heartfelt thanks to all who read the reBlog during the last two weeks and special shout-outs to my favorite art hag Toni Burlap and favorite art fag r. rum.

thanks for the memories...
hugs + kisses,
r

Yo! Here's the third* project born from the Interactivos? workshop held at MediaLab Madrid last month.

Delicate Boundaries, a work by Chris Sugrue, uses human touch to dissolve the barrier of the computer screen. Using the body as a means of exchange, the system explores the subtle boundaries that exist between foreign systems and what it might mean to cross them. Lifelike digital animations swarm out of their virtual confinement onto the skin of a hand or arm when it makes contact with a computer screen creating an imaginative world where our bodies are a landscape for digital life to explore.
Video.

What was the biggest challenge in developing the project?

The greatest challenge was that the piece dealt very directly with the human body. It was important to create the illusion that these animated forms (which my Spanish colleagues have fondly named
bichitos) have an understanding of the structure of the arm or hand they are exploring and can respond to it in a believable manner.

Interactive works are often facing the challenge of unpredictable audiences and responses, but attempting to respond so specifically to something as versatile and subtle as hand and arm movements was pretty challenging. I also wanted to create the experience that these lifelike forms that are made entirely of projected light had a physical presence in the world. It was certainly a challenge to design a system that convinced people to try to hold them and feel they had perhaps some responsibility for them.

Do you plan to develop the idea any further?

Yes, absolutely. I think there is a lot of potential for development.

The next release of the installation will integrate audio feedback. I began working with several talented sounds designers during
Interactivos?, but did not have a chance to fully integrate it. I think an audio-visual synthesis will add to the sensory experience of the piece. On a more conceptual level, I plan to consider the idea that when two foreign systems or frontiers suddenly connect there is an inevitable change to both. So I am interested to find a subtle, but meaningful way to communicate that.

Looking further into the future, this project explores a lot of the concepts and questions I continue to research during my fellowship at Eyebeam. I am very interested in how digital artists deal with the human body. Although our bodies are so familiar and intimate I think they continue to be a source of mystery (at least to me) and it seems very human to try to use technology to explore and augment them. I also love work that wants to break free from the computer screen or other device, and I think a fascinating way to do this is to treat light as a living or physical force.

How does the system work technically?

The system design is not terribly complex. I use a digital projector mounted over the installation space for the projection onto the body.

A video camera and infrared illuminator are aligned with the projector to perform the vision tracking. The rest of the magic happens in the software which is written in C++ using the openFrameworks library. The program I developed (along with the help of several very talented collaborators) has three main components.

The first connects the various spaces of the installation (the video image from the camera, the projection space, and the computer screen). Understanding how these spaces connect physically was essential in creating a believable transference between the virtual and physical worlds. The next step was processing the live video to find different structural and motion information about the audience and how they are connected to both the screen and to each other. Finally, the fun part was designing the behaviors and interactions. I spent a fair amount of time finding the right marriage of form and physics to give the bugs some character and a sense of life. I have to credit Zachary Lieberman for all his help in programming the physics and motion in the piece.

Thanks Chris!

See also: Light bulb screen and Augmented Sculpture v 1.0.

From our friend Pablo Aravena comes these photos of Roadsworth's Tour de France installation in the UK.

It will get on all your disks
It will infiltrate your chips
Yes it's Cloner!...

Web 2.0 tracker FranticIndustries.com has compiled a "best of" list for the five most dead simple ways to store your files online. If it's not ridiculously simple to use, then it's not on this list.

From DropBoks to JustUpIt, these services couldn't be easier to get going. For the most part, you won't even have to register for an account - just jump in and start uploading away. What's missing from this list? Please share in the comments.

Since the hottest months of the year are also the sunniest - the idea of using solar energy to power your air-conditioner makes perfect sense. In fact we’re frankly amazed that its taken so long to develop such an obviously good idea: SolCool’s super smart Millennia air-conditioner uses solar power to cool you down during the height of summer steaminess - cleverly making use of the summer heat instead of blindly fighting it. In fact, Inhabitat HQ could really use one of these right about now…

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At 200 meters long and 12 meters tall, this vertical garden is an impressive permanent and living installation at the Musée Du Quai Branly in Paris. The "living wall" was designed and planted by Patrick Blanc and forms the facade of the museum which was designed by enigmatic French architect Jean Nouvel.

One of the highlights of the We Love Technology day which took place on July 12 in Huddersfield was the keynote of architect Usman Haque. He titled it "I Hate Technology" and listed several things that bother him about technology. My rough notes:

The word "technology" means something different today than what it used to imply in the past. Technology used to imply "knowledge", it was the study of making. It was not an object but the description of an object. Technology was more about the description of systems. Today we tend to think that technology resides in physical things. That is a rather dramatic change, from the way we describe things to objects containing this thing we call technology.

Consequence:
Artefacts. Fetishism for a piece of technology. You would never grab a frog and show it to people saying "this is wonderful biology!" or "Look at this biology!" We have developed a very mechanistic view of technology. Inspired by Steve Jobs?

A second problem is that we have the illusion of progress. When we think about technology, the words that spring to our minds are "innovation, value, efficiency."

But a look at train timetables (from 1973 to 1997) shows that even if loads of money has been poured into the train system, the trains actually got slower.
Example: Going from Portlaoise to Dublin took 51 minutes with steam engine in 1928, in 2006 it takes 55 minutes.
Philadelphia to Los Angeles in 1965 lasted 5 hours and 5 minutes. In 2005, the ride was 6 hours and 1 minutes.

Continue reading....

view additional pages

Hidden HAZARDS of CIRCUS THRILLERS

by TOM MURRAY

LILLIAN LEITZEL, the world’s i greatest lady aerialist, had just finished her 100th muscle grind in the high dome of a Copenhagen theater and the huge crowd of spectators were applauding loudly. Suddenly hundreds of eyes saw a slim graceful form plunging downward. The fall was not a part of the woman’s act. She had fallen to her death. “Crystalization” had weakened a swivel in her rigging, and once again this mysterious deterioration of steel had claimed another circus performer; this time one of the best and most loved artists of the sawdust arena.

Science has been unable to cope with this steel granulation and every season one or more circus performer plunges to his or her death beneath the white tops.

2008:Man With a Movie Camera is a participatory video — initiated by Perry Bard — shot by people around the world who are invited to record video according to the original script of Vertov’s Man With A Movie Camera and submit it to a website which will archive, sequence and deliver the submissions to The Big Screen in 2007-08. When the work streams your contribution becomes part of a worldwide montage, in Vertov’s terms the ”decoding of life as it is”.

BACKGROUND: Vertov’s 1929 film Man With A Movie Camera records the progression of one full day synthesizing footage shot in Moscow, Riga, and Kiev. The film begins with titles that declare it “an experiment in the cinematic communication of visible events without the aid of inter-titles, without the aid of a scenario, without the aid of theater.” It is often described as an urban documentary yet the subject of the film is also the film itself –from the role of the cameraman to that of the editor to its projection in a theatre and the response of the audience. It is a film within a film made with a range of inventive effects –dissolves, split screen, slow motion, freeze frame–all of which are now embedded in digital editing software.

WHERE YOU COME IN: This website contains every shot in Vertov’s 1929 film along with thumbnails representing the beginning middle and end of each shot. You are invited to interpret Vertov and upload your footage to this site to become part of the database. See the Scene Index.TECHNOLOGY: Use what you have at your disposal. If you don’t have a video camera, a succession of still images will work. Text is also o.k. The database will reflect the shape of the wired world on the 21st century stage.Uploading of shots will be available in August.TIMING: Vertov’s rhythmic patterning unifies the film. The shots are listed as seconds and as frames as a guide.

INTERPRETING VERTOV: Vertov’s footage was shot in the industrial landscape of the 20’s.What images translate the world today? e.g. instead of the mining scene if you’re living in Silicon Valley you might film inside Apple headquarters, etc.

PRESENTATION: 2008:Man With a Movie Camera will be streamed on four public screens in the UK beginning in October 2007 on the Big Screen Manchester. YOUR NAME, YOUR WEBSITE WILL BE LINKED ON THIS SITE. All material on this site is public domain.

CONTACT: Please email perrybard[at]gmail.com for questions about this project.

*we reserve the right to eliminate inappropriate material

Note: The subtitles on the above version are slightly different than the version used in this site. Soundtrack by Cinematic Orchestra, 2003. You can also view the film at archive.org. [via Newsgrist]

I love Etsy. As we've reported before, it is sort of like eBay for handmade arts & crafts, where they charge a small listing fee and take a percentage if you sell anything. DIY fanatics sell everything from knit coasters shaped like orange slices to miniature pewter bird charms.

Recently, the Etsy folks have opened up a space called Etsy Labs in Brooklyn, New York. They hold cool events and classes, like a recent supply swap for crafters. Every Wednesday at 4pm, they have an Afternoon Tea Party meet-up where you can check out the facilities and meet other crafter enthusiasts. Trunk shows are scheduled on the last Friday of every month from 6-8 pm. This month's trunk show, on July 28th, is called "Trashion", and will feature fashion and accessories made from - not surprisingly - trash, and recycled and repurposed materials.

For those aspiring to sell their wares on Etsy.com or those who are already on their way, Etsy Labs has various classes on subjects of interest to arts and crafters, from Screenprinting (7/21-7/22) to Intellectual Property Issues for Artists (7/28).

Check out the site for the latest information on dates, prices, membership requirements, and available spaces.

Posted by Ray    Category: design
Tags: classes  crafts  events  workshops
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Reducing the amount of energy your hungry computers eat up every day won't only save you money on electricity bills, it will reduce your carbon footprint. If you haven't thought about how much electricity your gadgets use up every day, now's the time. Turns out just a few changes in habits and system settings can save you money AND the environment. After the jump, have 10 ways to reduce your energy consumption and compute greener.

How do you reduce your energy usage? Let us know in the comments.

For all you graphically-minded designers out there, here’s your chance to shine: DesignBoom recently announced its latest design competition, Love Your Earth, which asks graphic designers to create a graphic artwork to raise awareness on global issues affecting the planet. The deadline is September 8, 2007, three winners will be awarded cash prizes, and a shortlist of honorable mentions will be featured at 100% Design Tokyo this fall. Check out DesignBoom for all the details and put those graphic design caps on!

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The Clean Hub, “a new prototype for sustainable infrastructure” conceived by Shelter Architecture in collaboration with Architecture for Humanity, and designed and built by architecture students from the University of Minnesota, is a breath of fresh air in an often-luxury prefab world. One of the finalists in American Express’ Members Project (vote for the Clean Hub here!), the freestanding module delivers completely off-the-grid infrastructure, from clean water and sanitation to renewable power to disaster areas or rural locations without access to such resources.

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Wake up and smell the pencil lead, says Japanese stationery and writing instrument manufacturer Pentel, who has combined the power of nanotechnology with the knowledge of expert aromatherapists to develop a new type of fragrant pencil lead. Featuring a long-lasting aroma designed to enhance mental capacity, the pencil lead — called “Ain supplio” — recently won the coveted Stationery of the Year Award (2007).

Unlike previous types of fragrant lead, which use weak aromatic surface coatings that tend to lose their smell quickly, Ain supplio relies on fragrant ingredients trapped in nanocapsules, or tiny air bubbles, which are infused into the lead itself. The microscopic size of the nanocapsules gives them extra strength to hold their fragrance for long periods of time — about 3 years if kept in the unopened package, 2 years if kept in their plastic case, and more than 3 months out in the open air.

Tentatively priced at 210 yen (under $2) per set, Ain supplio comes in three flavors — Refresh, Healing and Positive — each prepared by aromatherapists working with ingredients such as rosemary, mint, lemongrass and green tea. The aromatic blends are specially designed to boost the learning capacity of those in smelling range, says Pentel, who hopes the product will appeal to students. Ain supplio will hit shelves in September, just in time for the fall semester.

[Source: IT Media, Pentel press release]

We've known that our printers are spying on us, ever since the Electronic Frontier Foundation cracked the secret codes in the output of color laser printers. These hidden codes -- apparently placed at the behest of the Secret Service -- identify the serial number, make and model of the printer that printed them, as well as a date and timestamp.

What we didn't know is that if you ask the manufacturer of your printer to stop spying on you, they respond by ratting you out to the Secret Service as a dangerous subversive, and a few days later, the SS will show up and ask you why you care about your privacy.

Seeing Yellow -- a project from the MIT Media Lab -- wants to put a stop to this by overwhelming the manufacturers with complaints from their customers, so many that they can't turn us all into the SS.

When you print on a color laser printer, it's likely that you are also printing a pattern of invisible yellow dots. These marks exist to allow the printer companies and governments to track and identify you -- presumably as a way to combat money counterfeiting. When one person asked his printer manufacturer about turning off the tracking dots, Secret Service agents showed up at his door several days later.

Upset? You should be!

Let's stand up to silent tracking and government bullying and send a strong message to printer manufacturers. Our privacy and our control over our own technology is far too important to give up over trumped up fears of photocopied money.

See also:
EFF cracks hidden snitch codes in color laser prints
Do forensic printer marks slow down printers?
Is Your Printer Spying On You?

Pictures from the series “Fifty years of protesting” by Jo Metson Scott.

Despite its sinister history as a world-famous prison, no one’s stopping Alcatraz from becoming an innovative learning center for the latest in green technology. With its location in the middle of San Francisco Bay, Alcatraz is perfectly positioned to play host to solar, wind, and tidal power. The new turn to green comes on its 100th birthday, and the National Park Service is putting a ton of its own resources into this prison-turned-tourist destination, making sure power, water, and even transportation to and from the island is entirely sustainable.

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With all the sobering news lately about global warming and war, it’s important to remember all the positive things that are ALSO going on in the world at any given time. Case in point: the story of intrepid Malawi youth William Kamkwamba who, despite having no education or training, recently engineered and built a windmill that powers his entire village. It’s certainly the most inspiring story we’ve read this month, and we think you’ll agree…

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The personal powerPlant is a portable device that harnesses electricity through a solar cell and hand crank generator, into a NiMH battery. The device also includes a visual multimeter that monitors the amount of energy stored. The personal powerPlant can be used to power applications up to 8V at 70 mA.

Designed by: Mouna Andraos, Jennifer Broutin, Carmen Trudell with Mike Dory @ Eyebeam for the Alternative Energy Workshop 06.23.07

Help them win the instructable laser cutter contest by voting for this amazing project!

coming soon to a changing neighborhood

Looking at this stage more like the Pompidou than the casual stack of clean, minimal, white spaces which will eventually sit on the side of one of the oldest and most historically-evocative streets in New York City, the new New Museum is slowly rising above [most of] the roofs of the Lower East Side, where it will soon help to re-define the cultural landscape of an entire community.

We have already been seeing a number of good galleries opening up all over the neighborhood, and I wouldn't expect that trend to slow down any time soon. My only question is what took them so long?

In spite of the fact that I live almost on top of the Chelsea gallery ghetto, I more than welcome a new destination: At least on visits to that side of town art junkies will be able to get a drink or a snack while making [our] unflagging rounds.