prosthetic knowledge

Evolució by Onionlab / Mapping Festival 2013 

From the mailbox, a projection-mapping project:

Hello!
I am contacting you to present Onionlab’s most recent piece, Evolució

You will also find some high-resolution pictures here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/67507166@N07/sets/72157633486998073

And here is a brief description of the project:

Evolució

Onionlab presents Evolució, a piece that revolves around the graphic and sound abstraction of the concept it is named after: evolution. It is construed as transformation, construction and alteration of reality through time; evolution as a discontinuous creation process as well.

Created with 3D projection mapping techniques, this time, Evolució was projected onto the façade of the Musées d’art et d’histoire de Genève, though the piece takes the evolution concept even further: It was conceived as an open transformation process so that it can also be adapted to different façades and projection surfaces, and so that Evolució can continue its transformation process.

Laser Cut Record

Instructables project from Amanda Ghassaei that can allow you to create playable records with a laser cutter (sure the sound isn’t that great, but still …) - video embedded below:

A few months back, I wrote about how I used a 3D printer to transform any mp3 into a physical record.  Though all the documentation for that project is available here, and the 3D models could potentially be printed through an online fabrication service, I knew that the barrier to entry for normal people interested in trying out the process themselves was prohibitively high.  With this project I wanted to try to extend the idea of digitally fabricated records to use relatively common and affordable machines and materials so that (hopefully) more people can participate, experiment, and actually use all this documentation I’ve been writing.

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Rhizome: Prosthetic Knowledge Picks - WebGL

In this submission, I take a look at a web technology that brings impressive 3D projects into the browser.

Read it here

The Art of Projection Mapping: John Ensor Parker at TEDx NYU Poly

Interesting 15 minute video discusses, from an artist’s point of view, a brief history of technology, art, and culture, and how that leads into the practice of Projection Mapping. Video embedded below:

As our knowledge of the natural world exponentially increases, so does our perception of reality. Scientific and Technological developments affect us as individuals and as a collective species. At TEDxNYU Poly, John Ensor Parker discusses how the art media of projection mapping can be used to generate needed dialogue on the topic.

Wikigifs 

GIFs from Wikipedia randomly picked out for display, refreshed when you press the space bar - by Joel Franusic.

Try it out here

Clouds 

A Kickstarter funding project to create an interactive documentary of contemporary computer artists:

Over the last year we have captured interviews with over 30 new media artists, curators, designers, and critics, using a new 3D cinema format called RGBD. CLOUDS presents a generative portrait of this digital arts community in a videogame-like environment. The artists inhabit a shared space with their code-based creations, allowing you to follow your curiosity through a network of stories. What does it feel like to think with code? How can emerging technologies enable us to actualize our dreams? How has online sharing transformed the way artists collaborate?

More about this interesting project can be found at it’s Kickstarter page here

Comic Sans Must Die 

Part typographic generative degradation coding project, part wishful thinking, presented in Tumblr format by Antonio Roberts:

Love it or hate it, Comic Sans is one of the most popular fonts in the world.

Vincent Connare designed the font for Microsoft in 1995. He described it is best being used for “new computer users and families with children”. Despite this it has constantly been misused and can be seen everywhere from school letters, e-mails from government officials and even in documents about the discovery of the Higgs Boson.

Since it was unleashed on the world there have been multiple calls by designers for the font to be abolished completely, most famously by the Ban Comic Sans website.

Comic Sans Must Die is a project that satisfies every designer’s dream: to see Comic Sans die a slow and painful death. Every day the individual glyphs of Comic Sans will have their demise displayed for all to see.

Comic Sans Must Die is a project conceived by Antonio Roberts with code contributions from Richard Clifford.

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New Media - New Environments

This was my entry for the Transfer3D - Speed Show WROCŁAW, an experiment with Autodesk 1234D and a televised interview from 1967 with technology theorist Marshall McLuhan:

Brief:

Create a piece of work for the Transfer3D SPEED SHOW WROCŁAW, around the concept of 3D

Idea:

Advances in 3D imaging and technology has provided interesting possibilities to explore. In particular, there is a service which can convert multiple still digital photographs into a virtual 3D object called Autodesk 123D Catch.

With some understanding of the principles of how it works, it somehow lead me to connect to one of the most important figures in technological thought of the last 50 years: Marshall McLuhan. Having ideas with no single fixed viewpoint, employing ‘Probes’ to understand technological phenomena from various angles, and an influence from the texts of James Joyce and the concepts of Modernism, a connection can be made between both the thinker and the machine.

In 1967, he undertook a televised interview, sitting in a revolving chair in the centre of the stage, surrounded by an audience asking questions from all angles (see video embedded below):

Herbert Marshall McLuhan @ CBC 1967 from Sergey Teterin on Vimeo.

I took various frames from the footage to form the necessary collection to help create a potential model, all from various angles and different levels of proximity.

The results are a product of matching images and manually places points connecting the images to one another on particular key features of the person.

(See animated gifs above)

Result:

Admittedly, I was hoping to produce a virtual sculptural bust of Marshall Mcluhan, but the 1234D Catch service is designed for colour photography - the images I have used are black and white, grainy, and have been processed from original recording, to video, and eventually digitally processed onto online video services. Also, the subject must be completely still - it is difficult to find exact poses from various angles from someone who is in conversation with his audience throughout the recording.

Many of the attempts are, in relation to my initial plans, extremely disappointing in a representational sense, as well as some questionable orientations - upside down or positioned to the side as opposed to standing upright as would be expected.

My only consolation with the various outputs I have collected are that they still connect to the ideas of multiple viewpoints, abstract forms created from various points and time - machine vision generating pseudo-Cubism virtual sculptures.

The project should be considered a fully-finalized product, more of an experiment which, in theory, could provide other objects with continued practice, trying out different frames and combinations.

You can check some of the examples on my Autodesk 123D Catch profile here

LA Game Space - Kickstarter 

Ambitious yet exciting project looking for funding - a creative gaming Bauhaus to educate, develop and push the video game into a forward thinking artform:

Game design has always featured creativity and experimentation, from the earliest pioneers to the recent rise of independent creators.  And yet, we have barely begun to explore the potential of video games.

Let’s create a place for exploring that potential. A place for game innovation, education, and exhibition, where all of us can play and make and study and showcase games.  A place where we will rediscover what games have been, and re-imagine what games can be.

Join us in founding LA Game Space!

You can find out more at the project’s Kickstarter page here

Paper Computing Technology 

This relates to my previous post in a way; a ‘paper computing’ technology developed by the University of Tokyo in which you can edit a piece of special sheet by hand or by computer interface - via DigInfo:

At the University of Tokyo, the Naemura Group is developing paper computing technology, which can automatically erase, copy and print hand-drawn sketches on paper.

As well as using a camera and computer, this system uses a laser and UV light, making it possible to work directly with the hand-drawn sketches using the computer.

So for example, the user can leave only the edges of hand-written characters, creating 3D like text, or draw a figure by hand and color it in automatically.

You can find out more at DigInfo here

QR Clock 

Tech project which displays the time as a QR Code in an LED matrix, put together by ch00ftech:

What the hell?

Right?  This is an idea I had at some point along my four day drive across the country.  QR codes are very popular for some reason.  Marketers insist that they’re useful and demand to put them in everything despite the fact that nobody uses them.

The real problem with QR codes is that they force people to use a machine to translate what could easily be human-readable information.  Rather than a QR code, why not just show the text “Chevy.com” or even better just the word “Chevy” because everyone knows how to google stuff?  Seriously, I’ve seen QR codes on highway billboard signs as if anyone is going to whip out their smartphone while they’re pulling 65.

So why a clock?  As I’ve said before, clocks have already sort of been perfected.  A digital wristwatch is probably the most convenient, accurate, and durable way to tell the time possible.  Any attempt to change the typical blue-light special wristwatch will only make it more expensive or harder to read.  This clock attempts to do both.

Also, this clock points out the ultimate irony of QR codes which is that they are a technological convenience that really isn’t convenient.  In order to read this clock, the user will require some sort of QR scanning device which is guaranteed to have a time-telling function built into it already.

So, that’s why I made it.  Hilarious, right?

You can find out more about how it was put together at ch00ftech’s blog here

Facebook Demetricator 

A browser add-on that removes all quantifiable information in your Facebook page, taking away any social currency or values from sight.

Developed by Ben Grosser, he got in contact to tell me what it’s all about:

Under its influence, Facebook no longer foregrounds how many friends you have, or how much people like your status. Instead these numbers are stripped away, inviting you to try the system without these things, to enable a network society that isn’t dependent on quantification. 

More at his website:

The Facebook interface is filled with numbers. These numbers, or metrics, measure and present our social value and activity, enumerating friends, likes, comments, and more. Facebook Demetricator is a web browser addon that hides these metrics. No longer is the focus on how many friends you have or on how much they like your status, but on who they are and what they said. Friend counts disappear. ’16 people like this’ becomes ‘people like this’. Through changes like these, Demetricator invites Facebook’s users to try the system without the numbers, to see how their experience is changed by their absence. With this work I aim to disrupt the prescribed sociality these metrics produce, enabling a network society that isn’t dependent on quantification.

You can find out more and get the add-on at Ben’s site here

Memory of a Broken Dimension 

Trailer for independent Japanese game which smartly employs glitch aesthetics in it’s game world as part of it’s narrative - video embedded below:

FPS?

The emulator of an obscure computer system propagates across the internet, a signal is established…

There is very little more information about the game … at one point there appears to have been an online playable work-in-progress, but that isn’t working anymore.

There are more screenshots at the website of the developer, Datatradgedy, here, plus more in this forum here

Correction - I mistakenly claimed this was an independent Japanese game - turns out the developer is based in Seattle by the Twitter name xra - my bad …

Out Of Print 

Fun project creates computer-generated random headlines scrambled from news feeds which are then printed with traditional techniques and sent via Twitter:

The invention of the printing press is the finest example of how a shift in technology can change the way we communicate. In the 21st century, digital technology has become the defining force shaping society; changing the way we live, interact and consume information.

With the growth of digital media we are now faced with unprecedented levels of data. We find ourselves at a saturation point. By attempting to consume ever more, we end up understanding less. How do we make sense of all the information we consume and not get lost in the process? Through the use of traditional printing techniques we explore this question.

By using live online news feeds we are building a digital application that generates seemingly random headlines; these will then be printed using a custom-built letterpress. The prints will form a growing collection exhibited as part of the installation.

More about the project here

ROM 

Kickstarter project to fund a new publisher of high-end design books of videogame history, debuting with a book on the great Sensible Software:

Sensible Software 1986–1999 from Darren Wall on Vimeo.

The definitive biography of Sensible Software, one of the world’s most pioneering and best-loved games companies, and the flagship title for Read-Only Memory, a new publishing company specialising in high-quality video game products. 

Sensible Software 1986–1999 will tell the story of Sensible through interviews and anecdotes from those who were there – including Jon Hare and the Sensible team – and a feast of visuals celebrating the company’s idiosyncratic, groundbreaking style.

With your support, we want to publish the ultimate retrospective; immaculately designed and brilliantly written.

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