LATEST FLYER
Couple of flyer realized through the last months.
Add comment März 14th, 2009
MUCOM
“MUCOM“ is a small application to connect users in a local network (LAN) designed and coded together with Ben Maus and Martin Luge. People, who are working in such micro-communities, are often engaged only with their computers. There is hardly any verbal exchange; everybody is focused on his or her screen.
Our aim was to connect all those people and to sensitize themselves for the group and their behavior. They should be able to exchange informations and to find a new kind of connection. Although everyone is still in a working process by writing a text or checking emails, they should be „disturbed“ – forced to have a pause or to concentrate on something different. The exchange of information only happens inside of the micro-community.
The idea is to create a character called “MUCOM”, whose habitat is the collective screen-space of the people connected to the local network. Being some sort of digital live-form, it moves from screen to screen – haunting the users in that specific group. It interrupts working people and is only active in the
local network. If the user ignores “MUCOM” it becomes more active in disturbing. The main mission of “MUCOM” is to store data inside itself and take them with it. On Its way through the network “MUCOM” can only be on one computer at the same time.
The organic form and the behavior of “MUCOM” is similar to a living creature. It starts at the left edge of the screen and finishes its trip after leaving the screen on the right side. Meanwhile the user has possibilities to interact with MUCOM. The user can feed “MUCOM” with nearly every kind of data. One gets the opportunity to feed images, text, music or even little video-clips. Those files are revealed again by clicking on the character. When a file is released it disappears from MUCOM and can not be downloaded anymore unless the user feeds it again.
The texture of “MUCOM” represents the current state of the organism which consists of the number of all connected clients and the number of data files each user has uploaded. By clicking the client icon all files are shown. One can see the filename by moving the mouse over the file icon – and then decide if one wants to download the file or not.
“MUCOM” also has an intervening component. It claims its own space on top of the user’s screen. If the user ignores “MUCOM” for too long it gets kind of angry and attempts to steal a file or a part of your desktop. The stolen piece of the screen is then no longer visible to the user until “MUCOM” finds its way back to the particular computer or another user releases the file.
Uploads and clients are limited. There are not more than 12 clients allowed and every client can upload a max of 3 data files. Because of this restrictions a mixture of content is given permanently.
Add comment Februar 23rd, 2009
ADAP
Adap is the result of our research on “dysfunctional behaviour of things” together with Benjamin Frenzel. The main interest of this project was to understand, why people build up a certain relationship to broken things and to explore how we can use this fact in the designing process.
People tend to personify objects when they refuse to do what they are meant to do. You can also notice people developing strategies to deal with malfunctions of objects, what we call “interacting with failures”.
Adap is an alarm clock which adapts the behaviour of its owner, namely his faults. He falls asleep in the middle of the night and has to be woken up in order to do his job: to wake somebody up.
After a few days Adap will get tired, when its owner goes to bed. He soon will share the circadian rhythm of his owner. A slightly fading light indicates: the Adap is asleep. Sometimes you can hear him snoring, that means playing and skipping some music tracks the owner once copied to him.
The owner has to punch Adap to wake him up, so that he could be wakened by Adap in the morning himself. The Adap Project describes a close relationship between a thing and its owner.
Add comment Februar 23rd, 2009
ICYS TK5000
Is a project realized together with Tim Horntrich and Ben “allesblinkt” Maus.
Our basic motivation was to build a robot, capable of perceiving its surroundings and reacting accordingly.
These assumptions lead to the „ICYS TK 5000“ robot. It disputes with the ever-growing surveillance in urban space. Everywhere you go, you are being tracked and data is stored. The aim is direct confrontation. How does it feel to be tracked?
ICYS is equipped with a high-resolution camera, enabling it to perceive its surroundings. A custom designed face-tracking software allows the robot to recognize people and produce mug shots. For every spotted person, the robot automatically logs the time and the geo-coordinates via GPS.
The gathered information is printed on little stickers. Those stickers are adhered directly to the ground, thus leaving a distinctive trace of people moving through the city.
Due to the nature of the thermopaper the stickers also have a limited lifespan. The information fades over time because of heat, light and weather.
TECHNOLOGY
For the „ICYS TK 5000“ prototype we used a vacuum cleaner robot as the base. It is controlled by two microcontrollers. A small computer inside is responsible for face-detection and printing.The printing assembly in the base of the robot consists of a hacked GameBoy thermoprinter together with a sophisticated contraption to peel the stickers off the transfer paper and stick them to the ground.
A servo-controlled webcam tracks people‘s faces with the help of the „OpenCV Library“. All software for the robot was custom coded.
Add comment Februar 23rd, 2009
MOVING SHADOWS
is a custommade light with a swivelling holegrid. This projectionlight was created together with Tim Horntrich during a semesterproject called indiedesign.
To get a parametric design object which can be produced using technics like lasercutting or milling we designed an interface within you can draw your own personal shadowgraphics, set size and finally download a pdf with all cuttingshapes an materialindications to produce your own MovingShadow light.
>>> Click for more pictures < <<
Add comment Juli 31st, 2008