art & research bureau formed by media artist paula roush. msdm are mobile strategies of display & mediation and the artworks explore the links between networked practices and daily life.
Full of interesting network related work there is a particularly interesting set of images in the gallery documenting the Tagged exhibition at [ s p a c e ] Media Arts, London in 2006 (something I have posted about before but not seen the photos) featuring work by Boredomresearch, Paula Roush, Processing Plant (Louis-Philippe Demers & Philippe Jean), Mute-Dialogue and evoLhypergrapHyCx (C6).
A slightly different twist on physical computing / tangible interfaces is something I saw last year titled, Control Freaks and its only popped up on my radar now again. A Control Freak is:
a small device that attaches to an everyday object making it a host. It can sense the movement and sound of its host and connect that feedback to a local gaming platform, translating the manipulation of the host into game play commands on the connected game platform…When the Control Freak device clamps onto a host, sensors on the device can detect movement or vibration when the host object is manipulated. If the host is a door, then Control Freak can sense it opening and closing. The device augments the behavior of the host allowing it to become the controller of a game. Critical to this is the affordance of the host. A chair swings, a door opens and closes. The device translates the host’s affordance into play commands. In this way, swinging on an office chair can control the movements of Pong paddles on the gaming screen.
Below is a video of the Control Freak device being employed on an office chair to control a game called Brain Candy.
And below here is a scenario as to how the Control Freak creatures might one day imbue the everyday objects around us with the qualities of play.
One of the most interesting uses of Augmented Reality that I’ve seen yet (and all seem to employ the ARToolKit) is Levelhead (image above, video below), a 3D Spatial Memory Game designed by Julian Oliver who also created Packet Garden.
levelHead uses a hand-held solid-plastic cube as its only interface. On-screen it appears each face of the cube contains a little room, each of which are logically connected by doors.
In one of these rooms is a character. By tilting the cube the player directs this character from room to room in an effort to find the exit.
Some doors lead nowhere and will send the character back to the room they started in, a trick designed to challenge the player’s spatial memory. Which doors belong to which rooms?
There are three cubes (levels) in total, each of which are connected by a single door. Players have the goal of moving the character from room to room, cube to cube in an attempt to find the final exit door of all three cubes. If this door is found the character will appear to leave the cube, walk across the table surface and vanish.. The game then begins again.
There have been several comparisons made between Levelhead and the Rubriks Cube, the use of a tactile interface, navigation between the six faces of the cube etc. but some more interesting comparisons might be Pasks Universal Constructor, the Reactable (videos here) and the toy Cube World.
If you interested in the technology employed in this Mediamatic are organising a three day workshop designing Augmented Reality games from the 02/06/08 to the 04/06/08 of which Julian Oliver is one of the three workshop leaders.
Things have been a bit hectic recently what with the end of the academic year on us and the event I’ve been organising for Open Ear but here is some good news on progressing my own research.
An article I submitted many months ago for an edition of the long running French academic journal Terminal, Technologie de L’information, culture & société (Terminal, Information Technology, Culture & Society) titled Net Art, Technologie ou Création? (Net Art, Technology or Creation) has been published and is available for sale through Editions L’Harmattan. The title of this article as published in the journal is Net Art : au-delà du navigateur… un monde d’objets and is available below to download in English as Net.art: beyond the browser to a world of things:
M_M_ is a mirror installation by Matteo Peterlini similar to a few I’ve posted about here before such as Miroir Aux Silhouettes, a_mirror, MirrorSpace, Reface [Portrait Sequencer]. Specific details are a bit vague on this one as the description on the artists site is only in Italian and I can’t get a decent enough translation. Mixing the image of the user with symbols of Hollywood cinema:
M_M _ redesigns our relationship between the truth and the indelible image of myths through one mirror. The mirror, constructed here with a webcam, a monitor is after all the encounter point. But rather than to an instrument of fusion between truth and symbol it appeals to to think to me next to this job like to a rivelatrice work, that is that us door one detection of the conflict between extraordinary daily paper and, between human and myth, moment and infinite.
