I wrote a post in May about the TOTem (Tales Of Things and Electronic Memory) project RememberMe which was taking place as part of Future Everything in Manchester. Coincidentally they came to our faculty last week and gave a seminar about their research to date and some hints at its future direction.

There websites seem to have grown and come together well over the last month. This was the site I initially linked to which seems to be about the research in general while these two, Tales of the City and Tales of Things are two ongoing projects being developed. It was the second of these which was part of Future Everything and which was mainly used at the seminar.

Angelina Karpovich from Brunel University outlined the research while we got to interact with some of the ‘Things’ tagged as part of the Tales of Things project, notably the teddy bear in the image above.

Using an iPhone app (images above) we were able to scan the bears tag and read a text/tale about it. Angelina was keen to point out that the tagging technology involved was not new, the purpose was to explore it in ways that had really not been explored in great depth. What was a little disappointing was the inability for me to feed into the tale we were reading in the iPhone app but the project makes no such claim to do this and within the context it’s presented, as a method of story telling, works well.

It should be noted that the seminar was presented as part of a series at The George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling and I have been told a video of the seminar will be posted to the website soon.

Future Everything has just finished in Manchester, England. I didn’t manage to get there as I’m buried in marking at the moment but there were quite a few installations, performannces etc. worth visiting. RememberMe (image above, video below) by the TOTem (Tales Of Things and Electronic Memory) project caught my eye in particular. At the Oxfam shop, near Contact Theatre:

a research assistant will be based in the shop and recording brief stories about the donated objects into a microphone: where they acquired it, the memories attached and any associated stories. This audio clip will be linked to an RFID tag and QR code. During FutureEeverything all tagged items will then join the shop’s stock. Customers, including conference delegates, will be invited to use our bespoke RFID readers, or their own smart phone to browse artifacts, displayed amongst the many thousands of other objects. Once triggered, RememberMe labeled objects, will replay the story through speakers located in the shop, evoking ghosts of the past. Tagged objects will be in the public domain for purchase by other members of the community. Our iPhone and Android apps will allow them to access the story for years to come.

Here a write up about the work on Wired.

Last December Esquire published an augmented reality issue (image above). Can’t say I’m an avid reader or fan of Esquire and yes we are wandering quite a lot off the topic of networked art however the idea of this issue intrigued me enough to find a copy. It only appeared in America so I’ve been trawling eBay for the last month trying to find a copy while the application you use with it can simply be downloaded from the Esquire site.

The number of markers used in the magazine is disappointingly low, five for content and one for a Lexus advertisement, but this is hardly surprising, it is a magazine after all. The first marker (three images above) triggers an introduction by Robert Downey Jr. What’s interesting here is not just that the application is detecting the marker but when tilted along two different axis it’s also detecting its orientation and the same marker triggers different content.

Almost the same technique is used in the style section (two images above) of the magazine, the four orientations of the marker here trigger animations of the same model wearing different clothes for different seasons, an interactive catwalk. The design of this section is quite good, lots of animation and the video of yourself holding up the magazine becomes the backdrop to the whole scene.

The last interesting section (I’ve skipped one as it simply plays an audio file) is the Lexus advert (two images above) which takes a completely different approach / design to using the marker. Instead of seeing a scene pop up from the magazine you see the video of yourself modified through a number of filters and overlaid graphics (think Terminator vision!). This machine vision is supposed to be how the Lexus can ’see’ and detect cars in front in order to reduce speed / apply automatic brakes etc.

Overall there are a couple of interesting techniques in the magazine. Its last page has a list of non computer things which are already ‘augmented’ versions of something and compared to the content is almost a profound way of finishing with the statement, Augmented Reality, it’s newness is really just in its method of presentation.

Below is editor David Granger demoing the interactive magazine.

The Artvertiser (image above, video below) by Julian Oliver, Clara Boj, Diego Diaz and Damian Stewart is:

an urban, hand-held, augmented-reality project exploring on-site substitution of advertising content for the purposes of exhibiting art.

Using shape and motion detection the software can be taught to recognise individual advertisements. These adverts can then, viewed through the software, become a virtual ‘canvas’ which an artist can exhibit images or video. Visual documentation of the intervention can be immediately uploaded to on line galleries such as Flickr and YouTube.

While offering itself as a new platform for public art, The Artvertiser seeks to highlight the contradiction of Public Space in the context of what can and cannot be written on the surface of our cities. Neither graffiti or Fine Art, The Artvertiser exploits the inevitable redistribution of these surfaces in media such as digital film and photography, providing an alternative memory of the city. By leveraging the internet as a redistribution mechanism, The Artvertiser supposes that an urban site dense with proprietary imagery can be re-purposed as an exhibition space for art and archived as such in turn. Similarly, on-site exhibitions can be held whereby pedestrians are invited to use the looking device to view an exhibition on the buildings around them. Finally, non-live video can also be used. This enables artists to substitute advertisements in film and video with alternative content.

Originally seen on the Spectre mailing list.

N Building (images above and video below) by Teradadesign and Qosmo is a QR Code augmented building facade near Tachikawa station in Japan which is accessed through a custom iPhone application.

By reading the QR Code with your mobile device you will be taken to a site which includes up to date shop information. In this manner we envision a cityscape unhindered by ubiquitous signage and also an improvement to the quality and accuracy of the information itself…If a QR Code is static, what could we do with a dynamic device like the iPhone? Our proposed vision of the future is one where the facade of the building disappears, showing those inside who want to be seen. As you press on the characters their comments made on online appear in speech bubbles. You can also browse shop information, make reservations and download coupons. Rather than broadly tagging, we display information specific to the building in a manner in which the virtual (iPhone) serves to enhance the physical (N Building). Our goal is to provide an incentive to visit the space and a virtual connection to space without necessarily being present.

Originally seen on Alexander Reeders Vimeo profile.