The device is something in between a Polaroid camera and a digital camera. The camera doesn’t store the pictures on film or digital medium, but prints a photo directly on a roll of cheap receipt paper while it is taking it. As this all happens very slow, people have to stay still for about three minutes until a full portrait photo is taken.

I really like the look of the prints! Could you take my picture Niklas?

“PING! – Augmented Pixel” is a seventies style video game, that adds a layer of digital information and old-school aesthetics to a video signal: A classic rectangular video game ball moves across a video image. Whenever the ball hits something dark, it bounces off. The game itself has no rules and no goal.

You could say that it’s just an augmented reality version of Pong. But Niklas just did a little more than just that. PING! – Augmented Pixel doesn’t use a computer to process the video signal and display the game. Niklas made a read hardware box with its own micro-controller. Impressive work!

It consists of four units, each capable of displaying all 26 letters of the alphabet with an arrangement of fluorescent lights. The piece displays an algorithmically generated word sequence, derived from a word association database developed by the University of South Florida between 1976 and 1998. The algorithms take into account word meaning, rhyme, letter sequencing, and association.

I just love to see the mechanical details.

found at Rhizome

The second one is called “A drawing pendulum”. The pendulum need 15 minutes to draw this face.

found at make blog

via @sermad

A second new piece that he presents is “Rust Mirror”. It’s made of 768 oxidized steel tiles and works like most of his mechanical mirrors.

The third one is a piece from 2008: “Mirrors Mirror”. I know that I’ve posted it before but it is still great.

found at Make blog

In this next video, Hannah Perner-Wilson shows you how she made a paper piano.

Another project by Jie Qi are these paper flowers. She built-in some memory wires in the paper flowers connected them to a strong battery. Those wires let the flowers move, just like they would bloom.

found @zachlieberman

found @golan

Now in 3D!

They’ve fitted a N900 inside a Viewmaster, when you move the Viewmaster to the left or the right a switch is triggered. The signal is then passed on through an arduino board and a bluetooth signal to the N900. The camera of the N900 takes now 2 images, a few centimeters apart. The two images are colored red and blue and superimposed and displayed on the screen of the N900, so when you look through the Viewmaster you’ll see a 3D image.

Talk & Text

A Nokia N900 and an Arduino are hidden inside a Speak & Spell. The keys are connected to the arduino which sends the signals over bluetooth to the N900. So you can write and send a text message using a Speak & Spell.

Leave a Message

An Arduino connected to the Rolodex detects the position of the wheel and sends that information over bluetooth to the N900. Each position indicates a specific contact. Without touching your N900, you bring up the contact you need to the screen of the N900.

Phone FM

You can send a text message to your phone and it will read the artist’s name and send that information to last.fm. MP3′s will start streaming and the cover art will appear on the screen. The N900 has a build-in FM transmitter, the signal will be picked up by any radio nearby when it’s set to the right station.

photo by aemkei