Sunday, July 27, 2008
















THE PERFECT HUMAN_the real playable being

...next interactive installation...august 17th Downtown Film Festival, Los Angeles...


Thursday, July 10, 2008

CYMATICS, bringing matter to life through sound



WHAT'S THE MATTER? take some magnetic liquid...
"Protrude, Flow", by Sachiko Kodama and Minako Takeno
EVOLUTION OF VISUAL AND SOUND

John Cage & Merce Cunningham, Variations V, 1965
John Cage and David Tudor settled on two systems forthe sound to be affected by movement.For the first, Billy Klüver and his colleagues set up a system of directional photocells aimed at the stage lights, so that the dancers triggered sounds as they cut the light beams with their movements. A second system used a series of antennas. When a dancer came within four feet of an antenna a sound would result. Ten photocells were wired to activate tape-recorders and short-wave radios.



AudioTouch-Multitouch Audio Table, by Seth Sandler


a student at the University of California, San Diego is researching on and developing a Multi-user/Multi-touch musical interface.pretty interesting.
here's his blog
He investigates the idea of the interactive interface purposed in a more complex way from Microsoft, the Microsoft Surface
Microsoft Surface website

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

NEW PERCEPTIONS? beyond the human senses...

with the help of technology, a world of new perceptions' coming to us...

Playing piano with a robotic hand
"By tapping directly into the brain's electrical signals, scientists at John's Hopkins University, in Baltimore, are on their way to developing a prosthetic hand more dexterous than ever before. They have demonstrated for the first time that neural activity recorded from a monkey's brain can control fingers on a robotic hand, making it play several notes on a piano."
by Emily Singer
from the Technology Revied, published by MIT

Watch a robotic hand, controlled by neural activity, play "Frère Jacques."
Watch the translation of neural activity into robotic finger movements.


OR JUST ILLUSION?

The time Fountain, an optical illusion

Adaptation

An adaptation is a characteristic of an organism that has been favored by natural selection and increases the fitness of its possessor. Of course, an adaptation must have been adaptive at some point in an organism's evolutionary history, but such an organism's environment and ecological niche can change over time, leading to adaptations becoming redundant or even a hindrance (maladaptations).



ECHO LOCATION...something used from submarines and dolphins, but there's a blind guy that could train his body to be able to use it...
TO SEE THROUGH SOUND...switch of perception...how's it possible? just training.


The human body adaptation:
1977
, Marina Abramovic and Ulay, "Expansion in space", 32mins performance
...two bodies pushing two movable columns as heavy as the double bodies weight...


The human body adaptation: lost in a cave for 35 days

January 23rd, 2005
After 90 minutes’ searching the police discovered Jean-Luc Josuat-Vergès, 48, an instructor at a centre for the handicapped buried under a pile of plastic sheeting and leaves 200 metres deeper into the hillside
M Josuat-Vergès said that he entered the caves on December 18 while in the middle of a bout of depression. After his torch batteries ran out, he stumbled around for several days, losing his shoes, he said. He survived by drinking water from the cave walls and sucking on wood and lumps of clay and chalk to stave off hunger pangs. The police said that they found M Josuat-Vergès ragged, dirty, bearded and skinny, but mentally lucid, although he had lost track of time. After a few hours in the Tarbes hospital he was allowed to go home.
from The times, January 24th 2005

Sunday, July 6, 2008

parasite

A parasite is an organism that spends a significant portion of its life in or on the living tissue of a host organism and which causes harm to the host without immediately killing it. Parasites also commonly show highly specialized adaptations allowing them to exploit host resources.
FROM "The language of Biology-Dictionary and Research Guide"

TOXOPLASMA GONDII, a parasite which infects warm blooded animals.

"Recent epidemiologic studies indicate that infectious agents may contribute to some cases of schizophrenia. In animals, infections with Toxoplasma gondii can alter behavior and neurotransmitter function. In humans, acute infection with T. gondii can produce psychotic symptoms similar to those displayed by persons with schizophrenia. Since 1953, a total of 19 studies of T. gondii antibodies in persons with schizophrenia and other severe psychiatric disorders and in controls have been reported; 18 reported a higher percentage of antibodies in the affected persons; in 11 studies the difference was statistically significant. Two other studies found that exposure to cats in childhood was a risk factor for the development of schizophrenia. Some medications used to treat schizophrenia inhibit the replication of T. gondii in cell culture. Establishing the role of T. gondii in the etiopathogenesis of schizophrenia might lead to new medications for its prevention and treatment."
(E.F. Torrey, R.H. Yolken)
Stanley medical REsearch Institute, Bethesda, Maryland 20814-2142, USA. torreyf@stanleyresearch.org


suicide cricket...a cricket is pushed to suicide from a parasite, that leaves the body once dead.

perception


In psychology and the cognitive sciences, perception is the process of attaining awareness or understanding of sensory information. The word perception comes from the Latin perception, percepio, , meaning "receiving, collecting, action of taking possession, apprehension with the mind or senses.
FROM Wikipedia