks with temporary and net-based actions. The show at Team, for example, marks the launch of dooogle.com, a search engine which only yields results about Doogie Howser, M.D. Also available is a new piece of software called T.A.C. (Total Asshole Compression), a program which increases the size of any file passed through it.

If my site happens to be your first stop after crawling out from under a rock, I'm pleased to let you know that much earlier today Apple announced a few new things. In the software category comes iLife 05 and iWork featuring lots of updates and one new app, Pages (a word processor). More exciting is the new hardware. Mac mini is a $500 shiny white box with a some pretty good specs for the price. Finally Apple has entered the affordable market.

The iPod Shuffle is a very small and cute flash based music player. Subscribing to the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) philosophy, the Shuffle has no display and only offers basic functions. I'm certainly not giving up my iPod, but would consider adding a Shuffle to my mobile music arsenal-- it should be good at the gym, right?

Stockholm s Umbilical Design, a firm specializing in designs for space and extreme environments, has been asked by Xero --the first Swedish company to offer zero-gravity flights-- to work on a fun and reassuring interior-design scheme for its planes.

Using a parabolic flight plane normally used to train Russian astronauts and test equipment, Xero will take passengers on a one-and-a-half-hour flight that features 15 short periods of weightlessness.

In a bid to create a playground-like environment, the firm is developing a concept for an inflatable module that would completely transform the plane interior in about an hour. Aside from the inflatable interior, the cabin will be fairly open, with a few elements like vertical handrails that passengers can use to propel themselves around the space.

To further transform the cabin, Umbilical will add mood lighting and integrate some kind of scent design. These elements might also be used to give information. For example, instead of a pilot s voice announcing when periods of weightlessness will begin, a change in sound or lighting might cue guests to prepare. The design studio believes that zero gravity should affect the way we live, and refers to designs used in our homes as "terrestrial applications".

Xero has three flights planned for 2005--in February, July, and October--each holding 12 passengers.

Via MetropolisMag.

This article recently appeared in the Official Playstation Magazine. And now you get to read it for free. Great, what did I pay my $10 for then? Oh, yeah, that huge Gran Turismo 4 piece…

Anyway, the article is an interesting read. As someone who is married to a somewhat avid female gamer, it misses a few points. For example, my wife was hugely addicted to Dungeon Keeper. Not a game you’d expect a woman to be interested in. She also loved Carmageddon. Again, not what you’d consider a “female friendly” game.

The article is good, though sadly, online, you miss the marvelous irony of the article appearing in print right alongside a huge breasted woman with a sword trying to sell me some stupid RPG. Some developers never learn…

Yoshifumi Kitamura and his team at the Human Interface Engineering Laboratory, in Osaka University, is investigating varieties of new tools by changing the software parameters of the tool with a standardized interface. These experiments should help them design a comfortable user interface and analyze processes that occur while people learn to use new tools.

They first tested the system with chopsticks because although they are very simple in form, they do have multiple functions. I am a complete moron in front of chopstick, but it seems that their tool enables even users who cannot handle real chopsticks properly to operate the virtual chopsticks in a way that matches his/her mental image obtained from multiple joint angles, which are measured as a finger motion.

Generating sign language by using the user's intuitive hand action is a possible application.

It kills me but it comes from Nicolas again!

[…] if my friends make their rooms available online too, we can connect them & turn them into a house. We can party while we seem to be working.

socialfiction: Taxonomy of my Room

Related: COC: Consumer Oriented Classification

via thinking machine

The Table: Childhood 1984-2001, by Max Dean and Raffaello D Andrea, is a robotic table that selectively interacts with persons who enter the room, but it will choose only one viewer among them. As long as that visitor stays, he or she will be the object of the table s attention.

The table monitors the visitor s physical reactions. If that person is unresponsive, Table tries harder: it might initiate an action enticing the viewer to copy it or turn on its axis with a pirouette; it might decide to chase or even to flee. Once some kind of relationship is established, the table determines how to handle the situation, whether lyrically or aggressively.

The Table switches the roles of viewer and object. The artwork and not the viewer is in the position of choice. This in turn focuses the attention of other viewers on one particular visitors, making that person the "object" of attention.

Not sure this one will be of a great help for Nicolas' CSCW course. Besides, I bear a grudge against this table, I saw it at the Biennale di Venezia exhibition of art, in 2001. I entered the room three times (at least) and the table never chose me.

Video

Via Networked_performance.