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Tag Archives: interactive

Events

Richard The: Design for Social Interaction

May 4, 2010; 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm.
ACT - MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology, 265 Massachusetts Avenue, 3rd Floor, Room N51-390, Cambridge, MA.

portraitRichardTheRichard The is a graphic and interaction designer. After studying at University of the Arts Berlin and working at Sagmeister Inc., he is now working at the MIT Media Lab with Prof. David Small, and is part of the design studio The Green Eyl in Berlin. Richard focuses on new forms of visual expression that utilize computation, and design for new social interactions and situations. His work has been shown at Ars Electronica, Design Museum London and Experimenta Design Amsterdam. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including Honorary Mention at Ars Electronica, London Designs of the Year, Tokyo Type Director’s Club. Richard’s projects include:

The Whispering Table where one can explore similarities and peculiarities of different food ceremonies playfully. Four unique festivities celebrated by people of different cultures are assembled at a round table creating an archetypical scene of congregation.

richard_the_appeelAppeel is a virus spread by interacting individuals. Surfaces are covered by thousands of coloured stickers laid out in a grid. Peeling a sticker off leaves a white spot in the grid, people hence start individually and collectively changing its appearance. Once off the wall, the stickers ask to be sticked somewhere: people begin putting them on objects, walls, people, they collect them, they compose new images, they write messages. Slowly the little stickers spread, appearing further away from their source and occupying space.

Appeel inherits basic principles of interactivity and generativity applied to purely analogous means. Its immanent potential of penetrating regulated public and private space counterpoints its apparent plainness. The dot spreads with the promise to ironically mark its carrier as a symbol of sale and possession.

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Events

Joseph Butch Rovan

September 22, 2009; 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm.
Center for Advanced Visual Studies/MIT, 265 Massachusetts Avenue, 3rd Floor, Room N51-390, Cambridge

rovan_NIME_04065-CROPJoseph Butch Rovan is a composer and performer on the faculty of the Department of Music at Brown University, where he co-directs MEME (Multimedia & Electronic Music Experiments @ Brown) and the Ph.D. program in Computer Music and Multimedia. Prior to joining Brown he directed CEMI, the Center for Experimental Music and Intermedia, at the University of North Texas, and was a compositeur en recherche with the Real-Time Systems Team at the Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM) in Paris. Rovan worked at Opcode Systems before leaving for Paris, serving as Product Manager for MAX, OMS and MIDI hardware.

Butch will discuss is new interactive installation, Let us imagine a straight line, featuring dancer Ami Shulman — which you can visit on October 17, 2009; 1:00 – 4:00 pm at the Digital Humanites Lab (lower floor), Cogut Center for the Humanities, Pembroke Hall, 172 Meeting Street, Providence, RI.rovan_imagine_6inLet us imagine a straight line explores the meaning of movement and the limits of perception through multiple stagings of the body in time and space. Drawing on the work of French physiologist Étienne-Jules Marey and philosopher Henri Bergson, the installation presents an interactive environment that allows participants to reveal the substance of interior bodily impulses through image, text, and sound.

Documents of 19th-century science and 20th-century phenomenology combine with the very real and present gestures of a 21st-century dancer, to produce a contrapuntal study that allows one to experience movement in relation to bodies of knowledge — and knowledge of bodies — both past and present.

Rovan has received prizes from the Bourges International Electroacoustic Music Competition, first prize in the Berlin Transmediale International Media Arts Festival, and his work has been performed throughout Europe and the U.S. He frequently performs his own work, either with various new instrument designs or with augmented acoustic instruments.

Rovan’s research includes new sensor hardware design and wireless microcontroller systems. His research into gestural control and interactivity has been featured in IRCAM’s journal “Resonance”, “Electronic Musician”, the Computer Music Journal, the Japanese magazine “SoundArts,” the CDROM “Trends in Gestural Control of Music” (IRCAM 2000), and will appear in the upcoming book “Mapping Landscapes for Performance as Research: Scholarly Acts and Creative Cartographies,” to be published 2009 by Palgrave Macmillan.

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Events

Dorkbot Co-Hosts its Founder, Douglas Irving Repetto

August 17, 2009; 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm.
Microsoft NERD, One Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA

douglasNEW VENUE: Microsoft NERD, One Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA.

In our first joint event, Upgrade! Boston and dorkbot-boston are thrilled to co-host Douglas Irving Repetto. Douglas is an artist and teacher. His work, including sculpture, installation, performance, recordings, and software is presented internationally. He is the founder of a number of art/community-oriented groups including dorkbot: people doing strange things with electricity, ArtBots: The Robot Talent Show, organism: making art with living systems, and the music-dsp mailing list and website. Douglas is Director of Research at the Columbia University Computer Music Center and lives in New York City with his wife, writer Amy Benson; two cute/bad cats, Pokey and Sneezy; and many plants.

bondingIn 2007, Douglas and his collaborator LoVid created Bonding Energy for Turbulence.org. Bonding Energy consists of a set of Sunsmile devices that collect and measure solar energy from seven geographically distributed sites around New York State: Columbia University, NYC; Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy; University of Buffalo; Colgate University, Hamilton; free103point9’s Wave Farm, Acra; Experimental Television Center, Owego; and The Redhouse Arts Center, Syracuse.

sunsmile0The light energy reaching the Sunsmiles’ solar panels fuels a collaborative real-time data visualization on Turbulence. Part of the larger Cross Current Resonance Transducer (CCRT) project in which the artists are developing systems for monitoring, manipulating, and interpreting natural signals such as tidal patterns and wind, Bonding Energy is focused on solar energy. Bonding Energy is a model for distributed microenergy generation, inspired by SETI@home — which harnesses the collective power of personal computers distributed worldwide — and microcredit, a loan system that supports poor or unemployed people in underdeveloped countries. Small contributions from many individuals can produce significant results.

csa2Circular Spectrum Analyzer is part of the ongoing Cross Current Resonance Transducer collaboration with LoVid. It is a solar energy to sound and movement transducer. Two solar panels directly power a shortwave radio and two motors. One of the motors continuously tunes the radio across the 19MHz spectrum while the other slowly turns seven wooden discs. The shape and engraving of the discs was determined by data collected from the seven Sunsmile devices in Bonding Energy. The same data was used to engrave intricate patterns on the aluminum body of the sculpture.

Wired voted Douglas one of 2005’s 10 Sexiest Geeks. In a 2006 interview Wired News asked “Tell us how dorkbot came about. Where did the idea for it stem from and what was the first meeting like?. Douglas replied:

dorkbotqa1_fThe specific way dorkbot came about was I moved to New York City and I was leaving a place — I ‘d been working up at Dartmouth College, which is in a pretty isolated place, for a few years. It was really wonderful and I had some great friends there but it was also an extremely small community; virtually no one doing the kinds of things I was doing or was involved in.

So when I came to New York I really wanted to get involved with people. I really wanted to expand socially and collaboratively…. And so I … had this idea that it would be fun to just sort of send out a blanket call to say, “Hey, if you’re doing neat stuff, I’d like to, you know, hang out with you.” So the idea was an adult show-and-tell, more or less. You can read the whole interview here.

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Events

Joseph Farbrook + Joshua Pablo Rosenstock

April 14, 2009; 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm.
Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Studio for Interrelated Media, North 181, Evans Way (off 621 Huntington Ave) Boston.

farbrookApril 14, 2009; 7:00 – 9:00 pm [map] Follow the signs posted on the outside of the Tower Building (black glass)[Green Line Train "E"]

Multi-media artist Joseph Farbrook grew up in Philadelphia and New York City. His father was a concrete poet and his mother a realist painter. He focused on performance and narrative while studying at the University of Colorado, where he wrote electronic music, poetry, and fiction. As he became interested in a more immersive approach to narrative, he began using computers and the Internet as creative media. After graduating with a degree in creative writing, he was subsequently discovered by the art department and offered a scholarship to pursue an MFA in digital art. Farbrook began creating electronic installations, interactive video, and virtual reality narratives. His work also includes media-reflexive live performances with interactive video projections. Farbrook’s latest work is in the emerging field of Machinima (machine animated cinema) where he shoots movies from within his custom-made 3D environments.

netfashionIn Gone with the Wind net surfing creates a movie that fully engages a viewer for a time and then disappears into the ether, lost forever. The web pages themselves continually change, reflecting the net-fashion of the time. At some point, the net will look nothing like it does now and this movie will be unrecognizable, a relic, a captured moment stolen from the oblivion of the past.

nostalgiaNostalgia for Neverwas is the graphic narrative of Casual Boy, a 3D object created inside of the computer program ‘Poser’ that becomes sentient and embarks on a search for something more meaningful than thin facades and faux appearances. Casual Boy, upon realizing that he is only a hollow skin that is able to move about on display screens, searches the Internet for a time before such technology existed, when things were solid and substantial. Stepping into images of the past, Casual Boy seeks to live in a previous time, yet he is unable to resolve the conflict of his own nature.

Farbrook exhibits both nationally and internationally. Recent venues include the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, La Fabrica Arte Contemporaneo in Guatemala, The International Center of Bethlehem in Palestine, as well as venues in Mexico, Chile, Korea, and the USA. Farbrook is presently an assistant professor of interactive media and game development at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

rosenstockJoshua Pablo Rosenstock is a multimedia artist, musician, and educator currently based in Boston. He employs an ever- expanding variety of traditional and electronic media techniques to create works incorporating moving images, sound, sculptural installation, and interactive performance.

jacketRecent projects include Nomadic Remix Jacket, a wearable electronic instrument (2008). It consists of two hand-made jackets wired with electronics to form mobile sound samplers. The wearer circulates throughout the city, collecting sounds. The audio samples are continuously remixed into a rhythmic musical collage that accompanies their explorations. At any point in their journey, the wearer may add a new sound to the composition, which they are encouraged to do by interacting with other humans and by recording sounds specific to their current locale. At the end of the nomadic sound collecting journey, the sounds can be downloaded into a cumulative collection database.

The jackets (by Florence W. Rosenstock) themselves represent a trans-global remix of textile traditions, incorporating shibori and other Asian, African, and American techniques, as well as found and recycled materials. Brightly-colored and richly textured, they invite curiosity from spectators and encourage interaction with the wearer. More >>

Rosenstock earned a BA in Visual Art & Semiotics from Brown University and an MFA in Art & Technology from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In between, he worked to launch ZEUM, an art and technology museum in San Francisco, creating interactive exhibits and developing digital art curricula for students and teachers. He has presented work in venues as diverse as the Ann Arbor Film Festival, Cabaret Voltaire in Zürich, Switzerland, the Dislocate festival in Yokohama, Japan, the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum in Chicago, and the Montreal Anarchist Book Fair. Additionally, he is a multi-instrumentalist who has performed in musical ensembles throughout the Bay Area, Midwest, and New England.

He is currently an Assistant Professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where he was the first visual art professor on the faculty, and teaches in the Interactive Media & Game Development program. He received WPI’s Romeo L. Moruzzi Young Faculty Award for Innovation in Undergraduate Education in 2008.

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