Amnesia Sydney’s home ground, The Rocks, is a very pretty and tourist-friendly destination. And as we keep discovering through the council’s pop-up initiative, it is also fertile ground for creative experimentation. The case in hand is ‘&Company’ who have temporarily taken over a store next to the MCA.
I took the latter which was an introductory course into Arduino, the open-source microcontroller / software suite for programming. And I had a blast tinkering away my Sunday, plugging cables into speakers, triggering LED lights and getting my hands dirty with (processing-based) code. There is an intermediate course still available – get amongst it!
That is the basic model behind the wearable camera that blinds a user until he is touched by someone else.
The project was created by Artist Eric Siu and is called Touchy.
With Touchy, Siu wants to highlight social anxiety, which he believes is caused by the increased reliance on communication mediums like Facebook and Twitter. He says that the helmet emulates the isolating experience of over-reliance on social networks, and turns the wearer into a social device.
Touchy has two giant shutters that remain closed without human contact. Once the helmet’s sensors detect touch, the shutters open and illuminate the wearers eyes, the blindness is temporarily lifted until the connection is broken. If someone maintains contact for ten seconds, a photo is taken by the camera mounted on the front of Touchy, which is then displayed on a screen round the back.
Last month we highlighted the revolutionary move by piratebay to allow the downloading of physical objects via pirated 3D print designs. This time it’s all legal and consumer friendly via the NY start-up shapeways. Shapeways is a shop for 3D objects and an instant route to market for, well, anyone.
In their own words:
“With a growing online community and marketplace, we’re a NY start-up that harnesses 3D printing to help you make, buy and sell anything you want.By providing a platform for our community members to share ideas and gain access to cutting edge technology, we’re bringing personalized production to everyone—whether you’re already designing in 3D or are just looking to buy something completely unique. We print everything on-demand, which means that every order is customized and personalized.
We’re working to democratize creation by making production more accessible, personal, and inspiring.”
German artist Martin Klimas took porcelain fighting figures and let them “fight”.
The photos were taken just when the figurines shattered after being dropped – the sound of the breakage set off the camera shutter and the results are stunning. It really looks like they are fighting.
Here are some more:
Head over to his site to see more of them and his other work.
Simple – you cover it with a bunch of LEDs and make it disappear.
Mercedes Benz wanted to show that their new F-Cell model is good for the environment because it has 0.0 emissions. So they made it invisible.
Or at least from one point of view. One side of the new car was covered in LEDs and the other side had a Canon 5D Mark II attached to it so the video shot by the Canon was than shown on the other side making the car disappear.
Our sister company Publicis Mojo, together with Finch and Mobile Projection Unit (MPU) Sydney have developed and documented a look at mobile gaming – “Snake the Planet”
When ‘Snake the Planet!” is projected onto buildings, each level is generated individually and based on the selected facade. Above you can see that the person is part of the level – pretty cool.
Check out a video of it in action
I can’t wait for some more games to be developed. How about some Donkey Kong?
After the break you can find some more information, videos and photos.
After Stephan’s post appeared on the blog yesterday, it reminded me of an amazing project called Back to the Future (and part 2) by Argentinian photographer, Irina Werning.
By taking a photograph from your childhood, she attempts to recreate the photo with extreme attention to detail. The surroundings, clothes, positioning and facial expressions are all carefully put together to capture that exact moment from your past, in what was your future.
Another couple to note are a ‘do it yourself’ project called ‘Young Me/Now Me‘ where you can submit your own attempts at re-enacting your favourite childhood memory and Dear Photograph (below), a blog where you take a photo of an old photo that is perfectly lined up with the original photo’s setting (make sense?). Check it out:
Ulric Collette, canadian-based artist and photographer, put together photos of his family members and friends and photoshopped them together for his gallery of genetic portraits.
He calls it Research work on photographic genetic similarities between members of same family.
A great presentation by Brendan ‘Bob’ Forster last night @ Google with an awesome turn out of about 70 YoungBloods supporters from various agencies across Sydney.
First of all… YoungBloods is a platform for young advertising people to socialise, network and have a say on industry issues. The YoungBloods committee puts on a number of events during the year that anyone can attend. These events range from presentations held by leaders in our industry, trivia nights and industry themed parties.
Interested? Click here to become a YoungBlood or to be informed of these events.
Back to ‘Innovation @ Google’ presentation…
Bob (Brendan Forster), who is a Product Specialist at Google, spoke about Google’s innovation and various initiatives that have made significant difference to consumerism on a global scale.
The most notable of these initiatives would have been the Google Crises Response – a project which involves Google helping to connect people with information and their loved ones in times of disaster. For instance, during Cyclone Yasi and the Australian floods of 2011, Google provided a list of resources and phone numbers to facilitate emergency services, donations, volunteers and help people connect with loved ones.
Bob also explained Google X Lab, which is more or less a secret facility run by Google that works on ‘big ideas for the future’. He also gave examples on how Google has enabled previously unachievable ideas through technology eg The Johnny Cash Project, which allowed fans across the globe to contribute to a global art project which is ultimately a tribute to Johnny Cash. Bob also spoke about how Google has made significant progress in providing powerful consumer insights through search and further more, assisting consumers who want to engage everywhere at any time through mobile.
All in all it was a pretty inspiring presentation and well done to the YoungBloods team for organizing the event!
We all know this moment where you are focusing on your friend while taking the perfect picture only to find out later that there is some tourist in the background, some weird looking stranger bombing himself into our perfect shot.
Now there seems to be a solution on the horizon, Scalado announced a technology called Remove that will make it very easy to remove unwanted photobombers from your holiday shots. Simply select and remove.
Don’t believe it? Check out the video:
So how do they do it? The technology takes a series of photos in quick succession and then pinpoints moving objects in the collection, giving you the option to remove them with a click.
Right now it isn’t commercially available, but I can’t wait to have this on my phone soon.
We have all been to a museum and had to fight the urge to touch the painting we are looking at.
That might have been what Petros Vrellis thought, so he went ahead and created an interactive version of Vincent van Gogh’s painting Starry Night.
Hi project is a flowing simulation of the painting that when you touch it reacts and synthesizes sound. If left alone it slowly returns to its original state. Displayed at about 30 frames per second at 1920 x 1080 I am sure Vincent himself would have been impressed by it.
German Photographer Marcus Reugels takes pictures of water droplets refracting an image behind them, making them each appear to contain a world or Batman or Spiderman.
How he says on his website, every droplet is a unique piece of art. Pretty amazing
Check out his other work, which he says was not manipulated with Photoshop at all.
Posted by tbuesing 
Amnesia Blog 
You must be logged in to post a comment.