Posts filed in ‘GYRATES’
KEGEL CONTROLLER
The "Kegel Controller" is my new favourite use of Max/msp+jitter software! It is an interactive art performance using biofeedback from pelvic muscles to manipulate sound and video. Information is collected from the perineometer connected to the performer's perineum. The perineometer output is used to produce sounds and manipulate video on a small LCD display.
The best thing about this work is that it is performed without explanatory documentation, prompting interested audience members to ask the performer how the output is controlled ; .)
The neurons that shaped civilization
This short and stunning TED talk has neuroscientist VS Ramachandran tell us about recently discovered mirror neurons, or as he calls them Gandhian neurons, which allow us to learn complex social behaviours.
He claims that the Great Leap Forward was a Lamarckian evolution of a motoroneuron system which allowed emulation and imitation of another person’s actions. He suggests these mirror neurons supported the development of language and the understanding and interpreting of human behaviour.
Ramachandran has investigated motorneurons related to touch using electrodes to record the activity of specific nerve cells in the brain and has illustrated how 20% of motorneurons in the brain, relating to a specific area of the body, will fire when watching another person being touched in that same part of the body. This form of empathy is managed by touch and pain receptors which provide a feedback signal to veto the motorneuron signal so the brain knows that it isn’t your body being touched and you don’t get confused. However if you anesthesia that part of the body this feedback system is disabled thus dissolving the barrier between you and other human beings.
This suggests that all that separates you from other people is the organ of skin. We are all effectively connected by neurons so in fact there is no distinction between your consciousness and the consciousness of others just as the eastern philosophies has been telling us for millenia.
Svenja Kratz
ARTIFICIAL SMILE
TREE MUSEUM by Katie Holten
Katie Holten created the tree museum to celebrate the communities and ecosystems along the Grand Concourse, a 100 year-old boulevard in The Bronx, New York.
BODY NAVIGATION
Body Navigation (8 min. trailer) from ole kristensen on Vimeo.
Body navigation is a reactive floor-projection where dancers can dance on together with a digital reproduction of themselves. It consist of a camera tracking the dancers on the floor, and a projector that creates a image on the floor around and on the dancers. With this system connections and visual images about human relations and emotions are created that where not otherwise possible. Jonas Jongejan, from Copenhagen, developed the application which uses Processing.
RFID Glove for Interactive Object-based Storytelling
Detailed instructions on how to make RFID glove here http://thegeekmovement.com/blog/?p=67
PONG PROM
Pong Prom from Ed Keeble on Vimeo.
An art project that uses smart textiles to allow participants to play pong together by slow dancing.