Transgenesis

Transgenesis

In 2000 I had the chance to meet Pavel Smetana at Avignon Numérique, in France, and interact with his Room of Desires that he created in 1995. In this project I was connected to brainwave and heart-rate sensors in an empty room, with video projections of pretty relaxing pictures and music. As soon as I would become excited with an image, the system would generate new images and sounds, based on my biofeedback. The audience could witness these changes and understand what imagery would trigger a certain kind of emotions. After a while I would be able to control the system, in a way "controlling my emotions" and also what the audience would see as a result.

Recently Pavel Smetana in collaboration with Ivor Diosi and Ivan Acher revisited this past work and created transgenesis, a set of virtual environments the audio and the visual parts of which are changing in real-time in dependence on data received form sensors capturing brain and heart activity of viewers. Each viewer enters those and only those virtual landscapes which his or her physical and mental states lead to. Landscapes vary in audiovisual styles ranging from horror-like hyper-realistic atmosphere up to geometric or organic abstractions.

Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure
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Accessories for lonely men

My friends Burak, Yasmine, and Jonah mentioned an exhibition at the Moma that I checked online. I now plan a trip to New York to attend it. Among the many stimulating pieces, I selected this very funny set of electronic objects in the vein of Design Noir, which I believe could sadly become a commercial hit! Accessories for lonely men are eight electronic devices designed to alleviate loneliness by stimulating the -sometimes annoying- traces that one's companion would normally leave behind.





The collection includes a Sheet Thief, which "winds the bedclothes up on the other side of the bed while you're sleeping". Other joys of sharing a bed are re-created with Cold feet and a Heavy Breather that breathes hot air down the user's neck. In the morning the Hair Alarm Clock swings hair across the user's face to wake him, while the steel finger of the Chest-Hair Curler gently swirls his chest hair in concentric circles.



Accessories for lonely men by Noam Toran, photos Frank Thurston

Jonah's piece the WIFI-HOG is included in the show. The Wifi Hog is a tactical tool to liberate public WiFi Nodes!

"Wi-Fi Hog is personal system for a laptop or portable computer that enables people to gain complete control over a public access wireless network. The idea is presented as an alternative to the utopian vision of wireless networks being open, shared, and utilitarian for everyone. This project is a cautionary one, and comes as a reaction to the battle over free wireless spectrum where corporate pay-per-use and free community networks are fighting for signal dominance in public spaces. Wifi-Hog exists as a tactical media tool for controlling and subverting this claim of ownership and regulation over free spectrum, by allowing a means of control to come from a third-party."


Design and the Elastic Mind exhibition opens February 24th, 2008 at New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).

Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure
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Jealous computer: beware

A little flash back onto Electric Dreams (1984), in which a artificially intelligent PC falls in love with a cellist and discovers jealousy. A regular topic in science fiction, it is funny to see it in advertisement.

A viral campaign based on the premise that computers and other digital kinds of things can exhibit emotions, like jealousy. They certainly exhibit stubborness, insolence, daring-do, morose sorts of apathy moods, memory loss, short-term memory loss, deep depressions leading to suicide, and the occasional carbuncle and rash. Quite often. By Nokia to promote the NSeries and the N95. Via teckwondo.

Robot competition

Unique in its genre ... and just a step away from a tangible street fighter!

Motion and identity

A few little dots moving make a figure look male or female, heavy or light, relaxed or nervous, happy or sad. A fun tool to play with by Bio Motion Lab.

Another famous tool that I love, sodaconstructor, a Java applet that animates two dimensional models made out of masses and springs. In this one, emotion and anthropomorphism take place at the spring level.

A while back, Le ciel est bleu designed very successful moving creatures depending on gravity points.


In the robotic sphere, Guy Hoffman's lamp is designed as a collaborative desk assistant and this by following your intentions around your desk. Even if the lamp is non-anthropomorphic per se, its motion certainly gives it an anthropomorphic credibility that serves the function of a desk assistant. Video of its first steps!

Undercover

I recently spent time with friends Jean-baptiste Labrune and Dana Gordon these past two days, and we had awesome research discussions about the future of HCI! Dana Gordon explained me her fascinating projects and I loved her Undercover blanket.
The Undercover contains 24 wireless speakers and provides a special physical sound experience. The Undercover allows you to enjoy the vibrations of the speakers on your body and provides a private mobile soundscape.

The blanket has an embedded array of small speakers that can receive a wireless audio signal via a Bluetooth connection. This audio signal can be beamed from any kind of audio device, such as mp3 player, television, computer, radio, etc. The volume controllers were designed in a way, which suits the blanket’s natural cuddling behaviour. The upper corners (A.K.A 'the blanket’s ears') control the volume - (pull the right one for higher volume and the left one for lower).

Bracelet for moods

An interesting, beautiful but difficult concept design idea, Sense by Patty Yuan, a wrist-based bluetooth device that senses your emotion by reading your heart rate, skin temperature.

Mapping emotion to biometric data is a difficult research question, especially when it supposedly presents itself as a nonverbal communication device. What is communicated here? What is the language? What is the feedback loop? Many devices from this category deal with the same complexity: how to map these data to a visual or haptic language.

Framework: the four pleasures?

Designing Pleasurable Products by Patrick Jordan presents four pleasures to understand human experience (with products and services). In an interview for design and emotion he explains: "The Four Pleasures is a framework developed in the field of anthropology. In his book, The Pursuit of Pleasure, Lionel Tiger identifies four different ways in which humans can feel pleasure. These are: physiologically [the body and the senses], psychologically emotions and thoughts], sociologically [relationships], and ideologically [values]. I thought that if we applied the framework to understanding people and what they wanted from products, it could provide some useful insights and help guide design, marketing and branding decisions as well as business strategy."
His book aims to help designers structure their approach in understanding their users.

Shadow monsters

I saw the shadow monsters at the RCA in 2005 and loved them. The creator Philip Worthington has a lot of other neat projects on site. I just refer to this specific work as a reference in motion and interaction design.

What's next with social networks?

I recently thought of creating a social network for dead people. Everyone could provide their digital representations, biometry information, simulation of personal touch that would only be revealed when dead. However, Mission Eternity is a similar concept that Regine Debatty noticed at ISEA.

The M∞ ARCANUM CAPSULES contain digital fragments of the life, knowledge and soul of the users and enable them to design an active presence post mortem: as infinite data particles they forever circulate the global info sphere – hosted in the shared memory of thousands of networked computers and mobile devices of M∞ ANGELS, people who contribute a part of their digital storage capacity to the mission.

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Arcanum Capsules contain digital fragments of the life, knowledge and soul of the users and enable them to design an active presence post mortem.

A living sculpture

Aimée Mullins

Today at the fantastic H2.0 event hosted by John Hockenberry and organized by the MIT Media Laboratory, key speakers presented new research initiatives for augmenting mental and physical capability and this to vastly improve the quality of human life.


Pictures from Aimee Mullins's talk

I discovered the inspiring work of Aimée Mullins, that not only is functional but also beautiful. She raises questions on identity and the body, on what it means to loose her lower self. She worked with various artists, designers and modeled for Alexander Mc Queen.


Aimée Mullins, Dazed & Confused, September 1998 by photographer Nick Knight

In Cremaster 3, actress Aimée Mullins wears blades on the soles of her shoes or a white dress and transparent crystal legs.


Cremaster 3

At the end of the H2.0 event Aimée Mullins declared: "people say i have no legs, but I have ten pairs of them and my interaction with them allow me to be a living sculpture"


Aimée' Sculptural legs, photographer: Webb Chappell


Model: Aimée Mullins, photographer: Chris Winget

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Wearable robotic

Today at the h2.0 event -new minds, new bodies, new identities- Hugh Herr, director of the bio mechatronics group, presented his latest research. I am impressed by his work and fascinated by his own prostheses. He presented the number of persons who could benefit from wearable robotic and wearable attached to the body. From veterans who have parts of their body amputated, to anyone who could be robotically augmented. For instance, with wearable robotic, anyone could wear 100kg in a bag pack and not feel the load because it would be transmitted to the robot.

In Hugh Herr’s research, living muscle tissues are stimulated electrically to get the desired motion response. He presented the motion by mechanics in prostheses developed by the mechatronics group at the MIT media laboratory. The Rheo knee prosthesis allows to reduce the energy consumed in walking, allows to walk downstairs, upstairs, faster and slower. The person who wears the prostheses is controlling the lift. This research is based on nature, on how nature functions and steals from nature for its design.

Hugh Herr’s goal for the next years is to build the first hybrid body or limb by attaching robotic limb to the skeleton, load being transferred to the tissue. One of the main challenges is for the body to create its own seal. The group will develop the next generation of legs, and neurocontrol strategies for a direct control on these prostheses. Hugh Herr mentioned that his group developed the most powerful ankle in the world.

For the Human 2.0 event, John Maeda composed of 24 scribbled personas. I still have not chosen the one I am ...

Social affective touch for robots

My past research on psychohaptics and taptap at the Tangible Media Group, MIT Media Laboratory, involved studying the perception of touch, and how people relate affectively to haptic sensations. Today, Dr Cynthia Breazeal who leads the Robotic Life research group at the MIT Media Laboratory addressed the question of social affective touch. Her main theme is to build cooperative machines that work and learn in partnership with people.
Today at the h2.0 event -new minds, new bodies, new identities- she presented her latest research including the robotic companion. The robotic life group explores social affective touch and develops machine learning algorithms to categorize various sense of touch, from pleasant to annoying ones. Exploring the sense of touch and interpretation of touch by robots is a new area of research.
The robot is designed in the form of a bear, the bear being a universal symbol of comfort. The robot itself is covered of silicone skin to not feel like a machine when hugged. In their first experiments, the robot had local intelligence, local sensing and response, coordination. An operator could communicate with the bear to a 3d bear model on a screen.

Applications behind this work could be for family members to be able to play from everywhere, to bridge the usual generation gap between grandparents and grandchildren, to allow people to remain in contact while separated. This is especially important when a child is spending a day at the hospital alone and what it means for the parents to be able to stay with the child remotely.
Another high vision for this work is to allow collaborative partnership using a remote tutor. Cynthia mentioned that eventually the bear could be highly trained and could offer high quality education to the ones who usually are not exposed to such education.

Cool online social stuff

Bumplist

During Chi, I had a few gatherings with my old school friends from Media Lab Europe. This reminded me how fun it was to be beta tester for each other's project. Back in Dublin, I tried out Jonah and Mike's Bumplist.

BumpList only allows for a minimum amount of subscribers so that when a new person subscribes, the first person to subscribe is "bumped", or unsubscribed from the list.

Via Jonah again, I tested the super fun myfrienenemies social community. Basically, on this site, anyone can post anonymously about their enemies and connect to others through their enemies.

The Viscous Display

The Viscous Display created by Lily Shirvanee and Glorianna Davenport is a transient adaptive interface for collective play in public space.

Grounded on Henri Lefevre analysis of production of space as a social phenomenon, the viscous display proposes a space with transient meanings by exhanging social information through adaptive public interfaces.

Abstract: The Viscous Display explores the exchange of social information through transient public interfaces. Shaped by principles of ‘underground public art’, the Viscous Display is conceived as a novel mobile communication medium, where messages can be shared in public spaces. Inspired by biological learning systems; the Viscous Display learns sensorial information that form along traces of a participant’s touch and maps this information onto a flexible display.
Because it is made up of inexpensive materials, the Viscous Display is also a disposable artifact that may be collected in public spaces. It combines multi-modal sensing, learning algorithms, and a pliable silicone display.

Paper

Viscous display's web site

Couture for dogs

Kazuko Ryokai tailors clothes for tiny dogs. Her love for dogs and passion for pattern making made her create a line of clothing in Japan.

More on her web site - Keep in Touch Tokyo

Touch Sensitive Apparel at Chi 2007

Poster presented at Chi 2007

Our Touch Sensitive apparel is inspired by the vision to leverage stress, comfort, and massage people while they are on the move. When always on the move, as an interview based study has shown, people use technological devices to “tune-out” or express their fear of technology by finding “a place where [their] soul is” . What if objects that people carry with them and even carry on them could offer this sensory comfort that they seem to seek?

More on our Touch Sensitive Apparel.

Inspiration In hypermobile societies, people carry objects, information and goods. They develop habits. The notion of habitus coined by Bourdieu relates to everything that someone does, and in fact defines the individual. The search for comfort, to feel at home (to inhabit space through hab-its, habitus) when on the move defines the populations of our hyper-societies.

Design
Touch·Sensitive is a work-in-progress to develop a series of haptic modules that allow computational massage therapy to be diffused, customized and controlled by people on the move. It provides individuals with a sensory cocoon. Our current prototypes succeeded in defining a flexible structure, a mechanism of diffusion, and a feedback system for alerting and comforting the user through haptic means.
In addition, we propose to integrate machine-learning algorithms to understand the massage needs of the users through the analysis over time of the correlation between the motions of the user, the location of the pressure points, the intensity and qualities of the stimulus. We plan to develop these next steps along with specialists in massage therapy.

Download Chi 2007 WIP paper

Touch Sensitive Apparel was presented at Chi 2007. Enthusiasm, advices, references, and new ideas inspired by the visitors will lead a new prototype this summer.

Emotive type

Typography requires distinct design metrics with which to evaluate and understand its aesthetic and semantic effect. As such, the attributes of each letterform can be discretely mapped to various meanings that they represent.


Emotive type

I chatted more with Daniela K. Rosner at Chi'07 today. She showed me some of her work, and I particularly loved her work on emotive type using text transformation to convey emotions. She also did user test the concept.

In experiments one and two, users viewed a series of 30 kinetic text animations chosen at random from four emotion-animation mappings; they were asked to report whether they felt the emotion evoked by the animation was similar to or different from the name of the emotion represented. In the third experiment, users viewed a series of 32 varying animations of the word “information.” They were asked to select the emotion from the list of 15 that they felt conveyed same emotions as the animation. (...) Based on the results of both the second and third experiments, positive animations were more than twice as likely to be reported by users as highly correlated. Although users reported correlations of varying consistency among animation-emotion pairs, animations that involved less graphic complexity also ranked higher than those that did not. Interestingly, the emotion-animation pairs that ranked highest in their user’s reported correlation value also made more explicit use of metaphor than those that did not.

Can a lamp blush?

Blush

Can a lamp blush because of your phone conversations? Apparently yes and this by being responsive to your emotions. Pitch detection during phone conversations triggers a red halo around the lamp shade.

I love objects with moods, with apparent intelligence and most especially responding emotionally. They seem to always exemplify our anthropomorphosis relationship to products. Now that objects can pretend being responsive with a technology seamlessly integrated, this relationship between people and tech-products can completely be taken advantage of.

Blush is an example I think of this nature, made by Nadine Jarvis + Jayne Potter.

The light blushes in response to the emotional pitch of a mobile phone conversation. It is activated by the EMF emitted from a mobile phone. It continues blushing for 5 minutes after the call has ended, prolonging the memory of the otherwise transient conversation.

Anano

Just a post for the beauty of the eyes.
I followed the work of Anano since 2001. She designed my favorite bear characters. You can discover more pictures of her creations on her web site.












Later on she created a variety of objects and photographs, elegant, delicate, small and antique.










Two of her books on amazon

Petit a petit


Recevoir chez Anano