Sticky Postings
By fabric | ch
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As we continue to lack a decent search engine on this blog and as we don't use a "tag cloud" ... This post could help navigate through the updated content on | rblg (as of 08.2021), via all its tags!
FIND BELOW ALL THE TAGS THAT CAN BE USED TO NAVIGATE IN THE CONTENTS OF | RBLG BLOG:
(to be seen just below if you're navigating on the blog's html pages or here for rss readers)
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Note that we had to hit the "pause" button on our reblogging activities a while ago (mainly because we ran out of time, but also because we received complaints from a major image stock company about some images that were displayed on | rblg, an activity that we felt was still "fair use" - we never made any money or advertise on this site).
Nevertheless, we continue to publish from time to time information on the activities of fabric | ch, or content directly related to its work (documentation).
Wednesday, October 19. 2016
Note: following the previous post that mentioned the idea of spiritism in relation to personal data, or forgotten personal data, but also in relation to "beliefs" linked to contemporary technologies, here comes an interesting symposium (Machines, magie, médias) and post on France Culture. The following post and linked talk from researcher Mireille Berton (nearby University of Lausanne, Dpt of Film History and Aesthetics) are in French.
Via France Culture
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Cerisy : Machines, magie, médias (du 20 au 28 août 2016)
Les magiciens — de Robert-Houdin et Georges Méliès à Harry Houdini et Howard Thurston suivis par Abdul Alafrez, David Copperfield, Jim Steinmeyer, Marco Tempest et bien d’autres — ont questionné les processus de production de l’illusion au rythme des innovations en matière d’optique, d’acoustique, d’électricité et plus récemment d’informatique et de numérique.
Or, toute technologie qui se joue de nos sens, tant qu’elle ne dévoile pas tous ses secrets, tant que les techniques qu'elle recèle ne sont pas maîtrisées, tant qu’elle n’est pas récupérée et formalisée par un média, reste à un stade que l’on peut définir comme un moment magique. Machines et Magie partagent, en effet, le secret, la métamorphose, le double, la participation, la médiation. Ce parti pris se fonde sur l’hypothèse avancée par Arthur C. Clarke : "Toute technologie suffisamment avancée est indiscernable de la magie" (1984, p. 36).
L’émergence même des médias peut être analysée en termes d’incarnation de la pensée magique, "patron-modèle" (Edgar Morin, 1956) de la forme première de l’entendement individuel (Marcel Mauss, 1950). De facto, depuis les fantasmagories du XVIIIe siècle jusqu’aux arts numériques les plus actuels, en passant par le théâtre, la lanterne magique, la photographie, le Théâtrophone, le phonographe, la radio, la télévision et le cinéma, l’histoire des machineries spectaculaires croise celle de la magie et les expérimentations de ses praticiens, à l’affût de toute nouveauté permettant de réactualiser les effets magiques par la mécanisation des performances. C’est par l’étude des techniques d’illusion propres à chaque média, dont les principes récurrents ont été mis au jour par les études intermédiales et l’archéologie des médias, que la rencontre avec l’art magique s’est imposée.
Ce colloque propose d’en analyser leur cycle technologique : le moment magique (croyance et émerveillement), le mode magique (rhétorique), la sécularisation (banalisation de la dimension magique). Ce cycle est analysé dans sa transversalité afin d’en souligner les dimensions intermédiales. Les communications sont ainsi regroupées en sept sections : L’art magique ; Magie et esthétiques de l’étonnement ; Magie, télévision et vidéo ; Les merveilles de la science ; Magie de l’image, l’image et la magie ; Magie du son, son et magie ; Du tableau vivant au mimétisme numérique. La première met en dialogue historiens et praticiens de la magie et présente un état des archives sur le sujet. Les six sections suivantes font état des corrélations: magie/médias et médias/magie.
Docteure ès Lettres, Mireille Berton est maître d’enseignement et de recherche à la Section d’Histoire et esthétique du cinéma de l'Université de Lausanne (UNIL).
Ses travaux portent principalement sur les rapports entre cinéma et sciences du psychisme (psychologie, psychanalyse, psychiatrie, parapsychologie), avec un intérêt particulier pour une approche croisant histoire culturelle, épistémologie des médias et Gender Studies.
Outre de nombreuses études, elle a publié un livre tiré de sa thèse de doctorat intitulé Le Corps nerveux des spectateurs. Cinéma et sciences du psychisme autour de 1900 (L’Âge d’Homme, 2015), et elle a co-dirigé avec Anne-Katrin Weber un ouvrage collectif consacré à l’histoire des dispositifs télévisuels saisie au travers de discours, pratiques, objets et représentations (La Télévision du Téléphonoscope à YouTube. Pour une archéologie de l'audiovision, Antipodes, 2009). Elle travaille actuellement sur un manuscrit consacré aux représentations du médium spirite dans les films et séries télévisées contemporains (à paraître chez Georg en 2017).
TALK (audio): Le médium spirite ou la magie d’un corps hypermédiatique à l’ère de la modernité, par Mireille Berton
Résumé de la communication:
L'intervention propose de revenir sur une question souvent traitée dans l’histoire des sciences et de l’occultisme, à savoir le rôle joué par les instruments de mesure et de capture dans l’appréhension des faits paranormaux. Une analyse de sources spirites parues durant les premières décennies du XXe siècle permet de mettre au jour les tensions provoquées par les dispositifs optiques et électriques qui viennent défier le corps tout-puissant du médium spirite sur son propre territoire. La rencontre entre occultisme et modernité donne alors naissance à la figure (discursive et fantasmatique) du médium "hypermédiatique", celui-ci surpassant toutes les possibilités offertes par les découvertes scientifiques.
Friday, November 25. 2011
(Image: Institute of Physics)
The future of augmented-reality technology is here - as long as you're a rabbit. Bioengineers have placed the first contact lenses containing electronic displays into the eyes of rabbits as a first step on the way to proving they are safe for humans. The bunnies suffered no ill effects, the researchers say.
The first version may only have one pixel, but higher resolution lens displays - like those seen in Terminator - could one day be used as satnav enhancers showing you directional arrows for example, or flash up texts and emails - perhaps even video. In the shorter term, the breakthrough also means people suffering from conditions like diabetes and glaucoma may find they have a novel way to monitor their conditions.
In February, New Scientist revealed the litany of research projects underway in the field of contact lens enhancement. While one company has fielded a contact lens technology using a surface-mounted strain gauge to assess glaucoma risk, none have built in a display, or the lenses needed for focused projection onto the retina - and then tested it in vivo. They have now.
"We have demonstrated the operation of a contact lens display powered by a remote radiofrequency transmitter in free space and on a live rabbit," says a US and Finnish team led by Babak Praviz of the University of Washington in Seattle.
"This verifies that antennas, radio chips, control circuitry, and micrometre-scale light sources can be integrated into a contact lens and operated on live eyes."
The test lens was powered remotely using a 5-millimetre-long antenna printed on the lens to receive gigahertz-range radio-frequency energy from a transmitter placed ten centimetres from the rabbit's eye. To focus the light on the rabbit's retina, the contact lens itself was fabricated as a Fresnel lens - in which a series of concentric annular sections is used to generate the ultrashort focal length needed.
They found their lens LED glowed brightly up to a metre away from the radio source in free space, but needed to be 2 centimetres away when the lens was placed in a rabbit's eye and the wireless reception was affected by body fluids. All the 40-minute-long tests on live rabbits were performed under general anaesthetic and showed that the display worked well - and fluroescence tests showed no damage or abrasions to the rabbit's eyes after the lenses were removed.
While making a higher resolution display is next on their agenda, there are uses for this small one, say the researchers: "A display with a single controllable pixel could be used in gaming, training, or giving warnings to the hearing impaired."
"This is clearly way off in the future. But we're aware of the research that is ongoing in this field and we're watching the technology's potential for biosensing and drug delivery applications in particular," says a spokesperson for the British Contact Lens Association in London.
Monday, December 20. 2010
Personal comment:
Can also be used for windows of course, as the oled can be transparent when not lit and semi-transparent when lit.
Thursday, December 02. 2010
Links, via City of Sound via The Guardian
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Thanks, Gutenberg - but we're too pressed for time to read [The Observer]
"The study confirms what many are beginning to suspect: that the web is having a profound impact on how we conceptualise, seek, evaluate and use information. What Marshall McLuhan called 'the Gutenberg galaxy' - that universe of linear exposition, quiet contemplation, disciplined reading and study - is imploding, and we don't know if what will replace it will be better or worse."
Tuesday, August 10. 2010
Personal comment:
Quite active in the field of architecture & interaction design, environment design, Studio Roosegaarde makes a try in the field of fashion design with this interactive garment.
Thursday, July 15. 2010
Via PreCentral
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As we mentioned in our liveblog and wrap-up of Phil McKinney's keynote at MobileBeat 2010, HP's CTO was very clear that he wasn't announcing any new hardware - he likes webOS's chances on a "Slate device" but not on the Slate device.
McKinney also broke out both a Palm Pre and a Palm Pixi, but the most interesting thing he pulled out during his speech was a rolled-up flexible display. What you're looking at is something from deep inside HP's R&D, it's similar to E-Ink, printed on Mylar, and essentially can be made into any size you can imagine, from handset on up to an entire wall. It's full color and low-power, but more notably it's a far-in-the-future kind of thing, don't expect flexible display devices in the short or even medium term. The display that McKinney showed is still fairly fragile, even rolled up in a protective tube it managed to collect some kinds and flaws.
The takeaway? While HP really is dedicated to webOS smartphones, this flexible display technology is a sign that HP is thinking big about mobility.
McKinney's goal for webOS is to break out of the spectrum of devices with television on one end and featurephones on the other, to create something that is both richly immersive and highly mobile with fewer tradeoffs than what current devices face. That asterisk off in the upper right, unbound from the line of non-mobile-but-rich televisions and highly-mobile-but-boring featurephones is the target.

Friday, May 28. 2010
Via Pasta & Vinegar
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by Nicolas Nova

Les Editions Volumiques finally launched their website showing plenty of curious and original products based on mixing paper and digital technologies:
“Here are the first pieces of les évolutions dynamiques following research on both volume and interactivity, playfully mixing paper and computation. By allowing interactivity and gameplay in the page (for example with the Duckette project) or between the pages (in The book that turns its own pages, or Labyrinthe), we try to bring new life to paper. We then pushed physical behavior to paper and ink (the book that disapears). There, the paper is no longer only the frame for representation, but at the same time the field of a real physical experience. We also played with the volume and perspective of book and content (paradoxales, Meeting-Zombies). And then, we tried to combine paper with this little computer-object almost of us all carry everywhere: our cell phone (the night of the living dead pixels, (i) pirates).“
Why do I blog this? I find these projects fascinating and love the idea of mixing digital tech with paper to create compelling user experiences. The examples showed on the picture (see more on their website) are stunning and show the future of books go far beyond boring reading machines. The use of playful metaphors and game mechanics in the work of Bertrand and Etienne are also highly intriguing for those interested in inspiring ways to renew the reading experience.
Besides, if you’re interested in this type of “paper computing”, be sure to check the Papercomp 2010 workshop at Ubicomp. Organized by friends from EPFL, it’s based on similar ideas:
“Paper is not dead. Books, magazines and other printed materials can now be connected to the digital world, enriched with additional content and even transformed into interactive interfaces. Conversely, some of the screen-based interfaces we currently use to interact with digital data could benefit from being paper-based or make use of specially designed material as light and flexible as paper. In a near future, printed documents could become new ubiquitous interfaces for our everyday interactions with digital information. This is the dawn of paper computing. “
Tuesday, February 23. 2010
by noreply@blogger.com (Geoff Manaugh)
A mind-bogglingly awesome new project from MIT called Flyfire hopes to use large, precision-controlled clouds of micro-helicopters, each carrying a color-coordinated LED light, to create massive, three-dimensional information displays in space.
[Image: Via Flyfire].
Each helicopter is "a smart pixel," we read. "Through precisely controlled movements, the helicopters perform elaborate and synchronized motions and form an elastic display surface for any desired scenario." Emergency streetlights, future TV, avant-garde rural entertainment, and even acts of war.
Watch the video:
Instead of a drive-in cinema, in other words, you could simply be looking out from the windscreen of your car at a massive cloud of color-coordinated, precision-timed, drone micro-helicopters, each the size and function of a pixel. Imagine planetarium shows with this thing!
The Flyfire canvas can transform itself from one shape to another or morph a two-dimensional photographic image into an articulated shape. The pixels are physically engaged in transitioning images from one state to another, which allows the Flyfire canvas to demonstrate a spatially animated viewing experience.
Imagine web-browsing through literal clouds of small flying pixels, parting and weaving in the air in front of you like fireflies (or imagine training fireflies to act as a web browser). You're in a university auditorium one day when, instead of delivering her projected slideshow, your professor simply remote-controls a whirring vortex of ten thousand flying micro-dots. Digital 3D cinema is nothing compared to this murmuration of light.
Channeling Tim Maly, we might even someday see a drone-swarm of LED-augmented, artificially intelligent nano-helicopters flying off into the desert skies of the American southwest, on cinematic migration routes blurring overhead. On a lonely car drive through northern Arizona when a film-cloud flies by...
An insane emperor entertains himself watching precision-controlled image-clouds, some of which are distant satellites falling synchronized through space.
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Via BLDGBLOG
Personal comment:
D'une façon différente (écran, images volumiques et donc display), cela me fait penser au projet de Nicolas Reeves ("Mescarillons", self assembling architecture) et à ce que nous imaginions au début du projet de recherche Variable_Environment autour de la création d'architectures variables exploitant des "swarm intelligent flying robots"... Impossible à l'époque.
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