“Le mouvement est l’acte le plus important en ce que toutes les fonctions empruntent son concours pour s’accomplir.” Etienne-Jules Marey

Every since Jean sent me the info about PikaPika, I kept on thinking about perception and visualization of the ephemeral...

PIKAPIKA

PikaPika, the Lightning Doodle Project, is a development—mixing animation, light, and photography—upon earlier experiments. Recall the chronophotographies of Etienne-Jules Marey (1830-1904)



and Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, 1912.



White Noise/White Light, the interactive sculpture/landscape by MIT Professor J. Meejin Yoon experiments spatially with these notions.



To read: Laurent Mannoni, Etienne-Jules Marey, la mémoire de l’œil (Milan-Paris: Mazzotta - Cinémathèque française, 1999)

TRENDS: August 25, 2006 | The Technology Devices That Travelers Own. Travelers’ Device Ownership Creates Marketing Threats And Opportunities | by Henry H. Harteveldtwith Bruce D. Temkin, Charles S. Golvin, and Brian Tesch. Find the document excerpt.

seen p. 141 of WIRED 14. 09 (September 2006 issue): NEXTFEST: Tomorrow's Tech Today [a "preview"]... The item above has an air of déjà vu as the leather (?) bag resembles other conventional looking leather totes... but it is not! It also recalls other products like BYOB and the Voltaic™ Solar Bags Speaking of “integration,” the solar item is sawn on the side. I’d like to see more of designs like those of Issey Miyake and Minagawa Makiko whose use of technology in the design and production process is exemplary. But it is still the work of an undergrad (the youth think tech!) and of great use for neo-nomads! + +

The thesis of Ana Camila Amorim... Almanaco Portrait surely deserves attention! When communication stops between individuals, does the element representing it shrink?

"Idea/problem/context: Communication is part of human nature - an ever-present interaction forming bonds between people. The expansion of information and communication technologies and the mobility and miniaturization of devices has resulted in an always-on connectivity - anytime, anywhere. This blurs boundaries between work and play, and between our public and private lives. Because others have little awareness of our context, we are often confronted with situations of abuse or unwanted interruption.
The primary goal of this project is to expand the currently limited repertoire of signs to actuate and support non-availability. Users define their visibility at each moment, allowing granularity of access depending on their social relations and context."

Interesting to use standardized bling-blings to "appropriate" a standardized item: the mobile phone... This falls in the category spatial/object appropriation

doesn't it remind you of the bread with a handle? Wrapped meal from Algiers, one of my favorites in the Square.

Casting Net for Better Airfare... (Wired online) I find the article by Dave Demerjian quite promissing for the travel industry: Flyspy and Farecast are two services predicting flight fares:

"Flyspy asks passengers for their departure and arrival cities, and then presents 30 days' worth of fare information in a stock-market style graph." "Farecast not only displays the lowest current fares, but uses predictive technology to determine what direction those fares will move in over the next seven days." I particularly like the fact that "The man behind Farecast is Oren Etzioni, a professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington. He developed a program originally called Hamlet ("To buy or not buy, that is the question," he says) that uses algorithms to identify patterns in airfare data."

"Intimate Transactions is an exciting new form of interactive installation that allows two people in separate spaces to interact simultaneously using their bodies. Each participant uses a physical interface called a ‘Bodyshelf’. By gently moving their bodies on this ‘smart furniture’ they instigate ‘Intimate Transactions’, which influence an evolving ‘world’ created from digital imagery, multichannel sound and tactile feedback."

In the world of mobilities, people are more likely to be physically separated (and no matter for how long)!

This project recalls the RemoteHome project by Tobi Schneidler and the Relational Pillow project of Pattie Maes, Sajid Sadi and Amir Mikhak from the Ambient Intelligence Group at the MIT Media Lab: "With the Relational Pillow project, we are trying to provide a simple, intimate, and personable communication medium between loved ones. The pillows are capable of sensing touch information, and displaying incoming touch data as a pattern of lights that show the outline "drawn" upon the remote pillow. Pillows can connect to each other over the network so that this sense of touch can be shared across long distances. The physical sensation of holding a pillow and interacting with it builds upon the idea of using the natural features of the object in order to acheive a deeper connection between the users, without interfering in the communication process itself."

A project that combines high-end urban lifestyle and an interesting concern with using residual spaces... rooftops :)
The website of the loftcube project by Werner Aisslinger deserves some exploration!

Here is a print screen of it:



It is less the "mobile home" than the notion of "frugality" (developed in my thesis) that interests me here... the economy of space and use. If people can rent the loftcube, they may need an online service that enables them to visualize availabilities, and locations! (THINK NEO-NOMADIC :)

INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM
CITY - ART - TECHNOLOGY

MONTREAL, CANADA / 22 - 23 SEPTEMBER 2006 / 10 A.M. - 6 P.M.
AUDITORIUM, QUEBEC NATIONAL LIBRARY
475 DE MAISONNEUVE EAST, MONTREAL

"In the context of Champ Libre's 7th Biennale, to take place at the Quebec National Library in Montreal, the CITY - ART - TECHNOLOGY symposium will reflect on interrogations concerning the INVISIBLE CITY, linked to changing paradigms in today's cities and between remote regions. We will attempt to analyze how new global cities - defined by accelerated transformations and new critical masses due to changing economies, populations and demographics, political and social transformations - may nourish a different concept of the city as well as new art practices, which in turn reveal the city's ‘invisibility’ in imperceptible ways."

CHAMP LIBRE is "is a nomadic electronic arts organization and research laboratory that presents in situ events, inserted in the community and putting in relation current practices of contemporary art, of architecture, of urban planning and of new technologies."

The news come via PARACHUTE, "a magazine published in both English and French, is a site of interrogation and analysis of contemporary art in the world. It seeks to foster the emergence of innovative art criticism that makes strong use of conceptual and historical tools in order to analyze new forms of art emerging in our time."