Technology

E.

Everyone is an artist

By In Art, Blog, Technology, Visualization0 Comments

Joseph Beuys’ famous slogan “Everyone is an artist” showed his belief in the central role of creativity in everyone’s lives. We should not see creativity as the special realm of artists, but everyone can apply creative thinking in his or her own area.

Now a team of Russian designers made it easier to see the art in your everyday computer activities. Their free little Java application MousePath, which was renamed recently and is now known as IOGraph, captures your mouse movements and draws them on a blank canvas. Have you ever wondered what your mouse is doing when it’s moving around imperceptibly? Now you can see it!

Mousetrap

The developers Anatoly Zenkov and Andrey Shipilov say: “IOGraph is intended to brighten up your dull work, computer related routine and, hell yeah, it makes you an artist.” Run IOGraph, then forget about IOGraph and do your business as usual. When you come back after some minutes or several hours you will see what you have done. The lines in the picture are movements, the dots occur where the mouse is stopped. With IOGraph you will see your computer work from a different  perspective. Try it out!

Download IOGraph for free (Windows, Linux and Mac OSX) at www.iographica.com

2.

23+1 Chatrouletters. Don’t watch this video! Or watch it twice.

By In Art, Blog, Culture, Technology0 Comments

This Video-Performance is banned from Youtube. So please be careful! You might find the performance by artist duo Eva and Franco Mattes aka 0100101110101101.ORG offending. But if you watch it you can find out a lot about online social interaction.


“No Fun” was performed on chatroulette.com, a website that pairs random strangers for webcam-based conversations. What would you do watching a hanging man on chatroulette? Well, in the beginning you might believe what you see isn’t real. But then…

Call the police? Take a picture? Play the guitar? Or put on your sun glasses?

The performance’s set up is quite disturbing because the artists’ webcam captures the observer when the latter is looking at a suicide. The spatial structure and positioning of the screen and camera reminds of Diego Velázquez’ Las Meninas. As in Velásquez’ painting “No Fun” creates a deeply uncertain relationship between the viewer and the viewed. In fact, the one who is watching is being watched. Don’t watch this video! Or watch it twice.

Someone is watching you! - Diego Velázquez, Las Meninas (1656)
Someone is watching you! - Diego Velázquez, Las Meninas (1656)

(thank you @MrsBunz and 0100101110101101.ORG)

S.

Storytelling for Digital Natives

By In Blog, Education, Technology0 Comments
Smorytellers - www.smories.com
Smorytellers - www.smories.com

Smories are free original stories for kids, read by kids. 50 smories are added every month. Two London-based illustrator/writers Lisa Swerling and Ralph Lazar got the idea for smories.com during a long journey in a dirty Land Rover from the Kalahari desert in Botswana to Cape Town in South Africa.

Their daughter (8) had the idea to film herself with an ipod reading short stories, and then play them back to her younger sister (6). This kept the kids entertained for hours and inspired their parents to create smories. Thank you for this great idea!

Smories is a free online resource for kids and a nice and simple alternative to sites like youtube where young viewers can easily click away to unknown destinations. But smories is also a new platform for children’s story writers, where they are freed from the usual constraints of having to illustrate their story to have a shot at publication. At Smories.com writers can get their work published online, retaining all rights.

Storytelling when coffee-house and Starbucks weren't synonyms
Storytelling when the coffee-house wasn't Starbucks yet.

(Thank you swissmiss and smories)

6.

604,546 words, 515,991 pronunciations, 241 languages

By In Blog, Education, Technology0 Comments

All the words in the World. Pronounced by native speakers. Forvo was born as an idea in 2007, and is online since January 2008. By now Forvo has become the largest pronunciation guide in the world.

Are you able to pronounce the reason for Europe’s flight disruptions ?

You can browse and search Forvo for free. If you want to add new words or pronunciations you have to sign up – but it is also for free. In my opinion, Forvo is a great and interactive idea, combining the best of the two worlds: the world wide web’s networking feature with all the languages (still) spoken in real life. The language-of-the-day section features languages you might have never heard of before, e.g., Lakota spoken by the Lakota people of the Sioux tribes.

Mission Forvo: recording all the words that exist in the world.
Mission Forvo: recording all the words that exist in the world.

Did you ever wonder how to pronounce the name of your favorite foreign artist in his or her mother tongue? I was quite impressed, when I discovered how to pronounce the Icelandic singer in Islandic, the French band in French or the Polish composer in Polish. For non-English speakers it might be insightful to readjust some pronunciation assumptions for the worlds biggest internet companys: , and .

Try out Forvo! It’s fun! www.forvo.com

T.

Turn your overhead projector into a musical instrument

By In Art, Blog, Culture, Technology0 Comments

An overhead projector can be found in probably every classroom and caused a lot of students falling asleep during eternal presentations. Blair Neal from New York converted the most unglamouros educational technology into an interactive music-making machine.

Watch his installation that uses an old projector, a camera, some markers and a laptop and turns it all into a playful art piece. It is essentially an inverse color organ that you can play like a player piano. You can draw crazy things for fun or make more complex songs if they look more MIDI-sequencer like. Developed in Max/MSP and Jitter.

(thank you MAKE and Blair Neal)