‘Spinal Rhythms‘ is the thesis project of Eva Schindling. The subtitle is ‘Autonomous Embodied Evolution of a Biomimetic Robot’s Rhythmic Motion Behavior’, I’ve read it a few times and I’m still puzzled. It’s all about the physical movement of a stick-creature and its fitness. She didn’t use any electric motor to move the limbs but elastic shape memory alloy springs. Those contract when heated with electic current and expand when the cooldown, an Arduino board controls the whole system (an open source physical computing platform). It is of course very conceptual but maybe the video will clear up a few things.
Violence is an inevitable, mechanical function of the human brain, hard-coded down through time by culture, genetics, and evolution. Mediated experiences of killing change our perception of violence and death. As players die in a public video game server for Counter-strike, a popular online first person shooter, the electronic solenoid valves spray a small amount of fake blood. The trails left down the wall create a physical manifestation of nebulous kills.
Custom electronics based on an Atmega8/168 micro-controller are connected to a PC running a dedicated Counter-strike Source server. Players across the internet can connect and play live on the server, and each time a player dies, a java script written in Processing sends serial commands to the micro-controller, telling it to spray fake blood.
The ‘Digital MIDI Step Sequencer‘ is an Arduino based MIDI sequencer. I’m in awe for the breadboard design! Make sure you watch this video of the first prototype on YouTube.
Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It is part of the whole Processing open-source movement. Everyone who wants to get into physical computing should get such an Arduino board.
I whish I was smart enough to build something like that … I’ll try to make an LED blink tonight, promissed …
“Besides the impressive functionality, this is some some very elegant breadboarding at work.” - Make Magazine
Tadaa the iPhone SDK is here, ok it’s still in beta though. So if you have seen the presentation video, you might be quite excited too. Just skip to minute 41 and there you have it, nintendo Wii-like controls for gaming. The big advantage that Apple has, is that they have full control over the hardware and software. And that’s where I see the weakest point of the Google Android platform.
And for those of you who are still waiting for the Flash plugin for the iPhone. I guess as long as Adobe doesn’t make a custom player, we won’t see Flash on the iPhone. How would the iPhone / Flash player scale down Flash content anyway? And is the processor strong enough? Battery life? … just forget about it.
I actually had to use someone else’s mac to have a look at the SDK, I still have a G4 Powerbook and you’ll need an intel one.
‘Absolut Machines‘ is quite an amazing project by Absolut Vodka. Basically, Absolut commissioned 2 interactive sound sculptures, which you can control through the website, you’ll have to wait in line though.
‘Absolut Quartet’ is a robotic mechanical orchestra, by playing the piano you can inspire the 3 robotic ‘musicians’. You can find some making of pictures in this Flickr set. The other one, ‘Absolut Choir’ is a machine consisting of 22 choir members, by typing in words and sentences you inspire them to sing. Both are just amazing!
On the website you can choose from different camera angles, see some documentation, download your composition as a video etc. It’s just a pain to use it. I think it’s a shame that the website doesn’t match the quality of the installations.
Here is a tip, just go to the press website if you want to get straight to the info.
‘You Don’t Matter’ converted a plotting machine into an output device, that can draw, scratch or cut with almost any traditional drawing technique, in order to achieve aesthetics looking neither drawn by hand nor produced with only a computer. Most interesting and inspiring are all the little mistakes this machine produces, because of too much data, too much water, color, pressure etc. There are always gradients because the color gets less and less as the machine draws on. This expansion space describes the machine’s actual identity. No Image looks like the other.
And if you put a camera infront of the machine and take a time exposure it draws with light in the air like Picasso did with his hand.
Yeah, that’s a mobile phone. Well actually it’s a development circuit board for the google Android operating system by Qualcomm. Can you see an iPhone competitor in there?
More info and hardware porn shots at Wired’s Gadget Lab.
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