Auckland interactive

March 9, 2010 at 8:54 am
Filed under Architecture, Dynamic Environments, Interactive, Lighting

Auckland’s Ferry Building was transformed into a dynamic light canvas with “Night Lights,” a 5-day installation that invited viewers to add their hands, bodies, and mobile phones to the show. Creative agencies YesYesNo, The Church, Inside Out Productions, and Electric Canvas partnered to put on the show, sponsored by Telecom New Zealand in conjunction with its rebranding. The team projected a sequence of six scenes every hour onto the building’s five-story facade, then invited viewers to interact with the show by projecting their body movements onto the scenes. –P.M.K.

night lights from thesystemis on Vimeo.

Brain waves to produce light show of Olympic proportions

February 8, 2010 at 6:10 pm
Filed under Dynamic Environments, Human Interaction, Interactive, Lighting

“If you’re attending the Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, British Columbia this month, you’ll have the chance to transmit your brain waves across Canada. When they reach their destination, the province of Ontario, they’ll produce a custom light show on one of three prominent Ontario landmarks – presumably to the amazement of thousands of onlookers.” — A.M.

Kinetica with Jason Bruges

February 5, 2010 at 10:33 am
Filed under Interactive, Kinetic, Lighting, Media, Technology, Uncategorized

Jason Bruges’ light installations, interactive interventions, and placemaking projects sit somewhere between the worlds of architecture, art, and interaction design. One of Wallpaper magazine’s 10 “world-changing designers,” Bruges will be a keynote speaker at the 2010 SEGD Conference + Expo June 2-5 in Washington D.C. (Stay tuned for more details…)

In the meantime, Bruges is keeping himself busy with new projects including an Alexander Calder-inspired interactive light piece at Kinetica Art Fair in London. Kinetica is an exhibition of  electronic, robotic, sound, light, time-based, and interdisciplinary new media art. Bruges’ “Screen Cloud” recalls a Calder mobile, with 30 hanging screens that display changing content as they move. Each of the screens “understands” its orientation in relation to the other screens, demonstrating a concept called proprioception. — P.M.K.

Escaping Flatland

January 27, 2010 at 12:10 pm
Filed under Interactive, Technology

Tali Krakowsky sees poetry in the way that new technologies—interestingly, often driven by artistic rather than commercial endeavors—are allowing us to escape the confines of the computer screen. In her post as an Adobe guest blogger, she shows us a keyboard made out of water, a holographic gestural screen, and interactive artist Takahiro Matsuo’s Phantasm (pictured), an immersive installation of responsive butterflies choreographed by a glowing ball.

Through these lens, Krakowsky (designer of immersive environments and member of SEGD’s Board of Directors) continues to explore (in her words) “how interaction is evolving as it crawls out of the screen.” — P.M.K.

Sound Playground

January 27, 2010 at 11:55 am
Filed under Collaboration, Exhibit Design, Interactive, Lighting

Toronto-based interaction design firm, Aesthetec Studio, designed the electronics and interfaces for Sound Playground at the Connecticut Science Center. The interactive sculptures allow visitors to compose music. There are four colorful digital instruments: “a ‘rhythm’ sequencer with 64 touch-sensitive key controls, a ‘melody’ fret board with 13 touch-sensitive frets, ‘harmony’ wheels whose tops spin to make, well, harmony, and an upright bass. The exhibit is meant for several people to play together.” Project collaborators include:  Jeff Kennedy Associates and AV&C.

Find great work-in-progress pics on flickr. — S.N.

Sound Playground at Connecticut Science Center from Aesthetec Studio on Vimeo.

Technology crushes

January 21, 2010 at 9:18 am
Filed under Architecture, Interactive, Technology

Building as bar code?

Tali Krakowsky’s newest Creativity blog entry focuses on the allure of shiny new technology—and how it can temporarily blind us to the fact that the latest and greatest new things are often insubstantive and gimmicky.

She cites the digital facade on Japan’s new N Building as an example. The facade is a giant QR code that can be read by iPhones, revealing real-time graphics that appear to be superimposed on the building.

“It seems fancy and new but serves as a great reminder of what happens when we get too excited about technology and forget that our physical spaces last longer than an Esquire magazine issue,” says Krakowsky, a Los Angeles-based experience designer and member of the SEGD Board of Directors. “Why would we want a building in the form of a barcode when we’ve spent the last few decades trying to make barcodes disappear?” Great point, and as usual, her blog is a fascinating read. — P.M.K.

Cooper-Hewitt goes iPod Touch

January 19, 2010 at 9:39 am
Filed under Exhibit Design, Interactive, Technology, Wayfinding, museum

“‘Design USA: Contemporary Innovation’ at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum is less an exhibition than an extra-large design seminar in your head.

The show offers an array of objects and oddities, from household appliances to models for the sets of the musical “Hairspray,” punctuated by screens showing Web sites in action, among them one that locates pickup basketball games in New York. But the bulk of the exhibition takes place in the palm of your hand, on a specially programmed iPod Touch, the nonphone (but wireless-enabled) version of the iPhone. Apple has lent the museum a hundred of the devices in what is either a brilliant promotional move or — given the Cooper-Hewitt’s design-minded demographic — a case of pushing to the converted. They provide access to a wealth of interviews, slide shows and snippets of performances, all related to the 78 architects and designers represented in the show. Available free, this device sends the traditional audio guide the way of the one-horse buggy.” — L.G.D.

The Museum of Lost Wonder

December 9, 2009 at 9:01 am
Filed under Interactive, museum

Where to begin?  This website is an offshoot of a book of the same name by Jeff Hoke.  Here’s what Publishers Weekly had to say about the book: “Hoke, an artist and a senior exhibition designer at California’s Monterey Bay Aquarium, writes that the eclectic museums and curiosity cabinets of the 1600s inspired him, and that he wants to return us to a time before ’science became a belief system unto itself,’ a time when artist-alchemist-scientists were able to search for inner truth via mystical experiences and experiments without being ridiculed. Guided by the Greek muses and lured by his lovely color illustrations, readers are beckoned into seven ‘exhibition halls,’ named for the stages of alchemical transformation from base matter to divinely inspired knowledge.” — A.M.

The next generation of touchscreens

July 21, 2009 at 11:23 am
Filed under Interactive

Touchscreens that can morph to include buttons and touchpads would benefit sighted and non-sighted people in myriad ways. — A.M. The Butterfly Effect 2 download download Strangers with Candy movie

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Third floor: men's socks, dreams, housewares

April 22, 2009 at 1:52 am
Filed under Interactive

The Sele-Next Floor installation at the Design/Art Fair in Verona, Italy, takes you on a dream journey via elevator. — A.M.
next floor from dotdotdot on Vimeo

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