Project: “Der Überflieger”—Wearable Interfaces for Spy Pigeons

Student: Andreas Zingerle

http://www.derueberflieger.com
http://www.andreaszingerle.com

“Der Überflieger—Wearable Interface” are wearables for spy pigeons. The project deals with the design and implementation of a wearable technology for carrier pigeons. The experimental setup allows the user to follow the flight path of a pigeon (with GPS and digital photography from its place of release back to the loft. With the project and the use of standard technology, “Der Überflieger” is a tool for people to use surveillance as a counter-performance to reflect, mirror and disorient organisations that normally have the power to observe public and private life. The documentation shows the design process and the test flights that were carried out in April 2009 in the area of Graz, Austria.

Project: Parangonet 1.0: sonic dimension

Student: Ricardo Nascimento

This project aims to recreate the original concept of the “Parangolé” by the Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica. It is composed of three wearable sculptures which, through its movement in space, create and broadcast sound samples that refer to the Brazilian artistic movement called “Tropicalis” and other cultures. Each interactive garment is able to trigger and modify a different sound input. When performed together they create a sonic atmosphere that represents the cultural agglutination proposed by the tropicalists, transposing its fundamental concept, which is the mixing of cultures, to our days. A monitored dialog between the pieces and controlled by the user creates a transcultural dialog constructed between different worlds and backgrounds.

Project: Newsshaper

Students: Mahir Yavuz, Javier Lloret

“Newshaper” is a tabletop interactive system that deals with the re-contextualization of daily news items gathered from live news feeds. It allows users to create their own relational networks and ‘maps’ based on actual live news streamed from the Internet. Due to the dynamic nature of live data streams, the system constantly creates different content for users and due to manipulations made by the users it generates different visual results of the same content. In a more general sense, users of the “Newshaper” system shape their own reality and perception about the daily news and share their emotional news-scape with other users. Most of the time, mass media sources deliver the daily news in a certain context. This context creates a meta-meaning which usually affects the simple meaning of the news. Thus, by tagging, by categorizing, by geo-locating, by making it popular or unpopular, mass media manipulates the perception of the daily news. “Newshaper” allows users to break these pre-defined structures delivered by the source.

Project: The Society of The Spectacle

Student: Tim Devine

Incubation of a fertilised chicken egg begins on the 16th of August at 37.5 Cº with a humidity of 60%. On the 3rd of September the humidity will be set to 85%. If the temperature or humidity changes too much for too long during the following three days this could be fatal to the egg. By looking at the egg you will cut off the power from the incubator.

Saturday the 5th of September 2009 marks the end of the expected gestation period for a chicken egg: a chick should hatch at some point during this day. From Sunday 6th the incubator will continue to nurture either an egg that is past gestation with no chance of life, or a baby chick.

Project: GLIFIC

Students: Jayme Cochrane, Anika Hirt, Travis Kirton

The concept of “GLIFIC” is a reversal of contemporary trends in web-based media, whereby the concept of tagging media is transformed back onto itself. Rather than tagging images, video, and content with words like Flickr, Delicious, and other social bookmarking sites, we use media (primarily images) to tag words themselves. Instead of tagging one photo with a dozen words, we seek to tag one word with a dozen images. At any given point the word AUTOMOBILE could have tens of different visual representations. Using images as tags we then rebuild narratives, news and events by replacing the words in their text.

Narratives, news and current events are translated back into a glyphic form that breaks language barriers through the re:symbolization of communication. Obama’s inauguration speech, C.S. Lewis’ “Alice in Wonderland”, or the continuous stream of news feeds from sources like Al Jazeera or The New York Times can be written backwards from their linguistic forms into pictographic reinterpretations.

Project: Couch surfing / Vergence 《感 應》

Students: Louis Erwin Lee, Mauro Arrighi

In Chinese, 《感》 means “ to feel ”; 《應》 means “ to respond”.

Both of the characters are based on the same sign: 《心》 “ heart ”. Three participants will be invited to sit on a customized couch surrounded by the spatial sound interface that generates and synthesizes real-time designed sounds according to their individual heart rate variability. Due to personal perceptual psychology and the autonomic nervous system, the outer sound field can also dynamically influence the participants’ heart beat rate. After several minutes, their heartbeats might be synchronous, or chaotic. This would lead to a different, unexpected emotional and physical condition. This is similar to the way human communities are formed with different ideologies and culture.

Project: HELLO KITTY DAVENPORT Vintage Gaming Project

Students: Mauro Arrighi, Irmgard Reiter, Gregor Göttfert

The Old Interface Culture’s Black Sofa becomes a new gaming interface. A second hand gaming console is connected to capacitive sensors that enable the visitors to play the game “Hello Kitty World” in a new mode. Three players sit down on the sofa. They have to practice coordination by verbal and nonverbal communication to move quickly in order to control the character’s actions in the game. More visitors gather round the sofa to watch their performance and the game itself, which is displayed on a screen in front of them. The sofa interface is decorated in Hello Kitty style.

Project: Headbang Hero

Students: Tiago Martins, Ricardo Nascimento, Andreas Zingerle
http://www.headbanghero.com

*Headbang Hero* is a music/dance video game for testing and improving your headbanging prowess.
A special wig is used as a game controller, feeding motion data to the game software. The game analyses in real time how well your headbanging follows the rhythm of the music. You are awarded points for your personal headbanging choreography… but you should be aware that your health is at risk! To stress this point *Headbang Hero* also analyses how hazardous your performance is. As opposed to what happens in games where the player is in control of an avatar, in *Headbang Hero* what matters is the player’s own health. The game keeps track of two distinct aspects of the player’s performance. The first is the player’s (potentially heroic) sense of style and rhythm as he headbangs along to the music. The second is the amount of health damage the player is causing himself in the quest to become a hero. When the game ends the player receives a printed health report based on his performance analysis. Included in this report are tips on how to improve the performance and advice on how to avoid injuries.

Project: Scratch It

Student: Jesus Cabrera Hernandez

The project aspires to question the structure of media, globalization and the individual perception of Art and Society on two sides of the world. A series of interviews and footage on the theme of Information, Media Art and Society will being recorded in Cuba, a country with an environment in which the access to the media is limited. This footage will be projected in Linz, Austria during the Ars Electronica Festival, bringing to this event the points of view on art, technology, information and society that Cuban citizens have.

This is an attempt to reflect on the meaning of these terms in different societies. A screen will be made and covered with a silver rub-off surface. As people scratch part of it they uncover the projection of the Cuban footage. The metaphor of the necessity to deconstruct the information that the media transmit to us will be reflected—with the interaction of different users the big picture can be revealed. A separation between the two worlds will be made and the necessity of simple approaches to complex subjects. The idea of global human nature is countered with the answer of coming back to a simple natural interface, like scratching a surface with our hands and a coin, claiming as a metaphor to understand and deconstruct broad concepts like information art and society.

Project: 9.578 Files

Students: Anika Hirt, Margit Blauhut

What is digital data and where does it go after being deleted? “‘9.578 Files’” explores trashed and lost digital data and investigates our nascent naïveté in handling data and its storage media. By contrast it questions the possible loss of data due to digitalization and fast developing technology. Digital data from various collected media are recovered and restored. A visual memory is created out of the forgotten and discarded data that failed to be destroyed and succeeded to survive. The interaction with trashed hard drives visualizes the ease of accessing this data and pushes it back into the real world.

Project: Experiment Arctic

Students: Varvara Guljajeva, Mar Canet Sola, Andrej Boleslavsky, Kanno So

“Experiment Arctic” is a new media art installation that talks about global warming and its consequences. The current artwork differs from the other works in this field by its temporality. A piece of ice that is placed on the special table is allowed to melt in order to visualize the real situation that exists in the Arctic Sea. The water from the melting ice controls videos that are projected onto the top of ice and table. Visuals are about global warming, the shrinking ice in the North Pole and how they correspond to different water levels. Thus, the work aims to shake us up and raise our awareness and to experiment with a new and temporal medium like ice. Supported by the Asia-Europe Foundation.

Project: World 2020

Students: Mar Canet, Dietmar Suoch, Timm Wilks, Marcin Wodzyński, Marc Atanes

“World 2020” is an interactive post-catastrophic landscape installation. In the year 2020 planet Earth has become a place that is almost impossible to live in, following radical climatic changes due to the effects of the continuous exploitation of resources and the high level of pollution. Several scientists have made very dramatic predictions for the next hundred years. For example, the renowned British physicist Stephen Hawking recently predicted the colonization of Mars by 2046 in order for mankind to survive. The installation “World 2020” opens a window into the future of this imaginary world.

It is an immersive real-time generated scene showing where humanity just can’t live anymore. Instead people live underground and the installation represents a vantage point to the Earth’s surface. The audience has to wear special security goggles before they get offered a glimpse at three different scenarios of the world in 2020. This project tries to make an impact on the public by showing a possible future scenario about our current home planet.