Architec Tradure

Category: art

  • 03MarSculpting Behavior

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    Hayes Raffle not only just had two full academic papers accepted to the first class conference IDC 2007: Interaction design and Children but he is also a talented sculptor and designer. His Super Cilia Skin reflects his aesthetic sensibility and his ongoing passion for kinetic sculpture.

    Video

    Super Cilia Skin

    After co-creating and designing the award-winning ZOOB building system, Hayes joined the Tangible Media Group at the MIT Media Laboratory and created Topobo, a 3D constructive assembly system with kinetic memory and the ability to record and playback physical motion.
    Video

    a ZOOB creature


    a Topobo creature

    If you happen to be in the bay area, don’t miss Hayes’ talk, open to the public, that he is giving at the Berkeley Institute of Design, UC Berkeley, March 6th, from 1 to 2pm.
    Information about his talk.

    During the talk, he will explain how with Topobo children can assemble sculptures that dance and walk. He will present Fuzzmail a program that allow children to write a message that unfolds in time. He will show how with Jabberstamp children can embed stories, sounds and voices in their original drawings.

  • 05MarReflections

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    The artist Devorah Sperber recreates paintings by assembling spools of thread. Reflections is a permanent Installation at the Centro Medico Train Station, San Juan, Puerto Rico. The artist used 60,000 spools of thread and 23 convex mirrors for the installation.

    “Reflections” is a site-specific work, constructed from 60,000 spools of thread, which coalesce into a photo-realistic image when seen reflected in convex mirrors mounted on an opposing wall. My intention was to utilize the element of surprise to create a brief interruption in the lives of people as they move through the Centro Medico Train Station (…) Because people will be in motion, the images seen in the mirrors continuously change. As people step onto the escalator and descend to the lower platform, the reflections in the mirrors gradually dissolve from seascape to the neutral gray ceiling and blue skies seen through clear glass skylights above.

    Detail

    I discovered the work of Deborah Sperber on V magazine.

    Two days after I posted on the work of Deborah, I found out via cool hunting that the Pulse art fair in NYC last week showed a large number of pixelized works.

    Andy Diaz Hope uses gel-caps for creating images of people in front of their medicine cabinets.



    The occupation 2006, archival photographs, gel capsules, acrylic, 18 W x 15″ H

    William Betts recreate surveillance camera pictures using acrylic paint. This reminds me of Gerhard Richter’s Akt auf einer Treppe. Emma – Nu dans un escalier. 1966 in which the boundaries between painting and photography are blurred and through which comes a new form of expression in the arts.

    Carlos Estrada-Vega combines pixel-constructivism of digital media practices to paint and wood dowels within the canvas.



    Dona Clara, 2005. Margaret Thatcher Projects

    In the Middle of the End, Isidro Blasco uses 2D photos and later turns the them into a 3d experience using board mounted architectural structures.

    The Middle of The End

    Knitoscope Testimonies by Turbulence, are surprising animations created using “Knitoscope” software, a program that translates digital video into a knitted animation.

    Video



    erica

    An excellent interview on Turbulence featuring Jo-Anne Green by Régine Debatty on we-make-money-not-art

    Reconstruction shown at Artefact 2007 is a matric of LEDs that projects shadows and lights of passerby in a pixelized fashion. More can be read on the show and project on multimedialab



    reconstruction

    Monumental ceramic pixel art found on coolfinds.

    Pixel art by Swedish artist Maria Ängquist Klyvare. The artist has worked with mosaics since the eighties. More on her web site.



    A child’s face on Etsarbron near Gullmarsplan in Stockholm.


  • 03Aprperformative constructions



    short cut Images Elmgreen & Dragset, courtesy Galleria Massimo De Carlo – Short Cut was commissioned by the Fondazione Nicola Trussardi

    I am a big fan of the big picture outside the box: when pieces from an artist are put together in an ensemble. A catalog, a museum brochure or a web site. The nature of the work to be experienced is missing for sure, but some intellectual participation is taking place. I like to understand and connect with the artist maybe more than the piece itself.

    I think that the art pieces don’t need to be obvious, but they need to give you hints, and like a detective the viewer carefully inspects a site and experiences.

    I found that to be especially the case with the work of Michael Elmgreen & Ingar Dragset. Their web site presents visuals that communicate with the viewer very efficiently. I like their site-specific famous Prada Marfa, Public Art Project in Marfa, Texas, USA in 2005. A Prada sculpture-store installed in Texas in replacement of a Gas Station. Apparently the Prada Marfa building was made biodegradable to slowly melt back into the landscape …



    Prada Marfa

    I love their powerless structures series. These artists seem to always challenge the conventional structural space.



    Powerless Structures (kunsthall / temporary art) (2001), Installation view, Istanbul Biennial 2001


  • 15AprMary Farbood, harpsichordist



    Morwaread Farbood. Photography by Susan Wilson.

    Presenting a harpsichord/piano sculpture in my previous post, I thought it would be nice to attend an authentic harpsichord concert. My friend Mary Farbood is performing in Cambridge and in New York this April.

    Morwaread Farbood, American harpsichordist of Iranian and Japanese descent, is quickly becoming recognized as one of the rising young stars in the harpsichord world. She was selected for the Pro Musicis International Award in 2006 and won First Prize at the Prague International Harpsichord Competition the previous year.

    An excerpt of her playing J. S. Bach, French Suite No. 5 in G Major, BWV 816 – Allemande

    An excerpt of her playing J. S. Bach, French Suite No. 5 in G Major, BWV 816 – Courante

    An excerpt of her playing Louis Marchand, Suite in D minor, Pices de clavecin

    An excerpt of her playing Domenico Scarlatti, Sonata in D Major, K. 119

    The audio exerpts are unedited and from a live performance at the MIT Chapel in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Recorded April 12, 2006. Engineer: Mike Fabio.

    When and where?

    Saturday, April 21st, 2007 at 8:00 PM – Pickman Concert Hall, Longy School of Music, Cambridge

    Tickets

    Wednesday, April 25th, 2007 at 8:00 PM – Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, New York

    Tickets

    Program

    Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764)

    Pices de Clavecin from Suite in D minor

    Les Tendres Plaintes

    Les Niais de Sologne

    Les Soupirs

    Les Cyclopes

    Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809)

    Sonata in E minor, Hob.XVI/34

    Presto

    Adagio

    Vivace molto

    Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

    Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, BWV 903

    Hubert Ho (1976 – )

    Manual Labor (World and New York premieres)

    Ellen Taaffe Zwilich (1939 – )

    Fantasy for Harpsichord

    Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757)

    Sonata K. 502 in C Major

    Sonata K. 1 in D Minor

    Sonata K. 119 in D Major

    Sonata K. 455 in G Major


  • 03MayCulturally embedded computing and HCI challenges

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    At Chi 2007 I met with Lucian Leahu, researcher from the culturally embedded computing group at Cornell University. The group researches on affective computing by considering the cultural context in which people are in while interacting with computers.

    We analyze, design, build, and evaluate computing devices in cultural context. We analyze the ways in which technologies reflect and perpetuate unconscious cultural assumptions, and design, build, and test new computing devices that reflect alternative possibilities for technology. We are part of a community of critical technical practices [as coined by Phil Agre], or practices that integrate technical system-building with cultural, philosophical, and critical reflection on technical practice. We have a focus on reflective design, or design practices that help both users and designers reflect on their experiences and the role technology plays in those experiences. We work with collaborators in the Affective Presence coalition to develop an approach to affective computing in which the full complexity of human emotions and relationships as experienced by users in central to design (rather than the extent to which computers can understand and process those emotions) (…)

    For instance, their ongoing Fear Reflector project aims to support emotional self-reflection of people while they expect to confront their fears. Using a combination of biometry and camera input, it takes pictures of situation in which the user “fears”. People are then given the possibility to reflect on these “fear” contexts.

    The group had a few papers being presented at Chi 2007. I attended a very impressive talk from their group How HCI Interprets the Probes. They discuss the research techniques of Bill Gaver called Cultural probes that uncover people’s values and activities. They discuss how the HCI community craving for flexible design methods adopted and adapted the probes in their research. By Kirsten Boehner, Janet Vertesi, Phoebe Sengers, and Paul Dourish (from Irvine), How HCI Interprets the Probes.

    .Pdf of the Paper.

    Also a nice interview of Bill Gaver on Designing Interactions for reference.

    Another very inspiring take on HCI is to look at Situationist art practice. The authors specify how the Chi community can be relunctant to consider these methods, or by reducing them to comform to Chi’s ones instead of using the richness of these methods.

    .Pdf of the Chi’07 paper by Lucian Leahu, Phoebe Sengers, Claudia Pederson, Jennifer Thom-Santelli and Pavel Dmitriev.

    Of course, nice references on situationism with video and sound recordings of Guy Debord on Ubu. The most famous and studied book-movie of Guy Debord being Society of the Spectacle.


  • 11MayWhat’s next with social networks?

    I recently thought of creating a social network for dead people. Everyone could provide their digital representations, biometry information, simulation of personal touch that would only be revealed when dead. However, Mission Eternity is a similar concept that Regine Debatty noticed at ISEA.

    The M∞ ARCANUM CAPSULES contain digital fragments of the life, knowledge and soul of the users and enable them to design an active presence post mortem: as infinite data particles they forever circulate the global info sphere – hosted in the shared memory of thousands of networked computers and mobile devices of M∞ ANGELS, people who contribute a part of their digital storage capacity to the mission.

    Video




    Arcanum Capsules contain digital fragments of the life, knowledge and soul of the users and enable them to design an active presence post mortem.


  • 16MayMachine Therapy

    I mentioned the work of Kelly Dobson about a year ago. Today, I attended her VERY inspiring thesis defense at the Media Lab, researching on Machine Therapy. I love her personal relationship to machines. I cannot wait to read her thesis!

    Abstract

    In this thesis I describe a new body of work called Machine Therapy, a methodology for revealing the vital relevance of subconscious elements of human-machine interactions that works within art, design, psychodynamics, and engineering. This practice highlights what machines actually do and mean, in contrast to what their designers consciously intended. Machine Therapy is a cyclical process that alternates between discussion of and sessions for empathic relationships with domestic appliances, personal extension and connection via wearable and prosthetic apparatuses, and the design of evocative visceral robots that interact with people’s understandings of themselves and each other. Combining research and practice in digital signal processing and machine learning, mechanical engineering, and textile sensor design, I have been able to create new objects and relationships that are unique in some aspects while maintaining quotidian familiarity in other aspects. This is illustrated through the documented construction of several projects including re-appropriated domestic devices, wearable apparatuses, and machines that act in relation with users’ autonomic signals. These Machine Therapy devices are evaluated in studies of participants’ interactive engagements with the machines as well as participants’ affective responses to the machines. The Machine Therapy projects facilitate unusual explorations of the parapraxis of machine design and use: these usually unconscious elements of our interactions with machines critically affect our sense of self, agency in the social and political world, and shared emotional, cultural, and perceptual development.

    Dissertation Committee

    Christopher Csikszentmihályi

    Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences

    Muriel Cooper Professor of Media Arts and Sciences

    Program in Media Arts and Sciences

    MIT Media Laboratory

    Rosalind W. Picard

    Professor of Media Arts and Sciences

    Program in Media Arts and Sciences

    MIT Media Laboratory

    Edith Ackermann, PhD

    Honorary Professor of Developmental Psychology

    University of Aix-Marseille I, France

    Visiting Scientist, MIT School of Architecture

    Kelly’s Web site

    Computing Culture research group


  • 13AugA nice place to hang out

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    Falling Garden, San Staë church on the Canale Grande, 50th Biennial of Venice, 2003

    A nice place to hang out … in 2003!

    The Doge (Mocenigo) needed a church so as to be able to have a monumental tomb built for himself, the church (San Staë) needed a saint so as to be able to be built, the saint (San Eustachio) needed a miracle so as to be pronounced a saint, the miracle needed a stag in order to be seen, and we built the garden for the reindeer.
    The visitors lie on the bed above the doge’s gravestone, and the garden thinks for them.

    More info


  • 05SepOperation for adults!

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    Operation, game by Hasbro

    Today, I met with TMG alumni Paul Yarin. One of his latest project, the interactive sensing module for laparoscopic trainer, developed with Wendy Plesniak reminded me of the funniest childhood game Operation created by Hasbro. The child practices coordination skills by removing the patients symptoms with the tweezers.

    The sophisticated and impressive Interactive sensing module for laparoscopic trainer is a self-contained simulator for structured testing and training of skills used in laparoscopic surgery. Digital video and electronic sensors capture user performance and is approved to be used by medical centers to train and test critical laparoscopic skills. This is such a clever implementation. The advantages of physical objects as tools and the power of computer simulation are combined at their best.

    “This interactive laparoscopic training simulator combines the best of physical and virtual simulation into a plug ‘n’ play solution. It combines validated physical reality exercises, computerized assessment, and validated McGill Metrics. Electronic sensors and digital video capture user performance with a PC interface.”



    An example of practice task

    Real Laparoscopic Simulation’s web site


  • 26OctA sound machine

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    What could that be? The sound machine project consists of a pneumatic quintet that will be playing at the Hanover Fair, the world’s biggest industrial fair.
    Five automatic sound machines will provide musical accompaniment for the opening celebrations at the Hanover Fair. Pneumatic components and a PLC control system will be applied very differently from the way they are used in industrial automation: They will create a bridge between technology and art.

    21 micro-cylinders are used in each sound machine. The micro-cylinders imitate the mechanical movements of a musician’s left hand on the string instruments, determining the pitch of the tone by changing the length of the strings. Various drumsticks and a jazz brush are moved on the drum by micro-cylinders.

    Enjoy the movie of the sound machine project.

    “The idea of constructing musical robots or music machines is by no means new. The 18th century was the heyday of the machine constructors. However, the technical possibilities of Roland Olbeters sound machines by far transcend those of earlier music-boxes, especially since electronic media open up entirely new realms of sound.” – Festo

    See also the fantastic Chandelier, a large scale robotic musical instrument created by Mike Fabio, Steve Pliam and Tod Machover.

    Video of the Chandelier

    Don’t forget to check Untitled sound objects by Lang + Zimoun that are absolutely gorgeous. Thank you commentator gr Hicham for the link!


    Untitled Sound Objects (Installations 2005-2008) by Pe Lang + Zimoun from Pe Lang + Zimoun on Vimeo.