Priscilla Machils's blog

Multitouch Barcelona is a design group of four young Catalans that explores natural communication between people and technology. Read the report on Multitouch Barcelona on the Offf festival (7-9 May, Portugal). Please view the video on their project Guten Touch, an interactive installation including Space Invaders hitted by foam balls, pixel paintings created with brushes and digital objects holded by hands try to blur boundaries between real and digital.

May 9th is Europa Day. On 9th of May 1950 the first move was made towards the creation of what is now known as the European Union.

In Hasselt visitors could cycle through Hasselt or take a tour bus and discover various projects funded by EFRO (Europees Fonds voor Regionale Ontwikkeling/European Foundation for Regional Developement). Our project Creating Spaces was exhibited in art centre Z33. A demo of a multi-touch table, crewed by Johannes Taelman and a presentation
by Liesbeth Huybrechts informed visitors about our current research.

Today, the Interface our Space group joined a very inspiring one-day workshop at Z33, Hasselt (Belgium). ‘ConstantStream x Borderline’ discovered the rich and diverse meanings of the theme 'Borderline', in three borderline contexts, through three different designmethods and tools...

At the Venice Biennale, the mæve installation connects the entries of the EveryVille student competition and puts them into the larger context of MACE content and metadata. By placing physical project cards on an interactive surface, the visitors can explore an organic network of projects, people and media. mæve is designed and developed by the Interface Design team of the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam.

Mæve installation @ Venice Biennale 2008 from Maeve installation on Vimeo

Source: http://portal.mace-project.eu/maeve/ & meave on vimeo

QR (quick response) codes are two-dimensional bar codes which link online and physical graphics to websites and multi-media. Most of the time, the codes look more or less the same: abstract look and black.

But that’s about to change!

SET, a Tokyo based creative agency restyled the standard code. Takashi Murakami, a well known Japanes artist, and Louis Vuitton worked together and created a distinctive code featuring one of the artist’s characters and the classic Louis Vuitton pattern.

In this way, the agency hopes to add  some style and character to the bland world of machine readable codes.

Written by Katrien Dreessen on SocialTextiles
Source: PSFK

SLAP: Silicone Illuminated Active Peripherals. Bridging the Gap Between Virtual and Physical Controls on Tabletops

Physical user interface components such as buttons, sliders, knobs, and keyboards have many advantages: thanks to their haptic nature, they are easy to operate without looking, and their shape guides the user's input gestures. However, they are often expensive, and it is hard to change their labeling on the fly. Computer interfaces have largely replaced these devices with virtual on-screen controls, such as push buttons, scrollbars, rotary knobs and soft keyboards. Virtual controls are very flexible, easily changed dynamically - but they lack the physical, haptic texture and feedback of their real-world counterparts.

Silicone ILluminated Active Peripherals, or SLAP widgets, are physical widgets made from silicone rubber and acrylic that combine the advantages of physical and virtual devices: SLAP buttons, sliders, knobs and keyboards have the physical shape of real devices to provide the right haptic feedback, but are still easily relabeled using a tabletop rear projection. At the same time, they are particularly low-cost, and easy to put to use.

Different colleges offering new media programs met last Friday, 20.03.09 @De Brakke Grond in Amsterdam. Communicatie & multimediaDesign (Media & Design Academie, Genk represented by Liesbeth Huybrechts), Hogeschool voor de Kunsten (Utrecht), Digital Arts & Entertainment, HOWEST (Kortrijk) and Transmedia Lab, HvA (Amsterdam) shared their latest cross-over projects concerning art, media and technologie. Each projectpresentation explained the used methodology, collaboration between students, teachers and companies, artists, organisations and other institutions. Positive and negative aspects during the development of the different projects led to interesting new perspectives. Their presentations led to a roundtable discussion. HKU introduced two ex-students which recently set up a succesfull company Elastique, known for their internetproject EYEdenitity.

www.bamart.be – www.virtueelplatform.nl – www.brakkegrond.nl
An inititive by BAM, Virtueel Platform & De Brakke Grond

Artefact is developing an interesting concept design that aims to bridge the gap between the physicality of the real-life retail experience, and the flexibility of an online shopping platform.

The concept is called “The Wall”. It’s a large, monolithic looking interactive display that interacts with in-store physical products, and then aggregates associated online content about that item. It can help you “crowd source” your decision about whether or not to buy a particular piece - “does this look good on me?” The Wall will also be able to find similar items you might like (or at a certain price point), and help customers find other available products online, or in the store.

Via rb.trends