Arithmetik Garden by Sato Masahiko and Kiriyama Takashi is another work which was exhibited at ICC in Tokyo last year, this time as part of the Open Space. Users enter the garden with a numbered RFID smart card:

Passing through the gates (with the calculating formulas shown) starts the “garden’s” calculations of your number. When their sum becomes exactly 73, you are finished, and can leave the “garden.” “Arithmetik Garden” was created to substitute a concrete idea of calculation for our usual abstract one. Becoming numbers ourselves allows us to experience calculating and being calculated via the position of our own bodies in this space.

What follows are two works by two artists employing weblogs and automated bots.

Blogbot by Alex Dragulescu (image above) is a bot which generates an experimental novel by harvesting text from weblogs based around a specified theme:

What I Did Last Summer is the first experimental graphic novel generated by blogbot, using cached versions of My War (written by a U.S. soldier deployed in Iraq) and the now famous Baghdad Blogger. The protagonists of What I Did Last Summer are military and civilian units from the game Civilization 3.

Blog Bot Platform (image above) by Andy Broomfield unlike Blogbot doesn’t use blogs to generate work it enables objects to connect and potentially communicate:

Blog Bot Platform is a system, created with a Java program, that allows hobbyists to connect simple sensors to objects and give these objects ‘voices’ we can ‘hear’ via web 2.0 services, such as ‘Twitter’. Hobbyists can attach the different sensors to objects they have an interest in, and allow them to broadcast messages through text micro-blogs. These stream of text messages are then encountered in the public timeline, enabling the objects to express themselves amongst the streams of other tweets.

Almost a direct, albeit simplified, implementation of Bruce Sterlings Spimes as described in Shaping Things, Blog Bot Platform is an interesting invesigation into the internet of things. Although now finished Light Blogger Bots twitter page can be seen here, Storm Blogger Bots twitter page can be seen here and Explorer Blogger Bot can be seen here. Source code for Blog Bot Platform can be downloaded from Google Code here.

Network Notebooks #2: The Internet of Things has just been published in print and pdf form by The Institute for Network Cultures, Geert Lovink’s media research centre within the School of Interactive Media at the Hogeschool van Amsterdam (Amsterdam Polytechnic). The publication is one of (very few) which looks at aspects of The Internet of Things. The blurb on the back reads as follows:

Cities across the world are about to enter the next phase of their development. A near invisible network of radio frequency identification tags (RFID) is being deployed on almost every type of consumer item. These tiny, traceable chips, which can be scanned wirelessly, are being produced in their billions and are capable of being connected to the internet in an instant. This so-called ‘Ambient intelligence’ promises to create a global network of physical objects every bit as pervasive and ubiquitous as the worldwide web itself. Some are already calling this controversial network the ‘internet of things’, describing it as either the ultimate convenience in supply-chain management, or the ultimate tool in our future surveillance. This network has the power to reshape our cities and yet it is being built with little public knowledge of consent. Here Rob van Kranenburg examines what impact RFID, and other systems, will have on our cities and our wider society; while also ruminating on what alternative network technologies could help safeguard our privacy and empower citizens to take power back into their own hands. It is both a timely warning and a call to arms.

The institute has published a steady stream of publications including two of the most important network related publications of the last few years, Uncanny Networks and Dark Fiber (all of the institutes publications are listed here).

As with the the first Network Notebook (and a few of the other publications), this edition is free in print form to order from the website. Mine’s in the post but I’ve already had a look at the pdf version and it is definetly worth a look.

Originally seen at Nearfield.

Heart-Donor (diagram above, images below) by Laura Beloff, Erich Berger and Elina Mitrunen (see here for previous wearable art) is a wearable art with similar aims to some connected wearables I have posted about before.

The concept for Heart-Donor was developed as an idea about one’s social network within “hybrid space”*. The hybrid space is a space, which we –humans- inhabit in increasing measures via various devices like mobile phones and pdas used in our everyday lives. The work takes its point of departure by rejecting the (common) concept about differentiation of virtual (digital) and physical (”real”) layers of the world. This work is specifically constructed for the hybrid space. The work attempts to make this fairly new concept of space we live in, visible and materially concrete, in contrast to common unnoticeability influenced by the ordinariness of mass-produced devices.

Here’s how the work functions:

One can collect 30 recordings of heartbeats of friends and family -or other ideas for personal networks- into the HDvest. These heartbeats will be stored into 30 small lamps embedded into the front of the HDvest. The blinking heartbeats function as personal mementos of close people and friends. The heartbeats are combined with another concept relating to the technological world. The default color of a recorded heartbeat is green, but it changes to blink in red-color when the person (whose heartbeat is stored into the HDvest) goes online (with Skype). The “owner” of the HDvest can follow his/her selected social network of people shifting their presence between the physical and the virtual layers of the world wherever he/she and the people in the network may geographically be. The HDvest and its wearer exist continuously in the hybrid space.

An interesting work but problematic on a few points for me. It seems that such a work, designed to share a sense of presence with those you are close to, should be an intimate device (Rachel Murphy’s jewellery is still the most successful at this) and the Heart-Donor vest is not discreet enough to allow that.

Parasite, a work by Katharina Weier, is a small mobile information device or interactive sticker which is attached to a host (preferably mobile) in an urban environment.

This means, they ensure the transport of the single devices and therewith also the circulation of the messages. Instead of just staying on one place, the messages spread along the operating radius of the hosts. If two divices [sic] meet each other, an information exchange takes place. This effects, that the messages spread on their own and that they even get independent from the origin device. By this way, a maximum of information spreading is achieved, also and especially with people, who do not fit in the normal audience grid.

The device uses a combination of Arduino and XBee (to allow the arduino’s to communicate wirelessly). For related work see the post Parasitic networks and opportunism in urban space.