This video is very interesting because it shows how contemporary technology meets traditional.
It is more than just showing a new product, in this case a mobile phone with a cover made of wood.
The way the film is made is what impresses me the most. Getting something as ancient as a wood instrument, like a xylophone, and take this concept to play such lovely melody(Cantata 147 di Bach).
It doesn’t show in the film but the calculation and preparation for it to happen is enormous and requires knowledge in different areas, music, computing and movie making. How something so complex can be so simple, poetic and inspiring is just amazing. Think outside of the box.
Video Projection Mapping is a projection technique that can transform almost any surface into a dynamic video display. Specialized software is used to warp and mask the projected image to make it fit perfectly on irregularly shaped surfaces. The result is a dynamic projection installation that transcends ordinary video projection. Thanks to the new projectors it can be done over a match box or a large building facade.
Here in Venice I took part in a video mapping exposition at A+A art gallery. There are different works from local artists. You can see some of that on the video below. My work was based on a series of videos I am making on Venice Water Ways. I taped the image of San Marco tower reflected on the wet floor of the piazza, masked and projected on alittle wooden tower, creating a relation between image and form.
It is another case of augmented reality because it can create a window of digital projection in our real world.
Now withmicro projectors it is possible to adapt it to the mobile phones, it is a newfield of services that can be provided by Telecom Italia and Tim Brasil.
Here are some examples of large professional Video Mapping, done by a brasilian artist from Belo Horizonte called 1mpar.
Sending information through skin is one possibility that seemed unreal until now.
Can you imagine using your own arm as a keyboard or any other control device. The first idea that comes to mind is the insertion of electronic equipment or sensor inside the arm.
But some new applications in the research sensors area go beyond our imagination. Exploiting the biological and physical characteristics of our skin, muscles and bones researchers have found a way to transmit information.
The sensor is placed on an arm and detects the sound and vibration generated by the touch against the body surface and can locate a signal. Based on the type of touch and its location a command is triggered.
Now we can really say that anything can be at the tip of our fingers. It is just another example of the variety of interfaces that are becoming available and a further bridge between ourselves and the cyber-world.
Here at the Future Centre the Marco Polo team had some interesting debates in the last few days about the integration of the different generations living today.
What is called the millennium generation is the youngest one, it was born in the Internet era.
More than understanding what the different generations are about, it is important to understand that they are sharing experiences across one another as a society.
We are so over flown with information that it is hard to know what it is really important for us. The issue today is not the access of data but the management of its content and quantity. In order to analyze and comprehend the info we access we can be helped by a good information organization and by tools easing its selection. That is where an application like Visual.ly gets handy.
One of the conquest of the twentieth century was the break of the geographical barriers through effective and fast transportation. Especially with the advance of high speed trains and airplanes. The all world has shrunk. The New Century is promising a new breakthrough, but this time in the virtual space.
The virtual distance is almost non-existent nowadays and it has mixed together space and time. We can be online with almost anybody, anywhere in the planet. Even beyond!
These new thresholds of communications, have been taken up really fast; they are a real breakthrough for human contacts and relations.
The interaction among services and gadgets is growing so much that they are changing our use of the mobile phones.
Clearly we will keep using them to talk but most of the time we will be using them for something else. They are becoming part of our way of living not only as a device but as a complex ecosystem of services and products. That can be seen in this Nokia Mix Reality Demo.
If in the past the velocity increase was due to better tracks, faster trains and planes, today the speed in exchanging information relays on the better quality of computer systems and faster communications links, thanks to optical fibre. In biz, but also in our daily life, communications and processing are but two sides of the same coin. Without a good connection one’s can’t fully appreciate good equipment, nor experience good service.
It is so nice when you receive a phone call from someone you like saying how much they appreciate you. Nowadays mostly of messengers are send through mobile phones and social networks, people like to be connected.
Behind the facility of communication there is the emotional need to be love and showing you love others, its human nature.
Philips has created a smart fabric called LuminaLive than can display moving images on T-shirts or other supports made of fabric. it is a technology there is already available. I am studying a new services from telecommunication related to this line of product.
My idea is that we could activate those designs on the T-shirts with a more personal approach, also with more emotional attachment. This could be done by linking the different designs of a LuminaLive T-shirt to different messengers, that would be sent by mobile or msn connected also to any social network.
So not only we can let people know how much they are appreciated, but also they can show the world the symbol of there affection. It reminds me of a Steve Wonder song; I just called to say I love you, every time I hear it I fell good.
Celebrating this week the 150 years of Italian Unification, it comes to mind all the cultural aspects that create a nation. Since the formation of the territory, the language and the culture that within its locals variations create the sense of nationality.
The audiovisual is an important aspect of the formation of a culture. With its visual references found in art, photography and cinema. Italy especially in the cinema field will always be referred and remember for one of the most important movements in the contemporary cinema history, the neorealism. Studied by many, it was so well translated in its core by the great cinema critic AndreBasin.
This movement and its productions were only possible through the cultural and historical aspect upon it was found on. It represents best the evolution of the personification of a nation, and created some of the strong image references of the cinema and the Italian culture.
Nowadays the same territory and its cultural aspects are been reinforced and revised by the digital technology. The virtual world of the internet recreates new contours based on the real world that surrounds us. Its experiences and possibilities translated in a different dimension that is already part of our everyday life.
Instruments like mobile phones, computers and tablets help increase the connectivity and dynamics of the process with instant access. Services provided by Telecom Italia help make it possible. But new ways of making it better are being developed, like the project I am involved in at the Future Center.
Marco Polo 2.0 is a platform that comes to connect the territory, local service and culture with the World Wide Web experience. Connecting different communities, relating the real and virtual worlds. Italian cultural and lifestyle in multimedia contents, making larger experience of the territory possible. Reinforcing the sense of Nation through out the new media.
Do you know what smart fabric is? It is a smart materials, that can have its properties changed by an external stimulation, such as stress, temperature, humidity, etc. Such materials can “think”, interact, do small tasks or carry information on them. It is a growing market. Check out the smart fabric conference site.
Research on Smart Fabric Technology is growing rapidly and new products are expected to be available soon. We are having a series of talks about it here at the FutureCenter, and some very interesting ideas have come up. I am particularly interested in researching about the transmission of information through materials, specially the translation of emotions.
How are you today? It is a question your shirt may ask you someday; you may not answer it, but nevertheless it will sure know how you are truly feeling. If you are feeling cold, it could warm itself up, or if you are nervous it may vibrate like a massage to calm you down. It is a new step towards the interaction with materials that surrond us.
The applications for the smart materials have just begun.
Also, you could exchange data and feelings with others, close or far away throughout smart materials. One of the first experiments is the Hug Jacket, a jacket that activates itself by the contact of a hug.
It might be a good excuse to start hugging people anyway. But the exchange of information could become really useful when you meet people you need to say something to, but keep on forgetting. Spread out the news, like an event or an important meeting just by shaking hands, sending out medical readings or just letting them know how you feel.
If the Pompeii of the past was a world surrounded by paintings and images, creating for its inhabitants aworld of imagination that was the continuity of the real world itself, the Pompeii of today is a link between an ancient time and our reality.
Since the rediscover of the Greek and Roman Classicism the western society has modeled itself on those aesthetic canons. The life and ways of the ancient times are still in many ways a mystery for us.
Historians and archeologist have attempted to recreate those long gone times. Nowadays with the technologies available it is possible to recreate digitally the reality of other times.
Not only the Scholars are using this technology, the entertaining industry has given us good examples, like the recreation of the coliseum in the film “The Gladiator”. But the difference is that the work of universities is based on serious studies and tries to give us today a real sense of the life in the different times of the human history.
Pompeii is an important source for this knowledge because of the way it was preserved.It is an instant capture in time and well representative of the period, and the new forms of representation help us to understand the way of living of our ancestors.
Some studies show how was the architecture of the city.
If we understand the Virtuality from the point of view of Pierre Levy, as a potentiality, we can imagine many possibilities of the Digital culture. In the world of Images, virtual reality and ambient morphing is seeing as a new technology, an advance possibility of today. But it’s better to think that the technology to achieve it is new, but the concept has been present throughout the history of mankind.
Since the cave prints that might have been done in magical hunting rituals, to the trompe l’oeil of the renascence and the image ring of the Gothic Cathedrals, some spaces have always been surrounded by images that represented nature, other constructions or mythical creatures. Creating a magical atmosphere, virtual to the eyes of the observer, extending the reality of its own reality.
One of the most interesting examples preserved from the ancient world, are the paintings and pictures of pompeii. From the palaces, temples and private houses we can appreciate today only a fraction of the complex layers of images that were produced at that time. One can only imagine the felling of entering a space, in its majority part enclosed by walls, open only to a central patio, but completed with painting in every direction, creating a sense of emerging in another dimension.
Something we want to achieve today with the augmented reality, the 3D glasses and the ambient morphing. The connection with the past can show us a lot about the human imagination and the things we have kept in common with our ancestors. Pompeii might be one of the lost links from this past that seems to be more present that we can imagine.
