Talent-Spotting in Virtual Worlds

“…At Radio 1 we want to bring a new level of social interaction to our virtual broadcasts. We are hoping that the bands featured on-air will have their own custom-built avatars, playing in the virtual world. So if we have the Red Hot Chilli Peppers playing a gig, visitors to a Radio 1 virtual space will see avatars of Anthony Kiedis and Flea, mimicking the action in the real world.

We also believe it is crucial that the virtual audience can interact with the event. It is about replicating the “liveness” of an event, not just broadcasting it. Additionally, Radio 1 wants to find ways of allowing the audience in these worlds to actually affect the real event. I see no reason why they cannot be asking their musical heroes questions, alongside virtual Radio 1 DJs, either via Instant Messenger or VoIP. This deeper social interaction, that mirrors real world events, would do much to enhance the ripples that resonate around digital communities.” From Talent-spotting in virtual worlds by Daniel Heaf, BBC.com. Continue reading

Shares [odys]elicit Under CC/GPL

Friday 23 June 2006, live from the iCommons iSummit:

[odys] elicit - a full-body, interactive art installation circa 2001 - is now available under a Creative Commons By Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike license, and the source code is available under GPL. It works with almost any standard webcam (requiring a few drivers on PC)!

[odys]elicit is a large scale, interactive installation where every movement of the viewer, small or sweeping, births stuttering text onscreen. The viewerÂ’s motion elicits, character by character, passages from odysÂ’ text. The piece responds to small movements, writing the text onscreen slowly for the viewer to read, or to rapid passersby, whose full bodies birth hundreds of flying characters, impossible to decode. Continue reading

It is the salt flats :: It is America :: It is free

GPS EXPO 2006: Greetings geocachers, anthropologists, mappers, landscape photographers, GIS users, artists, backpackers, and others with a nominal interest in the Global Positioning System. The event will happen in UTAH and it might be interesting to you. It is real, really informal, free, non-sponsored, and on the salt flats of the GREAT SALT LAKE. Just people and the creative things they are doing with GPS putting together their interests at an amazing place at the same time. The location is on public land, is rugged although perfectly flat and normally drivable, and it requires no particular permission to assemble there. If you take proper safety precautions (H20, sunglasses) you might find it an interesting day of navigation and others navigating with GPS. Cheap to moderate hotel rooms are available in the nearby casinos in West Wendover, NEVADA.

Please join the group and document your project or experience at GPS Expo 2006. Continue reading

Individually Reactive Space

PICAMOTICS is conceived as an individual public navigation system in which an individual’s presence and movement in a space is interpreted and responded to by the system. The resulting “individually reactive space” knows its visitors. Tracking their positions it can follow movements and draw conclusions from individual behaviours.

Picomotics is also referred to as a “collaborative platform for interactive surroundings”. In addition to navigation, proposed applications include educational scenarios where individuals are assigned attributes which, when they interact with others, demonstrate abstract concepts in a playful and social manner.

For example, “visitors represent basic mathematic operations such as division, multiplication etc. by walking through a field of numbers. If, for example, the visitor representing an addition of 8 meets the visitor representing a division by 2, the result of their meeting will be 4. Abstract laws of mathematics become tangible.”

The system uses infrared camera tracking from above. The floor becomes a trackpad and display. Audio “sound showers” can also be supported. ipunkt (second image) is a similar responsive navigation system with a bit more depth on the development process. Continue reading

Writing Space and Memory Clouds

June 24, 2006 at 9:28 p.m. (GMT): Smoke Signals–by Minimaforms–is based on one of the oldest forms of communication in recorded history dating back over 5,000 years. The project works as a hybrid system that explores the dynamic and spatial capacities of smoke and light in relation to contemporary mobile SMS technologies of messaging today. Smoke Signals examines a dynamic real-time interaction that writes space. Smoke and light setup the condition for developing a typographic ambient / responsive environment.

Participants are invited to communicate with the project by sending SMS messages to one of two smoke signals located at the event. Remote participants can send messages through our Real-Time Virtual Interface located at memorycloud.com

Minimaforms was founded in 2002 by brothers Stephen and Theodore Spyropoulos as an experimental design practice that explores design that provokes and facilitates new means of communication. Also see www.fasterthansound.com.

Call for Comments

“As a culmination to the Networked Publics program, we are publishing a collaboratively written group book with the MIT Press. As part of this process, we are soliciting reader comments for inclusion in the book. Below is a draft of the essay on Networked Place (note that there is a word document attached too… it is likely easier to read). We intend to take the comments that we received and append them to the essay in a virtual symposium that will follow each chapter. In doing so, we hope to create a more dialogic forum within the book. Please leave your email addresses so that we can get in touch with you about your contribution.

Introduction: Contemporary life is dominated by the pervasiveness of the network. With the spread of the mobile phone worldwide (arguably history’s most successful gadget) and the growth of always-on broadband in the developed world, technological networks are becoming easier to access and more ubiquitous. The “always-on,” “always-accessible,” network—or at least the promise of that condition—has produced a broad set of changes to our concept of place, linking space to network to create networked place. Continue reading

An Empathic Matrix

Implant Matrix is an interactive geotextile that could be used for reinforcing landscapes and buildings of the future. The matrix is capable of mechanical empathy. A network of mechanisms react to human occupants as erotic prey. The structure responds to human presence with subtle grasping and sucking motions, ingesting organic materials and incorporating them into a new hybrid entity.

Implant Matrix is composed of interlinking filtering ‘pores’ within a lightweight structural system. Primitive interactive systems employ capacitance sensors, shape-memory alloy wire actuators and distributed microprocessors. The matrix is fabricated by laser cutting direct from digital models.

By Philip Beesley and Will Elsworthy with Robert Gorbet and Steven Wood. Assistant Designers: Eric Bury, Liana Bresler, Miriam Ho, Desmond Shum. At Interaccess Gallery June 1-29, 2006. Continue reading

Real-Time Composition

Pace of Place is a “portable, nomadic portal” that creates an “emergent performance of actions and data” of re-sampled activity in urban public wireless hot spots.

A net-enabled, webcam equipped laptop tracks motion at the site and extracts one vertical line of pixels from the image of moving bodies/motion. Custom software both accumulates and explodes the pixel lines, generating an image frame every minute and a 1 minute video loop of sampled time and activity every 30 image frames. The loops from different spaces/places capture and abstract the activity/pace relationship of the spaces.

Marlon Barrios Solano continues the project in residence at The Aesthetic Technologies Lab at Ohio State University and blogs on the residency here where he documents his practice and shares his process. Continue reading

Free Sonic Exploration

Sonic Arts Network and University of Manchester bring the Expo festival to Manchester for a weekend packed with over twenty free events including concerts, installations, performances, exhibitions, happenings, workshops, gigs, conferences and DJ sets. Expo is the hub and playground of the UKÂ’s experimental music and sound art scene, featuring very special guests from around the world. This yearÂ’s Expo festival is a sonic exploration of the inner, outer and public spaces of Manchester.

Festival Highlights: Expo kicks off at Cornerhouse on Friday 23rd June (18:00 – 20:00) with the launch event for three solo sound exhibitions, produced in partnership with Cornerhouse that run until 30th July. Staalplaat Soundsystem’s extreme and immersive sound installation The Ultrasound of Therapy gives visitors the chance to experience a unique personal sensory experience. Strapped to a hospital bed, ‘patientsÂ’ are subjected to personalised sound therapies. Continue reading

Participatory Performance and Interactivity

Jesse Pearlman Karlsberg + Micah Silver + Judy Dunaway :: June 29, 2006 @ 7:30 PM, Eyebeam, 540-548 west 21st street (bet 10 & 11 Ave).

This month’s Upgrade! New York examines participatory performance and interactivity in the context of contemporary sound art and new music. The evening brings together three artists working with sound and music: Jesse Pearlman Karlsberg, Micah Silver, and Judy Dunaway. Each of these artists draws their audience into the creation of their work.

Jesse will discuss Azariah: Whom Jehovah Helps, a new project weaving book arts, poetry, shape note singing, and storytelling into a participatory live event. Azariah turns its audience into an impromptu chorus and draws on Jesse’s experience working with shape note singing, audience participation, and New York’s religious history. Continue reading