Interactive Puppet Theatre

Here's another great project from NYU ITP's Winter Show (you might be seeing a few more of these in the coming days; ITP shows are like Christmas-come-early for Computerkrafters):

The North Wind and The Sun is the first production by the Interactive Puppet Theatre. Here's the Scenario:

1. Every 4 minutes, a story starts.
2. Two children will be invited to play - one as the North Wind and the other as the Sun.
3. Both players will wear each costume; the Wind and the Sun, and hold its controller.
4. Watch and listen to the story.
5. When it is the Wind's turn to blow wind in the story, the blue light blinks as an indication.
6. The Wind child blows wind into the controller.
7. Repeat the above 5-6 steps according to the story.
8. When it is the Sun's turn to throw sunshine, the yellow light blinks as an indication
9. The Sun child blows warm breath into the controller.
10. Repeat the above 8-9 steps according to the story.
11. Watch and listen to the story.

To get a look at the project in action, you can watch the Interactive Puppet Theatre Video on Google Video. And if you want to create some 'interactive puppet theatre' of your own, it actually doesn't sound all that complicated (for how sophisticated the resulting interaction is). Here are the ingredients:

- Two Arduinos for controlling input and output, there are a total of 32 steps in the story.
- Six Servo motors: One for the Sun, one for Wind and four for the status of the traveler.
- An MP3 player for narration and background music.
- A microphone for the Wind controller (Same mechanism as the internal microphone in the Nintendo DS.)
- A thermometer for the Sun controller, which detects warm breath or rubbing.

Read the the artists' build journal and you'll be on your way.

Botanicalls

Botanicalls is a project submitted by four students to NYU ITP's Winter Semester Show:

"The project originally spawned from completely non-technical conversations about indoor container gardening and the air-filtration qualities of common houseplants. Our concern about bringing plants into the ITP community was their chance of survival-- high-paced technologists seldom have time to stop and smell the flowers, let alone water them. 'But, what if,' we wondered, 'the plants could call us and tell us what they needed when they needed it? If they assigned us tasks, would this alters or engages us,' and the project was born."

As you can see from the diagram above, their solution used environmental detectors, Arduino microcontrollers, and XBee wireless communicators to bind the plants in the ITP offices into a network. Then they gave this network the ability to communicate with its human cohabitants by connecting it to the office phone lines via Asterix.

The end result seems to be that they've given a rather eloquent and self-aware voice to a series of otherwise mute plants. What other silent omnipresent companions do we have that might benefit from getting a voice of their own?

Sewing Circuits

The Craft Technology Group has a great in-progress project called Sewing Circuits in which they are trying to design "a construction kit and acompanying activities that will allow kids to learn about circuits through sewing. "

"Each kit contains a patch of fabric, a fabric switch, LEDs, a needle, conductive thread, and a battery. Participants in our workshops design images that incorporate the lights and switch, draw their designs with fabric markers and then sew the LEDs and switch to their patches, creating a simple circuit. The crafting activity can include working with materials like beads, felt and ribbons, and the kit can also be used to decorate personal artifacts like clothes, caps and bags."

While this sounds like it will be great for kids when it's done, they've also got a great tutorial on DIY electronics sewing that's great for us right now. If you have any ideas for projects with cloth-based components this is the place to start.

Insect Lab

Like a character from a William Gibson novel, Mike Libby of Insect Lab builds "customized insects":

Insect Lab is an artist operated studio that customizes real insects with antique watch parts and electronic components. Offering a variety of specimens that come in many shapes, sizes and colors; each specimen is individaully designed and hand- assembled, each is one of a kind and unique.

I like the combination of gooey wetware with pristine/precise clockwork. Plus the Frivolous Victorian Luxury aesthetic is always a good bet, especially when given a cyberpunk twist like this.

(via Make)

Moonwalking Shoes

Moonwalkers is a great little project by Andrew Schneider, a student in Tome Igoe's Networked Objects class at NYU ITP. Schneider used two old sneakers, some guitar cables, a Nestle Quick box, Arduino, and MAX/MSP to make shoes that control the playback of Michael Jackson's Bad. A photoresistor in the bottom of each shoe lets MAX/MSP start, stop, and slow down the music depending on how far off the ground the soles of Schneider's shoes are.

The end result is that the only way to get the song to play continuously is to actually moonwalk (which Schneider does quite well), making for a great match between the media and the hardware controlling it.

US Invader and Pac Sweden

Swedish artist Vuk Cosik was a member of the groundbreaking net.art group who were amongst the first to explore computer (and especially) video game aesthetics. The best net.art work combines the conceptual complexity of 'serious' gallery art with a high level of fluency with computer and internet technology and culture.

Cosik's current series of national flags rendered as 8-bit video games is no exception. They somehow manage to point out the iconic quality of these video game images, deflate the self-importance of patriotic symbols, and comment on different attributes of national identity such as military superiority all simultaneously.

For more examples, checkout we-make-money-not-art's flickr 'vuk' tag.

The Antikythera Mechanism

Recovered from a Roman shipwreck at the turn of the last century, this bronze and wood device turned out to be a complex computer for calculating the relative position of the sun, the moon and the planet built by the ancient Greeks in the second century BC. According the the New Zeland Herald, on its finding:

"the device was evidently an instrument of some sort because it used a complicated set of gears to move a series of concentric wheels and pointers which appeared to predict the movements of astronomical objects.

However, the scientists were surprised to find that the machine was in fact a sophisticated analogue computer that acted as a long-term calendar for predicting lunar and solar eclipses as well as the movements of the planets."

The most amazing part of the story is that the Mechnaism's function was still discernible after having spent 2000 years submerged under 40+ meters of water. Is there anything you've made that could survive something like that? Is there something you could design and build that might be able to?

Face-mounted Lucid Dreaming Mask

This one's almost too straight out of a cyberpunk story to actually be believable. Some kid has designed, built, and put up a how-to on a device that causes its wearer to have lucid dreams:

"When I first started reading about lucid dreaming, I found that some companies had created expensive pieces of technology aimed at increasing your likelihood of having a lucid dream when you wear it to sleep. I wanted one, but at the price of $200 they did not look so promising.

Thus, I decided to go in search of how to make my own lucid dreaming mask."

Basically, the device is a bit of headgear that keeps a pair of LEDs pointed right at your eyes. Its PIC waits a few hours after you've fallen asleep and then starts flashing the lights rhythmically. The idea is to wake you up just enough to give you control of the dream.

Great use of just a tiny little bit of tech to accomplish a good lump of self-experimentation.

(via Make)

Frank Lloyd Wright in Half Life 2

Someone's used the Half-Life engine to create a tour of probably the single most famous american architectural landmark: Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater:



(YouTube link)

Found via City of Sound who has some interesting insight on the subject.

Have you ever built anything in a digital world? Seems like a more and more important skill for the aspiring computerkrafstman these days. . .

Self-clone

Artist Bert Simmons is using digital modeling and paper craft to "clone" himself:

"Since a while I am in my midlife crisis, thinking a lot about the purpose of my life, what will remain and things like that. Since I don't have a specific talent to make my mark nor even managed to arrange some kids to reflect my existence or even have a beloved one that will never forget me I guess I am just one of many who just will be forgotten..That sucks, but instead of endulging my self into depression I desperatly started looking for a solution and I came up with this idea..."

He's got pretty detailed step-by-step instructions about how he did it on his website. Useful for anyone intersted in printing for 3d assembly.

WATSCHENDISKURS ("Face-slapping discourse")

WATSCHENDISKURS, or "face-slapping discource" is another project by Uli Winters, one of the artists behind the previously discussed Byte. This time Winters is collaborating with Frank Fietzek on a project for Art Bots, "an international art exhibition for robotic art and art-making robot". Here's the story:

"The two puppets of WATSCHENDISKURS ("Face-slapping discourse") are involved in a discussion about language theory. Like in many a real life discussion they pick their phrases randomly from a pool of more or less witty statements on the topic of language including Wittgenstein-Quotes and Russian weather proverbs. From time to time this discussion gets pretty emotional, and at a point where words no longer seem to be the right tool of convincing the other one, the frog and the cat lose their temper. A slap in the face stops the opponent and gives way for another intellectual excursus about the different layers of speech."

According to the artists, WATSCHENDISKURS is "controlled by microcontrolers, connected to a Director-program."

Byte

Here's another great project from the archives of the Prix Ars Electronica. Created by Christopher Ebener and Uli Winters, Byte puts an absurd spin on the idea of a network attack:

"The purpose of our project is to breed a specialized mouse population for attacking computer networks, which would be able to paralyze these in the briefest amount of time by destroying the cables. . .Little imagination is required to see how easy it would be to have these kinds of animals infiltrate the sensitive centers of information power and the devastating results this infiltration could have. According to the same principle, it would be equally simple to transform other creatures, for instance ants causing short circuits in computers, into dangerous weapons in the information war."

Airacuda

Airacuda is a remote controlled, pneumatically driven fish currently on display at ars electronica:

"The Airacuda moves smoothly and almost noiselessly through the water: In design, shape, and kinetics it follows its biological model.

Electronics and pneumatics are hidden within its waterproof head and control the S-shaped movements of the tail fin via two fluidic muscles. Two further muscles are used for steering.

The fin consists of an alternating traction and pressure edge, which are connected via frames. If an edge is pressurised, the geometrical structure curves automatically against the direction of the influencing force. It sounds complicated, but it is actually a simple principle, with which the fish can display the full swinging power of its fins in the water. This structure is called the Fin Ray Effect."

The Telegarden

Here's a retro project. In 1995, a team of artists, technicians, and gardners built an installation at the ars electronica museum in austria that used a funky new technology called the "World Wide Web". The installation was titled, The Telegarden:

"The TeleGarden is an art installation that allows web users to view and interact with a remote garden filled with living plants. Members can plant, water, and monitor the progress of seedlings via the tender movements of an industrial robot arm."

(via Tom Igoe)

Aram Bartholl: Maps

German artist Adam Bartholl, creator of the First Person Shooter Glasses I blogged earlier, has just premiered a new project called Map, which brings those red Google Maps location markers to life:

The web interface of Google Maps uses small graphical icons to show location related search results on a map in an alphabetical order. On each new search ten red markers (A - J) known from the analogue world find their new position automatically within milliseconds. Interestingly each marker and even the speech bubbles with further information do cast a shadow on the map and satellite image. While zooming in the map the pixel size of the markers on the screen always stay at the same size. But if their size is seen in relation to their environment they shrink while the user does zoom in the map.
This effect corresponds exactly to the phenomenon of Mr. Turtur, the illusionary giant of the children fantasy novel “Jim Button and Luke the Engine Driver“ written by Michael Ende.

The size of the rebuilt red Marker in reality corresponds to the size of a marker in the web interface in max zoom factor of the map.

Here's a video of the marker's installation from YouTube:



For further reading, check out the Gizmodo profile on Bartholl.

(via coin-operated)

J.R. Haddock

Artist JR Haddock makes digital art whose concepts are as compelling as its craft is rough. For example his series of "Screenshots":

"a series of drawings from an isometric perspective, in the style of a computer game. The subject of each drawing is the image, or images, that created a popular cultural event. Historical events (like the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the Lorraine Motel) are used interchangeably with fictionalized events (like the picnic scene from The Sound of Music)."

Specifically, Haddock comingles depictions of famous violent events -- often involving real and traumatizing public images of death, like the Columbine Murders (above), the car crash killing Diana Spencer and Dodi Fayed, and the bodies of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman -- with movie images from The Godfather, 12 Angry Men, and The Sound of Music that touch on similar subjects: courtrooms, shootings, etc.

This juxtaposition, combined with the imperfect facture of Haddock's recreations and the dated nature of his stylistic referent (how many people under the age of 25 have even ever seen the Leisure Suit Larrys and Kings Quests that these imitate?), makes for a disturbing, confusing, and lasting impression.

Similar things could be said for Haddock's series of Internet Sex Photos, or "ISPs", which consisted of low res images taken from online porn with the figures roughly photoshopped out of them:

Alex Dragulescu

Romanian multimedia artist Alex Dragulescu works largely in the realm of data visualization. Many of his pieces involve the artistic transformation of spam, like my favorite: Spam Architecture (picture above).

"The images from the Spam Architecture series are generated by a computer program that accepts as input, junk email. Various patterns, keywords and rhythms found in the text are translated into three-dimensional modeling gestures."

High quality prints from Spam Architecture series are available for sale here. Another similar project of his, Extrusions in C Major, takes musical scores as the data to be visualized. Here's the output from Trio C-Major for Piano, Violin, and Cello by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart:



But maybe Dragulescu's most compellinng project to date is Blogbot:

"Blogbot is a software agent in development that generates experimental graphic novels based on text harvested from web blogs.

Blogbot crawls the web and takes snapshots of web blogs related to a user-specified theme. Then, based on the harvested text, a dynamic collage of images and strings is generated using a keyword-matching algorithm. Later versions will use computational linguistics approaches to derive meaning from text."

You can "play" the first novel generated by Blogbot here

Super Mario Clouds Tutorial

Tech art pioneer Cory Arcangel has an amazing tutorial on his website describing the process by which he made one of his most famous works: Super Mario Clouds, which consists of a modified version of the Nintendo game, Super Mario Bros. with everything removed except the background clouds.

In the tutorial, Cory provides links to the actual downloadable ROM itself as well as detailed instructions for the soldering/hardware work required to install it. If you've never seen assembly code up close and personal -- or simply never from the inside of a Nintendo game -- here's your chance. It goes something like this:

.inesprg 2 ; 32k program memory
.ineschr 1 ; 8k chr graphics
.inesmir 1 ; standard mirroring
.inesmap 0 ; NROM mapper....aka no mapper...

.org $8000 ; 32 k cartridge

clouds_start: ; include cloud hex file
.dw clouds_start_addr
clouds_start_addr:
.incbin "clouds.hex"

Cory's walkthrough is cogent and clear as well. In fact, the whole "Things I Made" section of his website is a treasure trove for anyone interested in inspiration or practical advice for making this kind of art. Good stuff!

Payphone Warriors

Payphone Warriors is an NYU ITP-style Big Game in the tradition of Pac Manhattan:

"You and your teammates must dash across the blocks around Washington Square Park in a bid control as many payphones as possible. You simply make a call from a payphone to the game system and enter your team number to capture a phone. For each minute your team controls that phone the team scores one point. Grab more phones for more points."

Nice use of the increasingly forgotten, yet omnipresent, technical infrastructure of the payphone network.

First Person Shooter

First Person Shooter is a project by Aram Bartholl, that brings the magic of violent video games in to real life:

"First Person Shooter is the definition for a computer game genre which is played in the first person view while shooting is the main action of the game. A typical element of the game is the virtual arm of the player. Pointing with a weapon to the center of the screen this arm stays in the foreground all the time. The Object First Person Shooter is a card and a do it yourself set. The result of cutting and glueing all parts of FPS is a pair of glasses with the arm and weapon visible from out- and inside."

First Person Shooter on YouTube:




Get the full-sized image to make your own.

Wildlife

Wildlife is an urban art project by Karolina Sobecka:

"At night projections from moving cars are shone on the buildings downtown. Each car projects a video of a wild animal. The animal's movements are programmed to correspond to the speed of the car: as the car moves, the animal runs along it speeding up and slowing down with the car, as the car stops, the animal stops also."

Checkout Sobecka's homepage for other neat projects as well.