Reflections

The artist Devorah Sperber recreates paintings by assembling spools of thread. Reflections is a permanent Installation at the Centro Medico Train Station, San Juan, Puerto Rico. The artist used 60,000 spools of thread and 23 convex mirrors for the installation.

"Reflections" is a site-specific work, constructed from 60,000 spools of thread, which coalesce into a photo-realistic image when seen reflected in convex mirrors mounted on an opposing wall. My intention was to utilize the element of surprise to create a brief interruption in the lives of people as they move through the Centro Medico Train Station (...) Because people will be in motion, the images seen in the mirrors continuously change. As people step onto the escalator and descend to the lower platform, the reflections in the mirrors gradually dissolve from seascape to the neutral gray ceiling and blue skies seen through clear glass skylights above.

Detail

I discovered the work of Deborah Sperber on V magazine.
Two days after I posted on the work of Deborah, I found out via cool hunting that the Pulse art fair in NYC last week showed a large number of pixelized works.
Andy Diaz Hope uses gel-caps for creating images of people in front of their medicine cabinets.


The occupation 2006, archival photographs, gel capsules, acrylic, 18 W x 15" H

William Betts recreate surveillance camera pictures using acrylic paint. This reminds me of Gerhard Richter's Akt auf einer Treppe. Emma – Nu dans un escalier. 1966 in which the boundaries between painting and photography are blurred and through which comes a new form of expression in the arts.



Carlos Estrada-Vega combines pixel-constructivism of digital media practices to paint and wood dowels within the canvas.


Dona Clara, 2005. Margaret Thatcher Projects

In the Middle of the End, Isidro Blasco uses 2D photos and later turns the them into a 3d experience using board mounted architectural structures.



The Middle of The End

Knitoscope Testimonies by Turbulence, are surprising animations created using "Knitoscope" software, a program that translates digital video into a knitted animation.
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erica

An excellent interview on Turbulence featuring Jo-Anne Green by Régine Debatty on we-make-money-not-art

Reconstruction shown at Artefact 2007 is a matric of LEDs that projects shadows and lights of passerby in a pixelized fashion. More can be read on the show and project on multimedialab


reconstruction

Monumental ceramic pixel art found on coolfinds.
Pixel art by Swedish artist Maria Ängquist Klyvare. The artist has worked with mosaics since the eighties. More on her web site.


A child's face on Etsarbron near Gullmarsplan in Stockholm.

Sculpting Behavior

Hayes Raffle not only just had two full academic papers accepted to the first class conference IDC 2007: Interaction design and Children but he is also a talented sculptor and designer. His Super Cilia Skin reflects his aesthetic sensibility and his ongoing passion for kinetic sculpture.

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Super Cilia Skin

After co-creating and designing the award-winning ZOOB® building system, Hayes joined the Tangible Media Group at the MIT Media Laboratory and created Topobo, a 3D constructive assembly system with kinetic memory and the ability to record and playback physical motion.
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a ZOOB® creature


a Topobo creature

If you happen to be in the bay area, don't miss Hayes' talk, open to the public, that he is giving at the Berkeley Institute of Design, UC Berkeley, March 6th, from 1 to 2pm.
Information about his talk.

During the talk, he will explain how with Topobo children can assemble sculptures that dance and walk. He will present Fuzzmail a program that allow children to write a message that unfolds in time. He will show how with Jabberstamp children can embed stories, sounds and voices in their original drawings.

Robotic furniture design

Woojuin


Woojuin magazine table

Designer Victor Vetterlein works on robotic furniture. His Woojuin (2007) is a light fixture inspired by pod architecture & robotics. In the Woojuin magazine table, the reference to robotic is clear, and proposes a critique on automated lives in a digital age.



More pictures on Moco Loco and Archinect

Issey Miyake by Etienne Mineur

Stunning interactive graphic piece for Issey Miyake by Etienne Mineur. Jean-Jacques Birgé talks about la derniere valse of this work.



Spring summer 2007 women collection.
Spring summer 2007 men collection.
Collections designed by Naoki Takizawa for Issey Miyake.

Charles Goldman

Sculptor Charles Goldman says : TIME + DISTANCE = EXPERIENCE.
So I look at his on work on his web site work and find ...

Spruce / Spree (2005) A grass-dressed shopping cart that was apparently chained up at various locations throughout a developing neighborhood in Brooklyn, NY ...



Finally, the chain was clipped and the shopping cart was confiscated

Elsewhere (2000) and in particular Infinity Walk, wood, 32' x 16' x 8'. It is an iconic infinity sign.
"In elevation, the walkway rises, falls and turns underneath itself, providing a never-ending pathway that the visitor may follow."



The work dealt with the repetative nature of time and experience.

Scrapwood (1998) made of 6,144 cubic feet of scrapwood and cardboard.
"About two years worth -- 18 boxes -- of wood scraps are assembled site-specifically, according to whim and using only gravity. "


Chicago

Charles Goldman's web site

With - an emotional communication device

With - an emotional communication device - was selected as part of the Next-Gen PC design Competition organized by Microsoft and International Council of Societies of Industrial Design in 2006-2007. The device is designed for family members who live separately and to communicate over the internet. It is designed with the objective to convey emotions with the assumption that current technology interfaces are made too complex. The device resemble everyday objects (eggs, egg carton) to be familiar thus easy to use. The shape of the pillow is made "huggable" to offer a comfortable interaction.

A lot is being done in product design regarding remote communication using devices. Not so much attention is given to digital interaction using these devices (from a product design perspective). Because these objects are made interactive, I wander how the form factors can really match the technology outcomes. How do product designers think the functionalities of the interactive parts of the proposed objects? I liked the following example because it kept its product-like justifications even though it did not really address the interactive components. Instead it presented how people will use the designed generic tokens in relation to three main internet functionalities: talk, mail, play.



Small egg shape tokens called Identcons play a key role in this proposed emotional communication.



Each of them represents a person's identity.

The objective of With is to respond to growing need for a new, human-oriented communication device that conveys emotional qualities and solidifies people’s relationships by sharing their emotions.

Thank you Idealist for the link!
And thank you Microsoft, IDSA and ICSID for the pictures of the Design Competition.

Kyoto City University of Arts

Serendipity books made by Asako Matsumoto is an attractive concept interface to enjoy books.


Found on Blankism blog, the blog also links to the annual exhibition 2006 web site for Kyoto City University of Arts, in which a selection of gradute school prizes are presented.

Letter by Domae Hitomi

The launch of the Distance Lab

The Distance Lab is now opening! The Distance Lab is a new digital media research institute based in the beautiful and culturally-rich north of Scotland.

The mission of Distance Lab is to invent new technologies and experiences that challenge the way we think about distance and help overcome its disadvantages in learning, health care, relationships, culture, and other areas.

Based on the research done at the Media Lab Europe in Dublin, and more specifically in a research group named Human Connectedness, Distance Lab will expand on many of the themes from this group as it develops a similar demo-based culture full of talented engineers, designers, and artists from all over the world.

Distance Lab is now recruiting RAs and interns and if you are interested to apply for a position there, visit the Distance Lab web site

The ones already on board: Dr. Stefan Agamanolis, Matt Karau, Andrea Taylor and Joelle Bitton.


Raw: Joelle Bitton's master piece created with Matt Karau and Stefan Agamanolis at Media Lab Europe
Raw is an audio/photographic tool for conveying minimally-mediated impressions of everyday life. More about Raw

Interaction Design and Children

Jabberstamp? It is for adults to understand that a work of art is not a hat, but a boa digesting an elephant! - Yasmine Abbas



I teamed with Hayes Raffle to work on his Jabberstamp invention.

This is the first time I work on a project on which I am not the inventor. This collaboration is refreshing through the distance allowed by not being the actual initiator. It brings critical insights on the interaction design. Hayes asked me to join him, because of my background in toy design for children, especially the design of toys for emergent literacy. Out of the technology available, I tried to understand what could children do with the simple mechanism of associating sounds to drawings. Hayes and I end up testing the system, improving elements of the design and discussing its contribution. A pilot evaluation with children confirmed our hypothesis about the type of narrative children explore with such technological system.

We submitted a video for Siggraph'07, educator program and Jabberstamp was elected for being demoed and exhibited during the conference, the 5-9 of August 2007, San Diego, California.

A full paper Hayes and I wrote together on Jabberstamp got accepted to the Interaction Design and Children conference. The focus of the conference is on children’s role in the design and evaluation of interactive technologies. So we hope to see you in June 6-8, 2007, Aalborg in Denmark!

Abstract We introduce Jabberstamp, the first tool that allows children to synthesize their drawings and voices. To use Jabberstamp, children create drawings, collages or paintings on normal paper. They press a special rubber stamp onto the page to record sounds into their drawings. When children touch the marks of the stamp with a small trumpet, they can hear the sounds playback, retelling the stories they have created. We describe our design process and analyze the mechanism between the act of drawing and the one of telling, defining interdependencies between the two activities. In a series of studies, children ages 4-8 use Jabberstamp to convey meaning in their drawings. The system allows collaboration among peers at different developmental levels. Jabberstamp compositions reveal children’s narrative styles and their planning strategies. In guided activities, children develop stories by situating sound recording in their drawing, which suggests future opportunities for hybrid voice–visual tools to support children’s emergent literacy.

Jabberstamp is a MIT Media Lab project developed in the Tangible Media Group with Dr Hiroshi Ishii.

News (update)
July 23 07 Digital inspiration by Amit Agarwal.
July 23 07 Article in Discovery Channel by Tracy Staedter.
June 29 07 Article in Digital experience by Jonas Petersen.

Previous post on Jabberstamp.


IDC logo

Marisa Jahn

Artist Marisa Jahn gave a talk at the MIT Media Lab, in the Tangible Media Group.

Her work explores ways to engage people in gaining knowledge, from literacy, to environmental literacy. She designed tools and methods to invite people in a comparative analysis of information and self-reflective process. She collaborates frequently with Steve Shada and Natalie Jeremijenko.

Interested in how human interact and communicate with each others, she designed wearable musical instruments.
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For her master thesis in the visual studies department at MIT, she designed a game called Set. Elements of the set can be regrouped, labeled and organized and shared within the players.
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Project most easily understood through direct engagement, boxSET is a game played as an intervention into any existing collection of objects (archives, record albums, a heap of junk—anything). Involving multiple players, some of whom may not have any prior relationship with the objects to be sorted, the game asks players to develop categories that describes a grouping of objects. However, the creation of order occurs simultaneous with disorder: a player may choose to remove an object from another player's collection in order to place it in his/her grouping. This rapid taxonomic metabolism encourages players to narrate out loud (or 'show-and-tell') their categories with the anticipation that it may soon disappear. Further, through taxonomically engaging with different kinds of objects, players become aware of what kinds of objects (data) are better for certain kinds of analyses (formal, textual, psychoanalytic, etc.). As the game evolves, players become aware of the difference in interpretation, the subjectivity of order, and the contingent production of knowledge.

She created throw-n-Sow a new way for people to think about and engage with their environment. Frisbees deposite seeds while in the air...

Throw-n-Sow is a flying disc toy similar to a Frisbee that uses the centripetal force generated in the act of throwing to distribute seeds into the environment. Manufactured as a toy made from environmentally-friendly, biodegradable plastics, Throw-n-Sow consists of a main body and a separate container that slides and locks under the disc. This container contains adjustable holes of different diameter to accommodate variant seed sizes. In other words, Throw-n-Sow is a literally empty container into which individuals and communities emplace selected seeds.
Throw-n-Sow is interactive eco-art project that engages diverse communities in each step of the project (manufacturing, seed-selection, site-selection, plant stewardship, art education), Throw-n-Sow raises questions about the expanded field of drawing, indigenous ecologies vs. selective human cultivation, landscape evolution and succession, ethnobotany, agronomy, etc. Throw-n-Sow ultimately aims to valorize distributive intelligence and interdisciplinary learning.
Throw-n-Sow is the kind of art that literally passes between two or more individuals. Leaving behind a trail of seeds as it sails through the air, Throw-n-Sow essentially imprints moments of play into the landscape. Individuals carrying the Throw-n-Sow disc from one place to another develop an affective relationship to the toy and to the sites in which it is deployed.