Haven’t posted anything for so long, since I’ve been constantly traveling from conference to conference…?! Anyway, I’m up to IAR 2010 this evening with my lovely friend from Manchester. It should be cool!
Archive for the ‘Interactive Design’ Category
IAR 2010
Friday, June 18th, 2010
The Third & The Seventh
Tuesday, February 9th, 2010I found a nice new video today, a photographic point of viewing architecture.
A MAZE. Interact
Sunday, February 7th, 2010Just coming back from the A MAZE Interact festival where I experienced the global game jam Berlin. My mind is still there. I love Berlin, as always! How I wish I could have stayed longer and checked out transmediale, especially ‘The Futurity Long Conversation‘.
It was indeed an awesome festival. I am glad I finally met Julian Oliver and heard his talk “The Computer Game as Musical Instrument”, comparing contemporary sound-based games with 20th Century experimental instrument design, positioning such games as the grandchildren of early, radical ideas within Western (noise) music. Since the first time I saw his Levelhead, an Augmented Reality spatial-memory game, I wished I could meet him in person.
Keiichi Yano gave an inspiring and witty speech about ‘The Future of Music Games’. He also shared his insight of how the next generation of music games can continue to push the genre forward into new gaming plateaus, respectively, physical, social, education and fantastical. Martin Pichlmair talked about ‘Tracing the History of Synaesthetic Video Games and Media Artwork’, presented the game Radio Flare Redux and traced the history of synaesthetic video games and media artworks – from Kandinsky to Rez, from Frank Malina to wipeOut. It was interesting to know that he stopped making art in order to pursue the development of digital games. I guess somehow, life is a big game and we all have to enjoy playing. I also liked Leonard J. Paul’s talk ‘Droppin’ Science: Video Game Audio Breakdown’, stripping away the layers around how game audio works down to the core.
So many interesting things going on, and creative folks are exploring digital media. The world is getting so exciting!
Digital Fabrication
Saturday, February 6th, 2010Early this year, I got chance to visit The University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning. And I was luckily able to check out its impressive fabrication lab. It was inspiring talking with prof. Karl Daubmann, prof. Glenn Wilcox and director of the FAB lab Wesley McGee. I appreciated it a lot that they showed me some of their creative works.
The short visit also gave me quite a lot to think about. Certainly, there is much potential for applying digital fabrication in architecture design and production processes. Digital fabrication is the process of translating a digital design into a physical object. Its techniques such as rapid prototyping, stereolithography and laser cutting enable the production of physical objects directly from digital models. It allows creating new forms or structures, and exploration of the aesthetics of space.
But I am thinking about the possibility of mapping invisible data, not just concrete/hard data such as body movement, breath, and temperature but also some more abstract/soft information - for instance, memory, emotions, cognitive processes, thoughts, etc. into the architectural space generated by digital fabrication technology. And when these data could be embedded into our living space, in turn they would affect the way we interact with the environment.
Apart from this, I am always fascinated by how basic geometries with simple algorithms can be aggregated and emerge into extensively complicated forms. I’d like to see more creative or experimental digital fabricated works.
“Hyper” Augmented Reality
Friday, February 5th, 2010An interesting video shows a hyper augmented reality cave. Somehow the video is satire as well. I wonder what the essential things will be that we need to live in the future?
Sketches
Thursday, December 17th, 2009
It was definitely an amazing workshop. Some sketches I presented at the end. I was quite happy that I finally started to mess around with openframeworks. A big thanks to Zach and people from the Fabrica. I had such a great time, fantastic food, wine and lots lots of fun….!
‘mylight’ lamp
Sunday, August 30th, 2009I’ve been looking for a definition of meta-design, and in doing so I came across the ‘mylight lamp’ by Lars Spuybroek. It’s interesting to see that meta-design, an emerging conceptual framework, as a boundary object interpreted differently among various applied fields. As with most of Spuybroek’s designs, the lamp is a form of creative experimentation and quite impressive, no matter its shape or the concept behind it.
As Spuybroek himself says:
“We can now ‘print’ an object directly from digital information – molds will just disappear. People have no idea yet what an incredible change in technology that is. And what that means for design. All design will become meta-design: objects can now be a range-of-objects like in a family or a species. Not one is the same, but they are similar enough to be recognised. They can be big on top, big in the middle, or big below. They can have many holes or just a few. But they will always be private, each lamp you buy is different from the other, it’s unique.” – lars spuybroek
The concept is still pretty vague to me, but perhaps that’s to be expected – after all, there is no conceret definition in this field, since it is still under-developed. Right now, everyone has their own definition of ‘meta design’ The search for clarity is complex – but exhilarating.
Change, Adapt or Die in order to Survive
Friday, August 28th, 2009An impressive mash-up concept film made by Moving Brand with online media and social networking applications to depict how fast our life changes and how vital it is to keep moving, adapting to survive.
Playing the Building
Friday, August 28th, 2009A sound installation by David Byrne, transformed the 160-year-old Roundhouse into a giant instrument. If you happen to be in London, do check this out!
Telepleteaus
Thursday, July 2nd, 2009It’s been a big rush since I came back from Medialab Prado. It was an awesome experience to get involved with brainstorming for the Tele-plateaus project from both conceptual and technical aspects, looking at questions of how to simplify infinite complicated data, what kind of input data should be taken into consideration, how to embody the virtual presence, how to understand the difference between our perceiving and the reality, how to invite public participants to join the creation and performance and so on.
However, personally I doubt whether there is a democratic solution or how concretely we can really sense the virtual presence, or if the surveillance metaphor has anything to do with the network based spatial interaction performance. In the end we can only perceive a part of the world. We can never be really free.
It was beyond my expectation that Frieder Weiss could give us presentations as well as Eyecon and Kalypso tutorials. I remember I was totally blown away by his Chunky Move.
This was a great chance to be immersed in an artistic atmosphere again. I also met many good friends, Emilie Bardon, Lisa Parra , Thomas Dumke , Diana coca… It was an overwhelming weekend and I miss them already.
For the workshop photos…
