Incredibox

Incredibox is a interactive website that allows users to mix their own beatboxes using the skilled sounds of The Incredible Polo. The website is fun and super simple to use. You just drag and drop the types of sounds on the the beatboxer's t-shirt to add to the mix. Click on any of the beatboxers to remove their sound. The end effect is really enjoyable to experience.

Analogue Tweets

As part of his W+K's Platform application, Marcelo Pena Costa started an Analogue Twitter account. He set up a webcam while working on his project and wrote tweets live with a marker on paper, pinned to a bulletin board.

In my opinion, Analogue Tweets is actually a way more interesting idea than the project it was designed to document (I [heart] wires). This idea is so brillant, I'm filing it under Damn-I-wish-I-had-thought-of-that.

Bodies in Urban Space

Bodies in Urban Spaces is a performance art piece by Austrian artist, Willi Dorner. His crew of dancers and acrobats tour cities, running around as a group, squeezing themselves into whatever gaps or crevasses they pass. Most of the time, the group is wearing dynamically coloured clothes (not in the image above), making themselves into tightly fit, bright, beautiful urban artwork.

The Tan Man

Earlier this year, idiot er... design student, James Titterton offered his body up as a canvas. He ran a design contest to offer his skin "as a light sensitive material, upon which I am willing to have appropriate visual content 'developed' as a suntan". The winning design was submitted by Finnish graphic designer, Janine Rewell. James documented the stenciling, tanning and exhibition process on his Tan Man blog. Oh dear.

Real Human Interface

The always brilliant, Multitouch Barcelona have released a new video project called Hi, A Real Human Interface. It is an amusing reinterpretation of a computer preformed by a guy in a box.

I am once again reminded to say nice things to my computer. (Found through Fubiz)

BBC Blast Studio

The BBC currently have a great website up that allows you to play with interactive art in their studios. The BBC Blast Studios connects you to a live stream of the BBC studio (available 12pm-12am) where they have 3 interactive art pieces. Online users can choose an art piece to play with and then follow the instructions to participate.

My favorite is Mark, which gives you three paint gun shots at a large canvas. It is accompanied by a dragable timeline which allows you to see the artwork being created over time.

Fantastic idea. The combination of online visitors with real participatory art exhibits is almost too good to be true. This experiment in creativity will be available until June 9th.

Playing for Change

My dad sent me the link to this video a couple weeks ago. The video is an unlikely combination of street musicians from around the world playing Stand By Me. Each musician was recorded individually and then digitally edited together into the final fantastic song.

The video is part of an ongoing project called Playing for Change (great name!), which tries to use music to "break down boundaries and overcome distances between people". Although the Stand By Me video has gotten the most attention on the internet, there are actually seven videos so far, featuring different combination of street performers playing different songs. The other songs include One Love, Don't Worry, and Bring It On Home.

This is such a simple and effective idea. You can't help but love it. (Thanks Dad!)

Synchronous Objects

Synchronous Objects is a super interesting collaboration between choreographer William Forsythe and Ohio State University's Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design. It is a series of projects is to explore the art of dance from a scientific and data visualization perspective.

One of the sub projects, entitled Cued Annotations, visualizes a dance where each of the dancers starts their part upon a specific cue from one of their fellow dancers. You can watch the dancers preform the dance from a front or above stage view, and then re-watch the choreography with all the cues and their effects annotated. The project creators were "interested in the intensity and integrity of the dancers' attention to one another, the rapid exchange of information, and the different qualities of motion in each cue response". I can't wait to see more

Tweenbots

I know Tweenbots has been on every blog in the past couple days, but I love the idea too much to not add it to my collection as well. Tweenbots is an art experiment by Kacie Kinzer that looks at how robots and humans interact. Tweenbots are cute little cardboard robots which try to navigate the streets of New York. These robots are unique because they are human defendant. They only have the ability to go in a straight line and rely on human interaction to navigate complicated routes. The website has some great video of a Tweenbot trying to navigate its way through Washington Square Park. It gets stuck under benches, and in potholes... but people consistently come to its rescue. The trek apparently only took 42 minutes and 29 human interventions.

I love this project for so many reasons. Partially, I just enjoy the idea that people would help inanimate objects with a task. Mostly, I like this project because it challenges the typical thinking about robots. Robots are not necessarily going to take over the Earth, we can live peacefully together... they might just need our help. Let the robots contribute what they are good at, and let the people contribute what they are good at. I love crowdsourcing.

Office of Blame Accountablility

The Office of Blame Accountability... because sometimes you just need to get if off your chest.

The Office of Blame Accountability is a street art project by Geoff Cunningham and Carla Repice. It allows users to fill out a blame form or record an audio conversation with someone that they hold accountable for something. Since 2007 they have collected hundreds of accountabilities. They describe themselves as "A collaboration with the American public that follows a growing need for art that sees the viewer as a producer and participant".

How Benjamin Button got his face

I really enjoyed the movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Particularly because I was so enthralled by the special effects used to make the actors look younger and older. They were amazingly well done. I just watched Ed Ulbrich's TED talk about how Digital Domain created Benjamin's face, and now I'm even more impressed. His head is computer generated for the first hour of the film. The process that they created to make the effects realistic is pretty incredible. They innovated by using "technology stew" - combining little bits of relevant technology gems from gaming and medical imaging. I recommend listening to the explanation. They had me at phosphorescent makeup...

Fifty People One Question

Fifty People One Question is a heartwarming little video project created by Crush + Lovely and Deltree. I say "little" because it is such a serenely simple idea, and so simply executed, that it seems effortless. The project does what it says, asks 50 people, in 1 city, 1 question. The questions are also simple: What do you wish to happen by the end of the day? Where would you like to wake up? ...and the answers are varied and beautiful. Watch them all here. (Found through It's That Nice)

A Year in Outfits

Maria, of Stickers and Donuts, has just published My Year in Outfits - photos of what she wore every day for the past year. Wow... this is making me feel very uncreative about my wardrobe.

Microwave Carol

One of my favorite parts of the holiday season is the inventive greeting cards that creative agencies come up with. This year one of the most impressive has been the holiday video put out by AKQA. It is a Christmas take on found object music. In this case they play Jingle Bells using microwaves set to different times with different toned alarm bells. This sounds like something Eric Johnson would do.

Jumping in Art Museums

Oooo, yet another deliciously brilliant idea to add to my To Do List... Jumping in Museums. Allison Reimus has a blog dedicated to her love of jumping in art museums. She says "Sometimes, while visiting art museums and galleries, I am so excited by what I see that I have to jump for joy". Allison encourages readers to send in their own jumping in museum photos with info about who they are, what museum they were in and the painting they chose to jump in front of. She also organizes jumping events. One such event happened this past week at MoMA in NY. I might just have to swing by the local art gallery tomorrow.

I Missed You!

Improv Everywhere is a group of New York based undercover improv agents who organize and execute missions to "cause scenes of chaos and joy in public places". Their missions are all pretty funny and involve some sort of over the top kind gestures. Their latest mission called Welcome Back brought a huge smile to my face. The mission involved 20 "agents" to camp out at JFK airport for the day to welcome strangers. They found a driver in the airport carrying a sign with someones name on it. Then they would fill out all of their welcome home signs accordingly. When that person came to meet their driver they were also met by 20 strangers screaming their name, carrying balloons and flowers. Watch a video of the event here. This is such a brilliant idea.

Street with a View

Artists Robin Hewlett and Ben Kinsley have managed to make street art out of Google's Street View in their project Street with a View. They decided to blur fiction and reality to create the most interesting alley in the US. They figured out when Google Street View would be recording the images for a small street in Pittsburgh and then decided to throw an event. All of the scheduled activities were variations on the truth... a parade, a marathon, a heroic rescue, and more. Check out a video the Sampsonia Way activities in progress here.

Social Souvenir

Artist Sebastian Campion currently has an interesting exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Roskilde, Denmark. Social Souvenir is an interactive exhibit reflective of current online trends. The museum is selling 300 t-shirts for 125 DKK each. The t-shirt is black with white text, forming a phrase inspired by one of the museum's artists. As each shirt is sold, they are removed from the tangible half of the exhibit and transitioned into the virtual half, a large map. The t-shirt owner's address are marked on the map. I like the evolution of the exhibit from offline to online. It's very reflective of our social interactions today.

The Village Pet Store

Sigh... I'm falling in love with Banksy all over again. I know this has been on all the blogs today but it's such a brilliant idea, that I couldn't pass over posting it here as well. Banksy's newest exhibit in New York comes in the form of a pet store. The Village Pet Store and Charcoal Grill is now the home to a leopard print coat, hot dog hamsters, fish stick fish, chicken McNuggets drinking BBQ sauce, and my favorite, nesting CCTV cameras. All the "pets" are animated and viewable from within the small store, or from the street. Be sure to watch the videos for the full effect.

Banksy's comments on the exhibition were 'New Yorkers don't care about art, they care about pets. So I'm exhibiting them instead'. I'm swooning at the bad attitude. For more info check out Wooster Collective's coverage.

Sidewalk Psychiatry

Candy took notice of the fact that in most people's busy, lives one of the few times they have a moment to be alone with their thoughts is while they walk around the city. She points out that 'A routine trip can prompt reflections on everything from future goals to last night’s dinner conversation'. Candy created a project called Sidewalk Psychiatry to help pedestrians along with their deep thoughts. The project encourages self evaluation through sayings painted on city sidewalks. The sayings include 'Then why did you do it?' and 'And whose fault is that?'.

In Case Of Civil Unrest...

I never get bored of witty, positive street art. This sidewalk art reads: In case of civil unrest... remove cement, break into pieces, and throw. (Found though Wooster Collective).

Migration

I'm a big fan of Hellovon's artwork. I actually just bought a print a few months ago. Gorgeous sketches.

Hellovon has a new project entitled Migration. It is a two part project, picturing birds migrating from London to New York. The birds are shown on two large billboards. One is currently up in London's Brick Lane. The second will be posted in Williamsburg, Brooklyn in the coming weeks.

Applause

Jason Bruges Studio has created this interesting installation called Applause. An array of computer controlled flags respond to motion. The flags dynamically follow polo players or race cars, turning back and forth to follow the action.

Touched Echo

I'm immediately adding this one to my Personal Favorites. Touch Echo is a stunningly simple and effective outdoor exhibit in Dresden, Germany. It uses bone conduction technology (sound transfered through the bones to vibrate the ear drum, allowing you to hear sounds that have no noise) to listen to the sounds of the 13th February 1945 air raid that happened at that location. Visitors to the site put their elbows on the railing and cup their hands over their ears to hear the raid. I think this is a brilliant use of bone conduction. I particularly like the respectful, meditative pose that it forces listeners to adopt which adds to the experience and the message it has to others watching. This concept also has a sense of magic to it which I really like. The idea of a specific pose transporting you to another place and time, while others around you are unaware, is quite amazing.

Pulse

Pulse is a live visualization of recent emotional expressions written on blogger.com. Blogged emotional expressions are parsed using a list of synonyms which are translated into physical changes on a rubbery heart. This project has a fascinating mix of human emotions and computer data data. Feelings are coded as data in blogs, and the data is turned back into Pulse, an object with its own sense of life. I appreciate that the end result seems very alive, but very robotic at the same time. It appropriately represents the mix of warm emotions and cold data that are feeding it. Pulse is the thesis project of University of the Arts Berlin student, Markus Kison. (Found through Computerlove).

Slow Printing Calendar

I always like innovative clocks, especially ones that use natural ways of showing time passing. This clock, created by Oscar Diaz, is actually a calendar. It controls ink flow through paper so that only one number is filled in a day. It is currently just a prototype. Very cool idea. (Found through swissmiss).

One Day Poem Pavilion

I'm totally in love with this project. It is called the One Day Poem Pavilion. It's the thesis project of Art Center student Jiyeon Song. The pavilion is an experiment in typography. Sun shinning through the dome creates a poem in light on the ground. The poem is reveled, line by line, throughout the day as the sun passes over the pavilion. The content of the poem naturally changes through out the year as the sun shifts it's position in the sky. The poem's message is sensitive to the time of the year, with a 'new life' theme during the summer and a 'reflective' theme in the winter. I appreciate that this project is so simple and yet so complex at the same time. Check out more of Jiyeon's very well written explanation of the pavilion, including sketches and a time lapse video, on the project's website.

Ten Thousand Cents

I'm not sure why, but I'm totally enthralled by Amazon's Mechanical Turk. I just can't get enough information about it. I'm particularly fascinated by Aaron Koblin's artistic take on the the Turk (see previous post - The Sheep Market). His latest project is Ten Thousand Cents, created in collaboration with Takashi Kawashima. Thousands of Mechanical Turk workers were asked to paint a small section of a $100 bill using a custom drawing tool. They were paid one cent for their work. None of the workers were aware of the final image they were contributing to. You can click on any image in the bill to watch how it was drawn. Very cool.

Nokia Nseries Urbanista Diaries

The Nokia Nseries has created an interesting website where they tell a tale of 4 bloggers traveling around the globe and taking pictures, to help sell the Nokia 5 megapixel, GPS enabled phones. The advertising story goes like this... "Once upon a time, 4 travelers began a global quest. They beat a path through our urban jungles to seek out untold stories - to capture time, only to release it back into the world. And they laid out a trail so we cannot lose them". You can track the bloggers' travels and view their geo-tagged photos as the post them. It's a cool, overly dramatized take on selling a phone - I like it. (Found through Comuptuerlove).

Big Dipper

I just finished watching this mesmerizing video of Sarah Van Gameren's recent Big Dipper exhibit at London's Design Museum. The project is a large machine that creates candle-dipped chandeliers. Two rows of strung wicks circle each other, periodically being dipped into wax. The process takes 12 hours to create 24 finished chandeliers. It's really beautiful to watch. (Found through Hip.Young.Thing).

Mark lives in IKEA

Comedian and filmmaker, Mark Malkoff, somehow convinced a New York area IKEA to let him live in their store this week while his apartment was being fumigated. He is filming his experiences and posting them on his website for your viewing pleasure. I had a nightmare about living in IKEA once, so this idea totally fascinates me. As Mark says, 80% of his house is IKEA anyway so what's the difference. Mark will be living at Paramus New Jersey IKEA until Saturday if you are inspired to go visit him. (Found on the ).http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif

Robotlab's Bios [Bible]

Robotlab is a future thinking group of Germans who create social interaction experiments between people and robots in public spaces. One of their more recent projects is entitled Bios [Bible]. It is a museum exhibit where an industrial robot is writing out the Bible on scrolls in a calligraphic style as monks have traditionally done. If the idea of this makes you gasp a little, that's a good thing. The project is meant to make people question their thoughts on faith and technical progress.

The Sheep Market

Fun with Artificial Artificial Intelligence! The Sheep Market is a bizarre and intriguing collection of 10000 sheep drawings created by workers on Amazon's Mechanical Turk. Each worker was instructed to "draw a sheep facing left" and paid $0.02 for their troubles. You can actually watch the sheep being drawn. My favorite fact about this project is that 662 sheep were rejected - my imagination drools at the idea of what these rejections were based on. (Found through the Sub-Studio Design Blog).

Eric Johnson, meet World

World, meet Industrial Designer and digital music artist extraordinaire, Eric Johnson. Eric just debuted two of his most recent musical experiments at Etsy Labs Handmade Music nights. The first was his very entertaining Theremin Crutches. He recycled an old pair of crutches into a large theremin. The result looks and sounds like someone releasing all the stress the crutches have collected. Love it!

Eric's other project, Sixty Switches of Fury, is even more fabulous. It's a controller made to look like a piece of suburbia. The large section of wall houses 60 (now 61) light switches each controlling a music sample. The switches are arranged in octives like a keyboard, but unlike a keyboard you don't have to hold the keys down. Instead you just turn the switches on or off, creating a more natural and useful interface for those of us with only 10 fingers.

I appreciate Eric's approach to musical instruments because he comes at it from a design background and not just a musical one. The end result is all about the user interface and the interactive experience. The fabulously entertaining music is just a bonus. Eric's work was recently been featured by Wired and Time Out New York. May I just say that Nerdsters are awesome!

Rives - If I ran the Internet

I've recently fallen head over heels for the work of performance poet Rives. His spoken word poetry is incredibly clever and inspiring. Some of my favorites include 'If I rand the Internet' (above), 'Mockingbird' and 'Sign Language'. For more video of Rives' poetry visit his website, shopliftchimes.com

Michael Cross' Bridge

This art instillation called Bridge, by Michael Cross, was part of last year's London Design Festival. The setting is an old church filed with 60 inches of water. As you approach the water you are met by one single stepping stone. Stepping out onto the stone causes a series of small platforms to rise out of the water creating a walkway. As you walk out to the center of the church, the steps disappear behind. You end up peacefully alone above the water, free to take in your surroundings. Sounds wonderful.

Unfortunately, based on people's Flickr photos it looks like the insurance company stepped in and added lifejackets and an escort to the mix as well as cutting out the disappearing steps. The effect isn't quite the same. (Found through Computerlove).

Influences

Phil Hansen's fascinating version of a self portrait has been making the rounds, and rightly so. It is pretty impressive to watch. He uses his bare torso to paint 30 different paintings, one on top of the other. Each painting represents someone who influenced his life, such as Georges Seurat, Stephen Hawking, and Adolf Hitler. The paintings took a total of 30 hours to complete. You can see more of Phil's work at www.philinthecircle.com.

Robin Rhode

Video art is so impressive when it is done well. The work of the South African artist Robin Rhode is great example of how captivating this approach to art can be. He uses chalk, simple props and his own body to create animations. His work was featured at MoMA earlier this year. More images of his work can be seen on the Perry Rubenstein Gallery site.