Interview with Mark Shepard: ‘critical design’, architecture, urbanism and location based media

Mark Shepard is a media architect and researcher. His current research investigates the influence of mobile and pervasive media, communication and information technologies on architecture and urbanism. He is one of the organizers of the 2006 symposium on Architecture and Situated Technologies. This fall, for the Architectural League of New York, he curates the exhibition Toward the Sentient City. He is also one of the editors of The Situated Technologies Pamphlet Series.

read the interview here

via | chris woebken |

555 Kubik

The conception of this project consistently derives from its underlying architecture - the theoretic conception and visual pattern of the Hamburg Kunsthalle. The Basic idea of narration was to dissolve and break through the strict architecture of O. M. Ungers "Galerie der Gegenwart".more here

Lake of shimmer

Lake of Shimmer - tokujin yoshioka concept design for swarovski stand at baselworld 2009
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The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces

the clock clock

Swedish designers 'humans since 1982' latest design 'the clock clock'. the wall clock is set up by 24 analogue alarm clocks, which together display the time in a digital manner.
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Senseware - Tokyo Fiber '09

This exhibition is an attempt to visualize some of the domains that the new SENSEWARE can open up. Ideas were sought from architects, designers of all ilks, automobile and electrical appliance manufacturers, media artists, and even a flower artist. It will be fascinating to see how many new possibilities emerge from this initiative. The exhibition represents an intersection of technology, materials, and talent, all oriented towards future manufacturing. Many senses will be stimulated here, but I very much hope that one thing every viewer will sense is a very real excitement for the future. more

Technorama Facade

In 2002, Ned Kahn worked with the staff of Technorama, the major science center in Switzerland, and their architects, Durig and Rami, to create a facade for the building which is composed of thousands of aluminum panels that move in the air currents and reveal the complex patterns of turbulence in the wind. The facade is visible from the large urban plaza in front of the museum. more

lights on

lights on is an audio visual performance created for the Ars Electronica museum in Linz, Austria, which has a facade that contains 1085 LED controllable windows. The windows' colors are changed in realtime with music that's broadcasted on speakers surrounding the building.
Ars Electronica

Kinetic Sculpture

The kinetic sculpture is a metaphorical translation of the process of form-finding in art and design. 714 metal spheres hanging from thin steel wires attached to individually controlled stepper motors and covering the area of six square meters, animate a seven minute long mechatronic narrative. more

Live Video Puzzle

Live Video Puzzle is an interactive installation that takes a live video feed and incorporates it into a traditional sliding puzzle game. more

FLARE

FLARE is a modular system to create a dynamic hull for facades or any building or wall surface. Acting like a living skin, it allows a building to express, communicate and interact with its environment.
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Showroom Kiefer technic

This facade changes continuously; each day, each hour shows a new "face" - the facade is turning into a dynamic sculpture.
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Strømmer

"Strømmer is an unique installation, 27m2 of interactive LEDs provide light for each person passing by, the total energy consumption is smaller than 3 regular 60 w lightbulb. With an impressive lifespan when taken well care of by the inhagitants of Sandnes this is the light source for the future...."
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making of...

Pixelator

Pixelator is an unauthorized on-going video art performance collaboration with the New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority, Clear Channel Communications, and its selected artists.
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ZERO ENERGY MEDIA WALL

GreenPix is a groundbreaking project applying sustainable and digital media technology to the curtain wall of Xicui entertainment complex in Beijing, near the site of the 2008 Olympic Games. Featuring the largest color LED display worldwide and the first photovoltaic system integrated into a glass curtain wall in China...
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Curiously Strong

Curiously Strong transforms 250 individually passive objects into a single living machine. The piece plays on the sequential movement of a typical domino chain and is implemented with actuated Altoids™ boxes. Each box is equipped with an actuator mechanism that opens and closes the box’s lid when it receives a mechanically controlled digital signal. Sequential activation of the connected boxes results in a wave of motion akin to that of a typical domino chain.
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Landprint

The aim of the Landprint project is to reproduce subtle patterns and photos by combining various species of plants with programmed robotics. Plants and flowers that spawn seem to make continuous patterns with their various colours and shades seen from a distance. With the use of programmed robotics for the planting and cutting of plants, we can manipulate the evolving patterns, to render photo-like, delicate images.
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Aleph

Aleph is an experimental public display, that is using the spaces, people and objects it faces as a palette to display messages from hidden viewpoints. When looking at a small mirror, it reflects a fraction of the space around us, when looking at a mirror façade, it reflects most things around us. But if we build a matrix of small mirrors, which can adjust their tilt according to the site they are facing, we can create a display that uses the ever changing flux of the place to show images from certain points in space.
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wind to light

'wind to light' is a project executed by jason bruges studio. The events for this years architectural celebration, organised by the arts council england, riba and the architecture centre network, were focused upon issues of ecology and sustainability posing the reflective question 'how green is our space?'...
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Interactive Bus Timetable

As a permanent interactive installation, a fractured mosaic of light and color aesthetisize the open-air waiting area of the city of Moss's (Norway) main bus terminal, enlivening the space while offering suggestive information about the proximity of busses through dynamically changing color.
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Super Cilia Skin

Super Cilia Skin is a literal membrane separating a computer from its environment. Like our skin, it is haptic I/O membrane that can sense and simulate movement and wind flow. The intention is to have it be universally applied to sheath any surface. As a display, it can mimic another person's gesture over a distance via a form of tangible telepresence.
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NEW BLOG

As the variety and number of projects dealing with interactivity in one or the other way is huge, I made another blog. This blog collects links to various projects that combine new ways of interplay with everyday objects.
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UPDATE: Ping Genius Loci

Update from January post
The pixels have different colors on each side, so by rotating they can create fields of color seamlessly morphing into each other. As they sense a set of things from the environment, they can map things like the way people walk, or spatial soundscapes.
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The PingPongPixel

The whole installation exsists out of 2 units. The first is the display-unit, the other one is the storage cabinet, which sorts and dispenses the balls. Each image is built out of 2700 tennistable balls in 6 greytones! Depending on how fast the system can be fine tuned, a picture will be fully visible within 2.5 hours.
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Interactivity & The Paskian Environment

This is an on-going project to rediscover the work of cybernetician Gordon Pask and reconsider Pask's relevance to the construction of "interactive environments" by producing new embodiments that richly explore the human meaning of "interaction" and "conversation" in an actual built space. (Usman Haque & Paul Pangaro)
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Colour by numbers

Colour by numbersis a 72 meters high light installation at Telefonplan in Stockholm, Sweden. The installation will be inaugurated on October 23 and will shine during evenings and nights until January 7. Under live video you can see a live video image of the tower and also read instructions for how to control the light installation over the phone.
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SoniColumn

SoniCoumn is an interactive sound installation that can be played by a person’s touch. The installation takes the form of a column-like cylinder. Grids of LEDs installed inside the column light themselves on by the users’ touch and emit unique sounds. When a user cranks the handle, the column slowly rotates itself and plays the light patterns of the user’s touch.
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HOMOGRAPHIES

HOMOGRAPHIES is an interactive installation featuring 144 robotic fluorescent light fixtures controlled by 7 computerized surveillance systems. As people walk under the piece, the light tubes rotate to create labyrinthine patterns of light that are "paths" or "corridors" between them.
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The Time Fountain

Fluorescent drops are illuminated by strobing UV LEDs. The strobes are synchronised to each drop as it falls. The strobe delay can be varied to move the drops in slow motion or even to reverse the time. The drops can be interacted with in real time.
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Podium Light Wall

The Podium Light Wall is located on the South and North facades of 7 World Trade Center. As people wander on the pavement below a strip of blue light gracefully follows them. This strip of blue light is 7 floors tall and is visible from Freedom Park. The Podium Wall accentuates the individual, and the patterns that are created as many pass by together. Kinecity designed the interactive element of the design for James Carpenter Design Assoc. who were the responsible for the wall as an art piece.
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Chronos Chromos Concrete

Chronos Chromos Concrete is a system that is able to dynamically display patterns, numbers and text in concrete surfaces. The chroma stone can be used in- and outside and comes in three varieties: black to white, red to white and grey to white.
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Herz Fassen

A bowl is filled with water. By taking hold of it by the handles, it becomes moved by the rhythm of your heart. It starts pulsating with your heartbeat. Your heartbeat is calculated through the handles' measurement of your skin-resistance. The heartbeat is now stored and the water will 'beat' with this rhythm until the pulsation slowly abates.
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Paintball

The large white billboard measuring about 100 square meters was mounted on the facade of the university of art located on Linz main square. Whenever the number announced in the billboard was called a paintball was being shot from a scaffold set up a short distance away. The ball splattering against the surface of the billboard left a brightly coloured splotch. Every call triggered a paintball so that over the course of seven days the image that was constantly changing, became increasingly colourful.
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Random Screen

“Random Screen” is a mechanical thermo dynamic display which does not rely on any electricity. Each of the 12 by 12 cm pixels is an individual entity. A tee candle lights and controls each pixel. The rising heat of the candle turns a modified beer can which turns the pixel on and off. Each pixel has its own frequence. The more bright a candle shines the faster is the rotaion of the can.
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Pixel Roller

The pixel roller does exactly what it says, it rolls pixels. It can be viewed like a hand printer, the pixel roller can roll out any image, video or text manually, at any speed or diraction, round corners and over surfaces.
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LED Throwies

LED Throwies are an inexpensive way to add color to any ferromagnetic surface in your neighborhood. A Throwie consists of a lithium battery, a 10mm diffused LED and a rare-earth magnet taped together.
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aperture

Aperture is a facade installation with interactive and narrative displaying modes. Consisting of an iris diaphragm matrix, the facade's surface with its apertures' variable opening diameters is enriched by a dynamic translucency, that creates new imagery as well as a new channel for communication between inside and outside. more

bit.fall

In this installation, water is being used to project images taken from the internet. A computer observes various news websites and chooses thereafter the images to be displayed. 128 nozzles are controlled by synchronised magnetic valves, and the water drops falling to the ground shape the images. The visual information is only tangible for a second before the drops merge to become water again.
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Blinkenlights

In 2001/2, the famous "Haus des Lehrers" (house of the teacher) office building at Berlin Alexanderplatz has been enhanced to become world's biggest interactive computer display. The upper eight floors of the building were transformed in to a huge display by arranging 144 lamps behind the building's front windows. A computer controlled each of the lamps independently to produce a monochrome matrix of 18 times 8 pixels.
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Mechanical Mirrors

The 4 mechanical mirrors are made of various materials but share the same behavior and interaction; any person standing in front of one of these pieces is instantly reflected on its surface. The mechanical mirrors all have video cameras, motors and computers on board and produce a soothing sound as the viewer interacts with them. more

Pixel Factory

With a paper strip painted with pixel data "Pixel Factory" converts this data through a 7*7 pixel window to create images. By sliding the paper strip over the head of the box, the unrecognisable pixel data becomes an animation. The image on the paper is generated through computer processing, and the image can be taken from text images and video images, recorded real time. more

Reactive Cube

The reactive cube is a visceral kind of screen, designed to transform digital images into apperently physical objects. By projecting a two dimensional image through water mixed with a specially formulated emulsion, the light is captured and apperas to become a virtually real object.
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ThinkTank

A row of eight air tubes are placed in the bottom of the water tank. These release air bubbles one at a time, writing out alphanumeric symbols. By orchestrating these bubble-pixels, fleeting patterns and forms are being created that rapidly decay in the medium of water, leaving only a gurgling, chaotic residue at the top. more

Information Percolator

An ambient information display that is designed to give a rich medium of expression placed within an aesthetically pleasing decorative object. This display - the Information Percolator - is formed using air bubbles rising up tubes of water. By properly controlling the release of air, a set of pixels which scroll up the display is created. This allows a rendition of any (small, black and white) image to be displayed.
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The Source

The Source, in the main atrium of the new London Stock Exchange. A cube of 9×9x9 (729 in total) spherical balls are suspended on strings that stretch 32 metres up to the top of the main atrium of the newly designed building. These balls can reposition themselves independently of each other, forming dynamic shapes and fluid-like motions.
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Chris O'Shea's interview with Andrew Shoben of Greyworld

Interactive Waterfall

A very thin waterfall running over a display. The People affect the visuals of the display by their movement directly in front of the waterfall. This is done with an overhead infrared camera that measured the changes in people's movements.
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BIX

A matrix of 930 fluorescent lamps is integrated into the acrylic glass facade of the biomorphic building structure of the Kunsthaus Graz, Austria. Through the possibility to individually adjust the lamps’ brightness films and animations can be displayed - the Kunsthaus' skin is transformed into a giant low resolution computer display.
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AutoGene

"AutoGene is a aesthetic looking robot composed of eight modified umbrellas mounted in a circular pattern. A cocktail of air hoses and electrical cables join these umbrellas to a central which enables AutoGene to produce a choreographed dance which erodes the machines mechanical qualities..."
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Audio Grove

The installation consists of a circular wooden platform 12 metres in diameter, on which 56 vertical steel posts extend 5.5 metres up toward the ceiling. Each of the steel posts is connected to a touch-sensitive sensor system. This forest of vertical steel posts is an interface through which light and sound can be physically experienced and controlled.
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Kinetic Light Sculpture

A building façade which changes color distribution according to current weather conditions. Behind a screen of perforated aluminum, 120 floodlights fade from blue to yellow, illuminating the front of the building. The overall image is directed by a weather station on top of the building: the ambient temperature (variables: 0º-30º C) determines the amount of yellow on the blue wall. The yellow patches move in line with the direction of the wind.
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Listening Post

Listening Post is an art installation that culls text fragments in real time from thousands of unrestricted Internet chat rooms, bulletin boards and other public forums. The texts are read (or sung) by a voice synthesizer, and simultaneously displayed across a suspended grid of more than two hundred small electronic screens.
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Ping Genius Loci

Self sustainable analogue pixels that work outdoors in the sunshine, using solar power and radio communication, and can sense the presence of people. 400 of these sensor pixels create a large interactive field, that functions both as a sensor field and a large outdoor screen. Games and functions are being developed, to open up architecture to its use.
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eavesdripping

Eavesdripping is the design for an installation that uses water as both medium and display, rendering invisible communication visible. By enhancing a material electronically, make an intelligent surface intelligent and able to interact with the world around it.
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SnOil - a Display based on Ferrofluid

SnOil makes use of the ferrofluids magnetic sensitivity to selectively position and shape the fluid. This is done by electromagnets, which enable the appearing and disappearing of a magnetic field by switching the flow of an electric current. Therefore SnOil consists of two main parts: An approx. 25 by 25 cm sized basin that is filled with ferrofluid up to a height of a few millimeters.
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Lightbulb

Lightbulb uses a special bulb, inside which magnets and circuitry are hidden. Using a magnetic hall effect sensor, an electromagnet, and a [modified] PD feedback system, it floats a lightbulb stably in the air, while power is transmitted wirelessly from the base of the sculpture into the bulb.
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genoType

genoType is an experiment regarding fonts under genetic aspects. Their characteristics are encoded in hereditary information.
Different fonts can be mixed as desired and their genomes can be manipulated. New fonts are generated acoording to genetic rules. more