Tuesday, April 13. 2010
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by Patrick Burgoyne

Over the past few weeks, we've been following the production of Speed of Light, an ambitious laser light installation by United Visual Artists for Virgin Media. The show is now open and it doesn't disappoint
UVA were commissioned by Virgin Media to create 'an immersive light installation celebrating 10 years of broadband in the UK'. It comprises a series of laser-based experimental light works which flow through the labyrinthine spaces of the Bargehouse, the four-storey ex-warehouse on London's South Bank.
On entering the space, visitors are asked to speak into a suspended microphone to answer questions displayed on the wall in front of them. Their answers follow them around the building as they explore the various installations over four floors.
These sounds and others, as well as light, are carried around the building using fibre optics, thus tying in with the broadband theme.

On the first floor, is probably the most explicitly client-related piece in which lasers describe the outline of a TV set, coffee table and sofa in a living room.

Visitors' previous answers affect a giant laser-generated icon at the end of the next room – positive responses producing a happy face, negative ones a sad one.
The things get more abstract, and interesting. A spectacular light show runs the length of one room, reacting to sampled sounds, the multicoloured lasers made vibrant by the water-based haze pumped into the room - think dry ice.




The final room is more of a performance piece than an installation. Four large lasers, one on each corner of the room, react to the soundtrack of visitors' replies plus news feeds and archive audio.



A company like Virgin Media, with a corporate anniversary to celebrate, would perhaps in the past have settled for spending the money on a TV ad. Thankfully, with the aid of UVA and PR company Borkowski it has gone for something much more ambitious and memorable. Interesting too that it is a project that has come via a PR company rather than an ad agency - a sign of things to come?
This is a really beautiful piece of work – highly reommended.
Our previous posts on the project are here, here and here
Speed of Light is at the Bargehouse, Oxo Tower Wharf, Bargehouse Street, South Bank, London, SE1 9PH, from April 9 to 19.
All photographs by Tom Oldham
Friday, January 29. 2010
In a week when we are all learning to say iPad, we might also start practicing 'iGlasses'. Apple's got patents on augmented reality goggles:
- Apple See-Through Augmented Reality HMD Glasses
The January issue of Mac Life sports a fauxtograph of possible Apple augmented reality HMD glasses. It’s hard to know how much of this article is based on concept, but Apple working on an AR HMD would be a huge jumpstart to the nascent technology.

In mid-April of 2008, Apple published a patent for a “Head Mounted Display System.” The patent shows screens and fiber optics and vision imaging controls. Would the display use pico projection or utilize OLED displays? Pico displays could be used right now, but OLEDs might be a year out.

Would Apple make HMD goggle for augmented reality? Looking back at this 2006 interview on MacSimumNews, we can see that Steve Jobs was already considering it. Given that he also denies Apple is looking at a HMD practically guarantees they have something in the works.
Jobs: Yes, you want a nice big screen so that you can see lots of music and you can pick out what you want, versus a tiny little screen. But then again, you want the screen to be small so that you can put it in your pocket. Actually, discovering and buying music on a computer and downloading it to the iPod—in our opinion, that’s one of the geniuses of the iPod. So you can look at changing that—and maybe that will happen over time—but I think the experience you’ll get on a device optimized for putting in your pocket is going to be far less satisfactory than on a personal computer. You may still want to do that [on a small screen] occasionally, but I don’t think it’s ever going to mean that you can not have some other device that is your primary device for buying and cataloguing music.
Swisher: What would solve that? Can it be solved?
Jobs: Rollable screens, goggles you can put on; I don’t know. It’s not on the horizon.
Goggles you can put on, indeed.
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Via /Message
Personal comment:
Il faut battre le fer pendant qu'il est chaud... Pour contribuer à lancer la prochaine rumeur Apple...
Wednesday, November 04. 2009

Laurent La Gamba makes photographic installations dealing with camouflage. His work juggles with the idea of natural procrypsis in the urban space and deals with the relations among people, living environment, and technology.
(more…)
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Via NextNature
Personal comment:
Le camouflage urbain qui se réalise dans les brands, la pub, les signes et les paquets de chips... Intéressant, révélateur, comique, mais finalement plutôt inquiétant...
Wednesday, March 11. 2009

Launching in Seoul at the end of April 2009, the highly anticipated Prada Transformer designed by OMA/Rem Koolhaas will showcase a groundbreaking series of cross-cultural exhibitions, screenings and live events. For five months this shape-shifting venue will host multiple interdisciplinary projects, bringing a unique mix of visual arts to Korea.
The Transformer combines the four sides of a tetrahedron: hexagon, cross, rectangle and circle into one pavilion. The building, entirely covered with a smooth elastic membrane, will be flipped using cranes, completely reconfiguring the visitor's experience with each new programme. Each side plan is precisely designed to organize a different event installation creating a building with four identities. Whenever one shape becomes the ground plan, the other three shapes become the walls and the ceiling defining the space, as well as referencing historic or anticipating future event configurations.



"Waist Down - Skirts by Miuccia Prada", an ongoing project by Miuccia Prada in collaboration with AMO, makes its Korean debut on April 25, showcasing a collection of skirts "in motion" ranging from the first ever Prada show to the present day. Skirts by emerging Korean fashion students will be included to show the interaction between two fashion worlds and to amplify the meaning of fashion from different cultural perspectives.
The exhibition space will then be transformed into a cinema showing a programme of films selected by Alejandro González Iñárritu, the director of Oscar-winning Babel. "Flesh, Mind and Soul" is the concept for the unique programme - to be launched on June 26 - co-curated by film critic Elvis Mitchell, spanning multiple genres, countries and decades of filmmaking including a rich and substantial amount of physical, intellectual and spiritual films that will create a whole cinematic experience.
Subsequently, the Prada Foundation will present an exhibition, "Beyond Control", curated by Germano Celant, which will 'transform' the interior of the architectural object by OMA into an inspiring magma of works by some of the most significant contemporary artists.
Further cultural activities will be announced in the lead-up to the launch of the project. Prada and the Prada Foundation have combined their resources with their local partners' to develop an extraordinary programme for the Prada Transformer's innovative, changing stages. As the fields of fashion, art, film, design and performance now inform and influence each other with increasing diversity and complexity, this programme aims to stimulate and embrace multi-disciplinarian discourse.
Situated next to the 16th-century Gyeonghui Palace, the Prada Transformer - realized with the support of LG Electronics, Hyundai Motor Company and Red Resource Inc. - dramatically juxtaposes Korean history, tradition and folklore with this 21st-century multi-dimensional event space. Due to Seoul Metropolitan Government's passion and dedication to cultural projects, the Prada Transformer was well received and fully supported by the City. Visibly attuned to Seoul's modern positioning as a forward-looking and technologically advanced metropolis, the Prada Transformer is part of Prada's global commitment to the production of new realities in fashion, art, architecture and creative culture.
The architectural project is led by Rem Koolhaas together with associates Kunle Adeyemi and Chris van Duijn, and design architect Alexander Reichert.
As of today, the Prada Transformer is also visible online on pradatransformer.co.kr. The website is the result of a collaboration between Prada, AMO - the mirror image think tank of Rem Koolhaas's Office for Metropolitan Architecture -- and 2x4, a multidisciplinary design studio from NY focusing on art, architecture, and fashion world wide.
The concept of the site is strongly linked to the architectural project. Equal to the built pavilion, which transforms to accommodate different events, the website regenerates its graphics and contents according to the changes in use of the actual structure along time. The main navigation system is a timeline which allows users to intuitively scroll back and forward revealing the calendar of the pavilion and the related content.
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Via Archinect
Personal comment:
Evidemment, ce projet me rappelle partiellement les désirs sous-jacents qu'il pourvait y avoir dans notre projet de recherche "Variable_environment" réalisé pour l'ECAL. Même si dans ce cas, nous travaillions à une toute autre échelle... Ce projet de Koolhas sonne un peu comme le retour du refoulé: envie de mobilité, de reconfiguration, etc.
Reste aussi que l'utilisation de ces formes assez basiques et l'aspect finalement assez rude de l'ensemble sonne également comme un statement de ras-le-bol envers les formes "blob" et l'approche algorythmique/générative de la forme pour la forme des ces 10 dernières années.
A noter encore que ce projet lancé par Prada fait écho à celui que Channel a lancé il y a quelques temps déjà (projet par Zaha Hadid à l'instigation de Karl Lagerfeld), mais qui a déjà du être interrompu, soit à cause de son manque de succès (ça ne semble pas être le cas), soit à cause de ses coûts de transports et énergétiques exhorbitants. Il est annoncé sur le site du projet qu'il "n'aurait plus été dans l'air du temps" en 2009...
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