Look at this beat wartime empathy device by Dominic Muren. As he explained me in his email: Though it’s not the most traditional interface design, I feel more and more that really functional interfaces in our world of mediation, will need to be physical. And what more complicated topic to give physicality than war, and the civilian relationship to it. The Beat wartime empathy device is actually a pair of dogtag-like receiver and transmitter, one worn by a soldier, and the other anonymously “adopted” by a civilian. The soldier’s heartbeat is recorded, and transmitted, real time, to the civilian, where it is physically thumped against their chest, another heartbeat next to theirs. They feel the soldier’s fear, calm, or, god forbid, death. With such an intimate connection, it takes a hard heart indeed to ignore the true cost of war. [blogged by Nicolas on pasta and vinegar]

Slow Messenger Prototype (II) by Near Future Laboratory: This is the second prototype hardware for the Slow Messenger project … (It) uses a small 96 x 64 pixel OLED display by 4D Systems and the idea is that you’d have your “instant” messages displayed over relatively long periods of time, and the more you carried the messaging device with you — the more you held it — the more of the message you would see. If you left the device by itself — thereby not really showing much commitment or affinity to the message — the longer it would take for the message to reveal itself. Continue reading

“[...]Cynthia Schairer also gave an intriguing talk on prosthetics. Citing disability studies instead of cultural theory, she first cautioned against fetishising or romanticising prosthetics. I took this is an omen, as I had actually come to hear her talk because I like to imagine that I wouldn’t mind being rebuilt like the Bionic Woman. But the important bit is that she argued against envisioning prosthetics as extensions of the self, and instead repositioned them as interfaces between the body/self and the world. By focussing on how a prosthesis can create a whole social body, we erase the physical body’s work and pain. (Those sexy cheetah legs require gaining a huge amount of hip and thigh strength and relearning one’s sense of balance because of differences in bipedal and quadripedal locomotion, and all prosthetics run the risk of chafing and infection.) Continue reading

It seems like the average fan has only a limited range of possibilities to chose from. You are either for team A or team B, you are with or against it. So what is inbetween? Schalalala is a fan-scarf remix project, offering you a multi-valued articulation tool. Use the remix interface to turn existing fan-scarfs into your personal message. If you like, go ahead and knit it.

Schalalala is an open format for fans and fashion victims. A knitting at a time, a decentral scarf collection is evolving. If you spare some knitting talent, come and join the stand. Wool to the people! [via Guerrilla Innovation] Also see Bureau of Workplace Interruptions.

From Emotional Skin: Performance-Space Expression - The Body as Interface and Human / Environment interaction by Sonia Cillari: How can you have some kind of identity that simultaneously allows you to know something, allows cells to configure their own relevant world, the immune system to generate the identity of our body in its own way, and the brain to be the basis for a mind, a cognitive identity? All these mechanisms share a common theme. (F. Varela, The Emergent Self, 1991)

As a media artist and architect, it fascinates me to explore how human beings experience space. How we, as perceivers, reconstruct the internal and external world by means of our sensory system. And how our senses achieve the process of consciousness in order to identify these worlds. I’m interested in knowing how we individually generate empirical concepts of the world, thus relating new impressions to existing ones. Continue reading

Great catch by Pink Tentacle: researchers at Keio University Biomedical Engineering Laboratory have developed a brain-computer interface that allows the user controlling his avatar in Second Life by thinking about movements — the avatar walks forward when the user thinks about moving his/her own feet, and it turns right and left when the user imagines moving his/her right and left arms. A future goal is to improve the system and make Second Life avatars perform more complex movements and gestures. Video (14,9 MB) [posted on Positive Technology] Continue reading

By Andreas Schepers.

[Image: The Voice by Lisa Jevbratt 2005/2006] ABSTRACT: This paper makes a critical analysis of new media art working with data interfaces and visualisation – data practice or data art. Pursuing the distinction between information and data, it is demonstrated that data art often turns away from information in an attempt to present the data itself. In the process, data art constructs figures of data as unmediated, immanent, material and underdetermined. A critical analysis of these figures underpins reflections on the wider significance and potential of such data practices.” Art Against Information: Case Studies in Data Practice [PDF] by Mitchell Whitelaw. [via]

On October 4 2007, iMAL (Interactive Media Art Lab) will open its new venue, the first Center for Digital Cultures and Technology in Brussels, a new place of about 600m2 for the meeting of artistic, scientific and industrial innovations. The inaugural programme is composed of an exhibition, concerts and performances from October 4 - 7, with artists from Belgium, Europe, USA and Second Life.

Ideally located in the very center of Brussels along the Canal in a district currently involved in an intense urban renewal process, the new Center will host the office, workplace and workshop rooms of iMAL, and will propose a public space of 400m2 entirely dedicated to the contemporary artistic and cultural practices emerging from the fusion of computer, telecommunication, network and media. Continue reading

Today at Interact 2007 I presented my research conducted from 2002 until 2005. I presented the story of a Graphical User Interface that became a Tangible User Interface. The presentation introduced a novel approach to collecting, editing and performing visual and sound clips in real time. The cumbersome process of capturing and editing becomes fluid in the improvisation of a story, and accessible as a way to create a final movie. It was shown how a graphical interface created for video production informs the design of a tangible environment that provides a spontaneous and collaborative approach to video creation, selection and sequencing. Continue reading