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Chocolate is the key
2008-04-29 04:16:00
Everyone needs to relax a bit from the computer. Let this sweet keyboard show the way ...Chocolate Keyboard by designer Michael Sholk Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure.......................... ......................................... ..........................Blog Jouons Blog Maison Blog Passion

A little bubble and a little LED
2008-04-23 04:45:00
Tri-Color LED, Tilt sensors, 1.5" diameter sphereBubble Bobbles by James Clar are water-resistant floating globes each embedded with a tri-color LED. Tilt sensors are placed in each Bubble causing it to change colors depending on which direction it's tilted. Used in multitudes Bubble Bobbles can be placed in a pool or lake, causing ripples of colors with each splash and wave.-> Movie Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure

Your email in the future
2008-04-16 18:22:00
After Fuzzmail a program that allows to write a message that unfolds in time -with Fuzzmail you end up sending what you dynamically write instead of a flat/clean email!- we now have Time Machiner, the email time machine that sends an email in the future! It does not go beyond 2030 so you cannot go too crazy, but still it leaves you time to prepare some freaky surprises. Also one can imagine pre-sending the birthday wishes, so that you will never seem to have forgotten, see example below!When the email is being sent, you receive this nice confirmation screen. The team has a sure sense of humor! Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure.......................... ......................................... ..........................Blog Jouons Blog Maison Blog Passion
More About: Email , Future , The Future

Talk at Simon Fraser University
2008-04-15 07:26:00
The Faculty of Business Administration at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, invites me to talk for the Anniversary Speaker Series: 3 Campuses, 3 Speakers, 3 Themes, 3 Important celebrating two significant milestones: 25 years as the Faculty of Business Administration and 40 years since the launch of Canada’s first Executive MBA.Theme InnovationWhen? May 2, 2008, 10:30amWhere? Simon Fraser University Surrey Campus, Westminster Savings Credit Union Theatre, Room 2600.Sign up here! ($25, free for SFU students + Alumni)Talk summary Cati Vaucelle, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab will present two recent projects developed for the Media Lab's Tangible Media Group focused on Gesture Object Interfaces.At the Media Lab, the future is lived, not imagined. In a world where radical technology advances are taken for granted, we design technology for people to create a better future.The Lab comprises rigorous research and graduate degree programs, where trad...

A new social network!
2008-04-13 05:58:00
I love testing new social communities, as a way of seeing what features make such a network unique. I recently joined 3GB, the 1st Arabic social community network, and in it, you create a profile, smoothly upload a photo album, navigate through your friends albums within your profile, create a blog, join groups for discussions and so forth. What is unique so far is the possibility to chat within profiles, integrate your friends photo albums into your profile, and listen to a selection of music. The music player is great! The chat application is clean as it runs within the browser fast! It will be great to see this community grow.A new social network is an opportunity. As someone interested in the web, and where applications on the web are going, when you join a network with 300 people on it, with interesting features and sort of a unique balance between the different features that separate it from the big current social networks, you’re diving into the emerging trends and possibil...
More About: Social , Network , Social Network

A dystopian future for bloggers
2008-04-12 08:16:00
I recently came across intense and surprising posts about friends-bloggers who got banned by Google for monetizing their site. Their electronic death is a disaster for them. Bloggers write digitally, they exist electronically, but their online creative efforts are real. I think Google should be more careful before shutting down a site. The ones who create a site are real, they are not computer algorithms, so a single algorithm should not be entitled to kill a human's joy! Anyhow, this made me think a little. Google search engine became pretty powerful.Rumors say that selling/buying links ads (except the Google ads) ruins the natural ecosystem of the blogosphere and that Google penalizes users for doing so (by killing their internet existence). We all know advertisers only care for traffic and trend, but for some reason it indirectly increases their ranking as well and Google fights radically against this. As a blogger-publisher, Google does not warn you and just remove you from the...
More About: Future

Gesture and shape define the state of an object
2008-04-11 05:45:00
Switch by Radi Designers.Gesture and shape both change the reading and functioning of the object; to cut the power one needs to break the object to interrupt the wire continuity on which it is integrated. It is the shape of the switch that makes sense as much as the sensation of breaking. The gesture is reversible and the switch takes two shapes: straight or bent to define the states: open or close -the usual schematic representations. Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure.......................... ......................................... ..........................Blog Jouons Blog Maison Blog Passion
More About: State , Shape , Object , The State , Define

DNA, this little monster
2008-04-09 06:47:00
Following up on my post about the obsession for the future of human identification via DNA, interaction designers interrogate the influence of DNA analysis on dating. How will dating change when DNA analysis can reveal the presence of undesirable genes?Doll Illustrations by AbakeEvidence Dolls, created by Fiona Raby, are hypothetical products sold in a fictional shopping mall called Bioland. The Dolls were commissioned by the Pompidou Centre for the D-Day exhibition in 2005. The project consists of one hundred specially designed dolls used to provoke discussion amongst a group of young single women about the impact of genetic technology on their lifestyle. The Dolls come in three versions based on penis size (small, medium and large). A black indelible marker allows women to note down interesting characteristics of their lover. Hair, toenail clippings, saliva, and sperm can be collected and stored in the penis drawer. Four single women told us about their lovers -- past, present an...
More About: Monster

Body Mnemonics
2008-04-06 07:51:00
Media Lab just had an Open House and my adviser offered me to present in the auditorium my latest research! I was so thrilled. I also demoed Picture This! during the Open House.I had fascinating discussions with sponsors, very engaging, challenging and all of it relevant to our common explorations for new interactions design with current technologies. Researching on gesture interfaces, and new meaning for gesture interaction, i.e gestures that have a meaning to retrieve or interact with data, I regularly refer to Body Mnemonics project by Jussi Angesleva, who was researcher with me at the mythical Media Lab Europe in Ireland.I realized I never blogged about this work; it is a really cool project, and pioneer in its vision.Body mnemonics is a meta tool for portable devices that enhances their usability, shifts the interaction to the periphery of our concentration and makes them more responsive to our cultural background on the basis of three principles: proprioceptic sense, body ima...

Helvetica has gone wild
2008-04-06 06:13:00
Can Helvetica drop? Someone had to imagine it. Dropclock does it via a motion clock screensaver. Every minute of real time is numerically expressed with heavy helvetica dropping into water in slow motion. Thank you fat-man-collective!Video Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure.......................... ......................................... ..........................Blog Jouons Blog Maison Blog Passion
More About: Wild

Absolut
2008-04-05 17:17:00
Absolut Quartet ad, shot by Laurent Seroussi and designed by TBWA.Jeff did it again. We followed his adventures right after he won the competition. Now he completed the proposal and currently exhibits his spectacular robotic work at the service of Visionary alcoholism. Music and vodka works in pair and this time beautiful mechanics come into play. Jeff Liebermann and Dan Paluska worked together on Absolut Quartet.Closeup of some of the 100 custom electronics boards fabricated, one for every note.Absolut Quartet, a commission for the Absolut Visionaries project, is a music making machine like no other. The audience becomes part of the performance, while watching something that appears impossible. You can log in to ABSOLUTMACHINES.COM for a chance to interact with the machine. You will enter a 4-8 second theme, and the machine will generate, in real-time, a unique musical piece based on the input melody you have provided.The marimba shooting mechanisms and closeup of the wine players....
More About: Absolut

Personal Genome Card
2008-04-05 04:07:00
The future of human identificationDaniel Gross and Joris Maltha visualization designers at Catalog Tree conceived a personal genome card, a tribute to Gattaca where a genetically inferior man assumes the identity of a superior one!Design for a personal DNA card, commissioned by SEED magazine, New York. A fingerprint is generated from the 13 core loci as used by the FBI for human identification. In collaboration with Lutz Issler (line script).Anticipating a future in which we can learn to read our genome like a book, Seed commissioned Catalogtree to design a Personal Genome Card : a place where an individual's genetic information could be easily referenced. To use Catalogtree's card, the bearer would speak into a small microphone and ask a yes-or-no question. The card would analyze the remotely stored genome to come up with an answer. It would then change color: Red signifies a pure "yes," yellow means "no," and colors in between show varying levels of uncertainty. As we get better ...

Whisper of eight turned on pistol grip megaphones.
2008-04-03 07:26:00
Whisper by Miguel MonroyThe pistol grip megaphones are usually qualified by their "power". Loud and noisy, they are a sign of emergency. Here, Miguel Monroy renders them soft, almost whispering. They are located carefully, adjacent to one another so that the feedback of the same pistols homogenize the overall sound. Listen to the piece ->here Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure.......................... ......................................... ..........................Blog Jouons Blog Maison Blog Passion
More About: Grip , Whisper

April fool, the USB pregnancy Test
2008-04-02 01:33:00
Jonah sent me this April fool! So happy first of April to you all!!! I'd love hanging tiny fishes in your back, but because we are on a blog here, I will just propose this very nice High Tech Pregnancy Test ! What can the digital do with my no-tech data? Like a little fish in the water, this pregnancy test can be plug in to your ipod. Wait, no. Your iChat! so you can update your friends instantly about your status. Be careful to select the right end of the test, other than that it is pretty straightforward.The power from your USB port starts the electrospray ionization process, creating a spectrograph of the various masses for your analysis (...) The mass spectrometry software on the device comes with several sequenced hormones, including hCG (human Chorionic Gonadotropin), hCG-H (hyperglycosylated hCG - for detection before your first missed period), and LH (luteinizing hormone - for detection of your most fertile days). We like the fact that it does all three (...) While most home...
More About: Fool

Low tech color calendar
2008-04-01 06:50:00
Designed by Oscar Diaz and discovered by the awesome Cuarto Derecha, numbers and patterns in a calendar gradually get colored as time goes by. Is the ink really pumped by the paper or is it a design concept? I don't know. However it is very nice, the ink seems to physically travel through the paper spongy material ... Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure.......................... ......................................... ..........................Blog Jouons Blog Maison Blog Passion
More About: Color , Tech , Calendar

Pepper ghost mannequins
2008-03-31 01:53:00
Created for the Musée de la mode et du textile, Paris 1998, Radi Designers created a beautiful exhibition design that integrates 98's technologies such as projections of portraits. The exhibition consisted in a retrospective on graduates work from FIAMH (Festival International des Arts et de la Mode, Hyères) where moving heads animate mannequins and produce ghost like pictures. Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure.......................... ......................................... ..........................Blog Jouons Blog Maison
More About: Ghost , Pepper , Mannequins

Dynamic composition
2008-03-30 20:40:00
By Saiman Chow Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure.......................... ......................................... ..........................Blog Jouons Blog Maison Blog Passion
More About: Composition , Dynamic

SMS pictures on a frame
2008-03-28 21:04:00
For last Christmas my sister offered my grand ma a photo frame on which she can display digital pictures via usb upload/connection. It is a pretty cool idea, but my grand ma needs to constantly plug a usb key if she wants to update her pictures. Also she prefers the beauty of printed pictures rather than pictures on a "TV like frame".It is interesting to see how printed pictures are important. They have a specific meaning. It is not about what the pictures represent, it is about holding the pictures in the hand, turn them and draw notes in the back, sliding them in a book, bringing it from places to places. During the war, my grand father used to send my grand ma pictures with his beautiful poems written in the back. They served a specific function with a letter.Now that these digital frames invades the mass market, I wander what is left from the entire spectrum of photo-human relationship. I consider them being something that have little to do with the traditional picture. They con...
More About: Pictures , Frame

Pipe furniture
2008-03-27 16:42:00
It is so refreshing to discover good design work. Sometimes I miss my design school where creativity was combined to elegance. I love this set for the toilet: their shape ironically becomes their function: a pipe! Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure.......................... ......................................... ..........................Blog Jouons Blog Maison Blog Passion
More About: Furniture , Pipe

For the next generation of e-baby
2008-03-26 05:27:00
Do not forget me designed by Tomas Kral consists both of a brace for the cherished robotic dog Eibo, and a harness to show him the external world! This seems perfect for the next generation of e-baby, designed to provide convenience for the completely mental! Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure.......................... ......................................... ..........................Blog Jouons Blog Maison Blog Passion
More About: Baby , Generation , The Next Generation

Interactive touch sensitive surface
2008-03-25 03:30:00
FluxFlux designed by Media Interaction Lab, is an interactive touch sensitive surface that can be used either as an interactive table and/or as a digital whiteboard. The surface is based on a rear-projection screen providing both multi-touch and multiple pen interaction with individual identification.Flux’s application interface is automatically optimized for the intended use depending on its orientation. Flux can be used as a sketch board, a discussion table or a white-board. Transformation between different orientations is single handedly achieved easily and elegantly. Rear projection, in conjunction with FTIR and Anoto pen tracking allows multi user, multi modal interaction in every configuration.Flux has the following novel features:* transition between multiple hardware/user configurations* Optimized user interface based on the configuration and hence intended use* Breakthrough multi modal input possibilities with independent, simultaneous hand and pen tracking* Completely se...
More About: Interactive , Touch , Surface , Sensitive

Future fashion from the past
2008-03-21 06:39:00
This is a fun video that Etienne Mineur predicted I would love! It presents a selection of Fashion designers ideas from the 30's, for instance the very visionary electric belt adapts itself to the body. The woman of tomorrow will move in an atmosphere that is scientifically kept at the right temperature! Apparently, the man of the future will wear both a telephone and a radio! Can we make this dream finally possible?An electric belt will adapt the body to climatic changes and a dress that consists of a transparent net will probably catch the men!A wedding dress made of glass, a dress adaptable for morning, afternoon or evenings and an electric headlight to help find an honest man!Finally, this awesome outfit for the man of the future who will be fitted with a telephone, radio, and containers for coins, keys and candies!Video Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure.......................... ......................................... ..........................Blog Jouons Blog Maison...
More About: Future , Past

Virus love
2008-03-20 22:22:00
Yazna and ++ virus visualizationYazna and ++ created by Luca Bertini are two computer virus in love, roaming from one computer to another computer to find each others. Their passage do not damage computers. Their passage is soft, invisible and extremely fragile. They live a few moments in your more instable computer folders, they leave a small sign of their presence and if they don't find each other, they go back. In the event of an actual meeting, maybe their will give birth to a wanderful color dot baby. Feel free to look at their posology.NacreWorking on data narratives, Luca Bertini created Nacre, a synthesized creature stubbornly trying to protect itself from unmanageable amounts of data. Interferences and anomalies retrieved from the net are perceived as a hostile external body and thus analyzed and converted into a shield through a frantic, abnormal growth. Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure.......................... ......................................... .............
More About: Virus , Love

Your umbrella is your better sword!
2008-03-19 08:05:00
As a child I empowered my toys with all kinds of will of their own. We all have one day stood up on a chair pretending it was a boat crossing Niagara Falls. Well Yuichiro Katsumoto did it. He creates objects that become anything you want with noises. By combining common household commodities with computers, Yuichiro Katsumoto works on ubiquitous computing. He created a set of daily objects that give our everyday lives a whimsical spin.He created Amagatana an umbrella for enjoying a blissful walk after a rain.Amagatana is a mystical sword for enjoying the blithe feeling after the rain. When you swing Amagatana, you can hear the sound of swords clashing from the headphone. Amagatana seems to be just a plastic umbrella. You also seem just like a cheerful person when you are playing Amagatana. However, the umbrella exists beautifully in your hand as a “sword”. On your way home, Amagatana offers you the world of make-believe. Then, you will be able to get a feel for heroes of comic...
More About: Umbrella , Sword

Bicycles can create smoke too!
2008-03-18 21:19:00
Keep on Smoking by Michel de BroinAs an alternative to petrol, this custom-made bicycle transforms kinetic energy produced by the cyclist into smoke. The will to power is a renewable energy resource that can be recuperated by a power generator supplying enough electricity to operate a smoke machine. The work is the result of two coupled machines; the one human is productive and the other machine, consumptive. This coupling of machines produces smoke, a waste energy that is liberated freely in the atmosphere.Video. Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure.......................... ......................................... ..........................Blog Jouons Blog Maison Blog Lesson
More About: Bicycles , Smoke , Create

Adventures in science
2008-03-17 07:58:00
"Adventures in Science " work by Allan Sanders Posted by Cati Vaucelle @ Architectradure.......................... ......................................... ..........................Blog Jouons Blog Maison Blog Lesson

The Placebo Effect + Design Solutions
2008-03-16 22:07:00
You are getting better day after day.I discovered these placebo pills by Broadhong Design on Idealist. The idea is that the more you take the pills, the more the pills get smaller. Each pill has the same effect, the only thing that differs is their size. The psychological effect happens when progressively the tablet-taker transitions from bigger pills to smaller pills. The taker might feel a physiological (mostly psychological) change as in they are getting better as the tablet become smaller. According to the designers, such Placebo effect actually helps patients to recover from physical injuries and psychological trauma.I also found on the designer' site these intriguing pill-candy. The concept is that each patient has a right on his/her pill information, effect and prescription. Here the pills are wrapped in candy's paper, so the patient can easily recognize the pill's name. Apparently, it also works as a quick way to know what kind of pills they missed from their prescriptio...
More About: Effect , Solutions

These little things in the dark ...
2008-03-15 21:42:00
Our childhood was filled with creatures hidden in the dark. The feeling of them existing outside of our imagination was a source of interaction with the physical world, creating places for them to live. Our imaginary friends were sharing our secrets, they were our closest partner in the world discovery. One book that I recommend on the subject is The House of Make-Believe: Children's Play and the Developing Imagination by Dorothy G. Singer and Jerome L. Singer, one of my favorite book on imagination and child development.Children interacting with Kage no SekaiWhen I discovered Kage no Sekai, I immediately felt in love with it. The piece projects cute tiny creatures on shadows -and only on shadows- so that anyone can play with them, try to grab them, make them exist in specific places with shadows created just for them, or even trap them (see video of the children interaction with the system).Photo by the authors of Kage no Sekai"This device expresses this perspective not by using ...
More About: Dark , The Dark , Things

Recycle your equipment!
2008-03-15 00:12:00
The power of digital technology fundamentally transforms our lives. Materiality is being technically extended. The digital offers another variety of artifacts that impact remembrance. While expanding our experience, some things also get lost along the path to de-materialization.For the contextual area of my general exams I research on the attachments to physical, digital and virtual objects. I explore the psychological trade-off between what we call virtual and tangible “attachments”: I focus on people’s attachments to things, and through things, their relations to people (virtual and digital).I investigate the journey of the physical and digital object being appropriated, collected, hacked, transformed, possessed and shared on virtual environments and communities. I review the hacker’ skills in appropriating objects by transforming it: the Nintendo Wii becomes an umbrella with a map to provide real time directions while on the walk. The Roomba becomes a robotic dog, Guitar ...
More About: Equipment , Recycle

The Environmental Health Clinic
2008-03-14 08:04:00
Dr. Natalie Jeremijenko, my favorite artist engineer, came to our lab to share with us her latest research. I had the chance to work closely with her in Ireland for the Save the Robots summer exhibition so I was already familiar with her past work. She presented her new work, the health clinic, a clinic to which you can go to discuss your environmental health concerns.Natalie with her robot-talkative duckThe Environmental Health Clinic develops and prescribes locally optimized and often playful strategies to effect remediation of environmental systems, producing measurable and mediagenic evidence and coordinating diverse projects to effective material change.The clinic works like this. You make an appointment, just like you would at a traditional health clinic, to talk about your particular environmental health concerns. What differs is that you walk out with a prescription not for pharmaceuticals but for actions: local data collection and urban interventions directed at understand...
More About: Environmental Health