“Rope In Space” is an interactive installation developed by the Ars Electronica Futurelab. It allows people who are in different locations to play tug of war. You have to pull a rope which is attached to a device with a screen and camera. Your data is then sent to the other location and the other way around, so both can see how they’re doing. I guess you’ll understand after watching this video.
photo by aemkei
The first beta of Rhonda just came out a few hours ago and it’s exactly like expected, very cool. If you don’t remember what Rhonda is all about, you might want to read this. Here is a video where Zach Lieberman demos a few of the features.
I tried it out too, but my non existent drawing skills and trackpad didn’t really help.
The problem with most touchscreens is that you don’t get any tactile feedback. Touch the Invisibles, a project by nosigner, Hiroyuki Ando, Junji Watanabe and Eisuke Kusachi, let you feel what’s happening on the screen. They placed a small vibrator on the fingernail and by tracking the position of the finger with the touch screen, the user can get some tactile feedback. It’s probably not the most elegant solution to this problem, but I would like to try it out anyway.
Touch the Invisibles will be on display at siggraph 09.
found at designboom weblog
Rhonda is a 3D drawing tool like no other, the first when I saw it a few years ago I was immediately blown away. Amit Pitaru developed this amazing piece of software around 2003. Around that time he was collaborating with James Paterson, their project was called InsertSilince. In this video you can see James drawing using Rhonda with his unique style.
So it’s very nice to hear that the development of Rhonda will continue with the help of Zach Lieberman (openFrameworks) and Zach Gage (synthpond).
The Electronic Ruler designed by Shay Shafranek and Oded Webman can do a lot more than your average one. It can measure the length of each line you draw no matter where you start. But it can also measure the distance between 2 points, add the value of different lines and change its scale.
found at noquedanblogs
Crispin Porter + Bogusky is one of the hottest advertising agencies around with an amazing portfolio. The only problem they have is their current website, it is not and never was a good website. That website is actually that old that I don’t remember an older version of it.
Yesterday they made the beta version of their new website available to the public. I’m happy that they didn’t go the Wieden+Kennedy road, which is a 2 year old Flash monster, they don’t even update their timeline anymore.
The CP+B beta site is very reduced, they only show the logos of a few of their clients and present their work through videos and links to external websites. That’s it, no big write up on how they did their award winning campaign, the works speaks for itself.
Below their work you find 3 columns where the aggregate content. 2 columns are dediced to the client, one with links to traditional media news and one to blog posts related to the brand. The left column shows all the tweets from and @Bogusky, plus tweets about CP+B. They claim that they will not filter anything, a bold move!
In a few weeks they will release Nude, the code behind this site, as an open source project. Another bonus point.
So here is video of Alex Bogusky explaining the features of the beta site.
The Royal College of Art in London is currently having it’s annual Summer Graduate Show. Here are a few projects of the Digital Interactions class.
The Toaster Project by Thomas Thwaites.
For nine months I’ve been trying to make an electric toaster, myself, starting from scratch. Travelling to disused mines around Britain, digging up raw materials, processing and forming them into a hand crafted pastiche of a product sold in Argos for the throwaway price of £3.94.
My quest is perhaps absurd, but the contrast in scale between the products we use and the industry that produces them also seems absurd. Massive industrial activity in the pursuit of additional modicums of comfort at lower prices – small trifles, like an evenly crispy piece of toast, that we quickly become accustomed too. However, I like toast, as well as many of the other trappings of 21st Century life. The laboriousness of producing even the most basic material from the ground up exposes the fallacy in a return to some romantic ideal of a pre-industrialised time. But at a moment in time when the effects of industry are no longer trivial in relation to the wider environment, the throwaway toasters of today seem unreasonable. The provenance and the fate of the things we buy is too important to ignore.
The Compass Phone does not support any verbal communication side, but has only a GPS function. It measures the distance between two people in real-time and then converts it to the time it takes for them to meet each other by either transport or time unit. A compass is hidden under the digit display. The centre of the compass always indicates the user’s position and its needle indicates the other person’s direction.
CoinFlipper is a decision making tool. CoinFlipper is 99.99% controllable, yet deliberately random.
After the long calibrating procedure, the users can predict the result of coin flipping by adjusting the angle and power of CoinFlipper. Decision-making is no longer in the hands of fate or randomness, but in the true intentions of the users.
The Golden Institute by Sascha Pohflepp.
How do we decide which worlds come true and which worlds are discarded? While we are typically thinking in terms of novel possibilities or scenarios set in different futures, it is rare to attempt an imagined past that might have led to a different present. Positioned at the right spot in the past, such counterfactual histories might offer an understanding of the forces at work as well as a fresh perspective on our present challenges.
The Golden Institute for Energy in Colorado was the premier research and development facility for energy technologies in an alternate reality where Jimmy Carter had defeated Ronald Reagan in the US election of 1981. Equipped with virtually unlimited funding to make the United States the most energy-rich nation on the planet, its scientific and technical advancements were rapid and often groundbreaking.
Its scope ranged from planetary engineering to the enabling of individual participation and profit from the creation of electricity. Notable projects include the development of the state of Nevada into a weather experimentation zone and the new gold rush in the form of lightning-harvesters that followed, or major modifications made to the national infrastructure in an attempt to use freeways as a power plants. The institute’s vision continues to inform the American consciousness to this day. In relation to energy preservation and harnessing, but also in terms of man’s relationship to the forces of nature.
Tonight was the award show of the Cannes Cyber Lions 2009, one of the most well-known awards in the advertising industry. This years winner of the Grand Prix was Fiat eco:Drive by the agency AKQA London.
Fiat eco:Drive is system that is very similar to Nike+. When you plugin in an USB stick in to your Fiat, all the data of your drive will be saved on it. Back at home, you can upload that data to a small piece of software that analyses and visualizes it. Then you’ll get tips how to drive more efficient and save fuel to be more eco friendlier. Etc etc … I just love projects like this one, an excellet combination of the online and offline world.
All the other winners of the Cyber Lions will be online in the morning.
If you want to know more about this, then you should watch this video where Adobe talks to Fiat and the agency about the whole process.
Uniqlo Calender is the latest Uniqlo website to browse their apparel collection. This time they used those popular tilt shift videos to select a color. When you click on the video, a mosaic of Uniqlo apparel appears on top of it with the main colors matching to the video. When you click on an item you’ll get a detail view where you can click again to get to the next mosaic and so on. But the videos are the definitely the best part, the music is actually quite cool too. Like with every Uniqlo website, the attention to every little detail is amazing, just have a look at the little step by step guide to customise the widget. The Uniqlo Calender is not a groundbreaking website, it is just executed to perfection.
And while you’re at it, check the Uniqlo Tokyo Fashion Map too.
The Turn is a new interactive website by the multi-media artist & singer Fred Viola, you probably know his “The Sad Song“. It’s been a while since I’ve spend more than 10 minutes on flash website, so that is quite an achievement. Visit it now!
