Laser Tag is a new project from Graffiti Research Lab. The idea is that you use a high-powered laser pointer to trace a pattern on the side of a building, a camera captures that pattern, some software processes the capture, and a projector displays the graffiti-ized pattern back onto the side of the building, more or less in real-time. The effect is pretty cool. The process and source code are available here.
Speaking of ecological footprints, Personal Kyoto lets your track your energy usage and reduce it according to the Kyoto Protocol. It only works for NYC residents...just grab your ConEd bill, punch in your account number, and PK will display your energy usage for the last year, along with averages and your Kyoto goal.
Update: PK's creator tells me that he's looking to bring the project to cities other than NYC. Good stuff.
Nice interview with Michael Frumin on the occasion of him leaving Eyebeam. "There's so much data out there, and so little time!"
Eyebeam is accepting applications for the next round of fellows for the OpenLab. Artists, technologists, designers, hackers, git in there.
Michael Frumin tried to get some NYC subway data from the New York City Transit Authority through Freedom Of Information Legislation for a project he wanted to do, but they denied his requests. "Given a database of anonymized Metrocard 'swipes' over some small period of time, Frumin imagined that a multitude of explorations could be embarked upon. Below is a concept sketch for one specific project idea -- a visualization, for each station in the system, of the range of locations in the city that people travel to from that area." Nice Minard-esque prototype map.
Eyebeam's Graffiti Research Lab has won an Award of Distinction at Ars Electronica 2006. Congrats, guys!
Launch party tonight (4/14) at Eyebeam for Yochai Benkler's new book, The Wealth of Networks. "His book shows why labor done outside the constraints of free markets and giant corporations can still have a huge impact on the economy and social relations. He argues that a 'third mode of production' offers the promise of a more free society, but only if we make the right collective decisions."
Slashlinks
Ben Engebreth, a compadre of mine at the Eyebeam OpenLab, has released Slashlinks, a tool for automatically mirroring links from del.icio.us to your personal web site. At first glance it might sound like a simple archiving tool, a way to get your data out of del.icio.us, but what it actually does is reproduces your del.icio.us links on your web site.
Check out Ben's links for an example. If you click on a tag name, you can see that not only the links but the underlying tag structure has been reproduced locally. Once the links are on your site, you can style them how you wish (as Ben has), publish them where you want, etc. And Slashlinks will also keep your local links fresh...if you keep using the publishing tools at del.icio.us to add links, they will automagically show up on your site.
Eyebeam's Mike Frumin has released OGLE (OpenGL Extrator), a software package for extracting 3-D data from Windows applications. This means you can do stuff like grab the 3-D likeness of your World of Warcraft character and print it out on a 3-D printer or insert him into a Manhattan landscape (grabbed from Google Earth). Announcement here.
Christian Marclay will be premiering his new piece, Screen Play, at Eyebeam on Nov 11th. Damn the luck, I'll be out of town. I loved Marclay's Video Quartet piece.
Chris Johanesen has a short review of the Eyebeam panel last night. "I'd certainly rather read an insightful and well-written post about sandwiches than an unoriginal, poorly thought out post about politics." I like that Ebert quote too.
Everyone's a Critic panel
If you happen to be in NYC on November 3rd, stop by Eyebeam in the evening and check out a panel that I'm on about criticism called "Everybody's A Critic, Or Are They?" Here's a description:
With 9 million blogs, umpteen online message boards, thousands of shows on hundreds of cable channels, and an increased number of magazines on the newsstand, the number of outlets for expressing criticism has never been higher and the barriers to would-be critics have never been lower. Is this devaluing evaluation or does the shotgun approach result in better criticism? YOU be the Judge!
Joining me on the panel are Emily Gordon, Village Voice film critic Michael Atkinson, and Columbia professor & author Duncan Watts. The wonderful Steven Heller will moderate and no doubt bring the conversation to a higher level. Details:
November 3, 2005
7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Eyebeam (map)
540 W. 21st St.
New York, NY 10011
VGMap is a library developed at Eyebeam that lets you overlay arbitrary data and graphics onto Google Maps with Flash. Since you can dump anything you want into a Flash movie, you're free to annotate Google Maps with anything you want, from audio clips to banner ads of businesses. As an example, they've overlayed the NYC subway onto a map of Manhattan.
Both the NY Times and New York magazine have fall restaurant previews. The southwestern part of Chelsea (+ the Meatpacking) seems to be really jumping these days...lots of stuff happening on 10th Ave (i.e. my walk to Eyebeam most days): Batali, Morimoto, Cookshop, Colicchio, etc. Maybe with all the action over there, maybe the High Line park will work...
Eyebeam is looking for R&D Fellows for their new OpenLab. "The ideal fellow has experience creating innovative creative technology projects, a love of collaborative development, and a desire to distribute his or her work as widely as possible. We encourage artists, hackers, designers and engineers to apply."
The trophies for the Contagious Media Showdown were printed on Eyebeam's 3-D printer. But even better, each trophy had that winning site's traffic graph printed on it...the trophy for big winner Forget-Me-Not Panties is on the right.
Eyebeam is currently accepting proposals for their fall/winter Artist in Residence program. If you get in, I will be within heckling distance of your workspace.
The Contagious Media Showdown Awards are Saturday night at Eyebeam, 6-8pm. I'll be presenting one of the awards, so stop by and (please don't) heckle.
