Archive for November, 2005
Ada is a novel artificial organism, a creature in the shape of a space that can perceive and react to its surroundings. At the same time, her form facilitates a novel interaction between humans and machine that goes beyond the possibilities offered by a conventional computer, such as keyboard, mouse or joystick. Ada has sensory organs. She can see, hear and sense touch and contact. While Ada cannot communicate with words, she expresses herself through sounds, light and projections. Ada likewise learns how to synchronise her various components, such as the floor plates, the movable eyes and the light fingers. Ada is able to remember the visitors with whom she has played and whose gestures, movements and sounds she has observed. Like humans, Ada learns from experience: she can store an incident and later build upon it.
Ada Website
November 15th, 2005
Fancy playing around with Head Up Displays like they use in Fighterjets and are now starting to use in high end executive cars such as the BMW 5 and 6 Series.
Made by Microvision The MicroHUD™ evaluation kit is a head-up display (HUD) engineering prototype created to enable potential users to evaluate the benefits of laser scanning technology in a variety of applications.
November 15th, 2005
Not that I would consider carpet my first choice for interior design, its interesting now how more and more inteligent systems are being introduced into furnishing products such as carpets.
Carpets with inbuilt intelligence can now run office functions such as climate control, alarm systems and guidance technology. A partnership between two German firms, carpet maker Vorwerk Teppichwerke and semiconductor specialist Infineon Technologies has created a ‘Thinking Carpet’, equipped with sensors able to manage a range of control functions in the office of the future
For instance, pressure sensors can report an alarm as soon as people enter a security zone. In the process, intelligent software solutions are able to analyse the signals, even individually. Thus an alarm is triggered, for example, only when traces of movement commence on a window or an emergency exit, but not at free-access entrances. Security zones can be individually defined and individually controlled on a time-frame basis as well. As soon as registered signals are additionally relayed to a security control centre, the point of alarm (break-in or fire) can be localised precisely in a matter of seconds. Besides this, pressure sensors in the carpet can also be utilised as door-openers and light switches, or as electronic counters for people, too.
In combination with shatterproof LED modules, the ‘Thinking Carpet’ also becomes a controllable guidance system. For example, in this case light-emitting diodes in the carpet mark the shortest route to an emergency exit. The combination of different sensory functions (pressure, temperature and motion) can additionally enable the detection of people lying motionless on the floor, triggering a call for emergency help.
from wmmna
November 14th, 2005
A few years old now but I’m researching how you can build space with light at the moment so I thought I’d put this up for posterity. Vectorial Elevation was an interactive artwork designed to transform the Zócalo square in Mexico City. Using a three dimensional interface this web site allowed you to design a light sculpture with 18 robotic searchlights located around the Plaza. A web page was made for each participant with photos from 3 webcams. The piece was unplugged on the 7th of January, 2000, after receiving hundreds of thousands of visits from 89 countries and all the regions of Mexico.
Unfortunately the website is also no longer online.
November 13th, 2005
from veritas
November 12th, 2005
it must be Buckminster Fuller week here on Interactive Architecture
R. Buckminster Fuller, 1980
Every so often I like to highlight a few of the truely inspirational characters of Interactive Architecture from long before there were such things as CAD/CAM, or parametric design, or even microchips. After posting my last blog about the new nano composite material ‘Buckypaper’ and ‘Bucky I felt that It was about time I gave Buckminster Fuller a post of his own and to be fair he deserves more that just one post because in his life time his work as an architect, inventor, engineer, mathamatican, poet and cosmologist created 28 patents including… Stockade (1927), 4D House (1928), Dymaxion Car (1937), Dymaxion House, Geodesic Dome (1954), Paperboard Dome (1959), and then many more geometric marvels.
Fuller never got an Architectural degree and in fact didn’t even get a license until he was awarded one as an honor when he was in his late 60s. This did not prevent him from designing the geodesic dome: the only kind of building that can be set on the ground as a complete structure–and with no limiting dimension. The strength of the frame actually increases in ratio to its size, enclosing the largest volume of space with the least area of surface. This was his virtuoso invention, and he said it illustrated his strategy of “starting with wholes” rather than parts.
Three Dymaxion Cars were constructed in 1933 and 1934, pioneering many significant automotive design innovations. These included front-wheel drive, rear engine and rear steering, and aerodynamic streamlining.
Fullers 4D House 1928
Triton City
In the early 1960′s a design for a floating city for Tokyo Bay was commissioned. After the death of the projects original Japanese patron in 1966, the project was taken over by the United States Office of Housing and Urban Development. Pictured is a single neighborhood module of this “Triton City” designed to house 6,500 people. Three to six of these neighborhoods combine to make a town, three to seven towns, with the addition of municipal modules of appropriate size, a city. Made from steel or concrete, these twenty-story stuctures are designed to be constructed in shipyards and towed to their destinations.
November 11th, 2005
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