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.

I stumbled across an interesting post a few days ago on HC Gilje’s weblog Conversations with Spaces concerning relief projections. The focus in the post was on the work Augmented Sculpture v1.0 by Pablo Valbuena, which is incredibly beautiful, however the research by Johnny Chung Lee into automatic projector calibration (images above, video below) stood out as being a research system of great benefit to augmented reality and of course the Internet of Things.

These projections could be used in a number of ways, from simple non-standard shape projections, display enhanced objects, motion-tracked displays within augmented environments (e.g. in Minority report), augmenting physical objects with graphical interfaces and displays etc.

Sourced from HC Gilje’s weblog Conversations with Spaces.

More work from the Royal Collage of Art MA show The Great Exhibition 2007.

Flat Futures by Miguel Mora, again an MA Design Interactions student, is a research project with a series of prototyped outcomes focused on the uses of digital papers, the combination of print and digital technologies:

The Flat Futures project deals with this new smart/digital paper. Through printed electronics we can create processors, displays, batteries on flat and flexible surfaces like paper. Objects will wear technology instead of carrying them inside. It will become their skin.

How will this affect our lives? How will our relationship with these enhanced objects change? If any surface can display anything, where will its value be? In the physical object? Or in the information itself?

What if objects are made of paper? How are we going to interact with them? For instance, the disposable Paper Alarm Clock needs to be scrunched up in order to turn it off. It brings new ways to experience electronic products.

The image above shows potential uses of this digital paper, the Paper Alarm Clock (top, left to right) which a user scrunches up to turn off, the GPS Document which stores its own location and the Memory Envelope which remembers where its been. The last two of these seem very spime like.

Stringwalker created by Hiroo Iwata and probably most known for his work Floating Eye was premiered for the first time outside of Japan at SIGGRAPH this year.

The controller consists of a pad and a pair of shoes attached to a circular system of eight motor-pulley mechanisms with sensors mounted on a turntable:

There’s not a whole lot online about it, but it appears that when you move a foot around - for instance in a step motion - the distance and trajectory of that movement is calculated based upon the direction and length of string that has passed over the pullies. This is then used to scroll the world accordingly. It also appears that by using motors attached to these pullies the system, they might even be able to simulate the exertion experienced when walking up a hill, for instance.

While not completely related to research on networks I find the idea of networks being to date largely reliable on cabling infrastructures (this is of course changing) and the extension of this cabling through a physical haptic interface which uses strings attached to the user, a sort of reverse puppet scenario, quite appealing.

Related interfaces are the slightly over the top Virtusphere and the more practical but possibly not as similar to walking Powered Shoes (from the same research lab).

Originally seen at Seleckparks.

In case you’ve not heard M.I.T. (The Massachusetts Institute of Technology) have made a break through (or not if you read some responses to the news) in the possibility to transmit electrical power wirelessly, what they have called WiTricity (I believe it’s pronounced Whytricity). Obviously this has nothing to do with artistic research employing networks per se but still is fascinating stuff that may have a huge impact on how such work is created and exhibited.

B.B.C. News has a good write up on this explaining how it works and could be employed (see diagram below). Here’s the official press release from M.I.T.