Archive for February, 2006
idades is a communication network formed by modular installations placed in transit spaces. In each of them, a spectator can recognize his or her simulated silhouette, projected onto a screen, placed in the midle of the transit space, in such a way as to discover that his or her movements affect the trajectory of a virtual ball that bounces as it touches the edges of the silhouette. This activates a game in which the participant is the body of the player, along with the rest of the spectators that enter the visual field of the camera that is displayed on the screen.
Photos & Videos of the various exhibitions of the Project
In this game, the ball acts as an “ interconnection device” which, as it collides virtually with the body limits of the players, promotes in them a corporal response to keep it in movement. This way, the spectators become players of “ idades”, fusing with others in a neutral game space that is formed by the people who are in the same transit space and with those that are in other places in which similar screens have been installed, with the same conditions of space, time and play.
The neutral space is achieved by installing a modular installation which includes a camera that is used as a sensor, in front of the zone in which the interactors play, a computer connected to the camera that cuts the image of the people, a projector that displays the game, situated behind the interaction zone, and a screen, displayed in such a way as to ensure the normal circulation of people.
February 13th, 2006
RIPLfield website (see video)
An interactive installation built at the architecture department of TU Berlin . It consisted of light and sound-scapes which respond to the actions of people in the environment and remote data from Parsons School of Design in New York. It was created as part of an investigation into how architecture can operate as a responsive, interactive environment affecting local and distant locations. The studio explored the topic of ubiquitous computing and its implications for architecture asking what architecture means to a contemporary networked society?
RIPLfield is based around an ‘interactive floor' – a field of 108 pressure sensors arranged in a 9 x 12 grid. The sensors capture data as visitors move around the floor: Each pad is activated when stepped on, and the status of the sensor field is monitored by a software program. Other software interprets the data from the field, looking for particular patterns of movement, density, and proximity within the field activity.
Depending on the interpretation of these patterns, events are triggered within the environment – patterns of light are projected onto the floor from above, and a four-channel audio soundscape is activated and influenced in speakers around the perimeter of the field. The projected light shifts in colour through the RGB spectrum according to parameters such as visitor movement, duration in a particular location, intersections with the ‘trails' of other visitors, and the remote data feed.
February 12th, 2006
Video & Further Images
When groups of people work on complicated problems, they tend to generate large, shared displays spontaneously, whether in the form of printouts on a tabletop, posters, or marks on a whiteboard. This kind of shared view is a powerful aid to cooperative understanding, but it is most successful if it is robust, accessible, dynamic, editable. Computer displays, even large ones, have never adequately answered these needs.
Accenture have built a commercially available interactive wall using a very large, high-resolution display that is touch-sensitive. Its applications can handle interactions from multiple users, acting simultaneously.
The Accenture Technology Labs has created a scalable architecture which can support Walls of any size and resolution. “We use a series of commodity PCs and software parallelism rather than proprietary fusion hardware for higher performance at lower cost.” The natural parallelism of the system allows for full workstation performance across the entire Wall. Applications might feature complex CAD models, high-resolution video, interactive simulations, game graphics, or all of the above.
To draw the pixels, various display solutions are possible, from stackable cube style monitors to tiled-projection displays. To detect user touch, the Labs has developed its own camera-based touch system, which operates at a very large scale with a fine degree of resolution.
February 11th, 2006
Download (German) I’ve been meaning to post this for a while. My very clever friend Mirko Immendörfer’s phd Dissertation on Multi Sensitive Space. Mirko currently works for dRMM Architects in London and previously worked for architectural practices in Germany such as Prof. Wulf und Partner, infra plan, MBAS and at Takenaka Europe. Unfortunately my German is pretty poor so I can’t read it but he’s told me all about it and it sounds interesting so I thought I’d share it for those who do Sprechen Sie Deutsches and maybe you can tell me what you think.
February 10th, 2006
In the course of my research into making lighter-than-air interactive architecture I keep finding remarkable new applications for Dirigible technology. See the Space Lift and the Flying Radio Towers so while it may not be specifically interactive architecture, I thought I’d share these fascinating new approaches to sustainable power generation.
Wind turbines are constantly getting taller because everyone knows the higher you get off the ground, the better the wind speeds. But building big towers is expensive, especially if you want one 15,000 feet tall. So why not ditch the tower and make the windmill fly?
“Sky Windpower”
Several people are trying to do that. They’ve been written about before by others, but we’ve yet to tackle them, so here’s a little round-up of the three most notable projects: Sky Windpower, Laddermill, and Magenn. Each is a bit sketchy, but deserves to be given a shot. It seems obvious that once someone creates a workable system, it will become a huge winner, because of the sheer amount of power available up high: 1% of the jetstream’s wind power could supply all US electrical demand. Also, one of the main complaints about wind power is its intermittency–the wind doesn’t blow all the time, and so (according to Sky Windpower), most wind farms are only operating at their peak capacity 19-35% of the time. The wind is much steadier at altitude, so you get even more advantage over ground-based wind power. A final advantage is ad-hoc generation: devices with a reasonably simple tether-system do not have to be permanently installed in one place, they could be trucked out to any location that needed them.
Sky Windpower is the furthest along, with functional prototypes tested in the field. According to their figures, one flying windmill rated at 240kW with rotor diameters of 35 feet could generate power for less than two cents per kilowatt hour–that would make them the cheapest power source in the world. The flying windmills would initially get in position under their own power, using their motors to drive the propeller blades and helicopter upwards until they reached altitude. Then the motors would turn off and become generators as wind pushes the propeller blades, and the whirligig would float instead of fall because when tethered, the lift generated by the wind would overcome the craft’s weight as it also generates power.
Magenn
Magenn is a more modest design, which makes it more feasible. The inventor is Fred Ferguson, a Canadian engineer specializing in airships. He envisions a range of devices from the household scale. Magenn’s design is radically different from other windmills on the market–it would not use propeller blades. Instead, it would be a helium blimp, with Savonius-style scoops causing it to rotate around motors at the attachment-points to its tether. The blimp-like design has several advantages: its Savonius scoop design lets it operate in winds as low as 2 mph; it is safer in a crash, because it would fall slowly and be mostly made of flexible material; it is safer for airplanes, because it sits below legally usable airspace; it is safer for birds, because the moving parts are visible and travel with the wind. The critic’s valid point is that the devices are currently vaporware, with not even a working prototype built yet. Despite this, Magenn has a distribution partner lined up, once they do get into production. It looks like the power-blimps would be mechanically simple and easy to build, so I would give them good odds of pulling it off by the end of the year, as promised. But it will no doubt take a few years before their invention is optimized and debugged.
Magenn Details
Laddermill was a research project at TU Delft in the Netherlands. They imagined a series of kites strung together by cables into a loop hundreds of meters–possibly even a few kilometers–high. The kites would be computer-controlled to change their attitude and generate more lift from the wind on one side of the loop than the other. This would cause the entire loop to rotate, and its rotation would push a generator down on the ground to create electricity.
It sounds ludicrous, but the folks at TU Delft are smart, and we need to seriously investigate more out-of-the-box approaches. In some ways, this design is simpler than Magenn or Sky Windpower because it does not have to have the power-generation equipment aloft, and does not require a power-carrying tether, just a mechanical one. The elimination of power-generation hardware from the flying parts of the device also means that it should be safer, because the bits that can crash are small and light. I havent been able to find any information however on its development in the last 2 years so I’m unsure if its still being investigated.
Concept Videos & Images of Laddermill
via world changing
February 9th, 2006
Visiting the Reichstag
I’ve just got back from the Transmediale Festival in Berlin which from an interactive architecture perspective was quite a disappointment due to the lack of interactive installations and devices at the exhibition however on the plus side I made some new friends at UDK doing fantastic work which I will blog in the near future. Special thanks to Sasha for showing myself and Chris O’Shea some of the sites and sounds of Berlin.
Spots by Realities United
The one talk at Transmediale that was of interest was the Urban Media Panel which I have to admit I missed while I went visiting the incredible architecture of the city. Regine fortunately however has posted an article on the talk and you will find further information about the buildings discussed such as the work of Realities United in my Archives.
February 8th, 2006
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