today and tomorrow

‘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.

Do you use Microsoft Excel? Do you make drawings with it? Did you know that you can render 3D objects with it? No? Then read this article.

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.

Troika, known for their SMS Guerrilla Projector, was commissioned by Artwise Curators to create a signature piece at the entrance of the new British Airways luxury lounges in Heathrow Terminal 5. The result: ‘Cloud’, a five meter long digital sculpture whose surface is covered with 4638 flip-dots that can be individually addressed by a computer to animate the entire skin of the sculpture. The best part is of course the development pictures and 2 videos of the cloud in action.

Combine some LED’s with a touch interface and use it as controller; bingo you got me interested! Check out the Stribe. You have to love the development pictures on that website.

E15 is an experimental architecture that places the power of presentation of web content into the hands of those that use it. Based on a dynamic, interactive OpenGL-based scripting engine, E15 exposes an entirely new face to web content, freely modifiable by each individual user.

Yesterday, Google released the software development kit for its mobile platform called Android. Of course I had to install it and give it a try, it comes with sample code and some standard features like a web browser and a maps application.
The standard graphical user interface looks dull to me, especially since I played around with an iPhone before. The screen resolution of the demo phone is only 320 by 240 and it’s not that snappy, maybe that’s because it’s only an emulation.
Although the iPhone is available since last Friday here in Germany, I didn’t buy one for the simple reason that the iPhone and the contract are too expensive. But if I could get one from the States (over a €100 cheaper!), I would.
So Apple, I’m quite curious to play with the iPhone SDK next February! Bring it on!

RGB MusicLab converts RGB (Red, Green and Blue) value of an image to chromatic scale sounds. The program reads RGB value of pixels from the top left to the bottom right of an image. One pixel makes a harmony of three note of RGB value, and the length of note is determined by brightness of the pixel.

100 Nabaztag smart rabbits, brought by their owners, meet in the same spirit of the flashmobs, to all play together an opera specially composed by Antoine Schmitt et Jean-Jacques Birgé. Inviting John Cage, Steve Reich, Conlon Nancarrow and György Ligeti, this musical and choreographic partition in three movements, transmitted via wi-fi, plays on the tension between the music ensemble communion and individual behavior to create a strong and involved showpiece. This opera questions the issues of how to be together, of organization, decision and control, which are increasingly central and delicate in our contemporary world.

Nabaz’mob

What would you do if you were asked to develop an identity for an Audiovisual Performance lounge, organized by 24th Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival. Right, you would also develop a particle typography in Processing.
Amazing work by Infostuka.