king talk

We reported more than a year ago about the cookie-sized, computerized tiles that can be stacked and shuffled in your hands called Siftables. Last year Siftables was a research project initiated at the MIT Media Lab. Since then they have all finished their graduate work, and last summer they formed a start-up company called Sifteo. With support from True Ventures and the National Science Foundation, they are now hard at work developing the next generation of the technology to bring their vision of Siftables to the world.

This year they’ll be creating games, reaching out to developers, working with manufacturers, and running beta tests with players. They look forward to continuing to get to know everyone, and to working with you to create the future of play. In addition to this you should follow the Sifteo blog, because this start up is going to be hot. They will be on sale this year… Watch out!

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!

»AstroTable« is a prototypal interactive installation designed for an exhibition context. Astronomic principles of planetary movement can be explored and understood very easily. By placing one of the eight discs, representing the »Laws of Planetary Motion« of J. Kepler as well as the »Laws of Gravitation« of I. Newton, on the sun one can select a specific topic.

Smoothly animated, the solar system fades out, an abstract layer for visualization appears. The selected disc represents the sun’s mass. By spinning it, one »manipulates time«.

The disc remains consistantly spinning at that rate by itself (and a bit of electronics…). One can accelerate and decelerate it and thus manipulate the visualization. An audio comment completes the explanation. By removing the disc, one goes back to the solar system view.

This project was done by Andreas Brendle, Fabian Gronbach, Eduard Warkentin at the course »Interaction Design« from HfG Schwäbisch Gmünd under supervision of Prof. Beck & Prof. Krämer.

Jens Franke (PAGE author) featured two projects out of our portfolio in his talk »Die neue Freude an der Interaktion« at this years web design conference webinale in Berlin. The Chemieraum project was featured at the chapter »Interaktionsformen / Tangible Interfaces / Projekte« and the Earthwalk was mentioned as »Interaktionsformen / Keyboard Interfaces / Fakten«. Both projects were created by Thomas Gläser (envis precisely) and Jens Franke (www.jensfranke.de). Right after the talk Sian-Ru Lai held an interview with Jens Franke (german).

The official paper of the chemieraum project can be downloaded at the famous ACM digital library. The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), was founded in 1947 as the world’s first scientific and educational computing society. The digital library holds up to 70% percent of all papers which are relevant for research projects in the field of Interaction Design.

Thanks to the haptICS research group (MA Götz Wintergerst & MA Ron Jagodzinski) and the HfG Schwäbisch Gmünd for the help.