via Wired

The physically permanent identity of architecture has helped to define society for centuries. Now some practitioners have disengaged from tectonics as we traditionally understand it and are taking their discipline into the realms of ‘softspace’, a more fluid, ephemeral form of digitally-enabled design based on personalised experiences and responses. Softspace deploys new spatial systems including wearable computing, wifi, RFID and custom-designed digital software incorporating light, heat, sound and electromagnetic fields. These not only rely on people’s individual ways of interacting with them, but are enriched by narratives people contribute, creating new metaphors of use. Responsive environmental strategies of this kind have increasingly colonised museums and galleries like Tate, the Science Museum and the V&A

While the notion of a fantasy world made possible ‘on demand’ by new technologies is the theme of films like Minority Report and ExistenZ, contemporary softspace projects play a more subtle and open-ended influence on contemporary socio-spatial dynamics and our sensing abilities. Architects Usman Haque, Jason Bruges and Daan Roosegaarde and designer Despina Papadopoulos discuss the cultural implications of their work with Tate Modern curator Jane Burton and curator, author and critic Lucy Bullivant, guest editor of 4dsocial: Interactive Design Environments (AD/Wiley, 2007). Lev Manovich, the ground-breaking new media art theorist, is a keynote speaker.

Tate Modern

A conversation with Eric Rosner, Director of Animation at TV Land, in the Reallusion booth at SIGGRAPH 2007 in San Diego, California. 

Furniture puts on chameleon show (BBC News)

For more information regarding availability of the furniture for purchase, please visit Mongoose Studio (Japan).

Call for entires for Japan Media Arts Festival to be held February 6-17, 2008 at the National Art Center, Tokyo.  Submissions are in the following categories: Art, Entertainment, Animation or Manga.

Link

SIGGRAPH 2007

The Transnational Communities Award is open to artistic, cultural and social projects that creatively use the technologic and conceptual tools available in the web, broadening the channels of communitarian communication and interaction and giving rise to spaces online where practices and stories are shared. The purpose of this award is to foster the access to cultural goods and to the technologies involved in its production and distribution, to promote the diversity of expressions and to recognize the citizen participation of the Transnational Communities that link Mexico and the United States in a daily and permanent way.

The call for submissions is open to individuals, groups, associations, organizations and institutions from Mexico and the United States that develop artistic, cultural and social projects for which the Internet is both a sufficient and necessary condition of viewing, expressing and participating.

Among the fields of activity subsumed are: video (communitarian video, documental, videoart, videoclip, videomail, telenovelas/soap operas), net.art, citizen journalism, digital communities, online forums, weblogs social networks, online videogames , online artistic collaboration projects, electronic literature, digital narrative, online communitarian radio, podcasts, etc.

During the Festival, the winner will be awarded with USD 3,500.

For further information on the submission please visit www.transitiomx.net/concurso (Spanish) or http://en.transitiomx.net/competition (English).

All forms of cutting-edge creativity are covered here at artfuture and over the years I’ve tried out quite a few interactive and gestural interfaces.  The one question was, when would I be able to use this in my daily life?  It was always a few years out but now it’s finally here.  This is a big open thank you to Steve Jobs, Jonathan Ive and everyone else at Apple and those abroad who physically produced the phone as it is a truly wonderful device.  There have been lots of posts on what is or isn’t included on this first version and all I can say is, for me, it doesn’t matter.  What isn’t there will happen over time and what is there is perfect for now.  The most important part of the phone is the user interface.  It is fluid and responsive and is the first phone that works the way my brain works.  After using it for a day, all I can say is it immediately makes every other phone out there look old. 

In August, I’ll be at SIGGRAPH covering all of the emerging technologies, art show, fashion event, and expo and from the looks of the advance program, gestural and interactive items will be a big topic once again.  This time, I’ll be bringing one of the best with me

Alexa

When “Night Watch” was a hit in Russia, Fox Searchlight, the indie subsidiary of the Hollywood studio, Fox, decided to release it internationally. Rather than dub the original, Bekmambetov insisted on subtitling it and took charge of the design process himself. He conceived the subtitles as “another character in the film, another way to tell the story,” rather than treating them as extras.

The result was sensational. Most of the subtitles in “Night Watch” are in clear, white sans serif lettering, but others adopt different guises to reflect the mood and action of the film. Some glide across the screen from different angles. Others glow in red, if a character is especially angry or agitated (as they often are in Bekmambetov’s movies). One explodes in a puff of smoke after an explosion. Another, uttered when a character heard voices in his head while swimming, dissolves like blood in the water of the pool. Anthony Lane, film critic of The New Yorker, described those subtitles as “the best I have encountered.”

For more about this very creative director, please visit IMDb or Wikipedia.