This project proposes a hybrid approach: a real-time, interactive design and operation process that enables the (material) system to be self-aware, fully utilizing and exploring its kinetic design space for adaptive purposes. The approach is based on the interaction of compliant materials with embedded robotic agents, at the interface between digital and physical. This is demonstrated in the form of a room-scale spatial architectural robot, comprising networks of linear elastic components augmented with robotic joints capable of sensing and two axis actuation. https://www.creativeapplications.net/processing/self-choreographing-network-cyber-physical-design-and-interactive-bending-active-systems/
Imagine surfaces start to communicate with you. Your mobile gets goose skin when your lover texts you. Your WiFi controller changes the look and feel of it’s surface according to different game situations. Your sofa gives you a short massage as a warm welcome when you return home from a hard day of work. Your laptop feels dried out when battery status is getting low.
Markus Kayser - Solar Sinter Project from Markus Kayser on Vimeo.
Social Turkers: Crowdsourced Relationships from Lauren McCarthy on Vimeo. What if we could receive real-time feedback on our social interactions? Would relatively unbiased third party monitors be better suited to interpret situations and make decisions for the parties involved? How might augmenting our experience help us become more aware in our relationships, shift us out of normal patterns, and open us to unexpected possibilities? I developed a system like this for myself using Amazon Mechanical Turk to explore in the form of a performance. During a month of continuous dates with new people I met on okcupid, I streamed the interaction to the web using an iPhone app. Turk workers were paid to watch the stream, interpret what was happening, and offer feedback as to what I should do or say next. These directions were communicated to me via text message.
Chinese media artist Aaajiao combines visual and musical aspects to create works of art that imitate nature in thought-provoking new ways. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/pgzjzy/aaajiao-xu-wenkai
When mundane objects such as cords, keys and cloths are fed into a live webcam, a machine-learning algorithm ‘sees’ brilliant colours and images such as seascapes and flowers instead. The London-based, Turkish-born visual artist Memo Akten applies algorithms to the webcam feed as a way to reflect on the technology and, by extension, on ourselves. Each instalment in his Learning to See series features a pre-trained deep-neural network ‘trying to make sense of what it sees, in context of what it’s seen before’. In Gloomy Sunday, the algorithm draws from tens of thousands of images scraped from the Google Arts Project, an extensive collection of super-high-resolution images of notable artworks. Set to the voice of the avant-garde singer Diamanda Galás, the resulting video has unexpected pathos, prompting reflection on how our minds construct images based on prior inputs, and not on precise recreations of the outside world.
Six-channel interactive video installation; computer, six video projectors, three video cameras, custom software, vinyl floor. Healing Pool uses custom algorithms, cameras, and overlapping, high-definition projectors to create a seamless, glowing pool of organic patterns on the floor. The patterns are generated with a mathematical model first used by scientist to simulate firing patterns of brain neurons and later used to explore other visual and temporal forms found in nature. Left alone, the patterns slowly pulsate and shift over the course of each day. When a person walks across the piece the patterns tear apart and rebuild themselves, but never exactly as before. The change is similar to a scar left behind when a wound heals. Thus the pool holds a history, or memory, of all the interactions that have occurred since the piece was first turned on. Like the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, this project serves as a type of memorial, a constantly evolving record of change that honors the minuscule ways in which the slightest interactions—no matter how small or unintentional—have some impact. It is also an examination of how each person is, like the pool, a manifestation of everything that came before.
Ian Cheng (b. 1984), Baby feat. Ikaria, 2013. Live simulation, sound, artificial intelligence service; infinite duration. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of Candy and Michael Barasch 2015.197. © Ian Cheng