reaDIYmates are “Fun Wi-fi companions that move and play sounds depending on what’s happening in your digital life”.
(via bashford)
Britta Riley wanted to grow her own food (in her tiny apartment). So she and her friends developed a system for growing plants in discarded plastic bottles — researching, testing and tweaking the system using social media, trying many variations at once and quickly arriving at the optimal system. Call it distributed DIY. And the results? Delicious.
“Now within our community, a certain culture has appeared. In our culture, it is better to be a testerwho supports someone else’s idea than it is to be just the idea guy. What we get out of this project is we get support for our own work, as well as an experience of actually contributing to the environmental movement in a way other than just screwing in new light bulbs. But I think that Eileen expresses best what we really get out of this, which is the actual joy of collaboration. So she expresses here what it’s like to see someone halfway across the world having taken your idea, built upon it and then acknowledging you for contributing. If we really want to see the kind of wide consumer behavior change that we’re all talking about as environmentalists and food people, maybe we just need to ditch the term “consumer” and get behind the people who are doing stuff.”
“With the Presenze collection, Studio Nucleo has created decorative etherneal objects floating through space. A game of presence and absence, of lightness and weight, challenging the law of gravity. The balance is made even more precarious by the milkiness of the resin, permeable to light. It’s a fascination for the transition, from liquid to solid, from past to presence.”
Greg Borenstein pointed FaceTracker at Matt Jones’ Hello Little Fella Flickr group.
new interaction rituals
Julian Bleecker : getting interaction we deserve
May 22, 2007, 1:00 pm » The history of human-computer interfaces started with the keyboard. And, still today, the keyboard is the primary interface for our computer interactions. Punching little plastic squares, shapes a good deal of what we understand about our devices and their capabilities. From mobile phones to laptops, the keyboard button regiments our interactions, the design of our software, and the ways in which we
share, play and socialize in our digitally networked worlds.
Interfaces are the medium that shape, define and frame our digital interaction rituals. What are the possibilities for designing interfaces that are more mindful of the playful nature of humans? How can an art-technology approach to interface design make possible new interaction rituals that are more ludic than instrumental?
You are invited to hear a short history of the human- computer interface. Then, through several experiments in art-technology and design, you will share a trajectory for a near-future of new playful interfaces.
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Julian Bleecker is an art-technologist and assistant professor of
Interactive Media at the University of Southern California’s School
of Cinematic Arts. His art-technology projects, research and writing
focus on speculative near-future technologies and curiosities meant
to invigorate the imagination about the possibility for a kind of
computing that sustains playful and life-affirming worlds. He has
presented work and given lectures worldwide and exhibited his art-
technology projects internationally at venues such as SIGGRAPH, SK
Telecom’s Art Center Nabi (South Korea, Ars Electronica, Banff New
Media Institute, Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), International
Society of Electronic Arts Festival, American Museum of the Moving
Image, Art Interactive (Boston), Bitforms Gallery (NYC), Boston
Cyberarts Festival, Rhizome Eyebeam Atelier (NYC) and Xerox PARC.
