The project explores the notion of flow. Rather than fixing the digital in a responsive relationship to the user, where every call defines a reply, Slow Furl finds its temporality outside the immediately animate. The thick skin envelops the space in a deep furl. Like a glacier, this robotic membrane, is formed by its slow action, reacting imperceptibly to its inhabitation.

Slow Furl is playful environment that engages the physical presence of its guests. Users are invited to touch, to sit, or lie within its soft skins. As they do they feel the slow pulse of it’s movements. As a landscape, a cloud formation or an ice wall, it forms and reforms around the body of its user. Slow Furl is the making of a cybernetic environment that holds its own patterns of action and reaction. Conceived as an organism of interacting subsystems, the architecture holds an own motility, an own language of movements that defines its behavioural patterning. The skin clads a dynamic armature creating the possibility for movement. The armature is understood as a distributed computational system where separate parts hold their own potential for actuation. Each arm is controlled by a stand alone micro-controller that activates its mechanical movements. The skin acts as a unifier. Cladding the whole of the surface, the skin joins the movement of the individual arms into one fluid surface.

The skin also acts as a sensory system. Active patches are embroidered into the skin. These patches act on touch. As the skin moves, it activates the micro-controller. The simple shift between self activation (through the movement cycles of the armature) and interaction (through touch and movement of the users) allows the organism to engage an inherent indeterminacy. The architecture is behavioural rather than interactive, motile rather than animate.

Slow Furl has received funding from the Arts Council England, Lighthouse (Brighton) and RIBA (Sussex Branch). INTERArChTIVE is a consortium of Lighthouse (Brighton), Architecture Centre Network, interactivearchitecture.org and RIBA (Sussex branch). [via Interactive Architecture dot org]

From Feb 7 to April 15, 2008 you can see: The Remote chair in Boston, Huret & Spector Gallery, Emerson College :: The Remote chair in Second Life, Ars Virtua :: PDF menu of interactions between the two spaces :: Real time data from the two spaces @ turbulence.org.

Communication between the two halves of this extended environment is a complex choreography coupling the environmental phenomena of humidity, temperature, light, speech, mist, wind, sound and proximity across the two. The object in Boston appears to be a seat; but, experientially, the Second Life space appears to be inside the seat. A similar alteration of scale occurs in the other direction. Visitors to the Boston space and the Second Life space must negotiate to achieve goals: e.g. by sitting down, breathing, touching, knocking, colliding.

Imagine that hidden underneath the chair in Boston is a chair in Second Life (SL). But under the big chair in SL is a smaller chair (which looks a lot like the Boston chair). So under the SL small chair is the Boston chair, etc. etc. etc…

Boston’s effect on Second Life:
- as humidity around the chair in Boston rises, the amount of mist around the SL chair increases
- as the light level falling on the Boston chair decreases (for example when you sit on it), the fog in SL gets darker
- as the temperature rises in Boston, the lamp in SL changes from blue to red
- as the light level on each side of the Boston chair changes (e.g. if you sit on it and wiggle from side to side), the SL chair starts to wiggle from side to side too
- the more times you sit on the Boston chair, the taller the SL chair becomes
- as time progresses in Boston, the SL big chair slowly rotates

Second Life’s effect on Boston:
- as the number of avatars near the chair in SL increase, the Boston lamp will get brighter and brighter
- when someone sits on the SL small chair, the mist machine in Boston switches on
- if someone starts chatting near the SL chair, the lower blue fan in Boston starts blowing and pushes out the mist (if it’s switched on… which means only if someone is sitting on the SL small chair!)
- every time an avatar collides with underside of the SL big chair, the Boston chair starts knocking underneath
- every time an avatar touches the SL big chair, it changes the colour of the Boston lamp
- as the wind in Second Life increases speed, the upper blue fan in Boston blows more strongly….

Watch a video.

The environmental data of both spaces is publicly available in realtime via the EnvironmentXML repository enabling others to build devices and spaces that connect directly to both the Boston and Second Life spaces.

- EnvironmentXML page for Remote chair in Boston
- EnvironmentXML page for Remote chair in Second Life

The intention is to explore an architecture that is resolutely “human” (in the sense of being inhabited, configured and determined by its occupants) yet context-free (because it does not privilege geographical location).

Remote is a 2007 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., (aka Ether-Ore) for its Mixed Realities exhibition. It was made possible with funding from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. [posted on Haque Design + Research]

Fritz Haeg: Attack on the Front Lawn surveys recent ecological initiatives completed by the artist and architect known for his socially-responsive and community-oriented practice. Working at the intersection of art and social activism, Haeg engages audiences in collaborative encounters that often take place outside of the institutional confines of a museum or gallery. This exhibition brings together photographic and video documentation from Haeg’s ongoing Edible Estates project along with ephemeral items and site-specific elements created for Arthouse’s space that relate to gardening and sustainable food production in Austin. For the exhibition, Arthouse has been transformed into a community resource center, schoolhouse, working greenhouse, and finally, laboratory for artistic experimentation. This umbrella exhibition provides context for two related projects — the Sundown Schoolhouse and Edible Estates — that Haeg has developed for Austin.

The Sundown Schoolhouse is a non-traditional educational environment for design, literary, performing and visual arts. It was founded on the premise that artists, designers, performers and writers should be powerful and active agents in society, engaging in a dialogue extending to the outside world and which values public interaction, physical connectedness, and responsiveness to place. A large geodesic tent within Arthouse serves as the base site for How to Eat Austin, a weekly series of free workshops related to the cycle of food production, from composting and garden design to cooking and marketing the garden harvest.

Edible Estates Regional Prototype Garden #5 is an ongoing project to replace domestic front lawns with highly productive edible landscapes responsive to culture, climate, context and people. According to Haeg, Edible Estates is a “practical food producing initiative, place-responsive landscape design proposal, a scientific horticultural experiment, a conceptual land-art project, a defiant political statement, a community out-reach program and an act of radical gardening!” This project was initiated by Haeg on Independence Day, 2005, with the planting of the first regional prototype garden in Salina, Kansas (the geographic center of the United States). Regional Prototype Gardens have since been planted in California, New Jersey and London, England. Commissioned by Arthouse and with the help of community volunteers, Regional Prototype Garden #5 will be planted from March 14-16, 2008 and located at Sierra Ridge, a non-profit run low income housing community in Austin. Ultimately, regional prototype gardens will be established in nine cities.

Fritz Haeg works between his architecture and design practice Fritz Haeg Studio, the happenings and gatherings of Sundown Schoolhouse, the ecology initiatives of Gardenlab (including Edible Estates), and his role as an educator. He received his B.Arch from Carnegie Mellon University and has taught in architecture, design, and fine arts programs at CalArts, Art Center College of Design, Parsons, and the University of Southern California. He has produced projects and exhibited work at the Tate Modern, London; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, among other institutions. His new series of projects called Animal Estates will debut at the Whitney Biennial in March 2008. His first book, Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn, is published by Metropolis Books and distributed by D.A.P.

Remote
by Neill Donaldson, Usman Haque, Ai Hasegawa, Georg Tremmel

Remote connects together two spaces, one in Boston the other in Second Life, and treats them as a single contiguous environment, bound together by the Internet so that things that occur in one space affect things that happen in the other and vice versa — remotely controlling each other. Communication between the two halves of this extended environment is a complex choreography coupling the environmental phenomena of humidity, temperature, light, speech, mist, wind, sound and proximity across the two. The object in Boston appears to be a seat; but, experientially, the Second Life space appears to be inside the seat. A similar alteration of scale occurs in the other direction. Visitors to the Boston space and the Second Life space must negotiate to achieve goals: e.g. by sitting down, breathing, touching, knocking, colliding. The environmental data of both spaces is publicly available in realtime via the EnvironmentXML repository enabling others to build devices and spaces that connect directly to both Boston and Second Life. The intention is to explore an architecture that is resolutely “human” (in the sense of being inhabited, configured and determined by its occupants) yet context-free (because it does not privilege geographical location).

Imaging Beijing
by John (Craig) Freeman

Imaging Beijing is the latest installment of Imaging Place, a place-based, virtual reality project that combines panoramic photography, digital video, and virtual worlds to investigate and document situations where the forces of globalization are impacting the lives of individuals in local communities. When a denizen of Second Life first arrives at Imaging Beijing, he, she or it can walk over a satellite image of central Beijing where they will find a networks of nodes constructed of primitive spherical geometry with panoramic photographs texture mapped to the interior. The avatar can walk to the center of one of these nodes and use a first person perspective to view the image, giving the user the sensation of being immersed in the location. A web-cam captures live video of the user and transmits it to the head of an exhibition avatar. Dated links in the virtual space launch a browser, which opens a web journal of the Imaging Beijing field research.

NO MATTER
by Scott Kildall and Victoria Scott

NO MATTER is an interactive installation that activates the transformation of imaginary objects through the Second Life virtual economy into physical space. Second Life builders construct replicas of famous buildings, luxury goods and custom-designed objects, first reproducing, then inverting the notion of value itself. With zero cost for gathering resources, production of goods and transport of finished product, these items proliferate widely and quickly. In the real world, consumer items and imaginary objects serve as forms of emotional attachment — projection screens for desire, fear and love. A 3D-simulated space, combined with a virtual currency and social interaction, Second Life is a fully functioning economy of the immaterial.

The Vitruvian World
by Michael Takeo Magruder, Drew Baker and David Steele

In the 1st century BC, Roman writer, architect and engineer Vitruvius authored specific building formulae based on the guiding principles of strength, utility and beauty. For him, architecture was intrinsically linked to nature and is an imitation of cosmic order. The most well-known interpretation of this postulate is the Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci in which the human form is depicted in unity with the square and circle - representing material and spiritual existence respectively. The Vitruvian World is a real-time immersive installation that embodies the principles of Vitruvius within a contemporary context. Existing in three distinct yet interconnected spaces, the artwork simultaneously embraces the virtual, the physical, and the network that connects them.

CATERWAUL
by Pierre Proske, with technical assistance from Artem Baguinski and Brigit Lichtenegger

When someone screams in real life, do they hear us in virtual reality? Do they want to? CATERWAUL is an interactive sound installation that operates as a one way “portal” to Second Life via the internet. A physical wall in Boston operates as a totemic locus of grief. People approach it with intent to wail and mourn. The mourners grieve their lost loved ones who spend more time in virtual and on-line worlds than they do communicating in real life. The cacophony of the lamentation is recorded by hidden microphones in the wall, transmitted across the Internet and piped out of an “identical” wall in the virtual world Second Life. A website displaying a simulation of the wall allows other people, on the threshold of “real” and “second” life, to vicariously eavesdrop the wailing.

Mixed Realities is an exhibition that explores the convergence—through cyberspace—of real and synthetic places made possible by computers and networks. Mixed Realities links and overlays the Huret & Spector Gallery (10 Boylston Place, 6th Floor, Emerson College, Boston, Massachusetts), Turbulence.org, and Ars Virtua (Second Life: SLURL).

Second Life is a shared, synthetic, 3-D environment through which people can interact in real-time by means of a virtual self or avatar. Although it’s an imaginary place, it is often able to “masquerade as real” (Richard Bartle) because it approximates reality persuasively enough to facilitate player immersion.

Audience members – who will be embodied as avatars in Second Life, browsing the works at turbulence.org, and/or be physically present in the gallery – will interact with the works and with one another. Thus, Mixed Realities will enable people who are distributed across multiple physical and virtual spaces to communicate with one another and share experiences in real time.

Mixed Realities on Turbulence.org was funded by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. We are deeply grateful for their support.

A virtual recreation of a chosen physical space is constructed in Second Life. As the individual avatar explores the space in SL, the virtual MRIK Surface deforms to reflect the presence of the avatar exploring the space. The MRIK Surface exists in both the physical world as well as the virtual and responds to the input of both. In this example, the physical surface is constructed of sensors, servo motors, and supporting wood structure while the virtual surface is constructed virtually in Second Life and programmed with code to dictate behavior. A digital MIDI program allows the physical and virtually constructed surfaces to communicate real-time to code and local sensor input. For this reason, the surface which is built in the physical location deforms to reflect the presence of a virtual avatar.

Conversely, as the individual activates the MRIK Surface with their presence in the physical, the virtual MRIK surface moves to reflect this. The result may be considered a singular transArchitectural surface (receiving and interpreting data from both the physical and the virtual) which responds to the presence of both physical and virtual visitors. The MRIK surface continually updates information between the two objects (the kinetic one in physical space and the scripted one in SL) so it acts as a single flowing entity existing between two types of space.

Identity and Anonymity

As the surface reflects the presence of both SL and RL people, it may also reflect the ‘virtual’ presence of individuals through images or personal profile information. This would eventually be displayed on the surface. For example, a SL visitor might activate a surface which would deploy the chair and table for a RL person to sit and have a discussion. This begins to break down the anonymity normally associated with virtual/physical interaction and forces the virtual user to be tied to the physical consequences of their actions.

I’m still working additional elements into the project but in the meantime, have a go at this SLURL location (Architecture Island). The eventual goal is a fully interactive system allowing avatars to have some direct and indirect control over the function of the individual elements. This is still a prototype so if you experience any bugs please IM Far Link in Second Life. [posted by Michael DiTullio on Virtual Interactive Architectures]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcp1w9loz5w

WINDscale is an artwork by Rob Smith that visualizes wind speed in a picture. It uses an anemometer (a tool for measuring wind speed) placed on Jaywick Martello Tower on the Essex Coast (East of England). Data are then passed to a computer that changes the pixellation of the tool’s live picture, accordingly. In this installation, the image is a functional mirror of what it represents. The meaning of the pixel configuration and detail is then to visually embody an almost invisible content of the image. Here, pixels are used as an embedded data displayer, conceptually coupling the usual loss in video signal air reception (due to the wind) with this digital representation that instantly reproduces it through an effective data visualization concept. - Neural

Unveiled by Alex Beard, Deputy Director of the Tate Modern, this permanent work is the culmination of many years of effort for greyworld, and we are very excited to finally be letting him live outside. Commissioned by Land Securities for the property companys Bankside 123 development, the public-activated sculpture will be unveiled on a busy site behind Tate Modern. Lots of pictures of the work in progress are available here. Check our website for this and other information.