Any of you out there who are code-minded may have come across wonderfl. Its something I’ve wanted to play with for a while, and now there is another great reason.
Wonderfl is (was) a web-based flash development environment. Perhaps that might sound a bit dull… not the case . The idea is: you type code into the web page, and compile it in the same page. A few seconds later, and your code is a fully functional demo sitting alongside what you’ve just written. This in itself is a major step, bearing in mind where flash came from: a big old application for timeline animation. What’s really great though is the ability for you to browse other user’s source code, test it, and add to it. By default, your code is covered by the MIT Open-Source License so in most cases you are free to use these other projects.
Add to that, the Funnel Server. Funnel is a set of libraries for Actionscript 3 (and Ruby and Processing), that provide a simple interface between these languages, and your hardware. You can use Gainer or Arduino or XBee… just add the libraries and you’ve got it all at your fingertips. Now, Wonderfl is a web-based physical computing development environment!
It is as simple as taking an existing experiment that uses mouse position as an input, for example, and swap the inputs for physical ones. As an introduction to physical computing, without the hassle of spending time understanding the ins and outs, it is perfect. Not for first time Actionscripters, perhaps, but there are a good mix of simple and complex projects, look through them here. I’m gonna go away and try it out.
This is the first project I came across on the site:
In Fläsch, the winegrowers Martha and Daniel Gantenbein took advantage of the success of their Pinot Noir to replace their steel containers with oak barrels. They commissioned the architects Bearth & Deplazes with the design and construction of a new fermentation hall for twelve new containers. A wine-tasting lounge was to be located one floor above the hall.
The architects worked with Gramazio & Kohler on the facade, a double-skin of brick with polycarbonate panels on the interior. As they describe: “robotic production method … developed at the ETH Zurich enabled us to lay each one of the 20,000 bricks precisely according to programmed parameters—at the desired angle and at the exact prescribed intervals.”
Therefore a supergraphic composed of overlapped “grapes” could be created in brick in precast panels without the expense of numerous mock-ups or traditional masons. The wine estate in Fläsch follows the terroir principle. This principle states that the local colour – soil, microclimate, local traditions and the winegrower’s trademark – is directly reflected by the wine. A sensitive handling of space, temperature and light is therefore necessary. This was taken into account by the utilisation of special wall elements.
I wanted to go and check out the (recent) Architecture Association Summer Show and upload lots of images to encourage Londoners reading this blog to go check it out. That’s what I wanted to do. But then I didn’t manage to make it over until the last day. My inability to make it over earlier has left me with one option. To post a few snapshots of interest from the models I saw. I’m new to London so this was my first AA show, so I can’t comment on how previous exhibitions were better or worse, but I can say that the standard of the work this year was impressive.
Although not the best time to graduate in Architecture, I remain optimistic that the current greedy-banker-induced-world-crisis will end soon and these students will all be busy transforming the world into the more organic-yet-somehow-polygonal one suggested by these models. (At the same time, I still think Mies van der Rohe was onto something…) The rest of my comments are in the form of images. 9000 words worth. Many of these images are from AA’s Design Research Lab (AADRL) section of the exhibition.
The new Situated Technologies Pamphlet is out featuring a conversation between leading interactive architects Philip Beesley & Omar Khan. The Situated Technologies Pamphlets series, published by the Architectural League, explores the implications of ubiquitous computing for architecture and urbanism. How are our experience of the city and the choices we make in it are affected by mobile communications, pervasive media, ambient informatics and other “situated” technologies? A new generation of architecture that responds to building occupants and environmental factors has embraced distributed technical systems as a means and end for developing more mutually enriching relationships between people, the space they inhabit, and the environment. This pamphlet discusses key qualities of “responsive” architecture as a performing instrument that is both mutable and contestable.
Designed by Mark Francis Tynan & William Hailiang Chen, ResoNet visualises the resonant frequencies inherent in the natural environment, via the interaction of the public and surrounding elements detected by a LED net. By using Low-Fi techniques ResoNet creates a cascade of light triggered by the vibrations detected across the structure.
ResoNet’s tensile web structure is stretched across a space, like a spider web. A series of vibration sensors & LED circuit components are fixed at key intersections on the tensile network, to detect minute vibrations as a result of human and natural activity.
Be it a brush of a hand, or a passing breeze, the energy is converted into light that resonates across the structure, immersing the public in a cascading visual of flashing LED’s
Tetsuro Nagata, a recent graduate of the Bartlett’s Interactive Architecture Workshop, has created a series of pedagogic installations Inspired by Frances Yates’ “Art of Memory”, exploring physical manifestation of various concepts of memory. The final installation “Computing an Identity” is a Memory Theatre (a reference to Giulio Camillo’s Renaissance masterpiece), which uses delayed images of the self to question the observer’s own memory.
The installation is a processional experience, beginning with a spotlight that initially appears to display your shadow. The shadow then begins to delay questioning the observer’s perception of things that we take for granted. If the observer stays still, his shadow is merged into one of a previous occupant of the space.
The procession moves on towards a delayed mirror, which shortens its delay the closer you get to it. At a certain distance, the reflection becomes clearer, and the observer is able to directly compare their delayed reflection with their real one.
The piece culminates with a ‘rose window’ which captures observers’ faces, and reveals to the individual, his position within the long-term memory of the space. When left alone, the installation begins ‘dreaming’ – reconstructing its previous memories.
The piece instigates a conversation about image, identity and story-telling in a secular world. The individual procession references that of a church; from nave, to altar, and exiting through the West door. Nagata explains that “One of my initial aims was to question where bodily and facial images have gone from contemporary architecture, and as devices that trigger your memory, what their role is in a society obsessed with storing memories in external appliances.”
. The idea is: you type code into the web page, and compile it in the same page. A few seconds later, and your code is a fully functional demo sitting alongside what you’ve just written. This in itself is a major step, bearing in mind where flash came from: a big old application for timeline animation. What’s really great though is the ability for you to browse other user’s source code, test it, and add to it. By default, your code is covered by the MIT Open-Source License so in most cases you are free to use these other projects.
