Can Helvetica drop? Someone had to imagine it. Dropclock does it via a motion clock screensaver. Every minute of real time is numerically expressed with heavy helvetica dropping into water in slow motion. Thank you fat-man-collective!
Video
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Blog Jouons 
Saturday, April 05, 2008
Helvetica has gone wild
Friday, April 04, 2008
Personal Genome Card
The future of human identification
Daniel Gross and Joris Maltha visualization designers at Catalog Tree conceived a personal genome card, a tribute to Gattaca where a genetically inferior man assumes the identity of a superior one!
Design for a personal DNA card, commissioned by SEED magazine, New York. A fingerprint is generated from the 13 core loci as used by the FBI for human identification. In collaboration with Lutz Issler (line script).
Anticipating a future in which we can learn to read our genome like a book, Seed commissioned Catalogtree to design a Personal Genome Card: a place where an individual's genetic information could be easily referenced. To use Catalogtree's card, the bearer would speak into a small microphone and ask a yes-or-no question. The card would analyze the remotely stored genome to come up with an answer. It would then change color: Red signifies a pure "yes," yellow means "no," and colors in between show varying levels of uncertainty. As we get better at interpreting the human genome, Catalogtree notes, more questions will be answered with a higher degree of confidence.
The front of the card bears a unique visual pattern derived from the 13 chromosomal loci, or chromosomal positions, used in genetic profiling. The profiling process exploits short tandem repeats — variations in the number of times a short sequence of base pairs is repeated in a person's DNA. Two unrelated humans usually have a different number of repeats at a given locus. This structure is translated to a series of circles; different diameters are used for different bases. The circles are dropped into a container, and a line is drawn through their centers, creating an individualized drawing on every card.
Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure
Thursday, April 03, 2008
Body Mnemonics
Media Lab just had an Open House and my adviser offered me to present in the auditorium my latest research! I was so thrilled. I also demoed Picture This! during the Open House.
I had fascinating discussions with sponsors, very engaging, challenging and all of it relevant to our common explorations for new interactions design with current technologies. Researching on gesture interfaces, and new meaning for gesture interaction, i.e gestures that have a meaning to retrieve or interact with data, I regularly refer to Body Mnemonics project by Jussi Angesleva, who was researcher with me at the mythical Media Lab Europe in Ireland.
I realized I never blogged about this work; it is a really cool project, and pioneer in its vision.
Body mnemonics is a meta tool for portable devices that enhances their usability, shifts the interaction to the periphery of our concentration and makes them more responsive to our cultural background on the basis of three principles: proprioceptic sense, body image, and the "method of loci" mnemonic device.
Joelle Bitton (also MLE ex-fellow) showing her data storage locations!
Using inertial sensing a portable device's movements in 3D space can be tracked, analysed and referenced to the posture of the user. This enables a user to store and access information on his or her own body space. For example, online banking information could be accessed by moving the device to your back pocket. Similarly, your music archive could be located at your ear.
More on the web site !
Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure.............................................................................................
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Wednesday, April 02, 2008
Whisper of eight turned on pistol grip megaphones.
Whisper by Miguel Monroy
The pistol grip megaphones are usually qualified by their "power". Loud and noisy, they are a sign of emergency. Here, Miguel Monroy renders them soft, almost whispering. They are located carefully, adjacent to one another so that the feedback of the same pistols homogenize the overall sound.
Listen to the piece ->here <-. Beautiful piece.
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Tuesday, April 01, 2008
Absolut
Absolut Quartet ad, shot by Laurent Seroussi and designed by TBWA.
Jeff did it again. We followed his adventures right after he won the competition. Now he completed the proposal and currently exhibits his spectacular robotic work. Music and vodka works in pair and this time beautiful mechanics come into play. Jeff Liebermann and Dan Paluska worked together on Absolut Quartet.
Closeup of some of the 100 custom electronics boards fabricated, one for every note.
Absolut Quartet, a commission for the Absolut Visionaries project, is a music making machine like no other. The audience becomes part of the performance, while watching something that appears impossible. You can log in to ABSOLUTMACHINES.COM for a chance to interact with the machine. You will enter a 4-8 second theme, and the machine will generate, in real-time, a unique musical piece based on the input melody you have provided.
The marimba shooting mechanisms and closeup of the wine players. Photo by Sesse Lind.
You will see this melody played by three instruments. The main instrument is a ballistic marimba, which launches rubber balls roughly 2m into the air, precisely aimed to bounce off of 42 chromatic wooden keys. The second instrument is an array of 35 custom-tuned wine glasses, played by robotic fingers. Finally, an array of 9 ethnic percussion instruments rounds out the ensemble.
Video
Untitled Sound Objects (Installations 2005-2008) by Pe Lang + Zimoun from Pe Lang + Zimoun on Vimeo.
Don't forget to check the sound machines by Pe Lang and Zimoun, and by Festo.
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Blog Jouons
April fool, the USB pregnancy Test
Jonah sent me this April fool! So happy first of April to you all!!! I'd love hanging tiny fishes in your back, but because we are on a blog here, I will just propose this very nice High Tech Pregnancy Test! What can the digital do with my no-tech data? Like a little fish in the water, this pregnancy test can be plug in to your ipod. Wait, no. Your iChat! so you can update your friends instantly about your status. Be careful to select the right end of the test, other than that it is pretty straightforward.
The power from your USB port starts the electrospray ionization process, creating a spectrograph of the various masses for your analysis (...) The mass spectrometry software on the device comes with several sequenced hormones, including hCG (human Chorionic Gonadotropin), hCG-H (hyperglycosylated hCG - for detection before your first missed period), and LH (luteinizing hormone - for detection of your most fertile days). We like the fact that it does all three (...) While most home tests can detect a level of 15-50 mIU/mL of hCG, the enhanced methodology of the USB Pregnancy Test Kit can detect 5-50 mIU/mL, and will show you the exact concentration via its friendly onscreen interface. In addition, the LCD display on the device itself will light up and show you the symbol of a baby, no baby, or multiples and your Estimated Delivery Date based on the concentration of hCG, hCG-H, and LH in your urine - ThinkGeek
Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure.............................................................................................
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Monday, March 31, 2008
Low tech color calendar
Designed by Oscar Diaz and discovered by the awesome Cuarto Derecha, numbers and patterns in a calendar gradually get colored as time goes by. Is the ink really pumped by the paper or is it a design concept? I don't know. However it is very nice, the ink seems to physically travel through the paper spongy material ...
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Sunday, March 30, 2008
Pepper ghost mannequins
Created for the Musée de la mode et du textile, Paris 1998, Radi Designers created a beautiful exhibition design that integrates 98's technologies such as projections of portraits. The exhibition consisted in a retrospective on graduates work from FIAMH (Festival International des Arts et de la Mode, Hyères) where moving heads animate mannequins and produce ghost like pictures.
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Dynamic composition
By Saiman Chow
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Friday, March 28, 2008
SMS pictures on a frame
For last Christmas my sister offered my grand ma a photo frame on which she can display digital pictures via usb upload/connection. It is a pretty cool idea, but my grand ma needs to constantly plug a usb key if she wants to update her pictures. Also she prefers the beauty of printed pictures rather than pictures on a "TV like frame".
It is interesting to see how printed pictures are important. They have a specific meaning. It is not about what the pictures represent, it is about holding the pictures in the hand, turn them and draw notes in the back, sliding them in a book, bringing it from places to places. During the war, my grand father used to send my grand ma pictures with his beautiful poems written in the back. They served a specific function with a letter.
Now that these digital frames invades the mass market, I wander what is left from the entire spectrum of photo-human relationship. I consider them being something that have little to do with the traditional picture. They conveniently randomly select pictures and display them.
The Vivien photoradio: They send picture emails. You get picture postcards.
One idea that I recently found, from interaction designer John Kestner who gave a talk today at Media Lab, is the photo digital frame that receives pictures from SMS. The designer repackaged the printer into a photo frame and its display is the out tray of the printer.
Vivien translates between generations. Vivien prints pictures with messages on the back from family and friends, placing them right into a photo frame. It is warmer and easier to maintain than current printers and requires no computer, receiving emails with pictures, subscribed photostreams and SMS messages through Wi-Fi.
On can print messages in the back of the picture."A Standalone device that receives picture emails, photocasts, and SMS messages from family and friends, and prints picture postcards into a photo frame." It is a good idea because it invites for a new relationship to the picture frame, here it creates a message with a surprise! Of course there should be some kind of filtering mechanism for spam SMS pictures.
Vivien photoradio also comes with Clark that provides a quick Internet connection to users without one. Nearby Vivien photoradios will begin receiving content!
Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure.............................................................................................
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