Posts
BY MEANS OF A SIGH
By Means of a Sigh is beautifully playful interactive work by Quebec artists Jean Dubois and Chloé Lefebvre. The work is displayed in public spaces and consists of a large scale video of the two artists’ head shots facing off. Viewers are invited to phone a number and share their breath through their mobiles with the faces on screen. This breath allows the artists to blow bubble gum at each other … until their bubbles connect, connecting their breath and ultimately jeopardising the bubble as the gum tears and the connection is lost.
“This simple system generates complicity between the two characters and between the work and the spectator–who now holds the ambiguous responsibility of at once controlling the image and putting it at risk.
In this video the artists explain their concept, plus you get to indulge in Québécois French:
Their work was recently shown in Federation Square, Melbourne, as part of Experimenta Utopia Now.
Air Quality Awareness buddy
Air Quality Awareness buddy (AQAb) is a wearable, designed as a safety vest, that uses sensors to measure three gasses indicating air quality and a soft display to visualise the results. If air quality deteriorates a larger portion of the fluorescent fabric is visible. Better air quality results in smaller portions being visible. The vest has numerous pockets some of which contain: a mobile phone (for sending data to the internet), two battery packs (to power the electronics), a black box (that holds the sensors.) It’s aim is to create awareness of current air quality in the wearer, people around her and the general public. Another great project from Danielle Roberts.
e-PRESSED
e-Pressed is a e-Pressed is a wearable that uses galvanic skin response sensor to measure stress and energy levels in the body. LED lights visualise the wearer’s inner state inviting acupressure areas to be pressed where required. A great, if highly ambitious concept. I wonder how these galvanic skin response sensors differentiate between high stress readings caused by negative states of being that requires acupressure intervention and readings caused by what could be deemed positive states.
ZYXIO’S breath enabled interface
In my research to develop a breath controlled interface I have been searching for an über sensitive pressure sensor that can pick up the subtleties of breath. Wired magazine are reporting that Zyxio have developed a blow sensor interface for computing to rival the touchscreen. While I don’t think this product will meet my needs it does give me hope that electronics designers are moving in the right direction.
UNTITLED SOCK PROJECT
Untitled Sock Project is an artistic installation developed during November 2010 as part of the Mediamatic Dev Camp in Amsterdam.
By blowing into straws, visitors contribute to the creation of a knitted sock. Depending on how hard they blow and which straw they blow into, the sock will be knit faster and the thread will be colored with different pigments. The result will be a collaboratively knit sock with a unique color pattern.
PNEUMA DRESS
Designer Synne Geirsdatter Frydenberg wants to use fashion to draw attention our attention to our breath. Pneuma is a white, embroidered dress speckled with LEDs that monitors the breathing movement of the wearer around the waist (not chest) via a sensor.
The result is a patterned visualization of the wearer’s breathing cycle with superficial breathing resulting in dim LED lights and deep breathing in brighter, more luminescent light patterns.
BREATH BRA
This wearable project by Dan Sullivan is based on arduino’s lilypad microcontroller. Breath bra measures the breath and temperature of the user utilising simple resistors. It uses bluetooth to pass this data to the user’s mobile phone for display allowing them to trace this biofeedback throughout the day. A project that’s sure to get women and men squeezing into this wonder brassiere.
DATA VISUALISATION
At THATCAMP we’re looking at the quagmire of looking for information in today’s world of data overload. Looking at the limitations of accessing data by using the search function, the slot and button. The standard search interface assumes the starting point is a query but users don’t necessarily have a query but are rather browsing or surfing for information.
A powerful simile - it’s like opening your shop door and saying to the person, “what do you want?” as opposed to opening the door and saying, “this is what we have what would you like?” What data visualisation enables is the reverse engineering of the search engine - showing the user everything and then offering them the tools to filter and deal with the complexity of the data. Data visualisation makes data more spatial, it becomes multi-dimensional. It allows us to discover relationships between data more easily by illustrating the patterns between data sets.
Some of the applications that have been suggested that will allow you to go deep into your data dynamically:
Manyeyes - looks for patterns in data supporting visual intelligence. Good for stats
Freebase gridworks - (java built) designed to work with excel, splits composite fields into multiple fields, allows you to load data, understand it, clean it up, reconcile it internally, and augment it
DBPedia - shows relationships between wikipedia entries + allows you to add your own data.
Dapper - a platform for understanding content from the top down, turning simple HTML websites into semantically aware applications with a few simple clicks of a mouse
Visualcomplexity - describes itself as a “unified resource space for anyone interested in the visualization of complex networks”.
Infosthetics - this site, created by Andrew Vande Moere of the University of Sydney, illustrates some interesting and creative visualisations of a broad selection of data.
Touchgraph - this free Java application allows you to explore the connections between related websites.
BREATH CAR
Nice use of the Yamaha MIDI breath controller to make the breath car do three point turns and other fancy maneuvers using your breath.
Irvine Brown has then had the breathing directions of these maneuvers translated into musical notation. (dynamics, tempo, duration of notes, phrasing, breath marks - but no key or pitch). Even a movement of a Hummel trumpet concerto has also been transcribed as a track layout.
MAGIC FLUTE
This is the cutest video - it shows the first time the magic flute was played by Glenn, a young boy with limited arm movement. The breath controller changes pitch as it is tilted, quite intuitively it would seem, as Glenn lifts his head the pitch increases.