„The ultimate goal of the RoboCup project is By 2050, develop a team of fully autonomous humanoid robots that can win against the human world champion team in soccer.“ (www.robocup.org)
It sounds like the end of the soccer world as we know it. Like one of the first scenes of „Battlestar Gallactica“ in a soccer galaxy. I am usually not thinking that much about soccer, but when you live in Vienna, which is the host city of the EM finale on Sunday, you are automatically hypnotised by the euphoria of the masses on the streets. It feels like a constant Fata Morgana or a drug side effect. You see toreros driving bicycle in front of your door and you get hugged by strangers in the underground just because your shoes have the same colour as the winning team jersey.
Anyway the „RoboCup“ Project is a very interesting project in robotics, which combines science and fun for the audience, which is something very unusual I would say. The teams who are taking part on the present „RoboCup‘s“ consist out of robots and their programmers in different categories. Until now the robots are playing against other robots, but who knows…..The amazing robots in the „Humanoid“ category look already like the first cylon models I would say. But of course like a kind of the nice cylons. Still there is a way to go to get these guys to look like a sexy David Villa I guess.
RoboCup rockz!
The „RoboCup 2009“ is going to take place in Graz in Austria.
Powers of 10 interactive. At least somehow, because this approach is much more graphical. Found on the page of camera-manufacturer Nikon, this site shows you scales of things in relation to each other - from the smallest speck of matter (atoms and smaller) to the largest planets and far beyond. Explanatory graphics will give you a real idea of your place on the planet - or indeed the universe. Goto Universcale
And if you have never seen “Powers of Ten” by Ray and Charles Eames, please watch it now!
Dance and create in rAys V2.0! With an array of 64 lasers the audience can generate audio and visuals, where every movement (or, better: every intersection of a vertical laser beam with your body) directly corresponds to a sound or graphic. Somehow I can’t really see the synaesthetics and the tight interaction in the video documentation all the time, but I believe it’s a great experience and a cool idea.
David Byrne converted the Great Hall of the former lower Manhattan ferry terminal into a gigantic musical instrument.
Playing the Building is Byrne’s latest sonic innovation, and morphs the century-old Battery Maritime Building into a clanging, vibrating sound sculpture. A retrofitted, antique organ that acts as the control station for the musical instrument. In this installation, the former Talking Heads co-founder blurs the boundaries between the creators and consumers of culture. He explains:
“Devices [have been] attached to the building’s structure — to the metal beams and pillars, the heating pipes, the water pipes — and are used to make these things produce sound. The activations are of three types: wind, vibration, striking. The devices cause the building elements to vibrate, resonate and oscillate so that the building itself becomes a very large musical instrument.”
Playing the Building continues through August 10, 2008 at 10 South Street, New York, NY; open every Friday through Sunday, noon - 6pm. Admission is free of charge.
I posted about the Tenori-On before, and it seems that audio interfaces for electronic music are becoming more and more of a high-tech thing. I stumpled over the LEMUR by accident, looked at the website and was just amazed by how this multi-touch interface offers sheer endless possibilities of controls. And what’s really interesting is, how they managed to have a multi-touch surface on a screen that actually recognizes exact coordinates. We will have to look into this more detailed. Make sure to check out the video demos.
When I first saw the ‘augmented sculpture’ at the ARS Electronica in 2007, I did the same thing as nearly everyone else did, who went in to this small room there. I immediately went out again and photographed the name of the artist from the board outside (Pablo Valbuena) with my mobile phone. Then I went in again and stayed there for a long long time.
Actually projections onto a 3D object in real space are nothing new at all, but we all know that holding a crayon doesn‘t make one necessary an artist. And Pablo is one of these people who are able to create an impressive piece of art just out of few minimalistic elements. The way he puts the virtual geometry on his physical sculpture is just amazing. The hypnotising sound environment and the perfectly choreographed virtual object transformation gave me the impression of being in a kind of a ‘Tron’ World.
I am happy that Pablo continued his work and hope to see some new versions of the ‘augmented sculpture’ in real ’space-time’ soon again!
After we managed to get the blob detection working smoothly, we had the chance to play around with some visual effects. Nothing fancy, just some cheap and dirty visuals.
As one of the first companies, Albatron demonstrated on this year’s Computex a 22″ touchscreen LCD display which would retail for roughly 120% of the price of a usual LCD without touchscreen feature. That surely sounds promising and a little bit surprising at the same time. Their flagship 22″ LCD (1680 x 1050) that has a sensor on each side of the display and the technology is scalable to 24″ and beyond through the addition of a single extra sensor.
No info about this product can be found on Albatron’s Website but we’ll keep you posted about upcoming developments.
As a passionate (hobby)photographer myself I always crave for visual stimulation, and it’s especially inspiring if I find someone else’s work that just surprises me and keeps me entertained no matter what project I look at. Lovebryan.Com has a huge collection of pictures on his website and what I really like the most are his features. The best one in history of mankind, “Uncle Dirty”, unfortunately had to be taken offline since Uncle Dirty’s family didn’t like his member to be exposed in his very personal way of life. But I think that’s what Lovebryan can do the best, offer very intimate views into other people’s lives without giving the feeling of exploitation.
If you want to dive into a never ending stream of great real life photography make sure to also check out his blog, which has over 80 pages full of great images.
Alright, it’s obvious that Watz has to be featured in this series about my favourite designers. I recognized his work in 2005 I guess, and have been following his output since then - and most of the time it amazes me. He works with generative tools (Processing mostly, I believe), and creates interactive pieces, artwork on canvas and print design.
His portfolio shows all of his work, although it has not been updated for quite a while - to keep up to date you will have to subscribe to his flickr photos or his Code & Form blog, where he also shares code snippets. He is also initiator of the conference, exhibition and blog Generator.X, which deals with “generative strategies and software processes in digital art, architecture and design”. Recently Watz has been experimenting with prototyping and creating generative physical models. He made a workshop about “digital fabrication and generative systems” at Club Transmediale in Berlin (again, loads of documentation on his flickr).
It’s great that computer artists are more and more recognized also in the art world. However, I missed people like him in the recent exhibition in the Vienna MUMOK about mathematics in art called Genau+anders - there were great pieces by Sol LeWitt, Peter Weibel, Herbert W. Franke, Max Ernst and many others, but no contemporary artists like Watz. Obviously the MUMOK is not the place for cutting-edge digital art. His work has been shown in Vienna already, back in 2003 in the Künstlerhaus at the Abstraction Now exhibition.
All photos and screenshots have been taken from Marius’ flickr account (copyright by Watz).
