Gestural interaction in museums

“A proposal for an upcoming Canadian Museum for Human Rights suggests a wide range of advanced interactive technologies, including “a gesture-responsive wall full of factual information that will work in a fashion SIMILAR TO NINTENDO WII technology,” according to a report in the Edmonton Journal. “With a simple swipe of the hand in the air, visitors will be able to turn virtual pages.” You won’t even have to remember what you saw: “Visitors will be given a ‘human rights key’ that will provide a digital recollection of their experiences that they can later take home.” The museum is scheduled to open in four years in Winnipeg.” Via roomware

Stock puppets

8 foot tall fiberglass mannequins act as puppets, each puppet movement is connected to a face animation of the appropriate finance minister on the VGA monitor head. Via Pasta and vinegar.

The G-7 Stock Puppets are an Internet-driven kinetic installation that tracks the movements of global stock markets with seven larger-than-life marionette puppets. Using a real-time data stream, a network of PC laptops, and a complex electro-mechanical control system, the installation reanimates the abstract machinations of global financial markets as an absurdist carnival puppet show.

Web site

Fabric suppliers

TreeFall design listed and commented on online fabric stores. A useful list for any craft designer! Via craft magazine

Part suppliers

Adam Kumpf from the Tangible Media Group at MIT created this very comprehensive list of part suppliers for getting electronic components! A useful guide for any tech-researcher!

You need a brand?

A nice set of slides about branding a logo, a product or a company created by Neutronllc.



More slides on slideshare.net



The company also published a book The Brand Gap: How to Bridge the Distance Between Business Strategy and Design

A funny graphic with cross cultural meaning the nail that sticks up is one brave nail

A breathing robot

Few weeks ago, I carried in my arms Omo, Kelly Dobson's new companion robot. A very therapeutic robot, it expands and matches your breathing. Made of rubber, shaped like an egg to be carried in your arms, it feels soft and alive.

Omo is an alternative relational object. While similar to "carebots" and companion robots, Omo draws on ongoing Machine Therapy work revealing the psychological, social, and political dynamics between people and machines. As a result, Omo's role is empathic and sometimes unexpected rather than normative. Omo breathes and senses the breathing of anyone interacting closely with it, matching—or seeking to lead—patterns of breathing. Omo does not always privilege soothing.

Materializing 3D

The company Dassault Systèmes envisions ways to materialize 3D, a research theme that has also been explored and implemented for quite a long time in the Tangible Media group. Dassault Systèmes made an inspiring TV commercial, probably in the same vein than SF.
One can always find inspiration in Philip K. Dick's books ... Now the hard part is to materialize these concepts into a working prototype. How can we physically manipulate objects that can morphed themselves in the desired physical form?

Video of the TV commercial, a bit too Adolf Loos' form follows function type of aesthetic, but definitly explains their concept.

Fashion digital

by Anthony Vaccarello

Transmitting power and data using the human body makes us seamless with the digital environment. It feels we are not invaded with digital data anymore, neither do we invade digital data, we are just seamlessly part of it, with it.

This particular piece of Anthony Vaccarello discovered on Style Bubble is for me a subtle left over of our cyborg mania, organic yet wired looking.

Invasion of new AIM buddies

I recently found 4 new AIM buddies: Prof Gilzot, sharthisdotcom, Spleak and WSJ. I started looking online for some info about these new buddies and I discovered that Prof Gilzot is an automatic tutor to help school students prepare for their S.A.T with practice questions. Type "Menu" or "More" will get you started!
sharthisdotcom is an aim version of share this
Spleak is a 21-year old virtual girl who can chat with you.
And your WSJ aim buddy is the Wall Street Journal!

Info online about these new AIM buddies and more info here.

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.