Move and SymbioticA

I recently moved to Los Angeles, so last night I hit Machine Project to go see Oron Catts & IonatZurr of SymbioticA speak about tissue culture art. Definitely cool stuff!

iTunesU has a neat video about creating art-games, go to the iTunes store and search for
"joe mckay finding balance".

More info here:

http://hci.stanford.edu/cs547/abstracts/06-07/061006-niemeyer.html

You can also check out Joe McKay's website.

Dorkbot DC Meeting September 10, 2007

Dorkbot DC is a monthly meeting of artists (sound/image/movement/etc.), designers, engineers, students and others in the DC area who are interested in electronic art (in the broadest sense of the term.)

Next Meeting:

Monday, September 10, 2007
7 PM - 9 PM (ET)

Marian Koshland Science Museum of the National Academy of Sciences
6th and E Streets, NW
Washington, DC 20001

(PDF Meeting Flyer/Poster)

Presentations will include...

Conrad Barski: PicnicMob.Org

PicnicMob is a concept to create "flash mob" picnics in parks of major U.S. cities, but it assigns each participant to a location in the park so that they are near other participants with similar interests (calculated using simulated annealing).

Thomas Edwards: "Touch"

Mechatronic and robotic artist Thomas Edwards will present his work "Touch" which allows two individuals to physically touch each other over the Internet. During the meeting, Edwards will demonstrate touching fingers between Washington, DC, and Toronto, Canada.

On the other side will be Liav Koren at the University of Toronto's Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design. "Touch" is part of the Phy2Phy project to link physical artworks over IP.

Philip Kohn

Philip Kohn will lead a tour through "The Looking Glass" , an evolving interactive video piece that encourages participants to move about in silly ways by rewarding them with cool effects when they do.

He'll reveal plans for a new (hopefully!) commissioned collaboration with ceramicist Novie Trump called "Through the Hedge" which will create an artificial real-time jungle including magical creatures that do things to you when you touch them. It will attempt to blend and bring life a large ceramic mural with an embedded huge LCD flat screen.

If he gets it together, he may also debut a new piece called "Feeling Lucky" which crawls along the web as a stream of consciousness in pictures using Google image and Google search.

For desert, he will offer "Pastry", a recent piece that shows organic layers of texture that come out of the screen, without the need for 3D glasses.

Real Life to Second Life

I'm investigating having "Touch" bridge between the physical world and Second Life.

There are a couple of mechanisms for objects in SL to talk to the outside world. Andy Fundinger has a summary of the three mechanisms here. The one that makes the most sense for "Touch" is probably having the object do HTTP requests to the outside world using llHTTPRequest.

Touching distance

It turns out a more accurate translation of the last bit of the Make:Japan blog entry about touch is:

From Translator: As far as I can tell from the video, it looks ordinary. However, reading this explanation, it sounds innovative. I wonder how I can use this for what, though. I can't think of any idea for it, from this mediocre brain....

I was thinking that when I "touch" between DC and Toronto, it won't just be 356 miles between the two cities, but actually the "touch" signals will go between DC and Sunnyvale, CA (where the server is, 2429 miles away) and then to Toronto (2262 miles away), for a total of 4691 miles.

Big in Japan

"Touch" was on the MAKE:Japan blog today, link here.

Google language tools translate:

Perhaps Thomas Edwards of the friend who serves [aruhuagiku] with Dorkbot DC that (the other technical field artist includes) started wiki of new project. The name is, Phy2Phy, in addition name " the physical interaction on IP (physical interaction) “. The video of YouTube which is introduced here has become up-to-date report of that " touch " project. The pressure perception register was used, it is the system that 2 humans it is touched mutually via the net. Here cool hard is used the large quantity. The Comfile CUBLOC CB220 microprocessor and the Pololu micro serial servo controller, it is Lantronix Xport and the pressure sensor etc. As for all details and link, there is the page of Touch Project of Phy2Phy. Thomas is the expectation which announces halfway lapse with Dorkbot DC September 10th.

From translator: If you looked at video, but with plainness when explanation is read, you can think enormously in epoch-making ones, don't you think?. Whether so being able to utilize in something. At the point where the ordinary person it is sad for such idea not to emerge, .......

Interesting Thesis

.art - Situating Internet Art in the Traditional Institution for Contemporary Art

(Karen A. Verschooren - MIT)

This thesis provides a critical analysis of the relation between Internet art and the traditional institution for contemporary art in the North American and West-European regions. Thirteen years after its inception as an art form, the Internet art world finds itself in a developmental stage and its relation to the traditional institution for contemporary art is accordingly. Through an elaborate discussion of the key players, institutions and discourses on aesthetics, economics and exhibition methodologies, this sociological analysis of the past and current situation hopes to offer a solid ground for extrapolation and predictions for Internet art’s future as an art world in its relation to the traditional art institutions.

Washington Post mention

Some of my work got a mention in the Washington Post "Weekend Now" chat for August 3, 2007:

Washington, D.C.: I read in the Post about the great success of Tom Greaves's street installation "The Compliment Machine," which dishes out compliments to people as they walk by.

Then I read online about an Artomatic artist who had a similar machine called "Sycophant" a few years earlier but had very little notice.

Mr. O'Sullivan: Do you recall the Artomatic machine? Are they similar?

washingtonpost.com: The Art of Gratuitous Praise ( Post, July 21)

Michael O'Sullivan: I do remember "Sycophant" quite well. It was similar to the "Compliment Machine" in that they both dole out compliments, but "Sycophant," by Thomas Edwards, an artist who organizes DC's Dorbot meetings of tech/art people, was not just an impersonal box, but a robotic human head. It was rather hilarious, as I recall, saying things like, "You look really hot" and "I love your sweater."

...

Was Sycophant: the one next to the talking fish?

Michael O'Sullivan: Yes! That was the one. The fish--an altered version of one of the Big Mouth Billy Bass novelties--shouted out things like: "They're eating my eggs!" By the way, you can find more about the monthly DC Dorbot meetings (where art and tech collide) at http://www.dorkbot.org/dorkbotdc/.

Links: Sycophant, School of Fish Pain, Dorkbot DC