Scott Fisher

Seems like it wasn't that long ago when I put up this post about the escalating developments of "table top computing" from Philips, HP, and Mitsubishi. OK, well it was actually about a year ago. But now we have Microsoft to add to the list with their announcement today of "Surface Computing". Good article in San Jose Mercury by Dean Takahashi and article in TechCrunch with videos here. Would be nice if someone would reference all the groundbreaking work that Jun Rekimoto did in this area many years ago at Sony's CSL. Image below:

Posted by Scott Fisher at 8:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

From: Artkrush

Public art organizations with an eye on new media are using surprising commissions to combat the longstanding cliche of public artworks as oversized sculptures stranded in empty plazas. Creative Time and the Public Art Fund in New York and Artangel in London are weaving video projections, websites, and interactive installations into the urban fabric. Often spinning filmic narratives about city dwellers, these projects resonate with viewers and forge a closer connection between art and the public.

Links, pix, and descriptions here.

Posted by Scott Fisher at 12:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The Beall Center for Art and Technology presents:

“Atmospherics/Weather Works” by Andrea Polli
Opening reception: January 4, 2007; 6:30 – 9:00pm
Exhibition Dates: January 5 - March 17

“It’s not about the data, it’s about the phenomena” – Andrea Polli

Atmospherics/Weather Works is an exhibition of several systems for understanding weather and climate patterns through sound. The results are sometimes ambient, sometimes turbulent and always evocative compositions that allow listeners to experience geographically scaled events on a human scale and gain a deeper understanding of the more unpredictable and complex rhythms and melodies of nature.

Polli's combination of new media and scientific research, informs her work with powerful presentations of many of the dangers to our environment, global warming, the ocean's influence on whether and pollution. Polli's work, has explored emerging technologies, written and developed custom and open source software, and worked with scientists from various disciplines to explore new aesthetic forms. In many of the works the sounds and the images are reacting to each other. She creates sonic installation of haunting sounds and visuals that create a sense of time and interaction.

Posted by Scott Fisher at 4:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Is it possible to let a first sketch become an object, to design directly onto space?

The four FRONT members have developed a method to materialise free hand sketches. They make it possible by using a unique method where two advanced techniques are combined.
Pen strokes made in the air are recorded with Motion Capture and become 3D digital files; these are then materialized through Rapid Prototyping into real pieces of furniture.

via boingboing

Posted by Scott Fisher at 7:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nice visualization project at the SF Exploratorium (via Eric Paulos at Intel's Berkeley Lab):

Cabspotting: an alternate view of a living city:
A group of designers and programmers led by Eric Rodenbeck of the
mind-blowing Stamen Design firm created the wonderful
Cabspotting.org, an online art experience that traces the movement of
San Francisco's GPS-enabled Yellow Cabs as they move through the
city. It's part of the Exploratorium's larger Invisible Dynamics
initiative to "reveal radically surprising and inspiring views of the
systems interconnecting the communities of the Bay." The
Exploratoirum is also encouraging the creation of artist's projects,
basically novel mash-ups of the same data that drives
Cabspotting.org's real-time cab tracking and time lapse visualizations.

Posted by Scott Fisher at 9:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Bruce Sterling's SIGGRAPH'04 keynote speech on "Spimes" is just out in expanded form from MIT Press on Peter Lunenfeld's MediaWorks Pamphlet series:

Sterling offers a brilliant, often hilarious history of shaped things. We have moved from an age of artifacts, made by hand, through complex machines, to the current era of "gizmos." New forms of design and manufacture are appearing that lack historical precedent, he writes; but the production methods, using archaic forms of energy and materials that are finite and toxic, are not sustainable. The future will see a new kind of object -- we have the primitive forms of them now in our pockets and briefcases: user-alterable, baroquely multi-featured, and programmable -- that will be sustainable, enhanceable, and uniquely identifiable. Sterling coins the term "spime" for them, these future manufactured objects with informational support so extensive and rich that they are regarded as material instantiations of an immaterial system. Spimes are designed on screens, fabricated by digital means, and precisely tracked through space and time. They are made of substances that can be folded back into the production stream of future spimes, challenging all of us to become involved in their production. Spimes are coming, says Sterling. We will need these objects in order to live; we won't be able to surrender their advantages without awful consequences.

Amazon.com: Books: Shaping Things (Mediaworks Pamphlets)

Posted by Scott Fisher at 11:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This forum will be a group discussion/brainstorming session on the emerging capabilities for embedding narratives in our everyday surroundings, personalization, and newforms of collaborative authorship.

Location: USC Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts, Room 201
3131 South Figueroa Blvd
Time: 6:00pm-8pm, 9/28/2005

UPDATE: Backchannel log Download file

Posted by Scott Fisher at 10:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)