One of the blogs I enjoy following is Innovative Interactivity (II). Here is the description from the "About" section of the blog:
"Innovative interactivity serves as an open forum for multimedia producers, interactive web developers, and new media professionals. Content focuses on the dynamics and theory of how people receive and react to different forms of information on the web, both through visual, multimedia storytelling and interactive information design."
"The goal is that this blog will provide an outlet for those in the online realm, whether you are interested in learning about multimedia storytelling, interactive web development, programming languages, software tools, data visualization, or all of the above. Hopefully you will be inspired from what you read here to surpass your current standards in order to develop highly effective multimedia interactives for the digital community."
Tracy Boyer Clark is the founder & managing editor of Innovative Interactivity. She is finishing up her MBA/MSIS dual master's degree at UNC-Chapel Hill.
Here is the press release: Next Generation of Microsoft Surface Available for Pre-Order in 23 Countries "Software developers interested in creating solutions for the Samsung SUR40 can get started immediately by visiting the Surface Developer Center. The site provides free and easy access to the Surface 2.0 software developer kit, featuring the Input Simulator, which enables developers to write Surface applications on any Windows 7 machine, as well as other helpful developer-related resources. There are already hundreds of highly skilled Surface software development partners that can be found at http://www.surface.com."
(I've listed Microsoft Surface partners at the end of this post and plan to share more about the latest applications for surface computing in the near future.)
The following product information was taken from the Samsung website:
40" Surface Experience "Samsung SUR40 is the new generation of Microsoft® Surface® experience featuring PixelSense™ technology, which gives LCD panels the power to see without the use of cameras. Building from the innovation of the first version of Microsoft® Surface® and Samsung’s leading display technology, it is now possible for people to share, collaborate and explore together using a large, thin display that recognizes fingers, hands and other objects placed on the screen."
PixelSense™ "PixelSense™ allows an LCD display to recognize fingers, hands, and objects placed on the screen, including more than 50 simultaneous touch points. With PixelSense™, pixels in the display see what’s touching the screen and that information is immediately processed and interpreted."
Resolution: 1920 x 1080 Viewing Angle: (H/V) 178 / 178° (CR ≥ 10) CPU: Athlon X2 Dual-Core 245e (2.9GHz) Operating System: Windows 7 Professional x64
Product Dimensions (With Stand): 1,095 x 728 x 707.4 mm Product Dimensions (Without Stand): 1,095 x 102.5 x 707.4 mm Shipment Dimensions: 1,214 x 299 x 832 mm
If you are a long-time reader of this blog, you probably know that I sometimes have some unusual dreams about technology. I don't blog about my dreams very often, but last night, I had another technology dream, a continuation of a dream I had one night last week. Voronoi Diagram (Wikipedia) I'm pretty sure that the last two dreams were sparked by playing an online interactive demonstration of a Voronoi application before going to sleep one night, and also reading an article about "extracting ordered patterns from a triangular mesh surface" in the Novemeber/December IEEE Potentials magazine before turning in last night.
The dance probably was influenced by my recent viewing of the North Carolina Dance Theater's performance of Innovative Works with my mom, someone who encouraged my study of music, art, and dance at an early age.
Some of my tech dreams are sort of...practical. For example, in one recurring dream, I find myself coding for a flexible mesh/grid application. Sometimes the mesh/grid has something to do with wireless sensor networks on curved terrain, perhaps related to something like the Smart Grid, and sometimes I find myself working on an application that analyzes streaming data from a variety of sources, for security prediction purposes. At other times, I'm coding for something more artistic, my preference.
Last night, my dream focused on creating a flexible mesh fabricthat used in a multimedia dance/graphic arts/music performance. I was coding for this performance using a Voronoi-like algorithm.
This is the best I can do to explain this: The fabric is carried by the dancers, and is both reactive and generative. In essence, the fabric is intertwined/embedded in the dance, the music, and the graphics. In my dream, everything looked/sounded/felt awesome and otherworldly, and the music that merged and morphed during the dance was so beautiful, not only the melodies, but the sounds. (In a previous dream, the mesh contained a "nanotechnology" component, but I'll save that quest for the future.)
I thought I'd look at some of my web book marks and search a bit more for information related to this topic. For now, here is the "brain dump". I have more to add to this post, and plan to port it to a reference page for this blog in the future. I hope that this post will be useful to some of my art/music/dance/tech readers!
RELATED AND SOMEWHAT RELATED
Update: Right after uploaded this post, I came across a link to a WebGL demo for a 3D music video of pop singer Ellie Goulding's song, 'Lights', by HelloJoy. Visitors to the webpage can click to interact with the environment. If you keep the button pressed, you fly faster. If you tweet the link, you'll see your name crop up as you fly around in the soundspace. For more information about the making of 'Lights' - take a look at Behind the scenes of 'Lights": the latest WebGL sensation! (Carlos Ulloa, 11/9/11)
Patterns in the Noise (Nathan Nifong's site - FYI, Nathan worked with Celine Latulipe with the Dance.Draw project while completing his bachelor degree in computer science at UNC-Charlotte) Voronoi Dance (Christian Gross, using OpenFramework) Voronoi art: Slow Trip (Oktalist/Mat)
The above video, by Mat/Oktal, was inspired by his viewing of Thomas Ruff's Substrat images. Scott Snibbe Studio (Intearctive art, music, and animation for iPhone, iPad, iPod, and Mac)
Interactive Voronoi Diagram Generator with WebGL (Alex Beutel) The above video was found in Alex Beutel's blog post, "Interactive Voronoi Diagrams with WebGL"
Arparna Rao: High-tech art (with a sense of humor)
Aparna Rao is an artist from Bangalore, India, who creates interactive installations supported by electro-mechanical systems. She collaborates with artist Soren Pors.
RELATED Pors & Rao website - a delightful interactive website highlighting the works of Arpana Rao and Soren Pors. Below are pictures of some of the duo's work, along with links to the Vadehra Art Gallery, where the works can be viewed online:
Jim Spadaccini is the director of Ideum and is responsible for the Ideum blog, which is well worth reading if you are interested in creative use of multi-touch, gesture, and interactive multimedia applications. Jim also serves as the principal investigator of the Open Exhibits project, a non-profit open source, multi-touch, multiuser software initiative, which includes a free software development kit (SDK) for museums, students, nonprofits, and educational use.
More about IDEUM Ideum will be involved in an upcoming day-long conference at the Tech Museum on Tuesday, November 15th (2011), Building Interfaces for the New Decade ConferenceSan Jose, California, 11/15/11
Ideum is working on interconnectivity between devices, as shown below, where people are connecting their iPhones to a multi-touch table:
Here is a video about Ideum's Tiny Drifters exhibit, 7 foot multi-touch wall at the Monterey Bay Aquarium:
Here is a promotional video about Ideum's rugged MT-55 multi-touch table. It holds up to the interaction of thousands of museum visitors.
