Wednesday, July 21, 2004
Flower Power Gadget Turns Plants Into Amplifiers
TOKYO (Reuters) - People who like talking to their plants can now enjoy a musical accompaniment, thanks to a Japanese invention that turns petals and leaves into amplifiers.
Tuesday, July 20, 2004
Web scrubs up for dose of drama
Kylie Robertson has launched a new “soap” on the web.
Kylie Robertson leans over her laptop screen and peers into the lives of the characters that mill about in the online world she created for them.
With a click of her mouse, she can access their mobile phone messages, read journals and flip through photo albums that are left scattered about as interactive props in what digital media specialist Robertson, 28, says is Australia’s first locally produced web-based series, Jupiter Green.
Last month’s launch of the 13-episode series is a sign, Robertson says, of things to come. As the internet weaves its way further into our lives, its impact on the way we view our entertainment continues to evolve.
Episodes (2-4 minutes each)
www.jupitergreen.com.au
or
www.citysearch.com.au
Wednesday, July 14, 2004
Upcoming Events: SIGGRAPH, ISEA, Prix Ars, Interactive Media Forum
SIGGRAPH 2004
August 8-12, 2004
L.A. Convention Center
Los Angeles, CA
http://www.siggraph.org/s2004/
ISEA 2004
August 14-22, 2004
Baltic Sea
http://www.isea2004.net/
Prix Ars Electronica
September 2-7, 2004
Linz, Austria
http://www.aec.at/
2004 Interactive Media Forum
Creative Space | Digital Space
October 11-12, 2004
Miami University, Oxford, Ohio
http://student.sba.muohio.edu/ims/conference/
Tuesday, July 13, 2004
Chinese author moves into texts
A Chinese author has written a novel that will be sent in 70-word chapters via SMS. Is this the first novel ever transmitted this way? It’s an interesting idea when you consider the sheer number of mobile phones in use around the world.
Qian Fuchang has reduced his novel Outside the Fortress Besieged into 60 chapters of 70 characters each, Chinese state news agency Xinhua reported.
Described as a “steamy tale of illicit love among already married people”, the novel will be available exclusively to mobile phone users.
Digitizing the voices of the past: Science perfects sound of century-old recordings
Using a tool normally used for particle physics research, two scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Carl Haber and Vitaliy Fadeyev, are investigating how to extract clear, audible voices from broken, mold-eaten and otherwise unplayable early recordings.
Body movement to create music
Scientists are developing ways of capturing human movement in three dimensions which would allow music to be created with the gesture of an arm.
It would eliminate the need for music technicians to twiddle hundreds of knobs to achieve the perfect sound.
The technique could also be used for scrolling a webpage, especially useful for people with limited mobility.
Hollywood 2D Digital Animation: The New Flash Production Revolution
For all you Flash animators out there, this new book by Sandro Corsaro and Clifford J. Parrott shows you how to move beyond the Web and create in Flash for television and feature films.
Friday, July 09, 2004
Fragments of Infinity: A Kaleidescope of Math and Art by Ivars Peterson
Are you interested in the intersection of math and art? If so, check this book out. It’s from 2001 and includes more than 250 illustrations and photographs of artworks (28 in full color). The images range from sculptures to geometric tapestries and mosaics. It’s a welcome addition to my bookshelf!
Lozano-Hemmer Creates a Virtual Environment on MOCA’s Digital Gallery
Thursday, July 1, 2004 — Saturday, January 1, 2005
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA) presents “Sitestepper, Relational Architecture 10” by Mexican-Canadian artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer on moca.org. The work is commissioned by MOCA and is part of an ongoing series of digital artists’ projects.
Specializing in what he calls “relational architecture,” Lozano-Hemmer transforms public spaces using interactive technologies that enable participants to become part of the artwork. “Sitestepper, Relational Architecture 10” consists of a navigable, virtual environment in which viewers can enter the web address of their choice to transform the environment through the selected web site’s text and visual data.
www.moca.org/museum/digital_gallery.php
Wearing your cellphone display on your sleeve
Researchers at France Telecom have recently developed operational prototypes of flexible colour screens integrated into clothing, opening up new horizons for services that let users display images on the clothes they wear. An initial range of purpose-built garments has been created by the designer Elisabeth de Senneville.
“Clothes are becoming a key interface for giving graphic expression and form to your moods. It’s a very personal symbolism, an emotion or state of mind that you can now display publicly and very simply through eye-catching animated graphics and short texts,” explains Emeric Mourot, R&D project manager.”
Space Artistry in Bloom (author and artist Martin Naroznik)
Naroznik’s book and website, Spacebloom: A Field Guide to Cosmic Xflora, catalog dozens of imagined flowers, many of them several meters in diameter, which drift (or propel themselves) through the vacuum of space, reproducing and deriving their nourishment from particle clouds and stars.
Naroznik’s spaceblooms are the products of nanotechnology and biotechnology, originated by man and set loose into space, where they can survive for decades.
Vodafone New Zealand Launches Digital Art Awards
New Zealand just launched their first national digital art awards founded by Vodafone. There is a total of over $40,000 available in prize money and mobiles for the winners in four categories—Still Image, Moving Image, Net Art and PXT/Video PXT. The closing date for entries is 5 pm Friday 10 December 2004 and the finalists will be announced in May 2005. Unfortunately, it is limited to New Zealand residents or those who have been a resident for 12 months prior to the deadline, but it’s an encouraging sign to see this type of sponsorship. All the best to everyone involved!
From Vodafone’s site:
The theme explores the role of technology in not only blurring old boundaries, but removing them altogether. This is creating a new social and workplace environment and is changing the way people communicate with each other.
This theme is inspired by - and will be reflected in - Vodafone’s new Auckland headquarters, a leading edge building called v.nue. The new building will be more than merely a place for employees – it will also be a high-profile statement of Vodafone’s culture and brand. At v.nue, Vodafone staff will be moving towards the office of the future, with increased mobility and flexibility in the work space.
Tuesday, June 22, 2004
Groovy Pictures: Extracting sound from images of old audio recordings
Songs and words preserved on antique vinyl records and wax cylinders become more precious with each passing day. They also grow increasingly fragile and are especially vulnerable to damage if played.
Now, researchers using optical-scanning equipment have made exquisitely detailed maps of the grooves of such recordings. By simulating how a stylus moves along those contours, the team has reproduced the encoded sounds with high fidelity.
Phillip George
Phillip George is a Sydney based artist who trained at the National Art School Sydney receiving a Diploma in Art and a Masters Degree with First Class Honours from the University of New South Wales in 1996, he exhibits nationally and internationally, his work has been profiled in, Beijing, New York, Athens, Crete, Thesaloniki, New Orleans, Los Angles, Kyoto, Auckland, Florida, Kengsberg, Siberia, Venice, Paris, London and Frankfurt.
He has represented Australia at the 2004, 2001, 1998, 1997, 1996, 1995 and 1993 SIGGRAPH Art shows, the largest and most important computer graphics conference and exhibition in the world.
His work ranges from painting and printmaking to interactive installation, new media and the post photographic. Phillip has held 20 solo exhibitions dating from 1981 to present and countless group and collaborative exhibitions. He is now collaboratively involved will the Spiral Sound Company in live interactive performances.
Current practices interest focuses on the photographic and post-photographic, truth as evidence and to challenge our notions of vision.
This research includes cognition in relation to vision, vision in relation to interpretation, story telling as it informs history, history as fiction and fiction in relation to cognition. Thus it completes a circle of relations linking visual information with fiction.
Philip Ross
Artist, amateur bio-engineer and member of the San Francisco mycological society, Philip Ross uses living organisms as the inspiration and means by which he makes his work. Through the design and creation of highly controlled environments, Mr. Ross manipulates, nurtures and transforms a variety of living species into sculpture. His work lies at the disparate intersection of homegrown technologies, folk art, and ecological studies.
Philip has worked collaboratively with a number of institutions. In 2001, The Exploratorium in San Francisco invited him to be an artist in residence for their Life Science Department. While there, he designed and constructed a hydroponic garden-fountain for their Traits Of Life exhibit. He has also worked with the Johnson Oyster farm in Tomales Bay, just north of San Francisco, where he devised a method of growing a colony of oysters onto an armature, a three-year process that produced a twenty-foot long architectural structure composed of a mass of fused oyster shells.
Philip will be showing his work in the Perth Biennial of Electronic Arts this fall and his writing will be featured in the spring issue of M.I.T.’s Leonardo magazine.
Philip recently had his work in a solo show at Machine in Los Angeles. The show included a series of Reishi mushrooms grown into highly artificed forms, the aforementioned sculpture grown out of oysters, and a self-contained survival capsule for one living plant. These sculptures are at once highly crafted and naturally formed, skillfully manipulated and sloppily organic.
www.philross.org
www.machineproject.com