CONNECTED!
LF:TK connected scissors...
The Talking Fish, earlier work by Jeff Mann
Vernacular: Howard Goldkrand (left) and Beth Coleman
PROJECTS
Projects supported by Connected! represent a range of themes concerning dynamic social interplay. Interdisciplinary by nature, they often involve collaborations with scientists, engineers and technologists with shared interests in dynamic systems, robotics, haptics and mixed reality environments. Emphasis in Connected! projects is placed on the collaborative creative process through augmented reality technologies connecting locations, people, media and objects.
Experimentation with communication technologies and rich media interaction is supported by the expertise of Waag Society as well as production guidance and dissemination.
A CONNECTED SOCIAL SPACE is a picnic in the park, among other things
LiveForm:Telekinetics is a laboratory and growing archive of recipes and complete menus for building connected social spaces. LF:TK takes a playful approach in the ways that a person online, and therefore without a body, can exist in the physical world, how a networked exchange, between two or more transgeographical spaces, can manifest itself within a physical environment. Furniture, decorations, cutlery, bric-a-brac and other cultural debris are transformed into networked interfaces, conduits for video, audio and kinetic data flows, and populate surfaces and tables within everyday social environments. Each object provides a simple function (transmitting a sound, image, kinetic motion, etc.) yet when combined with others helps build a complex arrangement of movement and gesture. It is a shared creation, a social ritual, a dance through objects, a table that is played.
Within our urban environments there is an increase in wireless access points, found within familiar social environments like the local café, sidewalk, public square, hotel lobby, office and private home. While commonly setup to provide a temporary service for the Powerbook carrying nomad or to clear up some floor space from cables, they are also interesting convergences between technological and social networks. The wireless access point is a portal, providing the possibility of multi-situated presence and is at the same time placed within a fixed physical location, a social environment rich with objects, rituals and codes.
Tapping into this resource, LF:TK proposes complete menus for different occasions, suggested recipes for creating your own connected social spaces within real-world settings. This wiki has been set up as an ongoing and growing archive for recipes, menus, inspirations, techniques and also documentation of these menus in action. These are available to be used 'as is', or as guides to create entirely new ones.
Join us in our experiments with everyday hybrid realities.
VERNACULAR (USA) by Beth Coleman and Howard Goldkrand
Vernacular functions as an independent Net-sourced platform for compiling and sharing multi-media objects in a 3-dimensinal interface. It will be designed to actually participate and reflect on grouping. Users become actors in a live Vernacular mix, as does the software itself.
Vernacular Live Site Mapping
A media performance is a collection of Site Mappings. Input data can be in the form of a temperature analysis, an audio sample, video bits, any signal or piece of information that can be translated into binary code can be utilized in drawing a portrait of a place and the people inhabiting it. Each local within the mix (i.e. a café, a bookshop, a children’s toy store) is able to interact with Vernacular, receiving and sending data via a weblink. Various local artists will be invited to come and perform as part of the Vernacular mix. For example, a group of electronic musician might be stationed in a caf&eaacute; while a video mix team plays samples and shoots live from the benches in front of the canal, et cetera.
This is not a project about software, though that is the form of expression. It is about recognizing and re-imagining the interface ecology in which we already exist. The project is to create a unique reflector point: vernacular is spoken here.
Beyond the Horizon of Adobe
Falling asleep at the Photoshop wheel? Bored by using standard commercial applications to make images or animation? 'Vernacular' may be what the doctor ordered. A new software by American artists Beth Coleman and Howard Goldkrand (known for their music collaborative SoundLab), 'Vernacular,' despite it's nominal nod to language, is a highly visual tool for 'associative data processing.' To compose a project, users drag and drop files (my palette included desktop debris – assorted images and a PDF file) onto 'Vernacular's' main screen, and then associates them with one another with self-styled categories and colors. The coup de foudre – users can press play to experience a multimedia, personal, 3D animation. The downside of this indie software is that, at least right now, 'Vernacular' runs only on Mac OSX Jaguar. -- Rachel Greene