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I had designed a system to cool down the body for mental health support. It is always nice to see how such system can be used in another context such as the Nike Lab that designs innovative garments for athletes. One of the product, that I found in the Print edition of Fast Company Magazine, is a jacket that cools down the body. Discovering that performance falls off drastically when core body temperature hits 103 degrees, the Nike lab designed a vest that slows the rise of core body temperature. It is simply filled in with water, then frozen overnight. The vest is meant to be wear an hour prior to competition.
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Created by Ebru Kurbak and Mahir M. Yavuz, News Knitter is a data visualization project which focuses on knitted garments as an alternative medium to visualize large scale data.
News Knitter converts information gathered from the daily political news into clothing. Live news feed from the Internet that is broadcasted within 24 hours or a particular period is analyzed, filtered and converted into a unique visual pattern for a knitted sweater. The system consists of two different types of software: whereas one receives the content from live feeds the other converts it into visual patterns, and a fully computerized flat knitting machine produces the final output. Each product, sweater of News Knitter is an evidence/result of a specific day or period.
New Knitter will be presented at the Seamless fashion show in Boston at this end of the month! In 2006, my team and I had presented at the Seamless fashion show, Taptap , the affectionate scarf!
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A video on the beach by Keith Loutit that resembles stop motion (effect Tilt Shift) found on this super neat French blog Fubiz. The video animates beach lovers that shape like sharp color points using the fashionable effect called Tilt Shift, effect I used a lot to present my sculpture work, playing with a unusual depth of field, to create optical illusions and to give it a maquette look and feel. This effect is apparently also called smallgantics, popular effect based on a Thom Yorke music video.
For the amateurs of the animations with the beach, don’t forget to check “la plage” by Bokanovski.
A very satisfying video of human motions within the light. Large format camera and filmed in high definition, the video entertains the viewer with light coordinated with motions. It is pleasing and becomes satisfying to watch the dancer twisting and jumping throughout the streets, playing with water and flowers. The soundtrack is a nice add-on by M83 (You appearing, Lower Your Eyelids to Die With the Sun), Sigur Ros (Staralfur) et Besnard Lakes (Devastation). Enjoy!
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DIY is the new black for the gaming industry which has adopted not only the DIY but also the craft culture in its new game for Playstation 3, Little Big Planet. In little big planet, users create their characters (their mascot) with textures, zippers, colors, attitudes and their own levels, events, design their difficulties and can then share their designs with their peers and play online.
The level creation is the most intriguing, because you got to design triggers and events like switches and buttons. It can be pretty simple if it is just to open a door to the next level but pretty rad 😉 when designing a multi-phase boss fight against millions of tech spiders! Also the sharing component is pretty elaborate as other users can rate your game and offer descriptive keywords to your creation, from “brilliant” to “repetitive”. So be sure to invite the right friends who can understand your style!!! You can also invite guest mascot stars! Isn’t that amazing?!
You are only allowed to create 3 levels that you share on the server side. If on the server the company deems that you are good at creating levels, you can then create some more. If the company decides that your levels are not good enough, then you are stuck and you need to cancel these levels until you are being granted the right to create some more! So that is interesting because it shows that the company is afraid that users aren’t gonna design levels good enough and that this game relies heavily on people’s ability to create neat levels. If users are not gonna create brilliant designs, then this will be a failure because it only comes with 3 small levels … This is like a creation suite for gamers that welcome creative individuals into playing, creating and sharing! I cannot wait to try it. If only they would send a free copy to designers, they would have great levels designed!!
Stelarc is a poet and scientist of contemporary times and his body, that he himself defined as ‘obsolete’, and others has defined as ‘posthuman’, is the end of the religious principle of body’s inviolability. Moreover he made a mutual correspondence between his body and his art, and this led to his iconic definition. The artist creation – ‘Stelarc Ken’ – builds upon the idea of iconic individuals being replicated in toy form.
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Transgenesis
In 2000 I had the chance to meet Pavel Smetana at Avignon Numrique, in France, and interact with his Room of Desires that he created in 1995. In this project I was connected to brainwave and heart-rate sensors in an empty room, with video projections of pretty relaxing pictures and music. As soon as I would become excited with an image, the system would generate new images and sounds, based on my biofeedback. The audience could witness these changes and understand what imagery would trigger a certain kind of emotions. After a while I would be able to control the system, in a way “controlling my emotions” and also what the audience would see as a result.
Recently Pavel Smetana in collaboration with Ivor Diosi and Ivan Acher revisited this past work and created transgenesis, a set of virtual environments the audio and the visual parts of which are changing in real-time in dependence on data received form sensors capturing brain and heart activity of viewers. Each viewer enters those and only those virtual landscapes which his or her physical and mental states lead to. Landscapes vary in audiovisual styles ranging from horror-like hyper-realistic atmosphere up to geometric or organic abstractions.
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SmartRetina: a translator between human gestures and machine functions.
SmartRetina is a lightfast gesture-tracking platform written in Macromedia Flash 8, utilizing its flash.geom. package, flash.display package, Video class, Camera class and their motion-tracking capabilities.
Based on this technology, the company created Mossalibra an interactive game installation, operated solely by intuitive human gestures. “While dancing to surrounding music, the user (represented in pixelated form as a pure gesture) can mimic a given set of gestures in order to gain points.”
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I recently spent time with friends Jean-baptiste Labrune and Dana Gordon these past two days, and we had awesome research discussions about the future of HCI! Dana Gordon explained me her fascinating projects and I loved her Undercover blanket.
The Undercover contains 24 wireless speakers and provides a special physical sound experience. The Undercover allows you to enjoy the vibrations of the speakers on your body and provides a private mobile soundscape.
The blanket has an embedded array of small speakers that can receive a wireless audio signal via a Bluetooth connection. This audio signal can be beamed from any kind of audio device, such as mp3 player, television, computer, radio, etc. The volume controllers were designed in a way, which suits the blanket’s natural cuddling behaviour. The upper corners (A.K.A ‘the blanket’s ears’) control the volume – (pull the right one for higher volume and the left one for lower).
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A few little dots moving make a figure look male or female, heavy or light, relaxed or nervous, happy or sad. A fun tool to play with by Bio Motion Lab.
Another famous tool that I love, sodaconstructor, a Java applet that animates two dimensional models made out of masses and springs. In this one, emotion and anthropomorphism take place at the spring level.
A while back, Le ciel est bleu designed very successful moving creatures depending on gravity points.
In the robotic sphere, Guy Hoffman’s lamp is designed as a collaborative desk assistant and this by following your intentions around your desk. Even if the lamp is non-anthropomorphic per se, its motion certainly gives it an anthropomorphic credibility that serves the function of a desk assistant. Video of its first steps!
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The SynchroMate fits snuggly in the palm of one’s hand (…) it encourages serendipitous synchronous interaction by indicating when a message is being composed for you by a distant companion through gentle vibrations and pulsing concentric circles of lush colors on the display
SynchroMate: A Phatic Technology for Mediating Intimacy, by Martin R. Gibbs, Steve Howard, Frank Vetere, Marcus Bunyan (2006)
Abstract
By and large interaction design has been concerned with information exchange – technologies for the collection, processing and transmission of informational content. This design sketch discusses preliminary ideas about an alternative way to think about interactive technologies – phatic technologies – that are less concerned with capturing and communicating information and more about the establishment and maintenance of social connection. Drawing on insights and inspiration gleaned from a recent field-based study of the role of interactive technologies within intimate relationships we outline our preliminary ideas concerning technologies to support phatic interaction. Using materials collected during our fieldwork as design inspirations, we developed design sketches for phatic technologies intended to support playful connection between intimates. One of these sketches – SynchroMate – is presented. SynchroMate is a phatic technology designed to mediate intimacy by affording serendipitous synchronous exchanges.
Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure
