Maimm's Weblog

Sixth Sense or the future of the interface

maimm — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 19:40:52 +0000

SixthSense is a wearable gestural interface that augments the physical world around us with digital information and lets us use natural hand gestures to interact with that information.

It has been developped by students at the MIT Media Lab. Internet is turned into a Sixth huamn sense, a wearable computing system that turns any surface into an interactive display screen.

The prototype cost $350, it consisted of a Webcam, an internet-enabled mobile phone and a mini-projector with an attached mirror, all hooked up to each other. It is worn around your neck or on your head. The setup allows the user to project information from the phone onto any surface — walls, the body of another person or even your hand.

The integration of those interfaces within the physical proves that we’re increasingly getting into the world of ubiquitous computing. It’s just a matter of time before seeing those types of interfaces and gadgets invading our everyday lives.

This video shows Pranav Mistry, the brain behind the project, with the device around his neck, and colored Magic Marker caps on four fingers (red, blue, green and yellow) that helped the camera distinguish the four fingers and recognize his hand gestures with software that Mistry created.

The gestures can be as simple as using his fingers and thumbs to create a picture frame that tells the camera to snap a photo, which is saved to his mobile phone. When he gets back to an office, he projects the images onto a wall and begins to size them.

This project was the buzz of the 2009 TED Conference and I can understand why. It’s simply, amazing!

Wall of Eye

maimm — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 15:59:57 +0000

Wall of Eye is an interactive installation created by Adrian Baynes which was exhibited at Kinetica Art Fair 09 in London two weeks ago.

It’s a wall with 255 mannequin eyes following the viewer through space.

Cool Stage Design, Buildings Projections & Augmented Sculptures by Pablo Valbuena

maimm — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 17:55:31 +0000

Those videos and pictures show the work of Pablo Valbuena, a Spanish artist known for his video projections on tridimentional objects.

A stage design and projection in Amiens, France.

This next project was created for Den Haag’s TodaysArt Festival, he explores the possibilities of augmenting architecture with another layer of information that can affect the perception of time and space in that location.

Here is a video of his Augmented Sculpture v. 1.2 shown at Ars Electronica: Goodbye Privacy, Linz, September 2007.

For more information and full quality videos, check out his website.

Monumental Sculptures

maimm — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 13:53:00 +0000

I’ve just read this morning about a project called the The Tees Valley Giants which is considered as one of the ‘world’s biggest art project’. The construction of the first sculpture has just started. It is the work of Turner prize-winning artist Anish Kapoor and one of the world’s leading structural engineers, Cecil Balmond. So I decided towrite a post about monumental sculptures I like.

Below is an article from design week website and here’s an article from The Guardian concerning this world’s biggest public art project.:

Construction is set to begin on the first of five giant outdoor sculptures by sculptor Anish Kapoor and engineer Cecil Balmond, planned for the Tees Valley.

The artist and structural engineer together designed the £2.7m artwork, which will be installed at Middlehaven Dock in Middlesbrough. The sculpture, titled Temenos, will be 110m long and nearly 50m high. Its name comes from a Greek word meaning a piece of land dedicated to a god.

Sculptures will also be installed at Stockton, Hartlepool, Darlington and Redcar and Cleveland over the next ten to 15 years. Temenos is scheduled for completion this summer. Tees Valley Regeneration claims that the five sculptures – which together will cost a total of £15m – will constitute the biggest public art project in the world.

Earlier this year, plans were unveiled for the Angel of the South, a £2m 50m-tall sculpture of a racehorse by artist Mark Wallinger, which could be installed in a field near Ebbsfleet in Kent by 2012.

See also Angel of the North, another monumental sculpture created by the very talented artist Anthony Gormley.

See also the Cass Sculpture Fondation: a park with monumental sculptures from very well-known and talented artists.

In 2007, I discovered a Belgian artist, Arne Quinze, who did an installation called “Cityscape” in Brussels, my hometown. He’s done various other large scale structures and installations in various countries including the on for the Burning Man Festival in the US, Nevada, which made him famous.

Here are a few images of Cityscape

Peter Kogler installation @ MUMOK

maimm — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 15:02:52 +0000

I’ve just discovered this artist from Vienna, he does some cool stuff and I particularly like the installation with projections he’s created for the MUMOK in Vienna.
Check out the video below. an exerpt. If you wanna see more of his work including the installation in high quality videos, go to his website.

more about "Peter Kogler installation @ MUMOK", posted with vodpod

Thru YOU: using youtube vids to make your own

maimm — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 22:26:42 +0000

I just came accross this website called Thru You
It’s a guy who’s creating his own tracks and music videos by putting toghether videos of people playing music uploaded on youtube.
It’s nicely done, check out the first one of a series of 7:

The art of Philip Beesley

maimm — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 22:25:34 +0000

Canadian artist and architect Philip Beesley has created some amazing interactive installations.

His latest work ‘Hylozoic Soil‘ takes inspiration from hylozoism, the belief that all matter has life.

It looks like a synthetic plant-like structure, a kind of forest with arfiticial trees and plants whose branches and leaves react to the visitors presence and movements.

I really like the installation’s organic and living behavior, it creates emotion and affect in the visitor’s mind. It makes me think of those primitive deep blue sea phosphorescent creatures.

The Opening of the new Ars Electronica Center

maimm — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 22:19:16 +0000

The beginning of this new year has been marked by the opening of the new Ars Electronica Center in Linz, Austria, this new space is entirely dedicated to Media Arts and is going to be the main venue for the famous austrian festival.

The building has a very complex architecture with an LED façade covering 5100 m2, it comprises 6 different spaces for exhibitions.

ART + COM is presenting various innovative projects that have been shown at the festival since 30 years. >> Showcase is exhibiting hybrid creation at the junction between media arts, technology, design and science.>> Poesie der Bewegung [Poetry of Motion] explores the artworks’ cinetic dimension >> Funky Pixels focuses on showing examples of human/computer interaction and real vs. virtual worlds. >> Deep Space presents some immersive environments, multi-screen, surround and 3D projects.

Finally, the Main Gallery – is showcasing the opening exhibition :
New Views of Humankind, which are projects assembled under 4 themes > BioLab > BrainLab > FabLab > RoboLab

Below is a video of the Opening Performance, on the 3rd of January 2009
Lights On > Visuals (yes yes no) + Sound Design (Daito Manabe, JP)

Shadow monsters by Philip Worthington

maimm — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 15:45:33 +0000

Shadow Monsters is an interactive installation created by Philip Worthington in 2005. It was developped using Myron (WebCamXtra), which is an open source project that allows people to do camera tracking art in many programming languages.

OS Revolution

maimm — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 01:49:03 +0000

documentary about LINUX