I got a shock coming face to face with myself on World of Warcraft. I'm rather relieved that I wasn't undead. As in hindsight, it's only natural that I should exist virtually, albeit unknown to myself and at least was not a zombie or otherwise nonexistent.
Existential angst.
All animals, including people, experience the world in different ways. Every animal has unique sensory equipment and a unique way of processing the information it receives. Some animals sense things that people are unaware of, and others sense the same things people do but interpret them differently. For example, bees can see in the ultraviolet range, some starfish have "eyes" all over their bodies, flies have multi-faceted vision, and sharks and some birds can sense electromagnetic fields. The SIGGRAPH 2009 Research Challenge problem is to choose a specific animal, or a specific animal's sense, and develop a system that will enable a person to experience the physical or social world as that animal does. Individuals and teams develop innovative solutions to a challenge problem, demonstrating their creativity, design, and execution skills. Selected finalists will present their work to a panel of distinguished judges in a public session in competition for final awards. ** I still really want to go to TEDGlobal in Mumbai/Mysore but SIGGRAPH sounds really good. At least this challenge sounds good. However everything else I've read is privileging visual art in a way that I find is not at all critical (in so far as I'm aware). And is also heavily code geeky, which is making me feel inadequate. And if I mention Panda3D I'm going to have to get it and learn it or msdramagirl won't forgive me. 
via siggraph.org
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SIGGRAPH 2009's Emerging Technologies presents innovative technologies and applications in many fields, including displays, robotics, input devices, and interaction techniques. The demos are available for attendees to try out and discuss with the creators. ** are we going? ** 
via siggraph.org
Emerging Technologies includes a mix of works invited by the organizers and works selected from juried submissions to the SIGGRAPH 2009 online submission system.
A Multimodal Floor for Virtual Environments
A New Dual-Clickpad Remote Controller for Consumer Electronics
AmbiKraf: An Embedded Non-Emissive and Fast-Changing Wearable Display
An Interactive Retrographic Sensor for Touch, Texture, and Shape
Anthropomorphization of a Space With Implemented Human-Like Features
Baby-Type Robot: YOTARO
Back to the Mouth
Bloxels: Glowing Blocks as Volumetric Pixels
CityMurmur
CRISTAL: Control of Remotely Interfaced Systems Using Touch-Based Actions in Living Spaces
Crystal Zoetrope
Digital Decal
Embodied and Mediated Learning in SMALLab: A Student-Centered Mixed-Reality Environment
Funbrella: Making Rain Fun
gCubik: Real-Time Integral Image Rendering for a Cubic 3D Display
Graphical Instruction for A Garment-Folding Robot
HeadSPIN: A One-to-Many 3D Video Teleconferencing System
ILoveSketch
Interactive Cooking Simulator
Jhai Sustainable Telemedicine Solution
Pen de Touch
PhotoelasticTouch: Transparent Rubbery Interface Using an LCD and Photoelasticity
Pull-Navi
SCOPE
Scratch Input
Sixense TrueMotion
Sound Scope Headphones
Texmoca
The Sleighing Simulator 2.0
The UnMousePad: The Future of Touch Sensing
Touchable Holography
Twinkle: Interface for Using Handheld Projectors to Interact With Physical Surfaces
Versatile Training Field: the Wellness Entertainment System Using Trampoline Interface
Virtualization Gate
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The emergent field of information aesthetics combines a rich variety of technical and artistic disciplines. Designers and new media artists are joining scientific visualization, informatics, and medical imaging specialists to create purposive, predictive, and creative representations of information. SIGGRAPH 2009 is highlighting this field in recognition of the increasingly prominent role that information visualization and data graphics are assuming in our digitally mediated culture.
The Information Aesthetics Showcase includes 2D and 3D prints, interactive and presentational screen-based works, multimodal installation environments, and physical objects that reveal information. In keeping with this year's theme, Networking the Senses, the works shown here engage not only the visual, but also auditory, kinesthetic, and tactile modalities. The relationship to information expressed in these exemplary pieces ranges from straightforward visualization of data to fanciful re-invention and transformation of it. Presenters include computational journalists, visual and material artists, biological researchers and neuro-scientists, graphic designers, scientific visualization developers, historians, cultural theorists, and digital media center collaborators.
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The emergent field of information aesthetics combines a rich variety of technical and artistic disciplines. Designers and new media artists are joining scientific visualization, informatics, and medical imaging specialists to create purposive, predictive, and creative representations of information. SIGGRAPH 2009 is highlighting this field in recognition of the increasingly prominent role that information visualization and data graphics are assuming in our digitally mediated culture.
The Information Aesthetics Showcase includes 2D and 3D prints, interactive and presentational screen-based works, multimodal installation environments, and physical objects that reveal information. In keeping with this year's theme, Networking the Senses, the works shown here engage not only the visual, but also auditory, kinesthetic, and tactile modalities. The relationship to information expressed in these exemplary pieces ranges from straightforward visualization of data to fanciful re-invention and transformation of it. Presenters include computational journalists, visual and material artists, biological researchers and neuro-scientists, graphic designers, scientific visualization developers, historians, cultural theorists, and digital media center collaborators.
The SIGGRAPH 2009 juried art exhibition showcases work by artists who engage technology and the natural world in their creative processes. Like a forward-looking cabinet of curiosities, the exhibition brings together artworks and installations that demonstrate, celebrate, critique, and conjecture about the flux of natural and technological forces. Plants and animals, insects, even the weather, have long served as subjects for study as well as metaphors for human experience. Mechanical equipment, electronic instruments, and robotic devices amplify our understanding of organic processes and enhance our natural capacities. BioLogic focuses on projects that graft these together - biological forms and systems with digital code and networks - to explore expressions of life as we know it or imagine it to be.
Works exhibited in BioLogic relate closely to those in Generative Fabrication, the Design & Computation exhibition. Together, the two exhibitions present an enthralling range of art and design projects that incorporate biological information and processes.
Works exhibited in BioLogic are published in a special issue of Leonardo, The Journal of the International Society of the Arts, Sciences and Technology. The issue also includes publication of the SIGGRAPH 2009 Art Papers. Publication of this special issue coincides with SIGGRAPH 2009.
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The SIGGRAPH 2009 Design & Computation Gallery explores non-linear and biological processes in design and digital fabrication through selected works of art, architecture, and design. The work's inherently generative nature encourages many lines of investigation along two main paths:
- Generative design - algorithm and process, explorations of phase space and path-dependent emergent phenomena, form-making versus form-finding, and iterative design such as simulation, analysis, and optimization.
- Digital fabrication - the interplay between digital representation and the crafting of physical objects; formation of structures by aggregation, weaving, and layered manufacturing; and exploitation of organic and composite material properties.
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The emergent field of information aesthetics combines a rich variety of technical and artistic disciplines. Designers and new media artists are joining scientific visualization, informatics, and medical imaging specialists to create purposive, predictive, and creative representations of information.
SIGGRAPH 2009 is highlighting this field in recognition of the increasingly prominent role that information visualization and data graphics are assuming in our digitally mediated culture.
The Information Aesthetics Showcase includes 2D and 3D prints, interactive and presentational screen-based works, multimodal installation environments, and physical objects that reveal information. In keeping with this year's theme, Networking the Senses, the works shown here engage not only the visual, but also auditory, kinesthetic, and tactile modalities. The relationship to information expressed in these exemplary pieces ranges from straightforward visualization of data to fanciful re-invention and transformation of it. Presenters include computational journalists, visual and material artists, biological researchers and neuro-scientists, graphic designers, scientific visualization developers, historians, cultural theorists, and digital media center collaborators.
Posted via web from AmIArt
SIGGRAPH 2009's Emerging Technologies presents innovative technologies and applications in many fields, including displays, robotics, input devices, and interaction techniques. The demos are available for attendees to try out and discuss with the creators.
Emerging Technologies includes a mix of works invited by the organizers and works selected from juried submissions to the SIGGRAPH 2009 online submission system.
A Multimodal Floor for Virtual Environments
A New Dual-Clickpad Remote Controller for Consumer Electronics
AmbiKraf: An Embedded Non-Emissive and Fast-Changing Wearable Display
An Interactive Retrographic Sensor for Touch, Texture, and Shape
Anthropomorphization of a Space With Implemented Human-Like Features
Baby-Type Robot: YOTARO
Back to the Mouth
Bloxels: Glowing Blocks as Volumetric Pixels
CityMurmur
CRISTAL: Control of Remotely Interfaced Systems Using Touch-Based Actions in Living Spaces
Crystal Zoetrope
Digital Decal
Embodied and Mediated Learning in SMALLab: A Student-Centered Mixed-Reality Environment
Funbrella: Making Rain Fun
gCubik: Real-Time Integral Image Rendering for a Cubic 3D Display
Graphical Instruction for A Garment-Folding Robot
HeadSPIN: A One-to-Many 3D Video Teleconferencing System
ILoveSketch
Interactive Cooking Simulator
Jhai Sustainable Telemedicine Solution
Pen de Touch
PhotoelasticTouch: Transparent Rubbery Interface Using an LCD and Photoelasticity
Pull-Navi
SCOPE
Scratch Input
Sixense TrueMotion
Sound Scope Headphones
Texmoca
The Sleighing Simulator 2.0
The UnMousePad: The Future of Touch Sensing
Touchable Holography
Twinkle: Interface for Using Handheld Projectors to Interact With Physical Surfaces
Versatile Training Field: the Wellness Entertainment System Using Trampoline Interface
Virtualization Gate
** are we going? **
All animals, including people, experience the world in different ways. Every animal has unique sensory equipment and a unique way of processing the information it receives. Some animals sense things that people are unaware of, and others sense the same things people do but interpret them differently. For example, bees can see in the ultraviolet range, some starfish have "eyes" all over their bodies, flies have multi-faceted vision, and sharks and some birds can sense electromagnetic fields.
The SIGGRAPH 2009 Research Challenge problem is to choose a specific animal, or a specific animal's sense, and develop a system that will enable a person to experience the physical or social world as that animal does.
Individuals and teams develop innovative solutions to a challenge problem, demonstrating their creativity, design, and execution skills. Selected finalists will present their work to a panel of distinguished judges in a public session in competition for final awards.
** I still really want to go to TEDGlobal in Mumbai/Mysore but SIGGRAPH sounds really good. At least this challenge sounds good. However everything else I've read is privileging visual art in a way that I find is not at all critical (in so far as I'm aware). And is also heavily code geeky, which is making me feel inadequate. And if I mention Panda3D I'm going to have to get it and learn it or msdramagirl won't forgive me.
Remember what "Frankie Say" ? The iconic Two Tribes release T-shirt marketing campaign in 1984 featuring such slogans as "Frankie Say War! Hide Yourself" and "Frankie Say Relax Don't Do It!".
The song's title derives from the line "when two great warrior tribes go to war", from the film Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior. see Wikipedia:
The first 12-inch mix ("Annihilation") started with an air-raid siren, and unfolded as a ground-breaking extended deconstruction and reinvention of the basic track, including Allen's starkest advice about how to tag and dispose of family members should they die in the fallout shelter (taken from the public information film Casualties).
The "Carnage" mix was, by comparison, altogether more conventional, featuring enhanced string treatments, a percussive midpoint flurry of vocal samples (from Allen and the group's B-side interview), but broadly following the prevailing instrumental/vocal 12-inch structural paradigm. The eventual album version ("For The Victims Of Ravishment") would derive from the "Carnage" mix.
The "Hibakusha" mix was originally released in a very limited edition, and appears on the Japanese-only Bang! album from 1985, even though the Japanese liner notes admit that the title is not pleasant to the Japanese readers. This mix was musically based on the "Annihilation" mix, but with a unique middle section comprising orchestral samples and percussive breaks that have much in common with the work of fellow ZTT act Art of Noise.
The Godley & Creme-directed video depicted a wrestling match between Reagan and then-Soviet leader Konstantin Chernenko for the benefit of group members and an eagerly belligerent assembly of representatives from the world's nations, the event ultimately degenerating into complete global destruction. This video was played several times at the 1984 Democratic National Convention.
A longer version of the video (based on the "Hibakusha" mix) included an introductory cut-up monologue by Richard Nixon ("No firm diplomacy... No peace for America and the world"), plus similar contributions from other world leaders, including Lord Beaverbrook, Yasser Arafat and John F. Kennedy. The complete soundtrack to the extended video was eventually released as "Two Tribes (Video Destructo)" on the German version of the Twelve Inches compilation. A third version of the video, included on the band's compilation of videos, retains the introduction, but loses most of the inserted clips in the main wrestling sequence.
A woman of many parts … Sasha Grey as Chelsea, a high-priced call girl in The Girlfriend Experience, which is screening in competition at the Sydney Film Festival.
Go, Sasha, Go! Although, it is somewhat Story of O. I am surprised by the surprise that Sasha's story provokes. As Soderbergh says towards the end of his interview. "Sasha has a 5 year plan, that's something most of the GfE's we interviewed had."
She's in control, somewhat. At least she is more successfully exploiting the situation than most. GfE is now the euphemism for call girl, or escort. Sex worker doesn't get a look in! Now that looking and moving like a pole dancer is compulsory in youth culture, I'm waiting for a rise in the status of sex work. Bring it on, baby.
This might not be robots... quite but I came across the Lunocet (pictured above) site completely by accident and was immediately struck by how brilliant an idea this was. Beautiful, effective and why on earth hadn't any one thought of it before?
On further reading (the Scientific American article), I discovered that, as well as Ted Ciamillo who has taken his design from nature, DARPA and the Segway team have been putting together a Project Swim which utilizes flexing of the larger leg muscles to power a kind of side fan. How cool is that?
Only being online is probably optional. What I need is a customizable context sensitive alarm clock. Nagware that is aware. Ideal for the iPhone if it could run in the background.
Imagine a gentle awakening at 6 which turns into a suggestion that you go for a walk if you get up before 6.30. Lovely weather for it! And if you're still lounging about at 6.30 the siren starts.
How about getting a gentle prompt at 8 to finish breakfast for all of the family and pack your bags for the day. Or start music practise.
Naturally not on Saturday. Or Sunday. Or on Wednesday which is early morning at school. And imagine 3 hours of different programming in different rooms as each member of family goes off to sleep!
Biological robots. Very futuristic but so much work has been done on the integration of sensors and the brain already I shouldn't be so surprised. This is an area I want to learn more about. (andragy)
Welcome to MOAAAD.org
I recently read an article defining the automobile as the best sculpture of the 20th century. Where do appliances sit in art theory? Code is poetry.
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The full text of Kathy Sierra's seminal piece "Code like a girl" is central to gender art technology discussions.
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Have I reached a dramatic conclusion? As the device evolves us more than we evolve the device, the application is art lacking only great artists or appreciation. Avant News is bringing us Tomorrow's News Today and that missing dash of post-modern irony to an ambitious thesis.
Dubai, United Arab Emirates, February 9, 2010 -- God's spokesperson, Ermil Higgibilly, announced today that once again the rapture would be delayed. This latest calamity to befall God is expected to move back the time of the pretribulation rapture anywhere from a week to a month due to some 'technical issues' with God's website. Palm Jumeirah: God's home/headquarters is located on the fifth branch up on the left, fourth frond over via avantnews.com
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the continuing untidy notes are in absolute sync with the downpour outside.
memo: get geotagging to go with the tweetpics
I stared inspired at my screen, which encompasses universes, (the earth from space is the single most downloaded image of all time) for ages before deciding against any of the applications available.
I have saved a spiral bound hard cover book and a fluid blue ink pen for special occasions. Untainted by domesticia.
The sussurant knitting of pen across paper is sending me into a dreamy state.
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my original untidy notes continue:
Small personalized applications like accretions or skins. Meaning of art? The creation of reaction in a constructive fashion.
As opposed to the constrictions of fashion, albeit art is symbolically guarded by the 3 headed dog of design, fashion and appreciation.
Issues of the body: Images of the work space with a maze of books, piled here and there. Steering one literally through. The space of production and the means of production are synonomous.
May 19th 1961. Although communications were lost with Venera 1 before the event.
The Application As Art: define terms. Query use as/of/in/or/is ?
Define art: That's a big one. Vlog with Henry Mulholland and Roomies Artspace for the artist's perspective throughout the project.
Blog it: Capture the lifestream of project as ongoing work in progress. Multiple sources ideal therefore tumblr, storytlr, posterous or sweetcron better than wordpress or blogger.
Art, culture, entertainment or technology: Which platform or medium are most emotional experiences being delivered to us? Validation of movies in 20th century as new artform through new media.
Credibility of the mundane, perhaps we are preHomeric awaiting the rise of epic?
MMORGs role in subsuming movies. Production of mashups as polished delivery of academia. Appreciation of culture jamming. Citations obviously include Burroughs and Gibson.
Rise of social inequity in the production and ownership of media being overthrown with the mass uptake of digital technology and then restored with the online/offline divide. Spirality of rise in a dialectic transferred to edge-centric understanding.
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Anne Boleyn in the Tower by Edouard Cibot (1799 - 1877)
19th May: I run downstairs at 10 minutes to midnight proclaiming "The Application IS Art!"
I am unable to sleep for rest of evening until I have scrawled these untidy notes and kept my partner awake to enjoy my excitement. On reflection, I can see why he was not as excited as I was. But when I finish turning raw synapse flashes into a crafty singularity then I hope everyone will enjoy this.
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Award... Hugh Durrant-Whyte with some of his robots. Photo: Steven Siewer
Deborah Smith Science Editor
May 21, 2009THERE are robot submarines, robot aircraft and robot ground vehicles. "It's like Thunderbirds in our lab," says Sydney engineer, Hugh Durrant-Whyte.
Instead of the international missions undertaken by the marionette TV series, these Sydney robots are being developed for very Australian applications: to track locust swarms, monitor bushfires, identify and spray weeds in remote areas, herd animals and observe sea creatures on the ocean floor.
The wide, empty spaces made this country ideal for deploying autonomous vehicles, said Professor Durrant-Whyte, of the University of Sydney. "If you were to pick one place in the world to do field robotics, it would be Australia."
A pioneer of robot navigation, he devised a method that allows a vehicle to be dropped into any new location and map its surroundings while keeping track of its own location, without human help or satellite contact.
This is particularly vital for ocean exploration. "Underwater you definitely don't get GPS and you don't have a map."
A deep-sea robot submarine, Sirius, developed by his team, has recently surveyed the waters off Tasmania, counting cuttlefish for other scientists.
Getting robots out of the lab and into the wilds to do useful work is his main motivation.
"As an engineer, that is the satisfying thing," said Professor Durrant-Whyte, who last night received an Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering Clunies Ross Award for innovation at a ceremony in Sydney.
In 2007 his team also carried out a world-first demonstration of two robot aircraft that could co-operate in flight and develop a strategy together based on what they detected on the ground.
This technology could be applied to problems, such as offshore search and rescue.
Professor Durrant-Whyte would also like to see robotics fully developed in the fight against bushfires. Robot aircraft could detect and track the fires, and robots, rather than people, could cut the fire breaks.
The Australian Centre for Field Robotics, which he heads, was recently awarded a $10 million five-year contract from global defence company, BAE Systems, to develop a robotic system that could survey unsafe urban environments.
It might include a small aircraft that could "perch and stare" like a bird in strategic places, and a larger version flying higher up sharing information with ground vehicles.
These robots would range from small ones to search buildings to larger ones to carry the small ones. "It's a hugely challenging problem to integrate everything."
This one almost slipped by! Love my robots. Korea's national productivity plan is to have a robot in every home before 2010, I believe. As they had all off Korea on broadband by 2000, I am optimistic.
A woman searches for inspiration, in this 1898 painting by William-Adolphe Bouguereau.
Pun intended above. I do get my artistic inspiration from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This project is all about The Application As Art.
I've been gathering information from friends, from strangers, from the twitterverse, trying to direct my sudden urge to create, to study and produce into the appropriate vessel at a university.
CoFA and UWS courses have had good reviews but I've already done a lot of production and am not seeking employment in that area. I really want to talk and theorise, to blog, pod and vlog, to lifestream my consciousness and get a good dialogue going.
I've spent too much time twiddling the knobs of various feeds ands posts to pull a 300 word proposal together but I plan to release the work in progress as we go. Next post - the untidy initial idea.
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Enzo Mari - Timor desk calendar, 1966; Enzo Mari exhibit, Spazio Italia gallery, IIC Los Angeles April 10-June 27 2008Enzo Mari is one of the people we have to thank for Italian design’s world prominence since World War II. His designs have always combined playfulness, practicality, and the unparalleled elegance of simplicity, all driven by an eagerness to work with new and old materials alike. Even as you admire their sculptural line and their machine-like logic you have to lift and fondle them like toys. Some of them are toys; Mari’s designs for kids’ books and objects themselves constitute a minor revolution in design for children. Similarly, the Pop brightness and futuristic stylizations of his designs for adults - for the workplace, for the home, for the kitchen, for the body - underscore rather than obscure their almost addictive usefulness. Like his countrymen, Milan-basaed Mari loves to play with and re-think ordinary objects; unlike so many of them, he is taken less with his own cleverness than with the magic of objecthood itself. A selection of about 60 Mari designs fills the Istituto Italiano di Cultura.
Too much time is being spent setting up the whole AmIArt lifestream and not enough time putting 300 little words together. 20 tweets.
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