king talk

This years overall winner at the Europrix Festival is the Whispering Table. A round black table, empty white dishes – nothing special at first sight. Approach the table and touch the dishes. You will quickly discover that they start to tell you personal stories about the symbolic meaning of food and rituals, related to four unique festivities celebrated by people of distinct cultures. By changing their position on the table and their distance to each other, you reveal new stories.

TheGreenEyl used different sensors and microelectronics for each module. Apart from the technical aspect, the most important part of this installation is you, interacting with this devices.

Digging in the Crates is an interactive installation which offers possibilities to explore Sampling as a production technology of modern music. While dynamic data visualizations will be navigated using modified turntables, information graphics as well as auditory contributions helping to understand complex contents and relations.

Visitors can choose from 50 old records of the 70s and 80s. All of these records contain one or more samples, which can be analyzed in the following. To analyze the samples to the record must first be placed on the turntable. A projection onto the record itself shows included samples as shaded areas. The old records can either be played or analyzed. To choose between these two modes, the on / off switch of the turntable is pressed. A modified turntable as an tangible interface is used to navigate and anaylze each single sample on the launched record.

Depending on user interests, Digging in the Crates offers different approaches to the topic. The visitor acts in a totally free interaction-space, which allows him to consider sampling from completely different perspectives. The straight interaction with information is just as important as the possibility to deal with “sampling” in a passive way. This means the user can slip into an active role in which he has full control over the visualized information as well as taking a rather passive attitude to get inspired by the interactions of others.

This installation was the Bachelor thesis project of Roland Lösslein from FH Augsburg using different tools like Arduino and Processing. Well done Mister!

In our ongoing effort to do some video documentation for recent projects, our focus now turned to the Center for New Technologies at Deutsches Museum, Munich.

As you might know, the exhibition opened in late November last year, featuring an enormous amount of interactivity. Every single one of the 33 huge display cabinets has a touch sensitive glass surface under which various objects and screens reside. By simply pointing his finger, a visitor can access different levels of information, combining the benefits of digital data with the tangibility of real objects.

Watch the video to see how it works! More information can be found on the official portfolio page.

Tired of shooting at virtual people? Come on kids. Daddy got a new toy for your iPhone. Finally you can blast your friends… This game is based on the color tracking method like we used it for Augmented Pong. After you defined the opponents shirt color you can go on playing. I like the idea of using the iPhone as tool which engages you to run through your city instead of sitting at home and playing the Sudoku App…

via engadget mobile

Tomorrow the envis team will be hanging around at Schwäbisch Gmünd to have a look at the latest work from the students. We expect some innovative concepts at the media lab like the last years project from Jonas Heuer and Jürgen Gräf. Notput is an interactive music table with tangible notes, that combines all three senses of hearing, sight and touch to make learning the classical notation of music for children and pupils more easy and interesting.

All basic clefs, note values and accidentals exist as single wood elements. Whole, half, quarter and eighth notes differ not only in their form, but also in their weight: Long note values are heavier than short ones. The idea is pretty simple and the experimental approach is enjoyable and informative at the same time.

Why don´t we use tools like that at school?