SubSub blog

As promised, here’s some more Light Up Bristol footage.

Light Up Bristol from crustea on Vimeo.

Light Up Bristol happened once again in December. This time bigger, better (and more chaotic) that before. There’s a whole load of pics up on the Flickr group, although with this year being in motion images don’t do it justice.

We’ve got some more video in production (yep, I know it’s March, we’ve been busy!), but for a preview check out the AntiVJ reel, which contains a little of the event from 1:34. (Note: The installations presented at the beginning of the reel are other works by the AntiVJ label)

5 nights
17 artists
100+ meters wide worth of building
6 dam large digital projectors
20 other lighting projectors and lights
3 machines
Over 100k worth of lighting power
4 french men
5463 chestnuts
2 snow machines
many late nights…

A couple of posts on some good looking digital stuff about recently…

Alexander McQueen - continuing his blurring between technology and fashion - recently used a Musion Eyeliner System to materialise a life sized hologram of Kate Moss in the center of the show.

The system, as used by Gorillaz in their stage ‘appearances’, simulates the 3d by using a projector, a mirror and a form of semi transparent foil that sits at 45% degrees to the viewers. It’s a modern version of an old technique known as “Peppers Ghost” used in stage shows.

The output looks beautiful, particularly when crafted by Alexander (and containing Kate). Have a look for yourself:

I’ve got a backlog of posts that just keeps seeming to get longer, with some sitting in my todo’s for at least a year. So in an attempt to not let them pass here’s a quick hit of some of the great and the good:

An attempt at digital pixels. Not quite as beautiful as Daniel Rozin’s work but still pretty interesting (the end goals are different anyhow). It’s nice how the whole system talks to each other, and ‘pixels’ can be added and removed as needed. Created with Processing.

Zopa.com has already had a reasonable amount of interest in the press. I originally saw it when checking out what the guys at Poke had been up to recently. Looking into it it’s a very interesting idea. Basically matching up lenders and borrowers. I’m interested to see whether it’ll get popular enough to get Carol Vorderman of the TV adverts in the morning.

This guy seems to have far too much fun making things such as paint ball and zombie mini guns. The best thing is he then goes to work and does stuff like this.

To balance out the mini-guns and zombies: this next site is somewhere between the ‘you too can look like Kate Moss’ pages and a MIT grads dissertation. Like.com utilizes image recognition techniques to find similar items within a number of online stores stock.

Finally, Matt Biddulph at hackdiary has created a meeting of our favorite Phy/Dig interface Arduino and Second Life. Some basic workings out are included so we can all get on with it ourselves. The potential for real world/ virtual world interfaces is massive.

The guys at I-Dat, this time with Kurator, continue to educate and entertain, this time with their Social Hacking event.

A number of international artists invaded the public spaces of Plymouth. These artist included The Institute for Applied Autonomy, Mikro Orchestra Project. Ludic Society and c6. They were also joined by Saul and keynote speaker McKenzie Wark (writer of A Hacker Manifesto, an inspirating read during Uni) for the seminar on Saturday.

Personally, The Institute for Applied Autonomy guys seemed the most interesting of the artists, with both their content and techniques. They seem to be somewhere between activists and tool makers. Terminal Air, which can still be seen at the Plymotuth Art Centre (be quick, ends 31st March), is an ‘installation to document the American CIA’s practice of ‘extraordinary rendition’ flights’. I had no idea what extraordinary rendition flights were, and the reality was scary and enlightening. If you can’t make it down to Plymouth be sure to check out the work’s description at a minimum.

The Ludic Society made street gaming a little darker, by tagging 25 individuals with RFID tags, under their skin! The game allowed them to adjust, tag (well un-tag) and react to the city.

The event was wrapped up with a Mikroparty, with both live and DJ performances from Tetine… who rocked in their very special way.

The guy’s who’s have been making the world a better place with their boards, have now come out with a bluetooth version.

In case you haven’t had a chance to play with one yet, Arduino is an open source physical computing platform allowing you quick and easy prototyping using a simple I/O board and a programming language build on top of Processing.

The new BlueTooth version opens up a whole load of possibilities, particularly as it has a Class 1 Bluetooth transmitter/receiver (read that as bigger/better or 100 meters not 10). Not only will the BT allow easily update-able hardware (no more climbing up ladders to update the brain of your hanging robotic monkeys), but they can also transmit and receive vie the programming interface.

The guys have now opened up something a little more official with tinker.it and are offering this and a whole lot more on their site.