Posts filed under 'Devices'
Déplacements consists of 24 computer case fans forming a rectangle. Each fan is a “pixel”, its number of revolutions and the intensity of the light of its LED change according to the level of gray corresponding to the pixel of reference.
This screen of fans is controlled by a computer simulating a cellular automaton entitled The game of life (devised by John Horton Conway in 1970). In this mathematical model, each fan is a cell.
Displacement is a hijack of this object, a component of the computer becoming image. It is not a question of a physical “displacement” but of a movement, a flow.
Video. A work developed by Manuel Braun for his Diplôme Nationale Supérieure d’Arts Plastiques at the Aix-en-Provence School of Art.
Via abstract machine. via Regine at we-make-money-not-art
More fans in art: The Art of Breathing (Circulation); Circular Breathing, a personal breath recorder; Avantilator, a performance where 100 modified fans were playing the music along with the DJ; Rabbit Field, an infestation of inflatable rabbit-like forms; Blow-Up (image above) records, amplifies, and projects your breath into a room-sized field of wind; Breathe On Me, a space with fan/webcam devices on the walls. The fan/webcams are modified netcams such that Internet users can control the direction of the fan from the remote webcam view; Twilight, a breathing installation.
via Regine at we-make-money-not-art
November 7th, 2006
While I was looking through maoworks website I noticed they’re working on a project called Sensorama with engineers ARUP, Imperial College, British Telecom and my old art school Central Saint Martins. Unfortunately no information is revealed but it reminded me of the project of the same name developed by Morton Heilig in the 1950’s.
The Sensorama (See Patent Application) was a machine that is one of the earliest known examples of immersive, multi-sensory (now known as multimodal) technology. Morton Heilig saw theater as an activity that could encompass all the senses in an effective manner, thus drawing the viewer into the onscreen activity. He dubbed it “Experience Theater”, and detailed his vision of multi-sensory theater in his 1955 paper entitled “The Cinema of the Future” (Robinett 1994). He built a prototype of his vision, dubbed the Sensorama, along with five short films to be displayed in it. Predating digital computing, the Sensorama was a mechanical device, which still functions today.
Howard Rheingold (in his 1992 book Virtual Reality) spoke of his trial of the Sensorama using a short film piece that detailed a bicycle ride through Brooklyn, created in the 1950s, and still seemed quite impressed by what it could do more than 40 years later. The Sensorama was able to display stereoscopic 3D images in a wide-angle view, provide body tilting, supply stereo sound, and also had tracks for wind and aromas to be triggered during the film. Oddly enough in hindsight, Heilig was unable to obtain financial backing for his visions and patents, and the Sensorama work was halted and today remains primarily a curiosity in the expansive lore of Virtual Reality.
November 3rd, 2006
"Re:orient – migrating architectures" explores the local aspects of China ’s global significance and increasing influence. The project seeks to forecast possibilities which are now detectable only along retail channels, but which will, in all likelihood, determine the built environment, which transforms under the pressure of ever cheaper products. The project follows up this train of thought with the presentation of spaces, architectural devices and materials that create new contents, and indicate ways of turning these constraints of the market to our benefit, demonstrating how to infuse the mass products, which are designed to have a short life-span, with lasting cultural values.
The Hungarian entry for this year’s Venice Architecture Biennial is an installation that presents an alternative contemporary architectural experience built from thousands of functioning networked Chinese toys.
Instead of form they focus on the system, as an alternative to authored design they created DIY methods, re-appropriating cheap and ubiquitous technologies.
The website provides growing in-depth information about the different parts to the project as well as the system qualities of their architectural experiment in Venice and all the code used is provided open source. I only wish I could make it to Venice to see it.
Chief co-ordinator is Attila Nemes along with Adam Somlai-Fischer co-ordinating the installation and Samu Szemerey the website. A selection of the research texts are available to read here. A full list of the people involved can be found here. Below are the links to the individual projects that make up the whole installation.
September 8th, 2006
Since I'm going Robot crazy this week, I thought I'd show another project from a while back that I really like by another one of my favourite artists, Natalie Jeremijenko .
Feral robotics is an open source robotics project designed to enable distributed and co-located teams of lay participants to 'upgrade' low-end commercially available toys with chemical sensing equipment, additional microprocessor hardware to enable environmental data collection and coordinated flock (or pack) behavior. The adapted robots 'sniff out' environmental toxins, that is, they follow concentration gradients of toxins sensed by their dog's noses. Not dissimilar to popular robot wars events, this project instead involves the release of 'packs' of feral robotic dogs that are designed and modified for release on sites of community interest, including public parks, school grounds and industrial sites. This creates mediagenic events, coverage, and discussion on contaminants in the local environments.
Because the dogs display concentration information through their movement, the exploration engages people who may otherwise find the scientific information illegible.
August 26th, 2006
Breeze is an ambient robot inhabiting the body of a willow tree. Unlike us, Breeze can visually sense and react through 360 degrees, allowing her to reach out to you and others wherever you are near. Owing to a shape-memory alloy and hidden electronic wiring, its branches rise and positions themselves towards passersby in lightly undulating waves. Responding slowly or rapidly, the tree can have a brutal or gentle reaction.
via wmmna
August 24th, 2006
Louis-Philippe Demers is a multidisciplinary artist using machines as media. He has worked on the conception and production of several large-scale interactive robotic installations, so far realizing more than 225 machines. 'In a more pronounced way than traditional theatre, mechanical theatre becomes a space for a collective consensus of the acceptation of simulacrum (even more surreal). The level of abstraction of the mechanical theatre enables a multiplicity of interpretation, it is an open ended work where each person sees a reflection of its own feelings.' (See Video)
The Mechanized Eccentric Series is a collection of several installations and performances united together in a large spectacle.
The Series regroups:
L'Assemblee, 48 robots layed out on an arena;
Colony 001, 8 robots and 1 central robots, a comment on nanotechnology;
Colony 002, 8 robots caught in cages;
The robotic characters of Armageddon (an operetta for robots) and a choir of 12 members;
and the two main robots of Le Proces.
Each robot is equipped with speaker(s), light(s) and motion(s) enabling the whole environment to become a vast surround soundscape. Namely, the performances include 6 voices of ambient sound plus a range (8 to 32) of independent robot sounds.
August 24th, 2006
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