“The SMS Guerilla Projector is a home made, fully functioning device that enables the user to project text based SMS messages in public spaces, in streets, onto people, inside cinemas, shops, houses…

Small, portable, and battery operated, the SMS Guerilla Projector contains a mobile phone which enables the device to receive and project messages from other people.

The SMS Guerilla Projector is made by recombining available technologies. As an open object, the projector generates a wide range of applications, allowing the user to display messages and share his reflections.

Its unpredictability creates a very special and disturbing experience for the people who watch the projection, and invites them to reflect on the content or the implications of the message.The images below show actual examples of projected messages.”

A project by TROIKA. More of the project here.

BURGER KING studio is part art gallery, part think tank. It’s a social laboratory that features the work of local artists in an interactive and engaging studio space. BURGER KING® and cutting edge artists take our “HAVE IT YOUR WAY®” spirit out of our restaurants and into the world.

Strolling in Obama land (Chitown), I came across this interesting experiment. So I created my T-shirt :) with original drawings by Blütt:

Blütt is a Chicago artist who tends to create messy backgrounds with his own bold, unique characters lurking on them. For this, he generally uses spray paint, ink, watercolors, wood, canvases and anything else he can dig up. On the street, he usually uses stickers and posters. When he’s not being anti-social and scribbling on something, he’s walking dogs and falling off bicycles.

The interaction designer Anab Jain, who came for the EPIC conference, and who I have met in Tokyo at the Ubicomp2005 conference was wearing a wonderful RFID flower…

Strolling in Copenhagen this weekend, I came across the Collectivity Project by the Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson. The Collectivity Project is Eliasson’s contribution to U-Turn, Copenhagen’s festival for contemporary art. It was great to observe the way in which kids of all ages were interacting with the piece:

“Thousands of white LEGO bricks - potential buildings - will be piled on a tables shaped after an aerial view of Copenhagen. The visitors can move freely between the tables, which each represent one of Copenhagen’s various neighborhoods, and are free to contribute with visionary, humorous or completely unrealistic proposals - come re-build the city of Copenhagen at the city’s most central location!”

Why am I blogging this? Saying that you wanted to do architecture because you played with LEGO bricks was certainly not an entrance ticket to any school. But looking at some of the creation (Above) makes you think about architecture and standardization, curtain walls, prefabrication… Neo-nomads do navigate in standardized and regulated places…

I would have preferred a donkey… But check this GPS drawn animal by Hajime Ishikawa. Information via PingMag:

“I think my favourite thing about GPS is that you have to take it and go outside and walk to get your data. You have to take your bicycle and spend a day to draw this thing. Though it’s a cutting-edge technology and you see location with sub-meter accuracy, it forces you to experience the real land in an analogue way.”

At MIT this fall: urban utopias.
This Is Tomorrow: Utopia - Dystopia - Heterotopia
MIT Visual Arts Program
Fall 2008

September 29, Imagining Communities, Jesko Fezer
Series introduction by Ute Meta Bauer, Director of the MIT Visual Arts Program; Yvonne P. Doderer, architect and urban research, MIT Visiting Professor in Visual Arts; Jesko Fezer, architect, collaboration with IFAU (Institute of Applied Urbanism) and co-editor of AnArchitektur, Berlin, Germany.

November 3, Mobile Life, Ghost Towns, Lukas Feireiss, AbdouMaliq Simone
Lukas Feireiss, curator, and editor of “Architecture of Change: Sustainability and Humanity in the Built Environment”; AbdouMaliq Simone, Professor in the Department of Sociology, Goldsmith University of London, UK.

November 17, Remote Habitats, Lucy Orta, Nicholas Makris, Armin Linke
Lucy Orta, Studio-Orta, Paris, France and Professor for Art, Fashion and the Environment, London College of Fashion, UK; Nicholas Makris, Professor of Engineering and Director of the MIT Laboratory of Undersea Remote Sensing; Armin Linke, photographer and film maker, Milan, Italy and guest professor at the HFG Karlruhe, Germany.

Self-sustainable chair by JooYoun Paek.
Info via Inhabitat. I love it!

Following up with screens and LEDs, here is an interesting article in wired about the band nine inch nails: Nin Dazzles with Lasers, LEDs and Stealth Screens by Bryan Gardiner. Excerpts:

“Unlike most rock shows, the visuals for about 40 percent of the show (including “Only”) aren’t pre-rendered. There’s no staging, no pantomiming by band members: It’s all interactive, live and rendered on the fly.

[…] The core of the show is a sophisticated trio of transparent “stealth” screens, which are raised and lowered during the performance.

Using one high-resolution (1024 x 288) Barco D7 screen — basically, an opaque, computer-controlled screen comprised of a tiny LED system on modular panels — and two lower-resolution semitransparent screens up front, Reznor and other band members are able to trigger and control various video loops and effects directly from the stage. The musicians can also interact directly with those visuals onscreen during the show, thanks to a sophisticated array of sensors and cameras.”

A sweet looking photograph before experiencing (again and again) CDG airport.

Adrian Paci
Temporary Shelter Centre, 2007
Videoproiezione 16:9, 5’30”, col.
Courtesy Galleria Francesca Kauffmann, Milano

Via e-flux.

Dennis Oppenheim’s work of art: Two-Stage Transfer Drawing, 1971. Evokes to me Body/self extension… etc.:

“Dennis Oppenheim to Erik Oppenheim (Returning to past state).

As I run a marker along Erik’s back, he attempts to duplicate the movement on the wall. My activity stimulates a kinetic response from his sensory system. I am therefore, drawing through him. Sensory retardation or disorientation makes up the discrepancy between the two drawings, and could be seen as elements that are activated during the procedure.

Because Erik is my offspring, and we share similar biological ingredients, his back (as surface) can be seen as an immature version of my own… In a sense, I make contact with a past state.”

“Erik Oppenheim to Dennis Oppenheim (Advancing to a future state).

As Erik runs a marker along my back, I attempt to dupplicate the movement on the wall. His activity stimulates a kinetic response from my sensory system. He is therefore, drawing through me. Sensory retardation or disorientation makes up the discrepancy between the two drawings, and could be seen as elements that are activated during this procedure.

Because Erik is my offspring, and we share similar biological ingredients, my back (as surface) can be seen as a mature version of his own… In a sense, he contacts his own future state.”