personal

Google world map

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Great new google service, nicely programmed in JavaScript. But where is my beloved home country?

Cybersonica Festival 2005

Cybersonica is an international festival for music & sound, supported by the Dana Centre, London.
The presented work didn’t seem that exciting to me, but Golan Levins keynote was really interesting: “Audiovision and Computation: Landmarks, Paradigms, Futures”. Also great to see him live-performing some of his works.

Include 2005 Conference

During the past few days i had the pleasure to attend the Include 2005 Conference at the Royal College of Art by working as a presentation assistant.

It was all about inclusive (universival) design, an approach to design in general and a hot future issue i think every designer should be familiar with. The purpose of inclusive design is to ensure that mainstream products, services, and environments are accessible to the largest number of people, irrespective of age or ability. It seeks to include those people in society who have been excluded by design, such as disabled people, the elderly, or children.
A great thing about this new mindset is that it at the same time attaches high importance to the aesthetics of a design.

Links
The Include Programme
The Helen Hamlyn Research Centre
Definition of inclusive design

Biojewellery.com online

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The new website of the Biojewellery (yeah, the British spelling!) project just went online. The team around Nikki Stott & Tobie Kerridge are currently looking for couples who would like to get personal rings made from metals and bioengeneered bone tissue. Go for it and donate your bone cells now!

For All Seasons

Not the most recent, but still very lovely interactive typographic work by hahakid.net:
For All Seasons

My PC friends out there should definitely download the small exe file and run the project, the Mac friends can only see the pictures and quicktime, but they still get a good impression.

Crash Symposium

Finally back in London, i attend the Crash Symposium last friday, thanks to Kalle Korman for the information. The symposiums domain is to explore human onthology and the future of coding in an interdisciplinary space of quantum physics, philosophy, artificial intelligence, robotics to indie porn. If you enter each one of these keywords at google, you’ll find loads of information. Dr. Sunny Bains, scientist in the field of optoelectronics, robotics, machine perception and emerging computing technologies, gave an interesting lecture on AI and physical computation. Among others, she showed a video from the Human Power and Robotics Lab, Cornell Univ., walking creatures without using any motors or classical computation. Check out their videos. Of course, they reminded me of Strandbeest.

The nerdiest domain ever:
www.0100101110110101.org

Robotics Links:
Institute of Neuromorphic Engineering
Autonomous Wormbot
Muscle action controlled prehensile tail

Biojewellery

Yesterday I met a very friendly girl at the RCA, Nikki Stott. She works as a research assistant in the jewelry department. She showed me around the workshop and told me about her MA project called Biojewelry. It uses laboratory grown human bone tissue as a design material to make rings of. Really cool, really wicked idea as I think.

The Biojewellery Project
Image Source

Also interesting in terms of design:
Cool Hunting
Sensory Impact

Interim Show at the RCA

Of course, I had to take a look at that. The photography, fashion and visual communication interim show (2005-01-18) at the famous Royal College of Art. Unfortunately I was not allowed to take photos of the shown works, so at least I post some photos of the building. I’ll soon have to look at the interactive department, which for me might be the most interesting stuff to see.

Links:
Royal College of Art
RCA Communication Art and Design 2005