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Ubiquitous Computing

A Japanese government sponsored research consortium that include five chip makers and 17 other Japanese high-tech firms has announced that the T-Engine, a ubiquitous computing platform is ready for prime time. T-Engine is a platform that developers can use to build ubiquitous computing solutions from commercially available products. The platform includes four different types of T-Engine boards:

• Standard T-Engine are used for smart phones and other portable information gadgets;
• Micro T-Engine are used for devices with relatively basic user interface functions like a toaster or microwave oven;
• Nano T-Engine are used for for small home electronic appliances like a stereo receiver; and
• Pico T-Engine for adding ubiquitous computing to the smallest of components such as valves, sensors, switches, and so forth.

Mood Recognition

In an interview with the Australian Financial Review, SCEE vice president Phil Harrison has made a number of comments regarding the PlayStation 3 and the inclusion within it of new motion sensor technology. Citing EyeToy as a “signpost for things in the future” Harrison went on to describe a somewhat Orwellian future where consoles would “be able to extrapolate eye movement and gestural [sic] recognition, more complicated finger movement, and the logical next step of that is to deduce from a person's facial expression and demeanour what their emotion state is.” Harrision also indicated that the company is working on a user interface that would work in a similar manner to the computers in the movie Minority Report, which were controlled directly by the user’s hands.

Human Area Networking

RedTacton is a new Human Area Networking technology that uses the surface of the human body as a safe, high speed network transmission path. It uses the minute electric field emitted on the surface of the human body. Technically, it differs from wireless and infrared in that a transmission path is formed at the moment a part of the human body comes in contact with a RedTacton transceiver. Physically separating ends the contact and thus ends communication. Communication starts when terminals carried by the user or embedded in devices are linked in various combinations according to the user's natural, physical movements. Communication is possible using any body surfaces, such as the hands, fingers, arms, feet, face, legs or torso. RedTacton works through shoes and clothing.

Mechanized Eccentric Series

Louis-Philippe Demers is a multidisciplinary artist using machines as media. He has worked on the conception and production of several large-scale interactive robotic installations, so far realizing more than 225 machines. 'In a more pronounced way than traditional theatre, mechanical theatre becomes a space for a collective consensus of the acceptation of simulacrum (even more surreal). The level of abstraction of the mechanical theatre enables a multiplicity of interpretation, it is an open ended work where each person sees a reflection of its own feelings.

Z Island Kitchen

When architect Zaha Hadid was asked to design a kitchen by DuPont and Ernestomeda for the Milan Furniture Fair, the chances were that it would be very special, but it’s hard to imagine how delighted DuPont must have been with the result, which not only showcases the company’s remarkable design material Corian to perfection, but has just gone on display in the Guggenheim Museum in New York as part of a special exhibition celebrating Hadid's equally remarkable worldwide projects. The Z. Island is equipped with numerous futuristic features such as embedded heating membranes, touch control panels, sound activators and scent dispensers, LED lighting and a multimedia entertainment system, including a flat screen and an Apple Mac Mini for serving iTunes. Such has been the interest in the kitchen that Ernestomeda is now offering the kitchen as a special, on-request production.

Fog Sceen

FogScreen A wall you can walk through. A computer you can use by touching the air. A hygienic screen that leaves no fingerprints. Walk-thru images. Air on which you can draw and write. Virtual reality that is true. FogScreen is already conquering the world.

Behind the revolutionary FogScreen are Ismo Rakkalainen, a senior researcher at Tampere University of Technology, and Professor Kari Palovuori. The idea is based on a light mist formed from normal water which is so fine that an image can be reflected with a projector on both sides of it. By using ultrasonic waves it is possible to walk through water that has been into dispersed into a light mist without getting wet. The fog wall remains steady between two air flows. The control of these airflows is an invention that has now been patented most recently in the United States.

Floatables

The aim of floatables is to create temporary, ephemeral zones of privacy: an absence of phone calls, emails, sounds, smells and thermal patterns left behind by others. Through various electrical systems they are also able to prevent access of GPS devices, television broadcasts, wireless networks and other microwave emissions. Finally, by creating a "blurry barrier" and a ground-plane camouflage pattern, they provide shielding from the unembarrassed gaze of security cameras and surveillance satellites.

Powered mainly by sunlight and wind they are supplemented by inducted electricity from mobile phones and 802.11 networks (in crowded spaces this amounts to several dozen Watts of unexpended power). Buoyancy is achieved by heating or cooling air in a floatation sac, much like hot air balloons. The entire structure (total weight 4.1 kg) can collapse or expand as necessary to alter surface area in response to wind speed and altitude. The vessels have no particular destinations and drift like flotsam around the city. However, they must keep moving because to be discovered by the authorities means almost certain destruction.

Keitai Girl

Keitai Girl by Noriko Yamaguchi
Japanese for “mobile phone girl”, presents futuristic images of human beings who have implanted electronic communication devices all over the body. The work is inspired by the Japanese mobile phone phenomenon; you can do almost everything you require for living with a mobile phone. It's radically changed the way people communication. Keitai Girl has several interactive electronics features and sound effects. They dance ParaPara with an original Eurobeat.

Fido Luggage

Fido Luggage by Peter Yeadon
This piece is a reconceptualisation of our relationship with something most of us barely tolerate. Instead of having it be what we drag unhappily behind us as one of the most unpleasant parts of any vacation, Yeadon’s luggage follows behind and then heels beside its owner just like a well-trained dog. Peter Yeadon is currently an Assistant Professor at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) where he teaches an advanced design studio, titled Future Studio. Future Studio involves students in examining the architectural potential of new technologies from nanotechnology, biotechnology, space exploration, and the military. It is supported by Yeadon’s pioneering research into the architectural implications of nanotechnology and nanobiotechnology. He began this research while teaching at the University of Toronto Faculty of Architecture, and continued his work while teaching at Cornell University’s Department of Architecture. His research follows developments in a number of areas but focuses on molecular manufacturing, nanorobotics, and quantum dots. His work argues that architecture can no longer ignore the achievements of disciplines that are creating new forms of life and are altering the fundamental properties of matter. It also uses the means of the architect, representation, to submit this argument as a declaration of a new epoch. New beings are being made. New atomic elements are possible. Distinctions between living and inanimate matter are no longer certain. His demonstrable challenge to contemporary architects is to think small, infinitesimally small.

Homage to New York

In the late 1950s, the Swedish-born engineer Billy Klüver worked on laser systems for Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey. He became the chief catalyst for the art and technology movement that was launched dramatically in the spring of 1960, at the Museum of Modern Art, with Jean Tinguely's infamous self-destructing kinetic sculpture, Homage to New York. Klüver's participation in this work, with its paint bombs, chemical stinks, noisemakers, and fragments of scrap metal, inspired a generation of artists to imagine the possibilities of technology, as the machine destroyed itself, in Klüver's words, "in one glorious act of mechanical suicide." Klüver proposed the active and equal participation of the artist and engineer in the creation of the artwork. In this collaboration, he believed that the engineer required the participation of the artist, who as a "visionary about life" and an active agent of social change, involved the engineer in meaningful cultural dialog. At the same time, he felt that the artist, in the spirit of Robert Rauschenberg's famous credo "to close the gap between art and life," had an obligation to incorporate technology as an element in the artwork, since technology had become inseparable from our lives. billy kluver