Major Studio Interface : PortableMonitor / Practice presentation

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Abstract
(video here)

PortableMonitor is a value fiction design of a digital empowered adhesive tape.

It works as a multitouch visual interface.
It can be resized on the fly by the user just adding or subtracting tape to the initial configuration.
It can connect to other computer and use them as source of computing power.
It recharges itself through solar energy.

PortableMonitor features

1- Classic tape look&feel
2- Digital visual output
3- Configuration conscious
4- Touch sensitive
5- Self energy supplying
6- Computing powered
7- Networked
8- Tough

Structure

We imagine the inner structure of the tape as particle based.
Each particle is an independent object capable of all the required features.
The particles can then be grouped as layers of functionality.

Features related technologies

Digital visual output:

Epaper video

Epaper Technology


Configuration conscious - Computing Powered - Networked:

Smartdust

Motes


Touch sensitive:

Touch sensitive Epaper

Peratech, Digital Print CIC solution for NASA


Self energy supplying - Tough :

Powerfilm

Super tough nanotube threads

Problem

Classic paper can be cut in almost any point of its surface.

As portableMonitor is made of various layers of tiny electronic devices it can't be cut on all of its surface thus a problem of Cutting resolution rises.

It can be solved setting up cutting areas and non cutting areas or making the devices that compose it so small to be equivalent to the fibers of traditional paper.

Collateral application

One pixel camera

portableMonitor - POSTMORTEM

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Urballoon

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Urballoon is an urban media space: a balloon equipped with a projector and wireless connection to the web that enables people to submit content online and broadcast it in public spaces.

Share your thoughts or media with people near the balloon by submitting materials from this site.

Submissions are now being accepted to be projected during the Interference exhibition at Eyebeam from September 27- November 26, 2007.

This is another great application of balloon as a communication interface

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Defetto Perlin Noise

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My friend defetto is featured on dataisnature for his latest experiment using Perlin Noise in vvvv.

He used noise values to deform a hi-res 3D mesh grid then applying various cromatic palettes using a multiply renderstate.

The article is here

The full image set is here

Check them out! ;)

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Superpatata

Talking about balloons...

here's an interesting post from Pixelsumo who talks about a pressure sensitive balloon lamp

More on playful lighting, this time its Superpatata, a squishy light from Hector Serrano
for Droog Design. Created from latex, salt and a fluorescent bulb,
Serrano explains “I wanted to let the user control the intensity of the
light just by touching it. As you squeeze the light, the bulb moves
around in the salt, and gets brighter as it gets closer to the surface.
That’s what the product allows you to do - play with light.”

Superpatata can be used as a lamp but also as a pillow, antistress
device, an object to warm your bed. The superpatatas can be easily
stacked on top of each other.

via: Pixelsumo

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Major Studio Interface : 5 Scenarios with Tape

Carrie Mae Kreyche

Claudio Midolo

Sandhya Moraes

Value Fictions

1. Form conscious Tape

2. Portable Monitor

3. 3D Scanner/Texture recorder

4. Chat tape enabler/virtual communicator

5. Invisible wrap tape

Precedents:

3. 3D Scanner/Texture recorder


"Contact 3D scanners probe the subject through physical touch.

A CMM (coordinate measuring machine) is an example of a contact 3D
scanner. It is used mostly in manufacturing and can be very precise.
The disadvantage of CMMs though, is that it requires contact with the
object being scanned.


Thus, the act of scanning the object might modify or damage it.
This fact is very significant when scanning delicate or valuable
objects such as historical artifacts. The other disadvantage of CMMs is
that they are relatively slow compared to the other scanning methods.

Physically moving the arm that the probe is mounted on can be
very slow and the fastest CMMs can only operate on a few hundred hertz.
In contrast, an optical system like a laser scanner can operate from 10
to 500 kHz.

Other examples are the hand driven touch probes used to digitize clay models in computer animation industry."

Wikipedia


4. Chat tape enabler/virtual communicator









5. Invisible wrap tape


Future Watch: An Invisibility Suit
























via: Sandhya

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Sky Ear

This is a project Katherine Moriwaki spoke about during my presentation.
It is related to my Value Fiction research as it focuses on the usage of balloons as floating physical pixels.

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Sky
Ear is a one-night event in which a glowing "cloud" of mobile phones
and helium balloons is released into the air so that people can dial
into the cloud and listen to the sounds of the sky.

The cloud consists of 1000 extra-large helium balloons that each
contain 6 ultra-bright LEDs (which mix to make millions of colours).
The balloons can communicate with each other via infra-red; this allows
them to send signals to create larger patterns across the entire Sky
Ear cloud as they respond to the electromagnetic environment (created
by distant storms, mobile phones, police and ambulance radios,
television broadcasts, etc.).

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The balloons are enclosed in a carbon fibre and net structure 25m in
diameter tethered to the ground by 6 cables and held aloft at a height
of about 60-100m where it will remain for several hours.

Using mobile phones people can listen to the actual sounds up high, the
electromagnetic sounds of the sky as well as streams of "whistlers" and
"spherics" (atmospheric electromagnetic phenomena that are the audible
equivalent of the Northern Lights). Of course, the action of calling
the cloud changes the electromagnetic environment inside and causes the
balloons to vary in brightness and colour.

For more background to the project and test flight stages please click here.

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Sky Ear
has had two successful launches, in Fribourg, Switzerland (July 4,
2004) and Greenwich, London (September 15, 2004). For photos of these
two events, please see the images section

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Source: Haque

Value Fictions : Balloon!

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Here's the research I did as an assignment for Major Studio - Interface class:

I had to find a common object, study it and then propose some way to digital-empower it... this is what came out :)


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Shopping in 1999

From the film 1967 1999 A.D., a short sponsored by the Philco-Ford Corporation, showing what home shopping would be like three decades in the future. Although they missed the frenetic pace of today's online shopping experience—the housewife's browsing looks almost leisurely—they guessed correctly on the abundance flat-panel screens (with multiple monitors, no less), even if they were off by about a decade. Oh course, they didn't quite put together that we'd still be using keyboards for input.

This is somewhat related to visions of the future proposed in the interface class like those of Vannevar Bush.

Watch

Via ComputerLove

Designer Statement

Design saved me

When I started doing design, I really didn’t know it was “design”.

I still remember that time - it was four years ago - when I left the Informatics Engineering study degree at Politecnico, and for the first time in my life I felt lost, with a lot of time on hand and nothing to do with it.
But at that time something magical happened: the same day I left the Engineering department I randomly found a magazine in a store called “Computer Arts”, which immediately attracted my attention.
The images I saw inside fascinated me at the point that I started to wonder if I would also have been able to do that kind of stuff.

Then I started doing graphical experiments with Photoshop, an activity which helped me to channel my frustration and gain new skills. Since then I began exploring the design world using the web as a resource for inspiration and knowledge, each time learning on my own how to use the specific tools I needed to accomplish my projects. If you wonder why I’m telling this to you, here is the answer: this is the first and uppermost reason that makes me want to “design things” ; I do it for myself, because it’s a passion.

Three years have passed now and, in order to find other reasons that drive my work as a designer, let’s fast-forward to yesterday evening :

Believe it or not, but for the first time in three years I finally had a theoretical assignment to fulfill, as the former design school I went to was very practical and we had never to speculate on theoretical themes and issues.
They have always been floating in my mind but now, for the first time, I can summarize them on a list of inspirational issues based on the works I’ve been doing over the last few years and on the projects I would like to carry out in the future:

-Inner communication
-How you see yourself
-Music
-Sound + Graphics
-People creativity
-Computers + Nature / Culture + Nature
-Memory + Emotions
-Physical world + Virtual world
-Socialization
-Social Activity
-Play / Ludic Activities
-Knowledge Share
-Politics
-Spaces / Loci
-Democracy
-Computers outside the box
-Networked Objects
-Human Movements + Kinesic
-Remote Communication
- Tools for Curiosity

---------------- 31 January 2008 edit ----------------

- Tools for Curiosity

- Intimate interfaces

- Real-time creativity

- Visual music

- Freedom of expression (GRL)

- Democracy/Open source governance

- Open source devices

- Videogames/Imagination

---------------- END 31 January 2008 edit ----------------

These issues can be linked into four major aims:

- to BRIDGE REAL AND VIRTUAL WORLDS, mixing them together rather than making them fight each other.

- to EXPLORE YOUR INNER SELF thanks to the digital media that have the power to capture and show yourself to yourself.

- to BUILD BEAUTIFUL AND SIGNIFICANT SYSTEM OF RELATIONSHIPS through the collection of data and the successful mapping of them onto new system of values.

- to TRY TO MAKE THE REALITY WE LIVE IN BETTER, allowing people to have access to knowledge and stimulate social activity towards politics and democratic dialectics.

The reading assignments surprised me, as I found in them many suggestions that I had already thought on my own and helped me to focalize on drawing the contours of myself as a designer.

For instance, I almost totally recognize myself in the “Interaction Designer” figure Terry Winegrad wrote about in his essay “From Computing Machinery to Interaction Design”, because I know I have the skill of a graphic designer, programmer, video designer, but I didn’t know how they could fit in just one craft.

Another thing in which I can recognize myself in the lecture submitted is in “The Pillow” by Anthony Dunne, because, until now a design centered approach is the way I designed most of the things I’ve done, which I used to label as “experiments”.
Value fictions are not only important but vital for design ... if design was just user centered it would be totally boring.

I think that we, the people who have the privilege to work with the digital media, must be aware of the power and responsibility that lies in our hands, since we have to master information in the information era.

Download Pdf here

Ta da!

Welcome!
this is my MFA DT blog for those not so familiar with US scolar system the degree for which I'm studing is a Master in Fine Arts (MFA) with major in Design and Technology (DT) ... in less words I'll do superstrangecrazyhopefullywonderful stuff with computers and other fun things!

more to come...