This happened #6

I'm hoping to grab a ticket to This happened #6 at the Southbank Centre in London on the 15th November. This happened is series of talks and seminars in which interction designers/interactive artists present concepts and project productions.

At this event:

United Visual Artists
Markus Kison
Troika
rAndom International

are all making presentations...

The project was started by Chris O'Shea of Pixelsumo, Joel Gethin Lewis and Andreas Muller of Nanika.

Japanese Graffiti

Cool Hunting have posted news on Remo Camerota's new book 'Graffiti Japan'.
Remo's website is here and this is Cool Hunting...

Interactive Art at the Science Gallery

After an enjoyable day in Limerick at the Tweak Festival (article below), I was treated to some more interactive art/installations in Dublin. On Friday, 19th September (19 - 21st September), The Science Gallery opened ArtBots, an event exhibiting robotic art and art making robots. The exhibition boasted 15 unique and varying exhibits, ranging from a rubix-cube solving robot, who successfully solved the puzzle in under 40 seconds, to a 20-foot long, sound generating, spring steel band that emulates the onset of a storm.

"Once purely cerebral experiences are transformed into tangible experiences" - 'What It Is Without The Hand That Wields It'.

A personal favourite was Riley Harmon's 'What It Is Without The Hand That Wields It'. This installation consisted of a Counter-Strike server linked via a micro controller to blood-transfusion bags containing fake blood. When a player is killed in the game, a signal is transferred to electronic solenoid valves in a particular bag, and blood is spilled onto the floor. What I like about Riley's work is that he makes the gaming experience more tangible to a player or viewer. If a player kills, or is killed, they are often so far removed from reality that the player doesn't think twice the actual act of killing an, albeit computer generated, character. Riley's work makes for literal bloodshed. I spoke to him briefly at the event and was stunned to hear that he received negative feedback from the computer game industry who claimed that his work was 'pretentious'. I can't say I agree. I can understand why computer game manufacturers might be concerned with people suggesting the ethics of their publications are in doubt, but I don't believe that this project is intended to highlight moral issues. I think it's more based on heightening the experience of the viewer or player, engaging other senses, making it more physical.


'Telematic Drum Circle'

Another interactive art work I'd like to mention was by electronic artist Byeong Sam Jeon. His work, 'Telematic Drum Cirlce', consisted of a number of drum and percussion instruments, manned by pneumatic air control valve robots, which would react in real time to a user's control via the web. Telematic Drum Cirlce allowed internet users to collaborate via this website to create and partake in an improvised, online music collaboration.



From Wednesday 24th - Sunday 28th September, Trinity's MSc Multimedia Systems hosted their graduate exhibition for 2008. The event

My choice of the lot was an interactive, touch screen installation named 'Drawings of a Floating World', pictured above, by Tara Carrigy, Néill O'Dwyer, Colin O'Sullivan and Scott Wade. Made of 3 infra-red touch screen interfaces, the installation surrounded the viewer creating a truly immersive environment. The graphic work was created using Java-based Processing and the viewer interacted by brushing an optical-fiber paintbrush over the screen, triggering reactive animations. One of my favourite parts of these installations is watching the public take part in the installation and this work succeeded in engaging an enthusiastic crowd. Information on the event can be seen here.

It was a nice finish to a rather Interactive Art packed week.

Tweak: Interactive Art & Music Festival

I managed to get the chance to make it to the Tweak Festival held in Limerick City last Friday. Tweak is a festival dedicated to promoting the use of technology as an artistic tool in society, aiming to explore its "social, economic, psychological, aesthetic and functional" potentials. The event ran from Monday, 22nd September through to the 25th. The festival held workshops, talks and live events across the University of Limerick, Limerick School of Art and Design and Limerick City club, Trinity Rooms.

The event was organised by Limerick based, MSc Interactive Media and Music Technology graduate, Nora O’ Murchú, who is now researching her Phd in the same field. An interview with her can be read here.

The event boasted a line up consisting of France Cadet, Digital Slaves, Area10Media La, John Bowers and Limerick based Soundings amongst others.

On the Friday I attended morning (ColourSound & Desaximundi) and afternoon (Digital Slaves) workshops on how to use VVVV, an interactive art and video synthesis tool, commonly used for live musical visuals and interactive art installations. VVVV provides a higher level of abstraction from coding. The user manipulates nodes, which become interconnected, working as input parameters and return values - eliminating the need to explicitly write code. It would be similar to what we would expect to see in a 3D packages node hierarchy and I'm guessing that this is how Softimage XSI 7's ICE programming technology works.

The event seemed to have gone down well. The workshop scheduled for the Wednesday; Michael Gurevich and Peter Bennett's Designing Stylistic Interactions was booked up and both morning and afternoon events I attended boasted promising numbers. O'Murchú didn't commit to future events, but Tweak succeeded in more than just getting the ball rolling. The Interactive Art scene in Ireland seems to be taking off and it would be a shame for this to be left as a one off event. I think it would be hugely beneficial to get more people participating and get a core interactive art community established across Ireland which could help promote and support similar events taking place in cities around the country.

Above photograph of interactive installation by Peggy Sylopp - http://www.generative.org/
VVVV on Vimeo

My Flickr Updated

I've finally managed to update my Flickr page here...

I came across some street art by an artist by the name of 'Eelus', who's work can be found on South William St and just off George's Quay... His two-tone stencil work is very reminiscent of another prominent street artist...
Also up is more lovely Maser work on Andrew's Lane Theatre...he also did work on the interior which is worth a gawk. And the "You Are Beautiful" stencils which can be seen all over the place...

Nintendo outprofit Goldman

"According to calculations by the Financial Times, the average employee at Japanese video games maker Nintendo is on track to earn more for their company this year than than the average Goldman Sachs employee did in 2007, the investment bank's best ever year." - Financial Times

I came across this in Tuesday's (16th Sept '08) Financial Times. To my amusement, they report that Nintendo's employees will potentially create $1.6million per employee head, compared to Goldman Sachs, where each employee are looking to accumulate $1.24million per head.

Nintendo are enjoying the results that investing in widening their consumer scope with the Wii and DS and these profits show that. However, while the the Goldman Sachs average employee took home $626,000, the average Nintendo programmer took home $90,900, with the rest going to shareholders.

METAMORPHOSE 08

I came across this article in trusty PINGMAG.JP.
Metamorphose is a Techno and Art Fesitival in Shizuoka, Japan, just south west of Tokyo. This years festival included a wide range of reactive and interactive light installations to complement the rave environment. The concert visuals look amazing and the lighting displays at the event seem incredible too. I'd love to have seen it first hand. I looked into the use of visuals as a part of my thesis and Final Year Project. That demo can be seen further below. Above is the link to the pingmag article and this is a link to the festival's myspace page.

The above photograph is taken from the festival photos on the myspace page...

Design VS Programming

I'm currently working on an essay which will look at the role of artists and programmers. Maeda, whose TED talk is above, was a professor at MIT's Medialab before joining the Rhode Island School of Design earlier this year. Maeda strongly believes that there is a shift in human's preference for HUMAN generated art, as opposed to technologically created material...this is the guy who supervised the creation of PROCESSING, the JAVA based interactive art software.

I'm sceptical that there will be a complete shun of technologically created work, but agree that the development of work will become more balanced between art and technology.

It will be posted next week, hopefully.

Ubisoft takeover of Hybride

"We've set ourselves a goal of creating angrossing, extended game experiences for our audiences. That means taking our game properties and extending them to other media, including television, film books and more"

- Rob Cooper, Managing Director,Ubisoft UK

October 08's 3D World Magazine reported on Ubisoft's acquisition of Canadian based effects company, Hybride. Hybride are best known for their effects on both 2006's 300, and 2005's Sin City, comic book adaptions. Such an acquisition would make sense as VFX of film and gaming begin to naturally merge. There's a quote from Jenkins' 'Convergence Culture' about how in the shooting of The Matrix sequels,

"Perry's team logged four months of motion capture work with Jada Pinkett Smith, the actress who plays Niobe, and other member of The Matrix cast. All the movements and gestures were created by actual performers working on the set and were seen as extensions of their characterisations."

- David Perry, Electronic Arts.

This studio synergy "allowed them to import thousands of 'assets' from the film production into the game". 

I've taken particular interest in this as it could set up an ideal business structure for developing tight-knit transmedia storytelling opportunities. This seamless connection between computer game and film media can help create a ubiquitous franchise, reaching out to a particular fan-base or general public alike. 

10 Futuristic User Interfaces

Jack Schofield posted this link to Smashing Magazine where they displayed their ideas of 10 futuristic interfaces. Some really nice concepts. I especially like Ringo: Holographic user interface as I've become fascinated with the idea of taking computer generated effects off the screen and into the real world (Its referred to as Augmented Reality as opposed to Virtual Reality).

I found it surprising that Jeff Han's multi touch screen, as presented on TED below, didn't make it into the list. I'd have it at the top of the list...



I was lucky enough to get a demonstration of the Musion Eyeliner technology in London. Its actually the material technology and set up logistics that Musion actually offer, its not an interface in itself. Many of you would have seen this used for The Gorillaz' live show (Musion & Passion Pictures) with Madonna at the 2005 MTV European Music Awards in Lisbon.



...and this is one of my favourite projection displays from Alexander McQueen's 2006 fashion show created by Musion and Glassworks Ltd.



...and if I am going to mention Musion and McQueen's fashion show work, then Diesel's 2007 'Liquid Space' (Vizoo & DVein) from Florence is certainly worth a mention.