DRHA 2010 Conference – Sensual Technologies: Collaborative Practices of Interdisciplinarity :: September 5-8, 2010 :: Brunel University, West London, UK :: Call for Papers and Performances — Deadline Extended: May 14, 2010.

The conference’s overall theme will be the exploration of the collaborative relationship between the body and sensual/ sensing technologies across various disciplines. In this respect it will offer an interrogation of practices that are indebted to the innovative exchange between the sensual, visceral and new technologies.

At the same time, the aim is to look to new approaches offered by various emerging fields and practices that incorporate new and existing technologies. Specific examples of areas for discussion could include: Continue reading

[PRE_TURN*ON] Sharing-Identity Interface Workshop | Atelier sur les interfaces de partage d’identité — with Martine Neddam :: October 14, 2009; 1:00 – 4:00 pm :: OBORO, 4001, rue Berri, local 301, Montréal (Québec) Canada :: Space is limited. To register, please contact: nikkifournier [at] gmail.com.

Martine Neddam will give a workshop on shared identity interfaces that allow for the participative creation of virtual characters. She will use the now infamous Mouchette site as a case in point. The virtual character together with the materiality, sensuality, participatory nature of the site situate the workshop amongst key issues that will be addressed during TURN*ON. Continue reading

Computer Interface: A Video History — A talk by Jamie Zigelbaum :: July 24, 2009; 8:00 pm :: Machine Project, 1200 D North Alvarado, Los Angeles, CA.

The interface is the bridge and bottleneck between humans and computers. Over the past 50 years researchers have invented and imagined many and various interfaces to join synapse and transistor. In this talk Jamie will give a brief history of human-computer interaction research and we’ll watch videos of seminal interfaces from Sutherland’s Sketchpad in ‘63 up through the latest nerdtastic work at MIT and elsewhere. Continue reading

Interface Fantasy: A Lacanian Cyborg Ontology by André Nusselder, MIT Press — Cyberspace is first and foremost a mental space. Therefore we need to take a psychological approach to understand our experiences in it. In Interface Fantasy, André Nusselder uses the core psychoanalytic notion of fantasy to examine our relationship to computers and digital technology. Lacanian psychoanalysis considers fantasy to be an indispensable “screen” for our interaction with the outside world; Nusselder argues that, at the mental level, computer screens and other human-computer interfaces incorporate this function of fantasy: they mediate the real and the virtual.

Interface Fantasy illuminates our attachment to new media: why we love our devices; why we are fascinated by the images on their screens; and how it is possible that virtual images can provide physical pleasure. Continue reading

[Image: Hiroshi Ishii with one of his early projects, bottles that play music when their stoppers are removed. Photo / Donna Coveney] Ishii makes the virtual tangible — A ‘hands-on’ approach to computers by David Chandler, MIT News Office, April 6, 2009:

“At a time when ever more aspects of our lives are moving toward the virtual, online world — stores, newspapers, games and even social interactions — Hiroshi Ishii seems to be swimming against that current: His aim is to bring the world of computers into more real and tangible form, seamlessly integrated with our daily lives.

Instead of just using flat screens, keyboards and mice, he wants people to be able to interact with their computers and other devices by moving around and by handling real physical objects. In short, by doing what comes naturally. Continue reading

Greg J. Smith writes: I’m happy to report that the Handbook of Research on Computational Arts and Creative Informatics will be released sometime in the next several weeks. I contributed a chapter entitled “Information Visualization and Interface Culture” to this book and in the space of about 10,000 words I outline a few backstories related to visualization. These include: an survey of early radar technology, Vannevar Bush’s Memex, the Head-Up Display (HUD), an excavation of the Graphical User Interface (GUI), the obligatory salute to Edward Tufte and an examination of John Maeda’s Aesthetics + Computation Group at MIT. The text isn’t entirely about timelines and technology as I use texts by Lev Manovich and Alan Liu to consider the cultural implications of pervasive interface culture. The chapter also includes some exemplary work by Ben Fry, Stamen Design, Burak Arikan, lab/RAD and a team comprised of José Luis de Vicente, Irma Vilà and Bestiario. More here.

The Khronos Projector — by Alvaro Cassinelli — is an interactive-art installation allowing people to explore pre-recorded movie content in an entirely new way. A classic video-tape allows a simple control of the reproducing process (stop, backward, forward, and elementary control on the reproduction speed). Modern digital players add little more than the possibility to perform random temporal jumps between image frames.

The goal of the Khronos Projector is to go beyond these forms of exclusive temporal control, by giving the user an entirely new dimension to play with: by touching the projection screen, the user is able to send parts of the image forward or backwards in time. By actually touching a deformable projection screen, shaking it or curling it, separate “islands of time” as well as “temporal waves” are created within the visible frame. This is done by interactively reshaping a two-dimensional spatio-temporal surface that “cuts” the spatio-temporal volume of data generated by a movie. Continue reading

PaperTweet3d: Augmented Reality T-shirts from squidder on Vimeo. [via]

V2_Events: Test_Lab: Artistic Interfaces :: March 12, 2009; 8:00 pm :: V2_ Ground floor, Eendrachtsstraat 10, Rotterdam and Streamed Live.

In this edition of Test_Lab, the outcome of artistic experiments in (counter-) intuitive Artistic Interfaces will be elaborated upon by interaction maker and researcher Kristina Andersen. While designers aim to advance interfaces to more intuitive use, through notions such as metaphor, artists often take a radically different approach, by incorporating counter-intuitive responses. This tension will be exemplified through demonstrations of the intuitive software design of Watch That Sound (Jacques van de Veerdonk and V2_Lab) … Continue reading

Pervasive Games: Interfaces, Strategies and Moves by Thomas Dreher :: English :: German:

Pervasive Games: Interfaces, Strategies and Moves reviews the actual state of the discourse about the fundamentals of this kind of games. Terms like the “immersion“ and “magic circle“ are transferred from theories on computer games in nearly all articles on the subject. The transferences lead to contradictory arguments in the authors’ efforts to explain the relations between the play actions and the playing field. An ‘interface-model’ is proposed as an alternative to these contradictions. The ‘world-interface’ constitutes the bodily and cognitive access of the gamers to the world. The ‘game-interface’ constitute the participants’ ways to comprehend and to use the elements creating the game´s requirements: the rules and the technical equipment. Continue reading