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. “
I just returned from San Jose working on the 2010 01SJ Biennial where, among other projects, I worked with Jaime Austin and Shona Kitchen to install “Small Wonders,” a cabinet exhibition based on the idea of the wunderkammer at the new expansion of the San Jose International Airport – which has some amazing public art, and you should definitely fly through there next time you come to the Bay Area.
“Wunderkammer, also known as cabinets of curiosities, were diverse collections of objects popular during the Renaissance and considered an early form of the museum. Literally meaning “wonder room,” a wunderkammer was meant to invoke a sense of wonder and often included a wide range of objects from natural history specimens (such as taxidermy) to geological artifacts (such as precious stones) to cultural objects (such as handicrafts). Small Wonders presents a range of objects by mostly local artists. The displays are meant to evoke the wonder of the early history of Silicon Valley, and computing in general, with projects making use of the early Minitel for animations or a hack of an Altair computer. Other wonderful ‘curiosities’ that artists create employ various forms of technology from blogging pigeons, to spying coconuts, to a lifelike origami peregrine falcon.”
ZER01 also commissioned a project by SuttonBeresCullter, The Wunderkammer, which they are almost finished installing. Here is a video stream of a talk they gave about the project tonight.
The Museum of London has launched an iPhone app which cleverly brings its extensive art and photographic collections to the streets of the capital...
The free app, called StreetMuseum, has been developed with creative agency Brothers and Sisters and makes use of geo tagging and Google Maps to guide users to various sites in London where, via the iPhone screen, various historical images of the city appear - just like in the image above.
[...]
Here are some more examples of the kind of augmented reality views of London the app offers:
Executive creative director: Andy Fowler
Creative director: Steve Shannon
Creatives: Kirsten Rutherford, Lisa Jelliffe
Account manager: Emma Simmons
Developers: Gavin Buttimore, Robin Charlton
New business director: Helen Kimber
Head of digital: Kevin Brown
Digital project manager: Tanya Holland
Digital designer: Mateus Wanderley
Image geotagger: Jack Kerruish
Patrick Keller:
Further than the functional aspect of this AR application, I'm quite interested in the potential mixing of times that it allows to experience. Always a funny game to compare old pictures with current situation, but the fact that you can experience it in place, try to find out the photographer's point of view, etc. creates a connection (channeling ?) to distant times, experiences and persons. It also brings the museum in town and uses the urban fabric, pathways, views, etc. as the base for a narrative scenography.
Christophe Guignard:
It reminds me an old project we designed but never developed in 2001 or 2002: to combine digital environments with views of existing urban areas. The idea was neither to add info about shops or monuments around nor to confront past and present, but rather to create a new "artificial" reality, a mixed architecture.
Every day we have to prove our humanity to the most unlikely of entities: computers. Artist Aram Bartholl — whose work deals with the intersection between digital and real-life spheres — has created an intriguing series called “Are You Human?” that integrates CAPTCHA codes into everyday landscapes.
Although you might not know the term for it, you probably use CAPTCHA codes at least one a week. They’re those trippy series of letters and numbers you have to punch in when verifying that you are, in fact a human, when signing up for an online service or making a purchase online. CAPTCHA stands for “Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart.” As you can see in the video above, Bartholl fashioned his own tangible CAPTCHA codes and slapped them up around a cityscape, often next to graffiti (which he calls another kind of code).
We think this is a pretty cool concept, and especially relevant as the web continues to have a greater impact on “real life.”
We were waiting for this one after Google Earth's pins or bubbles being built in physical space, after space invaders invading the cities and all sort of mash-ups of real and digital content.
So now comes the captcha as a tag. It's done therefore! A bit "geeky", but nice twist asking and verifying if you're "human" nonetheless!
This blog is the survey website of fabric | ch - studio for architecture, interaction and research.
We curate and reblog articles, researches, writings, exhibitions and projects that we notice and find interesting during our everyday practice and readings.
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