Sunday, November 07, 2004
“Cybertecture” represents future for design around world
Interactive architecture is the future of design in China and around the world, said James Law, the only Chinese nominee for the 2004 Asia Innovation Award.
Law, chief “cybertect” of a global consultancy based in Hong Kong specializing in the design and strategy formation of cybertecture projects, was nominated for his excellent design of the world’s first artificial intelligence media laboratory in Hong Kong.
He created the new concept of Cybertecture in January 2001, and was invited to be design consultant for the futuristic, Cannes-nominated film “2046” directed by Wong Kar Wai, which is on show across the country.
Artists prepare works for opening of the expanded Children’s Museum [Pittsburgh, PA]
Standing outside of the Old Post Office Building on the North Side—home of the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh for the past 21 years—Pittsburgh sculptor Keny Marshall’s eyes widen with excitement as he describes his latest piece, “Allegheny Waterworks.”
“It’s a fountain, but the kids will control all of the flow by turning the water on and off with a big wheel,” Marshall says. His interactive work consists of a massive polypropylene water tank out of which dozens of pipes lead to stacks of architectural artifacts from Pittsburgh’s past.
[snip]
“We’ve spent the last three years designing exhibits for this,” Marshall says, referring to himself and the 20 or so artists who have been collaborating on exhibits for the newly expanded museum. The project dedicated $500,000 to the creation of interactive artwork.
Exhibits include:
* A giant inflatable brontosaurus made from vinyl ice cream signs by Pittsburgh artist Tim Kaulen.
* An interactive video work called “Text Rain” by New York artists Camille Utterback and Romy Achituv in which visitors will be able to “catch” virtual falling letters and form words.
* And a “Smelling Machine” by Hyla Willis of Pittsburgh that is designed like an old amusement park machine such as a zoetrope or palm reader, but it doles out smells instead of fortunes.
In fact, the new-three story structure built between the Old Post Office and the former Buhl Planetarium that will function as both entryway and exhibit space is in itself an artwork, being sheathed in 43,000 square polycarbonate flappers that move with the wind and look like water cascading down the building. Titled “Articulated Cloud,” it was designed by Ned Kahn of Sebastopol, Calif.
Digital World
High-tech media has made inroads on our privacy, but a panel of designers says it’s as much an atmosphere as an invasion
Since the last world war, America has been the self-described watchdog for the world. But what happens when those in political power begin to turn America’s gaze back on itself? This was one of the questions being asked in August at the 54th annual International Design Conference in Aspen, Colo., where organizers Benjamin Bratton and Christian Moeller gathered 18 speakers from Europe and the United States under the banner “Ambient: Interface.’’ In front of an audience of designers and design students, they discussed how we engage with increasingly mobile and sometimes invasive computer technologies.
Thursday, November 04, 2004
FeedTank
FeedTank is a collective of digital artists using new technologies to create playful interactive spectacles. Inspired by the dramatic range of expression initiated by FeedTank artist Jonah Warren’s Full Body Games, FeedTank has continued to explore the potentials of Computer Vision in gaming and interface design. FeedTank’s installations are designed to be intuitive, invisible and encourage the participant to use their entire bodies when interacting. FeedTank has shown at CompactImpact, GAGA Gallery and HERE Gallery, all located in NYC.
Tuesday, November 02, 2004
Luis Cordeiro
Luis Cordeiro, is a young digital artist from Portugal, with graduation in Digital Arts (School of Arts - UCP), who works in the multimedia-design field. Beyond his commercial work he develops some pieces of digital art using concepts of art and technology. He usually prefers to create tangible interfaces and develop new standards of interactivity with all kind of mediums and resources he can use.
Monday, November 01, 2004
Cutting comment and choreography
IN a world where small dance companies come and go (go, mostly), London-based Ricochet Dance Company has been around a while. Set up in 1989, it has recently done some rebounding worthy of its name when it morphed into Ricochet Dance Productions in order to embrace the worlds of film, new media and visual arts.
Not more multi-media, I hear you sigh. But one half of this new double bill, at least, is the real deal. While everybody and their dog has a film backdrop in their dance shows these days, Ricochet takes the bold step of programming a stand-alone dance film or “video dance” alongside Aussie choreographer Lucy Guerin’s live piece for six dancers, This Is Your Life.
Dance film is a hugely exciting art- form, but woefully underexposed. Normally confined to specialist festivals, it is great to see it screened for a general audience . The idea for the 28-minute film The Truth originated, not with the choreographers (Paulo Ribeiro and Fin Walker), but with director Katrina McPherson and editor Simon Fildes.
Sunday Herald
Monday, October 25, 2004
Viewers to be able to shape TV
Manipulating your favourite films to make a more personalised movie is just the beginning of an ambitious new 7.5m euro (£5.1m) project funded by the European Union.
New Media for a New Millennium (NM2) will have as its endgame the development of a completely new media genre, which will allow audiences to create their own media worlds based on their specific interests or tastes.
Viewers will be able to participate in storylines, manipulate plots and even the sets and props of TV shows.
BT is one of 13 partners involved in the project. It will be contributing software that was originally designed to spot anomalies in CCTV pictures.
The software uses content recognition algorithms.
The three-year project will work on seven productions as it develops a set of software tools that will allow viewers to edit content to their needs.
Youth ‘mobile’ art initiative
BBC Northern Ireland and Media Lab Europe are to hold a series of workshops with young people in Kilkeel [Ireland] as part of the initiative, known as C-TEXT.
The teenagers will photograph scenes around the County Down town, working under the theme “A Day in my Life”.
The pictures will then be projected on a screen in the town square on 29 November in an interactive exhibition.
The audience will be able to send mobile text messages, which will also be broadcast on the screen within 20 seconds.
Saturday, October 23, 2004
OneTrees Project: An Information Environment (by Natalie Jeremijenko)
Cloning has made it possible to Xerox copy organic life and confound the traditional understanding of individualism and authenticity. In the public sphere, genetics is often reduced to ‘finding the gene for .... (fill in the blank)’, misrepresenting the complex interactions with environmental influences. The debate that contrasts genetic determinism and environmental influence has consequences for understanding our own agency in the world, be it predetermined by genetic inevitability or constructed by our actions and environment. The OneTrees project is a forum for public involvement in this debate, a shared experience with actual material consequences.
[snip]
Because the trees are genetically identical, in the subsequent years they will render the social and environmental differences to which they are exposed. The tree(s) slow and consistent growth will record the experiences and contingencies that each public site provides. They will become a networked instrument that maps the micro climates of the Bay Area, not connected via the Internet, but through their biological material. However, there are also electronic components of the project which include Artificial Life (A-Life) trees that simulate the growth of the biological trees on your computer desktop. The growth rate of these simulated trees is controlled by a Carbon Dioxide meter(CO2 ). The project juxtaposes the simulated (A-Life) trees and their biological counterparts, demonstrating what simulation don’t represent as much as what they do.
Each of the tree(s) can be compared by viewers in the public places they are planted, to become a long, quiet and persisting spectacle of the Bay Area’s diverse environment.and a demonstration of a very different information environment.
OneTrees Project
SF Gate (a good article)
Make: The First Magazine for Technology Projects
Make brings the do-it-yourself mindset to all the technology in your life. Make is loaded with exciting projects that help you make the most of your technology at home and away from home. This is a magazine that celebrates your right to tweak, hack, and bend any technology to your own will.
Coming early in 2005, Make is a hybrid magazine/book (known as a mook in Japan). Make comes from O’Reilly, the Publisher of Record for geeks and tech enthusiasts everywhere. It follows in line with the Hacks books and Hardware Hacking Projects, but it takes a highly visual and personal approach.
Wednesday, October 20, 2004
Project Aims At Genetically Engineered God
SF artist tries to find Almighty on tree of life beside bacteria, slime mold
Researchers in San Francisco have announced that they are on the verge of genetically engineering God.
Hailing the effort as a “major simultaneous breakthrough in the fields of science and religion,” the International Association for Divine Taxonomy (IADT) has “developed a novel method of genetic engineering that may soon allow scientists to place God on the tree of life alongside every other species, including slime molds, fungi and humans.”
The goal is “accurate placement ... of all deities worldwide, including the god commonly known as Yahweh, Jehovah and/or Allah,”—or, for scientific purposes, Divineus deus—in order to end centuries of often violent conflict between faith and reason.
No, this isn’t something out of an article from The Onion. It’s the latest “thought experiment” by San Francisco art critic and conceptual artist Jonathon Keats, 33, whose recent projects include selling shares of the 6 billion neurons in his brain ("Brain Trust,” 2003) and trying to convince the Berkeley City Council to pass an unbreakable law, Aristotle’s A=A (Every Entity Is Equal to Itself, 2002).
Sunday, October 17, 2004
Living next door to Alice
On screen, an Aboriginal boy piggybacks a friend on an old bike past a sacred site near a golf course in Alice Springs. The sky is clear and the landscape beautifully lit as they stop at a tap to drink. Looking around, they notice a shiny, expensive bike, unattended. Together they make a decision that could change everything . . . fade to black.
At this point, the director of UsMob invites viewers to choose from alternative endings. In one scenario, the police are involved and in the other, friends fight as one boy challenges the other.
The bike story is one of eight short films that make up UsMob, a series of real life morality tales and experiences from contemporary Aboriginal life. Set in Hidden Valley, an Aboriginal community in the middle of Alice Springs, it is a collaborative work by director David Vadiveloo and the Arrente community, including the Tangentyere Council and the Aboriginal Town Camp Council in Alice Springs.
Tuesday, October 12, 2004
Jacket Grows From Living Tissue
Fancy a partially alive jacket, possibly grown out of your own skin? In reality, it may not be that far away.
Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr at the Tissue Culture & Art Project are attempting to grow a semi-living jacket in an effort to create “victimless leather.” Hoping to highlight the possibility of wearing leather without killing an animal, the duo is presently focused on growing living tissue into a leather-like material and having it mature in the form of a miniature, stitchless, coat-like shape.
Thursday, October 07, 2004
My RESFEST 2004 (San Francisco) Favorites
After attending the RESFEST Digital Film Festival in San Francisco this past weekend, I thought I would recap my favorites even though they were all interesting. The festival is touring a large number of cities this year so check the RESFEST festival site to see if it’s coming your way!
Short films:
Brand Spanking (UK, 2004) by John-Paul Harney
In his graduation film, he has created a great spoof on the corporate branding and marketing to schools these days.
http://www.nftsanimation.org/JohnPaul_Harney.htm
Rare Exports, Inc. (Finland, 2003) by Jalmari Helander
A slightly dark comedic promotional video about what a fictional Finnish business exports.
http://www.woodpeckerfilm.fi/jalmarihelanderb11.html
The Man Without A Head (France, 2003) by Juan Solanas
One of the most beautiful and elegant shorts in the festival.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0812626/
Cinema Electronica:
Biting Tongues: Faultline (UK, 2004) by Vernie Yeung
Vertical scrolling cityscape with haunting music.
http://www.faultline.co.uk
Jonathan Glazer Retrospective:
An amazing series of commercial work from this master.
http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmpeople/249142/main?htv=12
Monday, October 04, 2004
Bye-bye, blueprint: 3D modeling catches on
You don’t have to contemplate the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, or the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles for long to grasp the notion that standard two-dimensional drawings might be inadequate for architect Frank Gehry.
The buildings are fantastic explosions of curvilinear shapes, executed in ways that seem more appropriate for paper than structural steel. They’re also representative of a dramatic new approach to designing and constructing buildings: building information modeling, or BIM, in which blueprints and other two-dimensional documents are replaced by 3D computer models, with each element of the design imbued with information about its real-world properties, such as how much weight a steel beam can hold.