king talk

No matter what you code and design, natur can top this aesthetics in some special way, like this video about a swarm of starlings. The complexity of the system is just impressive. Starlings become dots in a this natural particle system and I end up questioning myself: »How can this work out?« Thousands of birds in flocks and they don‘t collide. Researchers found out that each bird always pays attention to the same number of neighbors, whether theyre closer or farther away.

Starlings can almost always see many more nearby birds — but the number of may be closely tied to birds cognitive ability. The direction of the flock can be coordinated by each birds tracking six or seven other birds. This is remarkable! A very different kind of cognitive skill that has its own complex aesthetic. The behaviour of this swarm could also be programmed in lines of code. Every dot has its own parameters in the whole system. Flight404 even did a project calles Birds which simulates this whole process in a virtual and even aesthetic way. This swarm is a perfect example how nature influences the digital world.

via Audubonmagazine

Narrated by Tom Selleck, and directed by Fight Club’s David Fincher, the ads began in 1993 and were (mostly) remarkably accurate, predicting: E-Books, in-car GPS, tablet PCs, E-ZPass, video conferencing and video on demand. Take a look…

via Gizmodo

Nearest Tube is one of the first augmented reality apps created for the new Apple iPhone 3GS. 2D tube maps are so oldschool! This one tells you where the nearest tube station will be directly displayed in your environment by using the new video and compass function. When you load the app, holding it flat, all 13 lines of the London underground are displayed in coloured arrows.

By tilting the phone upwards, you will see the nearest stations: what direction they are in relation to your location, how many kilometres and miles away they are and what tube lines they are on. If you continue to tilt the phone upwards, you will see stations further away, as stacked icons. If you are owner of a new iPhone 3GS and you´re living in Chicago, Washington DC, Paris, Berlin, Madrid or Barcelona you can join beta testing by sending an email to contactus[at]acrossair[dot]com with your iPhone UDID Identifier code and your city location.

We think that the iPhone is the perfect mobile hardware for projects like this. Six years after the Handheld Augmented Reality project at TU Graz started their pioneer work with projects like the Invisible Train, a real multi-user Augmented Reality application for handheld devices, this technology enters the mass market.

After marketing guys have found out, it could be cool to map products as rotating 3D object on markers it´s time for the real apps. It´s time for applications which help us out during our everyday life. Where is the next hospital? Where can I find a cheap accomodation? Where are my friends now?…

As my project partner (Jens Franke) presented the world famous Earthwalk installation in Bogota, he was filmed by a Columbian TV station. The moderator is reporting about Campus Party Bogota (Columbia), the biggest network gaming event of the world. We had a chance to present the Earthwalk at several other events like Campus Party Valencia (Spain) and Campus Party Sao Paulo (Brazil) before. The Earthwalk project was done back in 2006 at a Arduino workshop held by Massimo Banzi in Schwäbisch Gmünd. The next Campus Party will be held on July the 27th in Valencia again. David Cuartellis, one guy of the Arduino developer team will be there for holding a workshop. Other cool stuff will be presented at Campus Futuro.

Side note: You can see Jens smiling at 4:10, the guy with the blue shirt.

As we featured the puzzling ZDF microsite in 3D, we thought about showing some other portfolios with a 3D User Interface. Some of them are not actually new and maybe already known, but we think they´re still worth to be shown:

http://bestiario.org

http://recom-cgi.de

http://www.varywell.com

http://www.screenvader.com/root.html

http://lab.mathieu-badimon.com

http://www.whitevoid.com/portfolio.html