Spaxels Presentation

Chris Bruckmayr, Martin Mörth, Andreas Jalsovec, Michael Platz

Ars Electronica Futurelab staffers have been doing R&D since 2012 on what they’ve dubbed spaxels (space pixels) – a swarm of quadcopters that can fly in precise formation and thus “draw” three-dimensional images in midair. The result is an amazing repertoire of extraordinary visualizations that even includes live depictions of proposed architectural projects.

The Future Playground at this year’s Ars Electronica Festival will stage a public demonstration of the spaxels capabilities. Futurelab experts will explain the concept and provide impressions of what the spaxels can do. Plus, members of the CADET R&D project staff will present the latest possibilities for interaction with spaxels and, with Smart Atoms, offer insights into the spaxels’ tremendous future potential.

Spaxels Pong and Just Fly

CADET (Roland Haring, Peter Holzkorn, Christopher Lindinger, Otto Naderer, Michael Platz) and Spaxels Team/R&D (Horst Hörtner, Chris Bruckmayr, Andreas Jalsovec, Martina Mara, Martin Mörth, Harpreet Sareen)

The CADET Spaxels Indoor Flight Showcase will demonstrate how the quadcopter swarm can be manipulated directly via intuitive forms of interaction. Several spaxels hovering right over the event stage will be used to display the various forms of interaction with such semi-autonomous systems. Gesture control makes it possible to determine the quadcopters’ position and flight path.

Music credits: “You’re in Love” by 7bit hero. 7bit Hero is an interactive bit-pop band that makes video games. 7bit Hero is Hans van Vliet, Richie Young, Phil Evans, Jaymis Loveday and Adam Single.

Smart Atoms Presentation

Horst Hörtner, Martin Mörth

Smart Atoms are the latest enhanced and upgraded version of the spaxels. Instead of being equipped with LEDs, the quadcopters are interlinked as building blocks. This will make it possible not only to form visual likenesses but also to generate objects with material-virtual characteristics. The idea behind this development and how these Smart Atoms function will be explained and illustrated at this presentation.

[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0EvDzDMMoI]

More information about the spaxels you’ll find on ars.electronica.art/spaxels!

During his stint as artist in residence at the Ars Electronica Futurelab from October to December 2013, Chilean electronic musician Ignacio Cuevas Puyol alias White Sample worked together with the lab’s staff to develop open-source hardware for musicians. He’ll now demonstrate its tonal capabilities in a performance together with Futurelab colleague Chris Bruckmayr alias raum.null. The accompanying visuals are by Veronika Pauser aka VeroVisual and Peter Holzkorn.

For the second time (after the initial collaboration in 2013), this year’s festival features the results of an Ars Electronica Futurelab Academy held at Queensland University of Technology (AU). The university, located in Brisbane, Australia, offers a trans-disciplinary class for which the Ars Electronica Futurelab provided a thematic challenge along with a technical platform and the guidance to incorporate it into projects. Program coordinators of Ars Electronica Futurelab and Queensland University of Technology as well as participating students talk about the program and projects that were developed for this year’s festival.

Program

Peter Holzkorn (AT), Veronika Pauser (AT): Introduction and program outline
Lubi Thomas (AU), Jared Donovan (AU): Program and Work Overview
Andy Bates (AU), Michael Smith (AU): Planets
Joshua Wilkinson (AU), Alice Brown (AU), Revy Hamilton (AU): Square Talk
Jonathan Kable (AU): Co-Lab
Plenum Discussion, Q&A

Projekte u19

Co-Lab
Planets
SquareTalk