king talk

Finally, our new game for iPad is available on the App Store. We call it Quasar Touch, and it takes you into a world of dark emptiness, where your only objective is to protect a source of light.

We like the simple gameplay that can change rapidly from easy to challenging. The soundscape has been generously provided by russian artist x3d5.

Quasar Touch has been created using OpenFrameworks (which is increasingly replacing Processing as my weapon of choice for creative coding).

We’d love to hear what you think about Quasar Touch! Let us know in the comments.

Today I want to feature a really nice project for kids. Although the video looks simulated, the idea is good. Just take the iPhone and put it in a box. By browsing the pages the young user can discover new worlds of interaction. I like the playful approach of that application, you don´t need to read user instructions first, it´s just about touching and having fun. Would be interesting to fill up that interface with some information about natural sciences and publish it for teens. How would that one look like?

via mobileart.jp

After we reported about Microsofts new Xbox project called NATAL, we have to tell about about this new concept for that console. It´s called Milo, a little 3D avatar boy which could be your new friend. You can share your problems with him, go outside in his world, play around and have fun with Milo. The real world is connected to the virtual one via 3D gesture recognition. You even can draw something, share it with Milo and talk about it… Maybe you can use another outstanding project from Microsoft called Songsmith to sing together with Milo. Everything is possible with this extraordinary masterpiece of absurdity.

Come on Microsoft… What´s wrong with you? It looks like you want to create a tool for all the little Bill Gates nerds which are unable to feel real emotions while they are having a real talk to real people making real fun in this really extra evil world. Well done!

via SimpleAndOpen

Everybody knows Pong – one of the earliest arcade video games which is simply based on the elementary idea of tennis. We decided to take this concept one step further, so Phil wrote a nice color tracker, which is capable of tracking two different hues. In this case it recognizes two different socks put over the hands of each competitor. We were using a installation made of white corrugated fiberboard found in the leftovers from Atzinger Verpackungs GmbH in Munich. The tracking cam is a second hand PS2 eye toy camera which we bought for 14,99 EUR at gamestop store just around the corner.

The well-known software we were using is processing, a programming language and integrated development environment (IDE) built for the electronic arts and visual design communities. We had to build the prototype both quickly and cheaply, so it was more important to be functionally efficient rather than aesthetically perfect. In the end the whole assembly cost us 15 EUR and took just an afternoon to build.

This pong game is in fact a mashup of the results of our 24h toyhacking session which took place on Friday, and the week-long SHARE project from Yannick Assogba  (MIT Media Lab / Sociable Media Group)

Yesterday my project partner Jens Franke and me held a talk at fmx/09, the 14. international conference on animation, effects, games and digital media. We presented the chemieraum project within the framework of the 10th junior showcase for »eyes and ears of europe« (EEOFE). We felt the pleasant vibes there and met some people from other universities like University of Arts Vienna, KISD Cologne, Georg Simon Ohm University Nuremberg, SAE Hamburg/Berlin, Bergische Universität Wuppertal, Filmakademie Ludwigsburg and especially many guys from FH Augsburg… ; ) Some of them calling themselves bunch of monkeys for doing some media installation stuff. While I was trying to get something for lunch I met some Interaction Design students from my old University HfG Schwäbisch Gmünd and felt like beeing a student again for one day. It´s a small world, really!

Unfortunately I just had time to visit two other talks, but these were fine. The first one was held by Zachary Lieberman about »making the invisible visible«. He talked about some of his projects like drawn, talk, the AR card magic and the Ars Electronica sound reactive installation (which I already knew form Joel Lewis talk at TOCA ME). Of course Zach (as a OF contributor) featured openframeworks as the ultimate tool… ; ) The second lecture was about »the tinkerer´s box« from the Quasimondo aka Mario Klingemann (incubator project site). He did some nice artworks with basic geometrical shapes like circles and triangles using Flash AS3.

It´s a pity that I have to work today. Maybe I´ll find some time for a short fmx visit before I head home to Bavaria again. If you are interested to be there next year just write a mail to info[at]eeofe[dot]de…

Shout out to Kristijan and the blonde girl which name I forgot (sorry) for taking these pictures…