More shadow installations

Big Shadow is a public installation promoting the Xbox game Blue Dragon in which the viewers shadow becomes a dragon during fights.
The promotion of the game using Big Shadow is based on shadow-play:

"We projected magnified shadows of ordinary people in town and created a system whereby they could play with their own shadows. A person’s shadow is projected as a giant shadow image, which can suddenly change into the shape of a dragon. This creates a new and engaging interactive experience.

A shadow can also be manipulated via the Web while viewing a webcam image. We wanted to provide a fresh experience that links the city and the Internet as well as people and shadows."

Shadows

I would like to make an interactive installation using shadows in some way. I have experienced quite a fiew interactive installations and the ones which I enjoyed the most and were most memorable all used shadows and light in some way.

John Lewis's most recent advert uses shadows, although not interactive it is beautiful aesthetically.

New brief - idea generation

Just recieved the new brief- design for interaction and its got me thinking about some installations I have seen over the past couple of years. There is one in particular which was fanstastic, it was an interactive installation called Shadow monsters by Philip Worthington

The video doesn't do it justice.


Focusing on large scale and tactile interactive experiences that engross and envelope the visitor, Philip Worthington (1977-) created Shadow Monsters, a digital version of the traditional shadow puppet, as part of his degree in Interaction Design from the Royal College of Art.

Through a complex interplay of computer graphic and photographic programming, fantastic monsters materialise from the shadows cast by the hands of participants, reacting to and elaborating on their gestures with sound and animation. Wolf-like creatures, birds and dinosaurs are among the characters that speak and squeak as imaginary mouths open and close.

‘Play’ and ‘playfulness’ are words Worthington frequently uses when describing both his work and his approach to interactive design. As the London-based designer says, “it is a platform for experimentation and a space for the imagination to run wild.” His other projects include a digital version of the traditional toy race car track, an online community graffiti network and a colony of digitalised leaf-cutter ants that mimic the behaviours of actual ants as they forage around an interactive tabletop in search of real objects on the surface.

Worthington’s designs inject spirit and humanity into our increasingly technologically driven society. However, interaction designers today are not only concerned with the expressive and communicative possibilities of new technologies but also with their social and cultural consequences. The vision recognition software Worthington has written for Shadow Monsters could have applications beyond growling wolves and squawking birds to incorporate graphical commands for the physically disabled. While exploring all available avenues for his truly immersive and interactive designs Worthington continues to make existing and emerging technologies more meaningful and relevant to our lives now.

Design futures presentation

IT SHOULD BE RED. Don't know why the slide has changed from red to blue, but it changed colour when I uploaded it so never mind.

I presented my concept to the class on Monday, I was quite nervous but apart from that I felt that it went pretty well. I was pleased with my PowerPoint presentation as I spent a long time preparing the slides, however I would have liked to have made an animation to present , but time was against me.

I really enjoyed seeing all of the other presentations, it was great to see what every had
come up with and how different everyones was.

William Kentridge Exhibition

One of the world’s most influential contemporary artists, Kentridge will exhibit a selection of his work including prints, installations and film, in Brighton this autumn. This will be the first time that most of these works will have been shown in the UK, and will constitute his largest exhibition here to date. Born and resident in Johannesburg, Kentridge produced work that engaged in the struggle against Apartheid. Today, his work continues to infuse political sensitivity into the making of his graphic representations and in his filmic and theatrical productions in a manner that discovers politics in the daily traumas and dramas of human experience.

Future Concept

After many long days and weeks of research I have finally reached the end of the project, I'm pleased with my concept and I have learnt a great deal a long the way. From my researched I have discoverd that the majority of today’s most significant technologies have been evolving for a decade at least, and combinations of technologies are often more powerful than single technologies and innovations on there own. The process of combining technologies should be driven by consumer needs, looking at consumer demand and seeing how existing and underexploited technologies can fill the gap.
I have developed a concept which I feel could exist in the future, a portable device which offers better viewing experiences. The idea of sharing and improving vision is the key to my concept, converging current and emerging technologies and developing a product that is portable which ables users to be self sufficient.

OLED (organic light-emitting diode)

New OLED prototype is a roll-up TV

Related Entries: Cell Phones & PDAs : Future Tech : Personal Computers : Portable Entertainment


Universal Display Corp. has shown off a full-color OLED (organic light-emitting diode) screen that's extremely thin and, more importantly, flexible. The prototype's screen measures just 4 inches diagonal, but it's a miniscule 0.004 inches thick. Resolution is said to be pretty good, too — about 100 dpi, so even a screen as small as the prototype could render most of the detail in a TV image. So far, OLED displays have appeared in some car head units and a few portable gadgets, but none of them have taken advantage of the technology's promise to make screens bendable like the UDC screen pictured here (Monitor Roll-ups, anyone?). Okay, now combine a flexi OLED display with a fold-out keyboard, and you can put all the functionality of a PC into a gadget the size of a PDA. Somebody please build this! — Peter Pachal

Pileus

The Pileus System is a tangible browser to make rainy days fun. The Pileus Umbrella and the Pileus WebService construct the system. At the demo, personalized photo-logs are projected on a screen of the Pileus Umbrella . User can take photos with a camera on the top of the umbrella. Taken pictures are uploaded and shared on Flickr with some context tags immediately via the Pileus WebService. The grip module has a web connection and ID for a social contents sharing for the WebService. Snapping action is used for a browsing operation with an accelerometer installed on the grip.

A Fun Concept but what about the Health And Safety Issues?

PicoP

video on your mobile phone and mp3 player is the latest thing; in fact full-length movie downloads from the likes of iTunes are almost common place. Too bad you have to watch all of them on that itty bitty screen. The world's smallest projector technology could change all that.

Microvision has invented PicoP, a laser-based projector that could someday in the not-too-distant future be placed inside portable cell phones, MP3 players, and other handheld devices. That's because the actual projector will be no larger than an Andes thin mint. The company unveiled a working prototype last night at Pepcom Digital Experience, a CES 2007 pre-show event that actually has no official affiliation with CES.

Using three tiny lasers (RGB colors), a combiner (to bring together the laser colors into a unified color pixel), and a tiny one-millimeter mirror, PicoP can project up-to-a 50-inch image in darkened room.

Images are not high-def, but they do appear in a sharp 800x 600 SVGA image at a 60 HZ refresh rate—that's because the combiner is shooting the combined pixels onto the mirror line-by-line. PicoP uses neither a projection bulb nor a focusing lens to produce the image. In fact, it conserves energy by only turning on the lasers when it needs them. So for an all green image, PicoP will turn off the Red and Blue lasers. This all happens in a fraction of a second. Microvision representatives said the technology inside is remarkable simply and actually resembles a DVD player's pickup head.

In the demo at Digital Experience, PicoP cast a vibrant image of Disney's Finding Nemo on a common piece of 8.5-by-11-inch white paper. The image was clear, but the amount of light in the large conference hall did not offer an optimal viewing environment.

Bluetooth Virtual laser Keyboard

Remember when you were promised all those amazing future tech innovations? Just around the corner was supposed to be a shining technology utopia with flying cars, personal space travel to distant galaxies, and bio-implantable cell phones. It's almost disappointing enough to make you sit at home and watch old episodes of "Space 1999".

Don't lose hope! An amazing glimpse of this promised future has just arrived at ThinkGeek in the form of the Bluetooth Laser Virtual Keyboard. This tiny device laser-projects a keyboard on any flat surface... you can then type away accompanied by simulated key click sounds. It really is true future magic at its best. You'll be turning heads the moment you pull this baby from your pocket and use it to compose an e-mail on your bluetooth enabled PDA or Cell Phone. With 63 keys and and full size QWERTY layout the Laser Virtual Keyboard can approach typing speeds of a standard keyboard... in a size a little larger than a matchbook.