news-controlled rice cooker

a rice cooker that tracks Internet news about genetically modified rice. for each new report about GM rice, a quarter cup of rice is dispensed into the cooker. when the cooker has enough rice for a meal, water is added automatically, the cooker is switched on & an email is sent out to inviting people to eat the rice.

the project is designed to create awareness to issues surrounding genetically modified organisms by producing excessive amounts of cooked rice & attempting to feed people with it.

see also news casualties as candy.

[link: mit.edu|via we-make-money-not-art.com]

Originally from information aesthetics
reBlogged by michael on Jan 18, 2007, 1:30AM

UmNyango Project

Women Fight for Rights with Cell Phones

In South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province, a project is helping rural women use mobile phones to report on violations of their human rights as well as to assert other constitutional rights. OhMyNews reports.

“… The UmNyango Project will use SMS technology for rural women and men to access information and report on incidences of violence against women and children, as well as violations of women’s right to land. Through simple text messaging, women will be able to report any violation of their constitutional rights. The project will also enable women to produce their own radio programs. The programs will be made available to local community radio stations, and distributed over the internet as “podcasts.”

“This is the first time in KwaZulu Natal that we know of, where SMS technology has been used to directly empower women in this way. What makes the project unique is that women will be able to assert their constitutional rights using accessible and sustainable technology,” said Anil Naidoo.”

From Women Fight for Rights with Cell Phones by Shibuya Epiphany [posted by Emily Turrettini on Smart Mobs]

Originally
from networked_performance

by jo


reBlogged

by michael

on Jan 17, 2007, 1:50PM

Sleepwalkers

In what could be the most-seen show in MoMA‘s history, Doug Aitken’s “Sleepwalkers” opened last night on the coldest night of the year in NYC so far this season. Sleepwalkers is a nighttime installation comprised of continuous sequences of film scenes projected onto facades that transform West 53rd and 54th streets into a vast outdoor multiplex. Turning MoMA inside-out by bringing public art to the exterior walls of the new iconic building for the first time, the project is a joint effort between MoMA and non-profit Creative Time, famous for enlivening the city with public
art. It was challenging to be
outside to watch the premiere, but it was
well worth it.

Filmed in New York, five interweaving vignettes follow each character—a bicycle messenger (played by Ryan Donowho, a drummer that Aitkin found in the subway, who’s now appeared on “The O.C.”), an electrician who fixes neon signs in Times Square (Seu Jorge of Life Aquatic and City of God fame), a postal worker (Chan Marshall aka Cat Power), a businessman (Donald Sutherland), and an office worker (Tilda Swinton)—through a night in New York. As they move from the solitude of their personal lives (waking up, drinking
coffee or juice, leaving their apartments) to their workplace and unexpected
encounters, the interconnected narratives emerge.

The eight gigantic projections, averaging
30’ x 60’, engage with the architecture in a way that I have never experienced
before. You can see two of the projections from an adjoining street and walking towards the museum gives you a little clue of what’s in store. In the sculpture garden (open to the public for free during
the project) you see five projections at the same time—three characters and
two ambient projections featuring landscapes including clouds and sunrises.
Much of the imagery is in sync, i.e. when Ryan Donowho gets on his bike,
Donald Sutherland climbs into his always waiting town car and Tilda Swinton
hails a cab. A surprising treat is how other buildings and the museum itself reflect
multiply the projections, immersing
viewers in the cinematic experience.

Winner of the International Prize at the Venice Biennale and director of music videos for Interpol and Fatboy Slim, the artist’s first large-scale public artwork in the United States challenges viewers perceptions of public space. Aitken calls the show a “silent film for the 21st century.”
It will be projected every evening from 5-10 pm for 28 consecutive days, from 16 January-12 February 2007. To see more images, get more info and watch a trailer go here.

A few blocks away, Aitken created a one minute film, New Day, which will run once every hour in the middle of Times Square on the Astrovision Screen. New Day also depicts the constant flow of life that is New York.
You can hear commentaries on your cell phone, by calling +01 408 794 0886

With contributions from Evan Orensten and Tim Yu.

Originally
from Cool Hunting

by Wendy Dembo


reBlogged

by michael

on Jan 18, 2007, 12:15AM

Lifecycle Building Challenge

If you’re into sustainability and a real challenge, this competition is calling your name. The Lifecycle Building Challenge, presented by the U.S. EPA and its partners, are seeking lifecycle designs from both professionals and students (teams are welcome) in the following categories:

Building: an entire building
Component: a single building assembly or connector
Service: a tool, system, practice, or method

Lifecycle building is the design of building materials, components, information systems, and management practices to create buildings that facilitate and anticipate future changes to and eventual adaptation or dismantling for recovery of all systems, components, and materials.

…

Originally
from core77.com's design blog

reBlogged

by michael

on Jan 18, 2007, 4:08AM

Stuart and Your Gallery

If you missed the launch last year of powerful art collector Charles Saatchi’s foray into the online networking, don’t worry you are not the only one. We only recently learned of the growing phenomena that are the Saatchi Gallery’s two online spaces for artists, Your Gallery and Stuart. Realizing the potential of tapping into the MySpace format, Saatchi started Your Gallery to provide a free online platform for artists. A New York Times article last month reported that since launching in May the site has, “contributions from about 20,700 artists, including 2000 pieces of video art. Everything there is for sale, with neither the buyer nor the seller paying a cent to any dealer or other middleman. About 800 new artists have been signing up each week.”

Capitalizing on this instantly successful format—that demonstrates artists’ need for self promotion and to communicate with other artists—Saatchi launched a sister site in November called Stuart (student art) to cater for the worldwide student art community. The result? In one month 1300 students created web pages for themselves there. They now have upwards of 6 million visitors a day.

It’s not only the students and professional artists who are benefiting from these online galleries, Saatchi himself is fascinated by the opportunity to see so many artists’ work from all over the world in one place. He says he spends hours each day looking at work on both sites, though for now he is leaving it to others to snap up the creations. As the rest of the art industry, dealers, gallerists, museum directors and collectors, gets involved, Saatchi is just enjoying the spectacle.

Originally
from Cool Hunting

by Leonora Oppenheim


reBlogged

by michael

on Jan 11, 2007, 4:24PM

Seeking examples of design informed by user research…

…but not just any user research. A while back I posted some thoughts on how user research might begin to take a more complex and therefore more real view of people. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about how to go beyond tasks and goals and incorporate meaning, culture, and context. I’ve also talked about this at a few conferences as well. Every time I bring it up, there’s a lot of discussion and general agreement. I think on some level this just feels right, especially to those of us who have made careers out of being advocates for users.

But how much evidence do we have that this really makes a difference in design outcomes? When have more nuanced or more complex understandings of users been instrumental in creating successful designs?

One good example of this might be Ziba’s work for Lenovo. They clearly moved beyond the task/goal framework and had a very successful design as a result.

I have a few other examples like this, many internal to AP, but would really like to find more. If you now of any, please post them in the comments. And please give as much detail as you can.  What did you do? Why?  How did it make a difference? We will all be able to benefit from these either for improving our craft or just making our case to clients or managers.

Share This

Originally
from Adaptive Path

by Todd W


reBlogged

by michael

on Jan 11, 2007, 3:29AM

The new Pepsi can and old marketing orthodoxy

We learned today that the Pepsi can is changing.  Cie Nicholson,
Pepsi’s chief marketing officer, says the Pepsi can will now change
every 3 to 4 weeks.  There will be 35 new designs this year, with more
to come next.

The Wall Street Journal speculates that the new designs will help Pepsi
"connect with the sort attention span of teens and young adults."  And
this is partly right.  Attention spans are now brief.  Familiarity
comes faster.  Boredom descends ever more quickly. 

But the more pressing issue is sustaining Pepsi’s brand visibility
in a turbulent culture.  Stillness and consistency were once a virtue.
The old style marketers insisted on keeping things simple and repeating
themselves endlessly.  Sameness was the name of the game.

New school marketing says the brand must meet change with change.  It
must stream with dynamism to stay in touch with dynamism.  Thirty-five
designs in a year.  This is precisely what the new school of marketing
has in mind. 

The new can will help.  But by itself it is not enough.  Pepsi is going
to have to build in dynamic tastes.  Now this really contradicts
marketing orthodoxy, but I am prepared to wager that Pepsi will be
varying its formula by the end of the decade. 

The old marketing is built into the big brands so deeply that it is
almost impossible to see.  This is the challenge for the brand stewards
inside the corporation, inside the agency, inside the consulting
world.  How quickly can we change?   And how many of the now great
brands will end up pulled down to the ocean floor by the
weight of orthodoxy.

You think I’m kidding.  Pepsi lives in a declining category and it is still possible for the WSJ to offer this risk analysis:

By changing designs so frequently, Pepsi runs the risk of confusing or
alienating consumers who rely on familiar visual cues to find their
favorite brands among a change sea of products, some marketing experts
say. 

Ah, if only doing nothing were still an option

References

McKay, Betsy.  2007. Pepsi’s New Marketing Dance: Can Can.  The Wall Street Journal.  January 12, 2007.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Gary Beene for the image.  For his excellent website on Pepsi history go here. 

Originally
from This Blog Sits at the

by Grant McCracken


reBlogged

by michael

on Jan 12, 2007, 11:56PM

tactile vest display

a wirelessly controlled tactile display, consisting of a 4 × 4 array of vibrating motors that is mounted on a waist band or on the forearm. this tactile display can be used as a navigation aid outdoors, as experiments have proved that 8 different vibrotactile patterns can be interpreted as directional (e.g. stop, look left, run, proceed faster or proceed slower) or instructional cues (e.g. “raise arm horizontally”, “raise arm vertically”, “hop”) with almost perfect accuracy.

see also tactile sports vest & tactile compass belt.

[link: newscientisttech.com & ieee.org (pdf) springerlink.com|via boingboing.net|thnkx Zac]

Originally
from information aesthetics

reBlogged

by michael

on Jan 10, 2007, 3:38AM

Pornography and Technology

My notes from Tina Lorenz’ talk at 23C3 in Berlin: Pornography and Technology.

I wanted to comment on what the presentation was like in general but Polas has done it already and i can only agree with just everything he has written (and will therefore remove from the title of my talks any term that might put off the audience, such as “art” or, well… “art”). I enjoyed the talk a lot. I just wondered if there was any point in blogging it because the content looks a bit like a wikipedia entry on, say, the History of erotic depictions but that doesn’t make it less fun, at least for me. ‘k, now the talk:

1. History of media until the birth of “modern porn”

Porn emerges with the first ability to abstract. Representation of sex first created for religion and later for arousal. Porn becomes mainstream only when the media is cheap enough to distribute sex representations widely. The cheaper the media the more porn copies can be distributed.

Around 1450, Johannes Gutenberg invented movable type printing. Shortly after that erotic literature started to appear even if it was illegal to distribute or even to own it. The situation was quite different in Asia, they have a longer tradition of erotic representation and literature.

The first porn engravings appeared in the 16th Century. I Modi was a kind of Kama Sutra, an illustrated book of 16 “postures” or sexual positions. Their objective was to arouse but it was also a social commentary on the situation of Catholic Italy at the time.

In 1839, Louis Daguerre invented the Daguerreotype, an early type of photograph in which the image is exposed directly onto a mirror-polished surface of silver bearing a coating of silver halide particles deposited by iodine vapor. It was the first commercially viable photographic process. However the material used was very heavy and required very long time of poses for the model of a portrait. No possibility to take any “action shot.”

The realism of photography made the authorities quite uneasy. So erotic photos or nude portraits were only authorised as “painter’s aids.”

The only way to reproduce a daguerreotype was to photograph them again which made them rare and priceless. Besides, they were quite fragile. The first erotic photographs and the first experimenters in stereo photography utilized daguerreotypes.

Etude

Stereoscopy made the technology more popular. Only problem was the rigid poses of the models.

William Fox Talbot patented processes which made it easier to reproduce photography and thus spread images to the masses. One of the patents shortened the posing time.

During 19th Century, the Postal Service became more reliable and safer to use internationally. Porn producers could then send erotic pictures to clients worldwide.

The Kinetoscope, developed by William Kennedy Laurie Dickson between 1889 and 1892, suddenly gave some movements to these images of erotic scenes. This early motion picture exhibition device was designed for short reels to be viewed individually through the window of a cabinet housing its components. It created the illusion of movement by conveying a strip of perforated film bearing sequential images over a light source with a high-speed shutter. Viewers could listen to the soundrack through headphones. It was developed as an attraction for fun fairs.

Kinetoscope and Carmencita

While reading the wikipedia entry for the kinetoscope, i found out that shortly after its launch came the first recorded instance of motion picture censorship. The film in question showed a performance by the Spanish dancer Carmencita who “communicated an intense sexuality across the footlights that led male reporters to write long, exuberant columns about her performance.” When Kinetoscope movie of her dance, shot at the Black Maria in mid-March 1894 was screened in the New Jersey resort town Asbury Park, the town’s founder, James A. Bradley was “so shocked by the glimpse of Carmencita’s ankles and lace that he complained to Mayor Ten Broeck. The showman was thereupon ordered to withdraw the offending film, which he replaced with Boxing Cats.”

Lorenz later explained that early movies were not an attraction on their own. They were part of a circus show or screened at the end of a theatre play representation. Reels had to be bought, there wasn’t any effective rental system.

The first erotic films date back to the beginning of the last century. Given the usually clandestine nature of the filming and distribution, many of them are lost. Most of what remains has been archived at the Kensey Institute for Sex Research. Europeans were pioneers in erotic films. She mentioned the first German erotic movie: Am Abend in 1910. Germans became quickly known for their fetish movies. And France “of course” (that’s how she put it) was fast to jump on the erotic movie bandwagon.

The first erotic movies were also called “stag films”. Their main audience was made of men who belonged to closed societies. As the entry fees to belong to those private societies were high, only rich men got to watch the films. The films were also shown in brothels to arouse punters. The stag films didn’t have any real plot. The novelty of seeing naked women was enough to make the gents loose their head.

The first erotic movies were better produced than shooted which might indicate that they were done by professional producers from Hollywood who wanted to make extra money on the side. Narrative elements were then introduced to eliminate repetition.

Erotic movies reveal a lot about the culture that produced them.

For example, Free Ride, believed to be the oldest surviving porn film made in the US (and haha! directed by Will B. Hard and A. Wise Guy), was made at a time when cars started to be “affordable”, they were a symbol of freedom.

In times of war, while women were working in factories and their men were soldiers, erotic movies depicted women as passive and submissive. They looked bored during the intercourse.

The introduction of sound allowed for the development of more complex plots. “Yes, there ARE plots in porn!” explained Lorenz.

The narrative brought even more morale and references to the culture of the day. According to Lorenz, pornography has always been more interesting than sex to get to know about our world.

1968: Denmark is the first country to legalize pornography. Copies were quickly smuggled out of the country.
1969: First sex expo “Sex 69″
1970: first modern porn, Mona, the Virgin Nymph that was the first porn film with a plot that received a general theatrical release in the U.S.

Porn wanted to go mainstream and merge with the Hollywood industry. So they increased the budget, put more effort in writing better plots and hired professional technicians.

2. Definition of pornography

Difficult to define. What is obscene and perverse for one person, say a feminist, might be acceptable for a philosopher. A common criteria is that porn seeks to arouse customers. But then again, what is arousing for you might be disgusting for me.

Lorenz believes that porn has to fill some technical criteria:
– porn is media-bound. It’s all about the layer of abstraction;
– porn is fictional, imaginative, iconic. Porns are staged, have a scenario. Grey area: house porn;
– porn is produced for an audience. If my friend organises an orgy and films, edits and credits it but doesn’t show it to anyone else than the “actors” and their close friends, the degree of abstraction is lessened. But if the video is uploaded online and seen by net surfers who don’t know any of the actors, then it becomes a porn movie. With an informed audience, it can even become art.

VHS vs Betamax. An urban legend wants that the format war was won by VHS because of porn. It fact the battle might have been won by something as simple as the length of the tape (2 hours for VHS and 1 hour for Betamax.) Porn adopted VHS to lower production costs. In its quest to go mainstream, the porn industry wanted to make feature films and thuus needed longer tapes. VHS allowed people to watch porn at home. They didn’t have to face the humiliation of buying tickets to see a smut movie.

The rise of the internet has allowed for an even larger and swifter distribution.

Stats: 60% porn in p2p now. In 2006, about 1% of random sample websites were sexy.

3. Teledildonics and Interactive Porn

Second Life: avatars programmed to have virtual sex. Sex in Second Life happens through a combination of poses, animations, scripts, and typing. The main ingredient is known as pose balls, objects with scripts in them that trigger a user’s avatar to play certain animations or poses. For sex, poseballs are placed close together, with titles above them that say the position the user will take.

Just out when she made the talk: Wiibrator, a Python application that interfaces the Wii’s Wiimote and the PS2’s Trancevibrator.

Lorenz concluded by saying that we’ll see more and more of these gadgets that mediate virtual and real life sexual activities. “And remember, porn is not bad!”

Originally
from we make money not art

by Regine


reBlogged

by michael

on Jan 2, 2007, 8:00AM

Fictional ruins from fictional worlds

[Image: Science Building, London, England, 2003, by Carl Zimmerman. From Landmarks of Industrial Britain].

In two beautifully realized and conceptually fascinating projects, Canadian artist Carl Zimmerman creates “architectural utopias, fictional ruins from fictional worlds.”

[Image: Archives, Leeds, England, 2002, by Carl Zimmerman. From Landmarks of Industrial Britain].

Zimmerman’s Landmarks of Industrial Britain, for instance, is “a photographic series of fictional public buildings derived from small scale architectural maquettes.”
As the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia explains, the series “envisages a worker’s state in Britain at the time of the Industrial Revolution.”
Zimmerman himself writes that his work preys upon “the apparent willingness of the viewer to accept a fabricated past.” In the process, the lost industrial utopia he’s created – a false history convincingly rendered through the use of immense landscapes and architectural monumentalism – comes to look like a world designed entirely by Etienne-Louis Boullée.

[Image: Museum, Birmingham, England, 2002, by Carl Zimmerman. From Landmarks of Industrial Britain].

Zimmerman’s earlier series, Lost Hamilton Landmarks (referring to Hamilton, Ontario), apparently kicked off the artist’s ongoing interest in “Greek and Roman [architectural] prototypes.” This “neo-classical architectural language,” Zimmerman writes, attains much of its aesthetic power by “appealing to state authority and to instinctual desires for permanence and stability, security, sense of place, or even to the desire for the guidance of a parent.”

[Image: Mount Hamilton Sanatorium, 1995, by Carl Zimmerman. From Lost Hamilton Landmarks].

Zimmerman thus uses the authoritative language of neo-classical architecture to help convince his audience that these buildings once actually existed – and that they now stand ruined somewhere, cavernous, sublime, and empty.

[Images: Mausoleum, Woodlawn Cemetary, 1996, and Mount Hamilton Hospital, 1996, by Carl Zimmerman. From Lost Hamilton Landmarks].

After all, these are not real buildings.

[Image: Public Baths, Manchester, England, 2000, by Carl Zimmerman. From Landmarks of Industrial Britain].

Quoting the justifiably enthusiastic reviewer Meredith Dault at some length:

[Carl Zimmerman] makes photographs of imagined architectural spaces. He builds models, photographs them, and then digitally manipulates the photographs, creating vast, impossible spaces. Sepia-toned and laid out flat on tables in the gallery space, the photographs read, at first glance, like historical documents – they feel very much like 19th century architectural engravings – until you realize they can’t be because they’re all dated in the present. A closer look reveals that the buildings are set in huge, almost surreal, bleak landscapes – their titles want you to believe, however, that these buildings are plunked down in ordinary cities like Manchester and Leeds.

Zimmerman’s show at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia appears to be over – but if it is still up, I would strongly recommend stopping by. Zimmerman’s models were on display alongside the photographs, and the exhibition sounds like it was well worth seeing.
What seems particularly interesting, to me, is that Zimmerman achieves a sense of near-total ruin, but he does so not through the depiction of structural collapse – he simply shows us grandiosity and silence.

[Image: War Memorial, Leeds, England, 2004, by Carl Zimmerman. From Landmarks of Industrial Britain].

If you’re feeling well-heeled, meanwhile, consider buying yourself some full-size prints of these images; you can do so at the frankly named buynewart. You can also see more deeply colored versions of Zimmerman’s work by visiting Toronto’s Stephen Bulger Gallery.

(Thanks, John Devlin! See also BLDGBLOG’s earlier look at the work of Oliver Boberg and Thomas Demand).

Originally
from BLDGBLOG

by Geoff Manaugh


reBlogged

by michael

on Jan 4, 2007, 7:34PM