pudding.cool does it again
“What if you could search every visible word on New York City’s streets?”
This is just so up my alley and a great use of technology, great insight and just blows my mind on what can be possible. Of course just imaging what governments or nefarious entities might be doing with the same kind of insights… but anyway, let’s just enjoy what this project has to offer. So cool.
This project by Niklas Roy is from 2010, so I’m a little late to the party, but I just love the simplicity with which it elicits audience interaction. No need for a big red button or instructions. If you just give people enough of a hook they will interact of their own accord. We’re intelligent inquisitive beings, I love when interactive art plays into that. If you let your audience discover things on their own, their sense of wonder will be much increased.
View the video and more below
Continue reading My little piece of Privacy
Also awesome video tracking and interaction.
Robot readable world from Timo on Vimeo.
Really nice art video based on found footage of robot vision. Like the source material and the execution.
What’s happening here? A guy is brushing a cat via a remotely controlled robot but, the robot is more of an avatar since it is directly mimicking his movements plus he’s using a bunch of readily available or open source technology like Wiimotes and Kinect. What does all this mean? It = Awesome.
Artist Adrianne Wortzel discusses her use of arduino hacked Elmo-TMX’s. I think I might just have to run out and buy one and do some hacking of my own. Her work covers Telerobotics, a very noble pursuit.
Wow. Just wow. So amazing, but my favorite parts are that it has to put itself into object recognizing mode, it takes a while, and that it instantly forgets itself and has to run an recognition algorithm again and only then can say – aha! it’s me.
See more at thecorpora.com
UPDATE:
Hey guess what happens when Qbo meets another Qbo?
Courtesy of google. Amazing to see all of the mapping it is doing. I loved how it keeps track of every traffic light at intersections. It definitely seems to be aware of a lot more things simultaneously than I am while driving. But I do wonder what the legal implications are of even this test car driving around by itself. It will be quite amazing to see most cars on the road doing this in the not so distant future.
Amazing how quickly we anthropomorphize things. From my own experience I know it’s possible to forge an imaginary connection with a simple blinking LED, if the timing is right, but downright impossible not to anthropomorphize if it has a human face on it, no matter how many wires are sticking out of the back.
What I really enjoy about this video is the different perspectives that the two people in it bring to the robotic creation named Bina48. It’s the kind of disparate dynamic that often comes up when a creator of specific technology and the general public meet. It exists wether the tech in question is a new word processor or the latest humanoid robot, and is not much different from the dynamic between a parent and a stranger looking at the actions of a child.
The public/user go into the situation with certain expectations based on appearance and are usually disappointed as selective shortcomings of the technology bring to the forefront the fact that there are always limitations and our expectations always soar just beyond what is currently possible. On the other hand the tech creator/parent are acutely aware of all the limitations, they don’t push these boundaries, instead they are focused on the technological feat they just accomplished and marvel at the possibilities of whatever specific problem they just overcame. within these boundaries the technologist is able to tease out amazing things out of their creation, this is what they are so proud of when they are presenting something.
Unfortunately it’s really hard for these perspectives to meet. Of course it doesn’t help, when the tech in question responds to an inquiry on friendship, with a rant on world domination. awkward.