Instead of looking at a beautiful field of flowers in the wind, Jennifer Steinkamp truly immerses you in a seemingly endless emerging three-dimensional space of shifting buds, branches and flowers. It is another masterpiece in her attempt to dematerialize architecture but is achieved so mainly because of the hypnotic, dreamlike and supersaturated quality of the imagery that your attention gets so drawn into. Be moved and get lost but stay grounded!

MCASD has commissioned Jennifer Steinkamp to create a new work for MCASD Downtown's Joan and Irwin Jacobs Building. Entitled Madame Curie, this new commission is inspired by Steinkamp's recent research into atomic energy, atomic explosions, and the effects of these forces on nature. Marie Curie was the recipient of two Nobel Prizes for creating the theory of radioactivity, and discovering radium and polonium. She was also an avid gardener and lover of flowers.

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Photo Credit:  Robert Wedemeyer

Flowers rendered realistically for this new work include marsh marigolds, may flower, chestnut blooms, and hop plants, among many others drawn from a list of over 40 plants mentioned in Marie Curie's biography written by her daughter, Eve Curie. The seven-channel projection will engage the architecture of the space and will require seven synchronized projections onto three walls of the 4,500-square-foot gallery.

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Impulse 101, a beautiful piece of minimalist ASCII animation is a diptych, half painting/half beamer, 100% on the internet created by Anthony Antonellis.

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Scintimacy, another great research project from the Design Reserach Lab, explores interpersonal boundaries through muscial interactions. Human skin and touch - the intimate sphere, become part of the musician -computer interface to create a bodily-close haptic and emotional experience.

With 'Skintimacy' we present a skin-based interface for a collaborative musical performance. The experimental setup is intended to be both an evocative tool for interpersonal interaction and touch, as well as an alternative digital musical instrument. By integrating the human skin and touch into the musician-computer interface, we propose a bodily-close haptic and emotional experience.

As an experimental collaborative instrument, Skintimacy is designed to give an auditively perceivable answer to the question: How can intimacy be experienced through sound when humans interact through mutual touch and perform with each other? Furthermore, since the instrument evokes interpersonal interaction, we want to employ Skintimacy as a playful tool that allows for the observation of intimate behaviour. We have discovered that personal and intimate borders are shifting significantly in a performative context where a computational (musical) process is linked to interpersonal touch.

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The Mobile Lorm Glove is a mobile communication and translation device for deafblind persons developed by Tom Bieling and Ulrike Gollner at the Design Research Lab in Berlin. The glove translates the hand-touch alphabet "Lorm", a common form of communication used by people with both hearing and sight impairment, into text and vice versa. The glove, along with a Bluetooth enabled handheld device, enables deafblind people to communicate and stay connected. The longterm goal of this project is to implement direct speech for input and output. Great product!

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The Mobile Lorm Glove provides particularly two innovative ways of communication for deafblind people. It supports mobile communication over distance, e.g.  text message, chat or e-mail, and it enables parallel one-to-many communication, which is especially helpful in school and other learning contexts. With this newly developed technology and interaction, it will soon become possible to also „feel” E-Books or Audiobooks. The Mobile Lorm Glove functions as a simultaneous translator and makes communicating with others without knowledge of "Lorm" possible. As a result, it empowers deafblind people to engage with a wider social world and further enhances their independence.

The Mobile Lorm Glove is part of the project "DESIGNABILITIES – Disability-inspired Interaction", which in a larger research scheme focuses on perspectives for Interaction Design in terms of an enhancement of Information-Communication-Technologies and Human-Computer-Interaction, by transferring properties from "disability" contexts (e.g. deaf/blind communication) into general contexts of communication (e.g. localisation in loud or crowded environments via gesture-based or tactile info transfer).

External Partners: Allgemeiner Blinden- und Sehbehindertenverein Berlin (ABSV) + Oberlinhaus Potsdam

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The interactive artwork, LUNAR features a series of interactive light objects placed at the Youth division of Mental Health Care GGz in Breda, the Netherlands. Filled with LEDs and interactive technologies, the objects are designed to ‘come to life’ by emitting sounds and color upon detection of children’s touch. By intervening with the existing architecture, LUNAR creates an informal play between children, their therapy and the building.

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Marnix de Nijs is a Dutch artist whose artwork primarily consist of ‘performance machines’  in form interactive installations that confront the viewer with our perceptions as they are shaped by the media, technology and ourselves. Mirror Piece,  based on Nijs’ previous work Physiognomic Scrutinizer, is equipped with biometric video analyzing software that allows to compare the scanned facial features and characteristic of anyone looking into the mirror with over 250 people stored in a database.

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Zimoun, the talented sound architect / artist from Switzerland has collaborated with Architect Hannes Zweifel for his latest kinetic sound installation 200 prepared dc-motors, 2000 cardboard elements 70x70cm.

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Assisted by Olle Kilström, Anca Stirbacu, Kjell Håften, Sergiu Doroftei, Mihaela Vasile, Filip Airinei, Cosmin Tapu, Dan Tian, Octavian Hrebenciuc, Petre Lungu, Vanessa Gageos and Florian Bürki. Kindly supported by Pro Helvetia - Swiss Arts Council.
Photography by Zimoun ©

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Dutch wearable technology and eTextile designer Meg Grant has come up with a beautiful way to keep your secrets secret - just wear her embroidered gloves and you can carry your secrets savely in your hands. The interaction design is so simple and intuitive as the switches on teh gloves are triggered by gestures- a more natural way of interacting seems unimaginable. Record is activated by pressing the left and right thumbs together.To activate the playback simply press the thumb and the forefinger of the left hand together. 

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The secret keeper gloves are a simple idea that I've been developing for a little while. I'm exploring the idea of extending human behaviour and tendencies in a poetic, playful way, and integrating the controls as unobtrusively as possible. The switches in the gloves are triggered by gestures.

The secret keeper gloves are a way to fulfill the very human urge to tell a secret, without sharing the secret to others. The wearer speaks the secret into her cupped hands, and then can play it back by holding her hand to her ear.

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Designer Tim Jockel has created a fashion show for German haute couture fashion label Stefan Eckert completely through three-dimensional hologram technology.

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Jockel teamped up with director Florian Sigl to create the visual concept for the show - which was first shot with a high-speed camera and then augmented with 3D motion graphics and compositing.Hoping to ‘communicate the philosophy behind the new collection’ in a better way, the Berlin-based designer has not only created the first complete 3D fashion show, but also ‘one of the biggest holographic projections ever.’

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Sensoree is an art and technology design lab focused on body architecture, interactive installations, therapeutic bio.media sensitive technology and robot clothes. Led by experience designer Kristin Neidlinger Sensoree designs future fabrics and smart textiles that explore the explores the Sensory Computer Interface investigating proximity, intimacy, telepathy, intuition, and humor between human and machine. Here are some of her latest works:

GER: mood sweater

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Mood is interpreted by a Galvanized Skin Response (GSR) which is a classic lie detector test. The GSR sensors read sweat or nervousness and translate the data into a palette of affective colors. The high collar, bowl design positioned with LEDs reflects onto the self for instant biofeedback and acts as a tele-display or externa blush for the other. Located on around the larynx, the visual interface replaces speaking, as the wearers emotions are instantly expressed.

INFLATACORSET

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The design is based on research to augment Sensory Processing Disorder — hypersensitivity which ranges from ADHD to Autism. The instant relaxation from the corset is a type of therapeutic bio.media that can be applied to many populations.

FURVER

The sensor located at the base of the neck, acts as “eyes in the back of your head.” As it “sees” people approach, fiber optic spines rise and light up to warn and protect. The interactive fur is an extension of goose bumps, or the hair we feel rise in anticipation. The hard shell corset is personal space armor as well as a interactive protection of spacial boundaries.

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Mediating Mediums-the Digital 3D” is recent graduate Greg Tran’s prize-winning thesis, presented just over a month ago at the Harvard GSD. At eighteen minutes, Tran’s video is a thorough, didactic exploration into the collapse of material and digital borders, where designed and simulated geometries may be “projected into video of physical space with realistic light and textures.Here is Mediating Mediums - The Digital 3d [Part 3] and below the short version of his prize winning thesis film. To see the whole 18 minutes film go here:

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This study by London-based Sahar Fikouhi is the design of an augmented reality iphone application which allows for real-time scanning and sketch design of architectural structures. It was produced using processing programming language, 3ds max, boujou and After Effects. Would love to have this on my Iphone!

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“Peeling Layers of Space out of Thin Air” opened July 9 at the OMI International Art Center’s Fields Sculpture Park in upstate New York.

Architecture OMI commissioned nine architects to create virtual sculptures and environments within the 300-acre Field's Sculputre Park. Each studio was allotted a plot on which to overlay and GPS-pin their three-dimensional projects. The AR-app Layar scans each site for QR codes which it then downloads to 3G-smartphones, revealing the full-scaled installations along with various multimedia guides. The participating architects are: Acconci Studio, Asymptote, Cleater Studio, Kol/Mac, Metaxy, Leeser Architecture, Studio Daniel Libeskind, SHoP, and SITE.

Here a view of Kol/Mac studio's virtual sculpture filmed by mark skwarek:

Great idea - if you can you should go yourself to experience the virtual pieces of architecture implanted in physical landscape. More soon!

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3D2D3D is an augmented reality art work of spatially positioned 3D objects forming 2D representations of 3D objects by Dutch artist Sander Veenhof (SNDRV).Augmented Reality (AR) has finally gotten a foothold in our daily reality. With a massive availability of AR apps on the mass medium of today, every smartphone user is getting familiar with the art of the added reality, things that are not physically visible. That fact triggered artist Sander Veenhof to explore ways to develop augmented reality that cannot even be seen with an AR app. His augmented reality creations manifest themselves in another dimension: the 2D environment of the Layar browser compass function. But even there one sees an object escaping its dimension.

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Commissioned by Universal Everything, FIELD worked in close partnership with designer and creative director Matt Pyke to take the project from initial concepts and technical planning to design and creative coding over a period of 10 months resulting in a permanent installation of 8 dynamic video artworks in the lobby of Deutsche Bank Hong Kong. Atmospheric cityscapes, hand-drawn sceneries, patterns and landscape animations welcome visitors and staff, shown on a 12m wide hi-res screen. The animations are generated in realtime by a bespoke software system, making every iteration a unique and unrepeatable experience, and inviting passers-by to discover new details every day.

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The Cosmopolitan of Las Vesgas and dk (Digital Kitchen agency)  just won the Grand Design prize in Cannes.The Digital Kitchen was hired to bring the hotel to life - and turned the lobby into a beautiful immersive environment where each digital display embedded within the architecture has been transformed into a living art canvas. Eight lobby columns serve for the dynamic art installation, with currently 6 different themes (Discovery, Pathways, Current, Navigation, Seduction, Voyage) being alternatively displayed.

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The video is a two-minute documentary providing a behind-the-scenes look into the personalities and inspiration behind The Cosmopolitan featuring in particular Digital Kitchen Executive Creative Director Anthony Vitagliano.
You can watch the individual theme animations here:

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Nervous Structure 5 by Cristobal Mendoza and Annica Cuppetelli is an interactive installation that consists of a spandex structure illuminated by an interactive projection that reacts to viewers' movements.

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Uruguayan-born, Brazilian-based artist Fernando Velázquez has generated a series of  Mindscapes, translating our invisible brain activites into beautiful imagery:

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Watch this beautiful evolving landscape of a 3D fractal surface generated by British artist Tom Beddard who holds a PhD in laser physics! He is currently working on a WebGL 3D fractal explorer that will let you explore structures like this in real time.

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