king talk

»Field« is a development environment for experimental code and digital art in the broadest of possible senses.

It looks like a mash-up of processing and vvvv. Using the advantages of node-based and text editor programming in one single software. It was developed by the openendedgroup and has been developed over the course (of the MIT media lab) of many years. While there are a great many development environments and digital art tools out there today, this one has been constructed with two key principles in mind:

Embrace and extend — rather than make a personal, private and pristine code utopia, »Field« tries to bridge to as many libraries, programming languages, and ways of doing things as possible. The world doesn’t necessarily need another programming language or serial port library, nor do we have to pick and choose between data-flow systems, graphical user interfaces or purely textual programming — we can have it all in the right environment and we can both leverage the work of others and take control of our own tools and methods.

Live code makes anything possible — »Field« tries to replace as many »features« with editable code as it can. Its programming language of choice is Python — a world class, highly respected and incredibly flexible language. As such, »Field« is intensely customizable, with the glue between interface objects and data modifiable inside »Field« itself. »Field« takes seriously the idea that its user (YOU) are a programmer/artist doing serious work and that you should be able to reconfigure your tools to suit your domain and style as closely as possible.

More short movies of »Field« can be found here…
go out at grab your own… ; )

Additional technical informations about »Field«. It …
… is exclusively developed and tested on Mac OS X 10.5
… is Open Source, licensed under the GPL v3 (You should read the license)
… has a JavaIInterface … renders with OpenGL
… writes in Python / builds in Jython

via Benedikt Groß

While i was trying to get some informations about the new Arduino TinkerKit development i stumbled upon this video from last years »Arduino toyhacking workshop« in London 2008 (workshop 2009 video is here). It´s just a quick overview, but you can find more detailed videos of each project here at tinker.it. The idea of toy hacking is not actually new, but I still like it. Just go home and look around what you got and then tinker it. It´s doesn´t matter if it´s a toy keyboards, RC cars, a singing Santa Claus… whatever  ; )

So if you would use a toy keyboard you could make your own »piano shirt« like the girls from kobakant did. Mika Satomi and Hannah Perner-Wilson often work with soft conductive and resistive fabrics to create wearable electronics from cheap, basic and off-the-shelf materials. That´s what it´s all about… You don´t have to spend much money and time for a quick ´n´dirty prototype. You just want to tinker around trying to get an idea if your concept is working or not by using materials which you have already at hand.

Toys are just an amazing source of cheap technology to hack and reuse. »Lowtech sensors and actuators« from Husman Haque (see article about primal source) and Adam Somlai-Fisher is a great example of this approach. You can download their PDF (1,1 MB) and learn something about personalizing your toys with the help of Arduino e.g. the sound responsive cat.

One result of ours is the toyhack of the famous »Big Mouth Billy Bass« which was originally constructed by the american toy company Gemmy Industries. We thought that it´s cruel to let Billy sing his same old song again, and again, and again… So we connected a microphone to his mouth and mp3 EQ signals to his back. Now he´s enjoying his life as a karoake fish. This hack was the result of a »getting started with Arduino« Workshop at the FH Joanneum was realised with the help of Christian Perstl and Daniel Fabry.

If you have some interesting projects about toyhacking in mind, just contact us. Thanks.

After we talked about Augmented Reality some blogs ago, we saw a future scenario called SixthSense invented by Pattie Maes and her assistant at the Fluid Interface Group (MIT Media Lab). »SixthSense is a wearable gestural interface that augments the physical world around us with digital information and lets us use natural hand gestures to interact with that information.« The user has colour fingertips (colour tracking?) and small tracking cam plus a really tiny video projector (where can i buy something like that?) hanging around the neck.

I like the concept and especially the idea to project a user related tag cloud at the shirt of your dialogue partner. What if you don´t like him? Can you tag him as an idiot in realtime? ; ) Thomas Hütter (icon mobile group) told KING TALK: »Apart from the basic idea, there is one detail that aroused my attention most. SixthSense introduced a new paradigm shift: mobile phones as powerfull and promising CPUs instead of hard-to-use gimmicks.«

The idea of scanning products reminds me a little bit of the susho (sustainable shopping) concept that was created within the sustainability lectures at HfG Schwäbisch Gmünd (Germany). We thought about a gadget and an application which allows the user to get additional information regarding sustainable aspects of a product.

via TED Talk