adam in the world

This artist, Jonathan Harris, writes amazing pieces of software. Software which maps nothing less than the mental state of the world. The results are some very poetic interactive maps. It's done by collecting data from the internet. A concept that has been tried in many variations before. What is special about this stuff is the extremely clever ways these data are treated and visualized. Fx. in We Feel Fine which maps the emotions of the world. It would be more precise to say emotions of the blogosphere perhaps... but anyway - the results seem really quite advanced and poetic, so go and play.

Newer and even more interesting than We Feel Fine is Universe - a modern mytholgy.

But before you start playing and exploring these worlds of his (or us) do yourself the favour of spending 20 min. of precious mindless browsingtime and whatch his speach from the TED conference this year, to get a very prober explanation of how these interactive maps work.

I feel like a map of myself.

(and thank you Luis for bringing my attention back to Ted's YouTube channel :)

I've been dealing a bit with advanced interface-design before, here & here. And in fact what Jeff Han is doing here is not really different from what Microsoft Surface can do. He just have a much better idea of what to use it for. In other words - this is so much more useful fx. looking at graphic visualizations of complex data, where the ability to both see the big picture and infinitely small details is important... rather than using it as an interactive sofa table... thank you microsoft for really making a difference.

Towards the end of the interview he says something really interesting about a possible 3D-version. It turns out the actual problem with this is that the human body has great difficulty doing very presize gestures when it doesn't have anything to push against. It's the problem of keeping your fingertip in an excact point in space, while taking a step to the side. Something that's very easy to do if you rest it against a wall.

So maybe even Jeff Hans design is a dead end too. Lot's of more videos of this on Youtube.

... to follow up on the comments to the previous post:

Fred mentions above video - a parody of an ad for Microsoft Surface. It points directly to what is probably Microsofts main problem - they buy some very cool existing technology without having any idea what to use it for whatsoever.
So they make a very expensive completely niche product that can do anything in the world, but nothing in particular. Meaning it's still all just potential. As it was when they bought it.
At the same time Apple takes quite a bit of the same technology, makes it pocketsized and affordable. Because they had a clear picture of the iPhone. They start with functionality. A specific idea.

Along this line it's very instructional to compare Microsoft Surface to Reactable - super cool project Dubi has brought to light. Here's what the main man behind it, dr. Sergi Jorda, says:
"... unlike many projects which involves a lot of technology, it started from a concept and not from a technology. So first we knew what we wanted to build and then we discovered how to build it"

This video shows the basic principles of Reactable. It's a little noisy, but so nice. Notice that the hardware is exactly the same as for Surface, except Reactable is round... in other words - anyone can make a touchscreen table-computer... the interesting question is why you do it.

I'll end it here for now cause it's late. Hope to pick up on the vitual reality tomorrow. Tangible, tactile, virtual reality perhaps. Just got a marathon monologue with a mad genious to go through before...

This movie shows a demonstration of the most incredible piece(s) of software I ever saw.

But please notice in the beginning the sentence: "...technology we brought to Microsoft as part of an acquisition" - in other words M$ didn't figure this out themselves. They bought a little innovative company who had already done it. An important point for a mac-addict like me, hehe.

None the less - this looks so incredibly exciting.

Once more via my new favorite blog Bioephemera - spend some time there. It's worth it.

And there's a new, and much needed, label: "Technology"... to compensate "web" will die. This should open up for some more posts about things such as robots and interactive architecture.

One thing leads to another - we all know that. And so the movie from yesterday led me on to these two:

This is the HeartLander, a so-called cardiac robot. It is inserted through a small hole in the body to mend a broken heart ... well, doesn't that just sound too good to be true! Above is the first prototype, below is the new slimmer, faster and funkier version. One of it's great successes so far is a myocardial injection which as far is I can understand is about tatooing a dot on the heart. Very handy. But what do I know.

Apparently one of its very funky abilities is that it can move about on a beating heart. An ability I'm sure patients still alive will appreciate. Obviously it's all still in early testing. None the less it is a rather impressive little robot they've made. So bloody simple.

I guess the finetuning of its mechanics might not hav been so simple though. Not to mention the practice it takes to learn controlling it - with what looks like a pretty regular joystick. All in all amazingly amazing.

Here's a little treat for you - the music video for the song "Jed's Other Poem
(Beautiful Ground)" by the band Granddaddy.
"So, what's so special 'bout this video" you ask yourself. Well, I'll tell you: It's programmed in Applesoft II on a 1979 Apple ][+ with 48K of RAM. Pretty cool, eh. And apart from that it's a pretty nice song and a real nice video...

"Jeddy-3 the humanoid was assembled in the kitchen out of spare parts. Before Jed's system died he wrote poetry. This is one of his poems."

Enjoy

Today we're just gonna have fun.... Nooo highbrowed pseudo intelligent artyfarty stuff. No, no. Just a few nice advertisements that involves ROBOTS!

Paper

Citroën boogie

Citroën boogie part II

and finally - this is not an ad. This is just a refurbished cooper mini, wooow, believe it or not hehe... LINK