Update on Interactive Tables

Regine from wmmna, and Nicolas Nova from pasta and vinegar have put together an excellent list of interactive tables.

also see Regine’s new post of a ‘Conversation table’, a project looking at the social dynamics that take place at tables during conversations.

also see Chris O’Shea aka Pixelsumo’s Sonicforms project and his links to related material.

Add comment January 15th, 2006

Philips - Entertaible

Philips have made the Entertaible which is a 30” LCD touchscreen table that has been developed for social gaming applications for people in places like bars and restaurants, and perhaps one day in the home. It also has built in speakers to add extra thrills to the age old board game platform.

Video

Personally I like it when your holding all you monopoly in your hands waving it at you friends as they land on your hotel for the second time but the fact that this technology expecially the improvements in the LCD screens now having greater viewing angles makes them more applicable to designing hypersurfaces for the built environment.

via Gizmodo

Add comment January 14th, 2006

Greyworld

Video

Greyworld are a group of london based artists who have produced a number of beautiful and subtle pieces of interactive architecture. Above is their piece The Source, installed in the main atrium of the new London Stock Exchange in July 2004. A cube of 9×9x9 (729 in total) spherical balls are suspended on strings that stretch 32 metres up to the top of the main atrium of the newly designed building. These balls, controlled by a computer running Python scripts, can reposition themselves independently of each other, forming dynamic shapes and fluid-like motions that reflects the nature of the stock market itself. Each morning, upon the opening of the London Stock Exchange, the balls awake from their cube arrangement and begin to form patterns. Similarly, at the end of each day’s trading, the balls fall back into their cube arrangement, and an animated arrow is shown using the blue LEDs inside the balls to show how the stock market performed on that particular day.

Check out Chris O’Sheas interview with Andrew Shoben of Greyworld.

1 comment January 12th, 2006

Singing bridges

“Singing bridges” by Australian Jodi Rose is a sonic sculpture, playing the cables of stay-cabled and suspension bridges as musical instruments.

An urban sound-scape that reflects the physical and metaphoric structure of the telecommunications network, with its fibre-optic cables circling the globe. The iconography of the bridge cables echoes the telecommunications lines stretching across the globe and linking us together. The work plays on an acoustic extension and interpretation of the constant flow of information and data through these cables.

Website

4 comments January 11th, 2006

LonelyHome - Tobi Schneidler

A spin off from the Remote Home project another project by Interactive Architect Tobi Schneidler called Lonely Bench. Part of their LonelyHome project.

A ’self conscious’ piece of furniture reluctant to its use. The sensors for this version was completely remade into a highly responsive and sensitive system triggering each cushion on the bench individually

“The LonelyHome bench is a hybrid creation, part domestic furniture and part robotic pet: a socially intelligent design object. It can be used as an ordinary piece of living room furniture, but it will also come alive unexpectedly.”

Video

The Lonely Bench is a complete stand-alone system ready to plug into the power outlet of any home. It was shown at the Touch Me exchibition at Victoria and Albert museum, London. Heres the website of maoworks who are a design strategy and production company working with commercial, research and cultural clients.

from loove.org

Add comment January 10th, 2006

Interactive Fountain - Ulrich Westerfrölke

A delicate piece of interactive architecture from a Ulrich Westerfrölke built in 1997 for Luitpold Square. The boundaries of the Square are defined by the 50 meter long facades of the Schloss Gallery and the Schloss with its newly constructed terraces. The “Energy Line”, a 70 meter long stainless steel-glass fiber band, goes beyond these boundaries. Beginning in the inner area of the Schloss Gallery near the now visible foundation stone shell, it cuts across the water basin in the square, steps up the bed and the edge of the terrace and ends in the rectangular limewood court. Thirty five sensor stones are strewn across the square and, like the Energy Line, glow in the night with a blue light. When a pedestrian crosses over one of the sensors, a change occurs in the water spray graphics with its 11 nozzles. The combination of each water nozzle, whether opened or closed, and the streams of water, either hard or gentle, enable 638,668,800 possible combinations. This means: each visitor to the square can produce a near unique water image.

The everchanging graphic is accompanied by the flyer’s constant rhythm of movement. The 12 elements (11 nozzles and the flyer) become a clock at the full hour: At first, the pneumatically controlled installation sets off every possible movement. After a few minutes of cacophony all the water is turned off, then the number of nozzles allowed to spray define the hour. Once again, all nozzles are turned off to “no water image” until a pedestrian reactivates the work by stepping over a sensor. A person interacts with the environment and through their presence they alone recreate the space

Add comment January 8th, 2006