Loosely Assembled » inputs

Proximeter

fekaylius — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 21:43:45 +0000

The Proximeter is a prototype for a device that visualizes your social graph according to time and collision potential. I like this image of it being something you check on the way out the door, but in reality I’m sure it would be a more integrated and frequently consulted item, most likely just an app.

Nested Play as Identity Centrifuge

fekaylius — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 17:00:05 +0000

PLAY, a short film by David Kaplan and Eric Zimmerman, explores a potential web of interconnected game spaces that puts the viewer’s sense of identity and context into a centrifuge.

One variant that would be cool to include in a piece like this would be showing the in-game initiation of one of these games inside of a game. This addition could construct a much richer labyrinth of interaction and agency, something much more complex than the obvious russian doll metaphor. The ability to zoom in and out between characters as part of the game play.

Although it’s fairly stimulating to watch someone else’s musing on this potential structure in linear passive form, it might be best explored as a game itself.

Stereoscopic GPS

fekaylius — Fri, 14 May 2010 16:57:06 +0000

While carrying a GPS device in each hand, Nikki Pugh walks and walks again, building up a collection of the glitches and anomalies in the data.

From the event listing:

As the journey is repeated and the resulting data overlaid, unique generative drawings are produced that reveal relationships between the fabric of the city and the behaviour of the technology.

I would actually like to see this data plotted in 3D (including altitude) creating a tunnel or cloud that could be navigated first hand. It also makes me wonder, if there is this much spatial drift in GPS, what about temporal drift?

This event took place as part of Tracing Mobility

Fixie Doubles

fekaylius — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 23:50:38 +0000

Mad bike skills!

Into Something Formless

fekaylius — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 23:13:40 +0000

Leon Botha talks about identity, vibrations, and formlessness.

I came across this guy researching Die Antwoord

Geography of Longevity

fekaylius — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 18:08:58 +0000

This video actually has very little to do with geography, but I do find it interesting that there are specific places, micro regions, where longevity is dramatically higher than the global average. In this TED Talk, National Geographic writer Dan Buettner discusses some interesting common denominators of these long lived, healthy and happy clusters of humans.

There isn’t actually anything very surprising in terms of specific details, but where I see the value of these findings being transformative is in various scenarios such as urban planning, architecture, community development, families, tradition making, suburbia 2.0, retirement, economic development, health care reform, and more.

China is building handfuls of cities from scratch, I wonder how many, if any, of these common denominators have a chance at being intentionally incorporated. When new cities are being designed, is there a “creative brief”?

(via open culture blog)

Calma Village

fekaylius — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 00:57:43 +0000

The most ambitious and engaged graffiti so far. It almost needs a new term coined just to differentiate it from everything else.

(Via @lucatoledo .)

Plugging in with Fingers and Eyes

fekaylius — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 00:29:50 +0000

Jim Stogdill writes very well about a compelling theme in his article entitled Skinner Box? There’s an App for That. I would have to sum it up as being about the nature of distraction in today’s networked world, and our role in its continuation.

There are a few tantalizing snippets that I just have to share hoping to lure you into reading the whole thing, if you can focus long enough.

A self licking ice cream cone of the mind
We’re pre-implant so I plug into the Skinner Borg with fingers and eyes
The very technology that makes our collective integration possible also distracts us from advancing it

(Via @timoreilly.)

Swimming Through Architecture

fekaylius — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 00:05:04 +0000

This cool video of Jeff Williams cruising around the space station brings up the obvious but perhaps underappreciated fact that in space, you don’t really need floors.

(Via
YouTube
- In This Orbital Outpost…We Are the Experiment
.)

Guerrilla Crosswalk

fekaylius — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 05:04:06 +0000

This mystery crosswalk on E. Burnside at NE 8th seems to be working.
(Photo: Doug Klotz)

(Via Bike Portland.)

Robots Mimicking Humans Mimicking Robots

fekaylius — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 19:15:38 +0000

‘Tis hard to say which is a more compelling, or more primary, interpretation of the notion of “Robots Mimicking Humans Mimicking Robots”, the reversible Palingram or the infinitely extended Möbius loop.

They both tell a different story about our fascination with, and relationship to, simulated humanity, machine intelligence, creator and creation. As a proposed next step, I’d personally like to see another robot manning the remote controls of this robot, perhaps creating some kind of command based feedback loop, susceptible to minute changes, enabling a kind of machine evolution of culture.

Enjoy

The Radiated Library and The Televised Book

fekaylius — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 17:57:24 +0000

How have people organized information over the centuries, and millennia? Are we predisposed toward more ‘linear’ or more ‘digital’ forms? How long have we been trying to cope with the problem of information overload? Are hierarchical trees a fundamental paradigm rooted in our own reproduction? How many times has the internet already been invented? How can we reinvent it again? How can we get enough distance from it to see it clearly?

In the 1890s and 1900s Paul Otlet designed and built a network where organized data could be explored, via “links” and a “web”.

via information architect and writer Alex Wright during a particularly good SALT lecture.

Neural Voice API

fekaylius — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 18:40:03 +0000

New Scientist has an interesting article about computer aided speech.

Ramsey, who suffered a brain-stem stroke at the age of 16, has an electrode implanted into a brain area that plans the movements of the vocal cords and tongue that underlie speech.

These sensors end up driving a vocal simulator, allowing Ramsey to make sounds with his mind.

I like this approach of tapping into the vocal control regions instead of the fantastical notion that you could simply tap into the “thoughts”. You could still have private thoughts, and express externally by intentionally “speaking”. It seems important to remember that computer brain interfaces will almost always have to read the signals naturally intended for output, and that a mind reading machine is still quite unlikely.

You could also hypothetically send those signals elsewhere, having them drive another device besides your own vocal simulator, you could have them broadcast around the world, sent to a voice to text translator, or simply stored as raw data on a backup drive of everything you have ever said.

Read the Neural Voice API article.

Veins of Gold in the Streets of Milan

fekaylius — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 19:30:37 +0000

I love subtle, nearly invisible art like this.

The site I found this on, unurth, has tons of other great street art (although most of it not subtle at all).

The Sounds of Monkeys’ Brains Concentrating

fekaylius — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 09:01:17 +0000

From a CCRMA final project called Sonifying & Visualizing Neural Data by Mindy Chang.

Opposites Are Also True

fekaylius — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 23:05:43 +0000

Great video from Derek Sivers about assumptions, opposites, logic, history, and thinking.

The example about Japanese addresses finally gives some context to the alternative global coordinate system Geotude, basically recognizing and giving names to the spaces between the lines.

Exploding Your Micro Worlds

fekaylius — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 18:34:45 +0000

This talk by Will Self starts out slow, but really gets cooking a few minutes in.
He’s talking about walking from London to New York and how to explode your many micro worlds.

Streams of Twinkies

fekaylius — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 19:17:44 +0000

Danah Boyd’s Streams of Content talk, about the flow of information through social media, is something everyone online should read.

There are several points that resonate with me, but I’ll limit this post to the quoting of a couple choice passages.

People consume content that stimulates their mind and senses. That which angers, excites, energizes, entertains, or otherwise creates an emotional response. This is not always the “best” or most informative content, but that which triggers a reaction. This isn’t inherently a good thing. Consider the food equivalent. Our bodies are programmed to consume fat and sugars because they’re rare in nature. Thus, when they come around, we should grab them. In the same way, we’re biologically programmed to be attentive to things that stimulate: content that is gross, violent, or sexual and that gossip which is humiliating, embarrassing, or offensive. If we’re not careful, we’re going to develop the psychological equivalent of obesity. We’ll find ourselves consuming content that is least beneficial for ourselves or society as a whole.

When we think about centralized sources of information distribution, it’s easy to understand that power is at stake. But networked structures of consumption are also configured by power and we cannot forget that or assume that access alone is power. Power is about being able to command attention, influence others’ attention, and otherwise traffic in information. We give power to people when we give them our attention and people gain power when they bridge between different worlds and determine what information can and will flow across the network.

via @chrismessina

Sachiko Kodama’s Magic Liquids

fekaylius — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:09:00 +0000

Sachiko Kodama works with magnetic fluids to create these surreal active sculptures.

via @caseorganic

Video Signal Through Meat

fekaylius — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:34:04 +0000

Who needs gold plated cables?

(Via @kottke.)