Livestreaming, blogging and twittering are more and more – and also
more easily – explored by different kinds of organisations. Today I am
attending the Glocal conference in Macedonia, Skopje on social media. And you can join the conference from a distance.
Here we (Niels Hendriks and me) presented a critical reflection on social media and design and how they are used in our (Media & Design Academy, Genk, Belgium) research and educational work in cultural, social and commercial contexts (most of the time the context is mixed).
In the beginning of this week I joined a whole day of presentations and talking about research in new media,
at the Institute of Design AHO, Norway. More specifically it dealt with
research into the complex interrelations between the phyical and the
digital in new media today. The day was the initiative of the gRig network.
gRig (the Guild for Reality Integrators and Generators) is a guild that
mixes realities and brings new realities into existence. The Belgian
co-founders of this international network are FoAM and Nadine. The members are all organisations and individuals commited to “research and creations of meaningful situations in hybrid reality“.
In Tokyo (where else?) a team lead by Hideki Koike at the Electro-Communications department of Tokyo University, develop a tactile interface using rubber to allow the user to actually touch 3D things.
Transparent rubber (which is The Mythbusters favourite), an overhead camera and an LCD panel is used to create this 'stretch and squeeze'-interface. "The camera detects the diffraction of
light as it passes through the three-dimensional transparent rubber,
interpreting your moves and the force you apply to its surface. There's only one disadvantage: The overhead camera. The problem is
that the user's hand can get in the way sometimes, which will give
erroneous results. They are planning to embed the camera inside the
LCD" (Source: Gizmodo).
10/GUI is a concept created by R. Clayton Miller. 10/GUI aims to bridge this gap by rethinking the desktop to leverage technology in an intuitive and powerful way. Watch this nice video for more information about this great concept.
Wednesday I posted an entry about handcrafted iPhone cases made out of felt on the Social Textiles blog. Well, a continuation of online available iPhone cases is the 'recession case' sold exclusively at Case-Mate. 10 cases for only 7,99 US dollar. This cardboard case is multifunctional: you can use them to microwave frozen pizzas, customize them by drawing on the cardboard, light them on fire when broken. Furthermore is it made of 100% recycled cardboard and is without warranty. So be careful to not paper cut your ear.
Last weekend Hard Rock Cafe in Vegas revealed a massive 18 foot multiuser multitouch wall. It automatically divides its space into 6 spaces. When working with 2, each person gets half the space. Some specs:
"The basics are 3 HD projectors behind an 18 foot multi-touch wall. The difference here is that the whole thing is one 6000 (almost, it is actually 3x1920 projectors, so it is a bit less)pixel plate, with over 100 4K-6K images/videos being displayed at one time. No "deep zoom" needed, everything is real-time. Also unique is the way we scale across GPUs seamlessly." (Obscura Digital)
CRISTAL - 'Control for Remotely Interfaced Systems using Touch-based
Actions in Living spaces'- is a research project that moves the
universal remote control to a multitouch kinda Microsoft Surface-type
table.
The system "uses
a camera to take an overhead shot of your living room setup, and you
designate the compatible parts: TV, speakers, digital photo frame,
HTPC, Roomba. Then you simply touch, swipe, drag and drop to control
the room. Your digital media collection shows up as almost a Cover
Flow-type design, and can be dragged either to the speakers or TV, or
just examined more closely on the Surface-type screen itself. I love
that you can watch a preview right there on the table, or quickly toss
it to the TV to output it", says Dan Nosowitz (Gizmodo).
The University of Tokyo recently added an extra feature to virtual reality immersion. Motion tracking, hologram and ultrasonic waves are combined to see, interact and feel virtual animation.A realistic tactile experienced is created by the ultrasonic waves which stimulate a variety of textures.
Wednesday I posted an entry about handcrafted iPhone cases made out of felt on the 
MAP-it by Liesbeth Huybrechts & Thomas Laureyssens is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Belgium License. Based on a work at map-it.be.