If you still haven’t already succumbed to skipping my ramblings—go watch the demo of levelHead by Julian Oliver! (embedded video below.)

levelHead Video

levelHead v1.0, 3 cube speed-run (spoiler!) from Julian Oliver on Vimeo.

Main points of fascination

• Physical object interaction; virtual worlds are dependent- and intertwined with physical objects (the cubes) in the environment. (Opposed to displaying virtual objects that have no connection to reality, which in my opinion is removing the “reality” out of “augmented“.)
• The cube, simple as it is, gives the impression of a gateway into an entirely different world.
• Simplicity. With the environment shaded and lit, the flat white character is simple and adds a mysterious touch to the experience.
• The cube is the controller as well as viewer; an intuitive solution for containing the game experience entirely within a simple paper cube.
• The game is easy to replicate if desired; all you need is the right program and a paper cube with printouts.
• Considering the Future: Remember Myst? I can easily envision an entire game in that style: purely contained within a paper cube, or even interchangeable shapes such as orbs or other simple ones for different environments (perhaps even a few in-game tools).

LevelHead information excerpt

Using tilt motions, the player moves a character through rooms that appear inside one of several cubes on a table. Each room is logically connected by a series of doors, though some doors lead nowhere (they are traps).

The player has 2 minutes to find the exit of each cube, leading the character into the entrance of the next.

Work is also being done to use invisible markers such that the cube itself appears entirely white to the naked eye.

Visit the project page of Julian Oliver’s levelHead

Thanks for an inspirational game concept, Julian!

Automatic recommendations:

1. Augmented reality games, but what’s reality doing there?
2. Useful augmented reality tool shipped by US Postal Service

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You can view more- or create your own art with Algorithm Ink.

[via Hackzine]

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The Absolut Machines

By visiting Absolut Machines you’ll eventually find yourself on a page with two live videofeeds, presented in an old-school, gray window system. One of the machines is placed in Stockholm, Sweden and the other in New York City. The machines at these locations are music-composing AI systems you can interact with to augment the music they generate.

The interaction sessions are recorded and you can get a compressed quicktime video of your visit sent via email or download it from the “Gallery” tab which lists all recent videos.

Think Artificial VIP Access
Dearly devoted Think Artificial readers have been allotted VIP codes that allow cutting to the front of the line to interact with the machines. Leave a comment on this entry and I’ll mail it to the address you enter in the comment form. Alternatively you can contact me directly. Note that there’s a limited supply of codes and they’ll be distributed on a first come first served basis.

Obligatory disclaimer: To participate in this giveaway you must be at least 21 years of age.

Absolut Choir

The Absolut Choir is a system composed of speech synthesizers implemented in the physical form of 10 robotic characters. Each of the machines, or choir members, has a unique voice ranging from women, to tenors and sopranos. A “mother character” virtually conducts by synchronizing and distributing sounds to the other members, each of which contains a Linux box for processing and a speaker.

As the Choir starts singing, the user may input words to the machine. As the machine receives the words, it immediately uses them to generate a musical composition and lyrics. The robotic choir follows the lead of its human partner, and with the help of generative algorithms, the machine engenders a melody, tempo, dynamics, timbre and lyrics inspired by the user-generated input. The composition is also infused with the machine’s current mood and from the most recently analyzed words input by previous users. A lot of short words with many consonants may result in a fast arpeggio-like song, while softer words may result in a slower composition. [Absolut Press Kit]

The sound feed was suffering from some technical difficulties when I tried the choir. But the video worked, and the choir was receiving my lyrics glorifying Think Artificial (I figured I’d attempt to create a themesong for us).

The video compilation I received afterwards was okay. But I discovered that the lyrics were (intentionally) rendered hieroglyphic by the choir, so it sadly doesn’t make the cut as our themesong.

Absolut Quartet

The Quartet is quite different from the Choir. The machines are three; the main one is a marimba which the system plays by shooting rubber balls into the air, aimed at the marimba keys it wants to hit — or multiple balls if the objective is to play a chord. It’s quite fun to look at.

The marimba rubber ball blaster implementation and design.

Overview of the Quartet under construction.

The second machine is a series of glasses which basically replicate the “finger on a wine glass trick”. The glasses are spun, each tuned to a various pitches, and small robotic fingers touch them to produce sounds. The third part of the installation is an automated percussion instrument.

And then there’s the fourth part, us – the users. At the beginning of a session the human user plays notes on a miniature piano. The melody played dictates what kind of music the Quartet will produce, or in other words, your input is the machines inspiration for a following 3 minute song.

The machines are brainchilds of Dan Paluska and Jeff Lieberman. Both of which attend at MIT and have many cool projects in their backpack that combine aesthetics, artificial intelligence, kinetic sculpting and robotics.

Looking Closer at Robotics in the Media

This project is not an academic foray into the realms of creative AI, but rather a project intended to be looked at in terms of aesthetics. That being said: The artificial creativity of the machines is very primitive. If we take for example how the Quartet works; the software takes the melody played by a human user and compares it to a pre-existing collection of songs. Once a similar match has been found the machine mixes the two together producing the ultimate outcome. What interested me more than the software implementation of creativity was the overall aesthetic appeal of the project. In addition to Jeff and Dan’s artwork, the media related to this campaign was superb (partly handled by Noise Marketing, creators of the Appleseed website).

When exploring how we are creating our world; augmenting our environment — it’s intriguing to zoom out of AI context: How we (humans) advertise and perceive products is environmental augmentation. The ultimate sentiment is to be aware of the augmentations. To study them. Be aware of their effect and purpose; and to adapt and further develop whatever it is we want to achieve.

When I saw AI-colored advertisements from a major company (a company that essentially has nothing to do with machines) I immediately wondered whether it gave an indication of the public appeal of robots in Western societies. Certainly, machines in general play a larger role in everyone’s lives than ever before; and the same can be said about robotics even though we’re still in very early stages of that development. When we note that Puma has been sporting robotic-prosthetic cyberpunk campaigns as well, I think we can at least safely venture that robotics are on the rise in terms of public interest.

Automatic recommendations:

1. Robot Uprising 2008-2015, Market to Reach $15B
2. The 5th International Workshop on Computational Creativity

When I imagine a harp I’m inclined see men wearing white periwigs and court-dressed baronesses listening to the royal harpist through clinging of crystal glasses. But not after this. Click through to see an interactive, musical laser array and have cyberpunked visions of the future augment your seventeenth century harp idiosyncrasies.

The term “Laser harp” was invented and first used by Bernard Szajner in 1980, according to Wikipedia:

The first model was constructed with a matrix of 5 X 5 laser beams in an octagonal frame. It has subsequently been used in a number of different designs, including a MIDI version invented by Philippe Guerre, and a recent one created by Yan Terrien. They have also been used in public art installations such as those created by Jen Lewin on display at Lincoln Center in 2000 and Burning Man 2005.

And now for the main event. Do you have your periwig on?

From the video’s description:

The harp is driven by an Arduino (Boarduino varation) and connected to the impOSCar VSTi software synthesizer, the TAOS sensor array sits on the floor in it’s own stand.

The summary goes on to state that the harp does respond to hand-distance from sensor, but that it’s still a bit buggy and was thus excluded from the demo. The creator of the harp, Stephen Hobley, has DIY instructions on his site, in case you want to make a laser harp of your own.

Links & References

• Laser Harp on Wikipedia
• via ConstantSkeptic

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The machines are the creation of artists François Delarozière and Pierre Orefice, inspired by Jules Verne and the industrial history of the city. During times of exhibition, the machines awaken periodically by the virtues of the cogs & gears and can be ridden (see links below for videos). The exhibit is located in renovated warehouses at the docks of Ile de Nantes and will remain as a permanent installment.

This is the kind of inspiration I would’ve loved to see as a kid. Thankfully I had access to a lot of books, some of which contained intricate mechanical artwork — but the Icelandic art exhibits were hardly at par with the Island Machines. I’m happy for the kids that get a chance to visit this exhibit.

The following pictures are courtesy of Claude Joannis, who receives a nice hat tip and thanks for contributing these to Think Artificial.

There’s a Lantern Fish in the Shadows

(Le Luminaire Des Grands Fonds)

I love this one. The combination of innocence and razor sharp machines rarely fails to inspire.

The Manta Ray (Les Raie Manta)

The Pirate Fish (Poisson Pirat)

The Reverse-Propelling Squid (Le Calmar Géant à Rétropropulsion)

The Crab Larva (La Larve De Crabe)

Pictures of the Crab Larva are apparently rare, as the organizers didn’t have an image of it themselves. It looks like an interesting design.

The next four images are courtesy and copyright ©Nautilus-Nantes. My thanks to the organizers of Les Machines de L’ile Nantes. Click on the images to see larger versions.

The Manta Ray

Click for full image.

The Reverse-Propelling Squid

Click for full image.

Pirate Fish

Click for full image.

Lantern of the Depths

Click for full image.

More Artwork in Nantes

In addition to the machines depicted above, the artists also created a 12m high and 8m wide mechanical elephant weighing 45 tonnes. There’s also a plan to create a steel tree that’s 45m (147ft.) in diameter and 28m high (92ft.), topped by two herons. Visitors will be able to ride in circles on the bird’s wings and walk bridges from branch to branch.

I didn’t include pictures of these mainly because the designs didn’t have the same aesthetic appeal as the others, but you can see some on Claude’s Flickr page.

Links & References

• François Delarozière and Pierre Orefice (La Machine, art group site)
• Les Machines de l’ile, Official site
• Video of the Nantes squid moving, video of the Nantes Elephant (YouTube)
• Video search for the Machines of Nantes

Automatic recommendations:

1. Cloud, Digital Sculpture by Troika

From Troika’s description (see links) on the inspiration and design of Cloud:

[...] we created ‘Cloud’, a five meter long digital sculpture whose surface is covered with 4638 flip-dots that can be individually addressed by a computer to animate the entire skin of the sculpture. Flip-dots were conventionally used in the 70s and 80s to create signs in train-stations and airports. We were fascinated by their materiality, by the way they physically flip from one side to the other. The sound they generate is also instantly reminiscent of travel, and we therefore decided to explore their aesthetic potential in ‘Cloud’.

Links & References

• Cloud discovered via Rhizome
• Troika’s project page, creators of Cloud

Automatic recommendations:

1. The Ra Desk Lamp by Ettore Cimini

Created by designer Ettore Cimini, you can get one for about USD$2000. Unfortunately, that’s not within my student budget.

Links & References

• Image from Lumina

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Featured Entries

Aside from clean cut aesthetics, you’ll notice I’ve created a featured bar for flagship entries I want you to read. Not that I don’t want you to read all of my entries. But too often I’ve held back posting something simply because I don’t want to see another article float down into the dark corners of the archives.

I’ve also come to appreciate this arrangement on other sites — a nifty way to quickly get to know a site and make a decision on whether to push that lush, orange subscription button.

Visual Diversity

I develop new ideas rapidly. It doesn’t take me long to outgrow a certain design, to start loathing a specific illustration or to otherwise long for something new to shake free from a rut. This design harbors visual flexibility; the header is large with an extra dose of clear space, enabling freedom and flexibility for a range of image types that I switch when I feel like it. When I’m content with the header, the featured entries’ images are spices that ensure a frequent change of frontpage flavor.

Technical- and Meta Info

When deciding to create a new theme, there were two themes I trusted and considered for building on; Rapid Access by my buddy John Pozadzides, and Grid Focus by fellow 9ruler Derek Punsalan. I went with the latter, mainly because I am more comfortable with a fixed-width design and quickly realized how I could modify it to suit my needs. If you’re on the lookout for Wordpress themes, I recommend having a look at these two. My thanks to the guys for offering them free of charge.

How’s My Driving?

I have several other improvements in mind; features that didn’t make the cut in this first version of rebirth. We’ll see some changes trickle in as we dig into the new year. I’m open to- and appreciate comments, as usual.

Welcome to the new Think Artificial. If you enjoyed last year’s stream of content, you’ll love 2008. Tell a stranger. Tell your robot.

Links and References

• Since I mentioned animatronic dinosaurs, have you heard about Dubai’s plans for a robotic Jurassic Park?
• Derek Punsalan’s Grid Focus theme
• John Pozadzides’ Rapid Access theme
• Special hat-tip to Mike Rundle for making inspirational delicious designs.

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The documentary was created by Microbia, a team of Floris Kaayk and Sil van der Woerd, two young filmmakers studying in the Netherlands. The film is quite well executed and mimics typical BBC-type documentaries, providing a hint of realism for an unbelievable scenario.

I can quite vividly imagine a sci-fi feature film being based on this concept. We’d follow our protagonist in a from infection to death, and his dealing with this unsettling new 21st century disease (perhaps a nanobot cure gone out of control?). Maybe the boys of the Netherlands should try pitching it to Gondry after he finishes Master of Space and Time.

You can watch the Metalosis Maligna documentary embedded below, or see a somewhat higher resolution Quicktime version at Microbia.

Links and References

• Metalosis Maligna via who killed bambi?

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The robotic, stalker chair project titled ‘Take_a_seat’ is the conceptual brainchild of Dutch artist Jelte van Geest. An RFID card allows the chair to track you around; and when you leave the library the chair returns to its dock for recharging. BotJunkie reports that:

This cool little project by Jelte van Geest won’t record what you’re saying or reconstruct itself, but it will follow you around and provide comfortable seating. There aren’t many technical specs, but it looks like you can check the chair out with a RFID card. The chair follows discreetly behind you, and is there whenever you need a little break. As soon as you leave the library, the chair returns autonomously to a charging slot. A whole bale of chairs can be controlled at once, automatically arranging themselves into seating appropriate for lectures and such.

From reading that I ignorantly presumed that this was an actual project … and it took me longer than I’m proud of to realize that it’s concept art from the ground up; the flocking behavior took it overboard and jolted me to reality. Puzzlement turned to annoyed embarrassment when I looked a bit closer and realized the weird contrasts weren’t bad video compression but CGI artifacts. In any case, it’s an excellent concept and really fun to watch.

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On some Saturdays, it’s good to let go for a while and visit a giant. Two sites that can lend a helping hand along the way are FFFFOUND! and Concept Art. Have an inspiring weekend.

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©2007 Hrafn Th. Thórisson

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This was recorded at the 2007 Lightining on the Lawn Teslathon; an event held in Baraboo Wisconsin. The coils are 2 meters tall and can generate around 3.5 meter sparks. From the video’s description on YouTube:

[...] The music that you hear is coming from the sparks that these two identical high power solid state Tesla coils are generating. There are no speakers involved. The Tesla coils stand 7 feet tall and are each capable of putting out over 12 foot of spark. They are spaced about 18 feet apart.

The coils are controlled over a fiber optic link by a single laptop computer. Each coil is assigned to a midi channel which it responds to by playing notes that are programed into the computer software.

These coils were constructed by Steve Ward and Jeff Larson. Video was captured by Terry Blake. What is not obvious is how loud the coils are. They are well over 110dB If you look at another You Tube video which is from a different angle, you can hear the echo off the building and get a better idea of how loud it is.

Here’s the other video they mention:

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Super Mario not your cup of tea? How about something classical:

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Apparantly, the guys who made these are going to start selling them under the product name Zeusaphone in February 2008.

Links and References

• via electro^plankton and Beyond the Beyond
• Tesla Coil on Wikipedia

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The Eclipse system was designed by Marcus Ward Curran, and really confiscates a similar idea I had a while back about a wall attached mechanism that engulfs the user. Mind you, Curran implements the idea more elegantly than I’d envisioned, and the teleconferencing concept is quite brilliant. (If this weren’t concept art, you’d know what I want for christmas).

See more pictures at Yanko’s (links and references below).

Video of the System

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Links and References

• via Yanko Design
• Marcus Curran’s Portfolio, Image credit: Marcus Curran

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Although I can’t say I love every single movie Burton’s made, there’s always something in each of his movies that I come to love. Sweeney Todd seems to be no exception, judging by the poster and trailer alone; a strange blend of CGI, graytoned scenery and crimson gushes of an all-too-familiar bodily fluid, topped with a bit of singing. (Yes, singing. Looked pretty cool.)

The trailer seemed to show a combination of different styles in all aspects. If I were to describe metaphorically what I expect the movie to be … I’d say it was a quilt. A quilt of an exotic patches made by Tim Burton to keep warm at dusk (because it’s always dusk in Burton Land). And, of course, as evident in the poster above — the film is quite aesthetically pleasing. From what I’ve caught a glimpse of, it’s going to be a feast for the eyes.

I’m looking forward to it. Hopefully it’ll be a nice addition for Christmas recreation. You can check out the trailer and some other goodies over at the Todd Sweeney site.

Links and References

• Hat tip to fellow 9ruler Dogmatic for inspiration

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