augmented sculpture is an art installation that combines three-dimensional sculpture and 2-D projections by lichtfront and grosse8. the project was recently presented at imm cologne 2010 where viewers could see the piece in action. the project consists of an abstract geometric form that is spiky and jagged all over. the sculpture itself is white making it the perfect canvas for colourful light projections. an array of digital projectors is beamed onto the form in accordance to the specific shape of the sculpture. the projection can illuminate each facet of the form individually making the sculpture appear to be illuminating from within.
The latter half of the 20th century saw the built environment merged with media space, and architecture taking on new roles related to branding, image and consumerism. Augmented reality may recontextualise the functions of consumerism and architecture, and change in the way in which we operate within it.
Neat demo, I just pray the future isn’t so full of corporate logos.
This month’s issue of tee-magazine T-post is maybe the weirdest shirt I’ve ever seen. It looks normal (and pretty nice, actually) in real life, but when worn in front of a webcam hooked up to T-post’s special web app, a ghostly, green hand emerges from it and challenges you to a game of Rochambeau.
Meet Parrot - ‘a wifi helicopter with two cameras’, or basically your own personal UAV.
A fantastic piece of tech. However, as Chris Arkenberg pointed out, “Compelling AR ultimately requires HUD glasses.” (Something I’ll be investigating personally this year.)
This hasn’t stopped Mr TheStreetFindsIt’sOwnUseForThings, William Gibson, himself from leading the discussion on just what cool uses this tech can be put to.
Tech Crunch has all the gory details, but this video gives you the gist - the heavyweight that Google now is just entered the Augmented Reality world, with an Android only (for now) application, Google Goggles:
Wikitude, the AR browser for Android and iPhones, hot on the heels of Layar, has added 3D objects to its functionality. And to demonstrate this, they built an AR WTC memorial:
LA graffiti writer Tony, aka TemptOne, has a rare neuromuscular disease that has caused progressive muscle weakness and eventual paralysis. Despite not being able to move a muscle, his eyes still function normally. With the help of the Not Impossible Foundation, he was once again able to get back to work:
“The instrument is based on a translucent and luminous round table, and by putting these pucks on the Reactable surface, by turning them and connecting them to each other, performers can combine different elements like synthesizers, effects, sample loops or control elements in order to create a unique and flexible composition.”
Now we have the Hap.tickle Greeting, designed by Lina Saleem, that allows us to send a tickle to our loved ones and dearest friends.
Since “tickling” strengthens social connections (according to Charles Darwin), Hap.tickle Greeting can help you connect with separated friends. The wearable itself is decadently designed with ruffles, frills and vibrating motors (of course) on the backs and sides of the garment. When the garment receives a message via SMS, the motors gently begin to pulse sending loving tickles down the sides and spine of the wearer.
Hugs, massages, and now tickles. The catalog continues to be built.
Rejoice, augmented reality is here! OK, now.. what’s next?!
Wait, first we better roll the video - Bruce Sterling’s keynote for the launch of the Layar Reality Browser, in which, Bruce being Bruce, he drops a metric ton of reality of these hip Dutch hackers. In fact this is mandatory viewing for anyone in a tech scene faced with the dangerous prospect of imminent success:
Now, while there’s still a little hype juice left to squeeze out of the lemon, let’s run a bunch of clips showing just how now Augmented Reality is. Proof being, if it barely works, it’s cutting edge tech, riiight?!
First, Layar’s main rival - The Acrossair iPhone 3GS AR Browser:
Then the Yelp ‘Easter Egg’, later revealed to be using Layar’s platform:
Further proof that one of the initial killer apps for AR will be tourism, the augmented London Bus app for the iPhone:
Finally, a little South Korean weirdness to finish things off - Maptor, an AR “torch” is I guess the best description:
Yes, I know, I know, I know.. AR isn’t really here until it’s Clatter, right. Or HUDs at a minimum. Well, be patient.. Lockheed Martin just dropped a cool $US 1M to Microvision “to develop a see-through eyewear system for ground soldiers.” Cross-fingers, we’ll be getting our grubby paws on those in a few years.
So where do this leave us fine citizens of this marvellous Future Present?
By our current measure of the state of Future - ie Japanese anime - the world of Eden of the East is just around the corner, but Dennō Coil might be a ways off yet. As fans of this show know, that’s your shining example of the realisation of technology as magic, which Bruce mentions in the keynote.
With such wonders on the horizon, I can’t help wondering what’s lying beyond it. Anyone care to take a guess?
We talked about the prototype HUD contact in January 2008. They have been working on improvements:
Today — together with his students — Babak A. Parviz, bionanotechnology expert at University of Washington, is already producing devices that have a lens with one wirelessly Radio Frequency powered LED. To turn such a lens into a functional browser, control circuits, communication circuits and miniature antennas will have to be integrated. These lenses will eventually include hundreds of semitransparent LEDs, which will form images in front of the eye: words, charts, imagery enabling the wearers to navigate their surroundings whithout distraction or disorientation. The optoelectronics in the lens may be controlled by a seperate device that relays information to the lens’s control circuit. Another use could be the monitoring of the wearer’s health and biomarkers f.e. cholesterol, sodium, kalium or glucose.
Link and photo via nextnature.net, though the image is a concept only at this point and not yet a working prototype.
It is 4:46am, I can’t sleep, and I have a question.
The future, as seen by the internet is often expressed by gadgetry, and there’s a particular trap involved in writing about outbreaks of the future in that gadgetry is often really shiny.
And if you’re writing about the future, chances are pretty good that you really like shiny objects.
But, gadgets are not the future.Look at the iPhone.
The iPhone is a fantastic bit of gadgetry, but it’s not the future - no matter how many proto AR apps get developed for it, there’s no way to escape the essential limitations of the device.The iPhone is simultaneously fiendishly useful and completely useless at the same time.It’s filled with a lot of really useful little apps and features, but it’s still handicapped from reaching a certain horizon of real productivity.Without extensive hacks, the iPhone is unable to connect to a variety of external devices for both input and output.It is extremely limited in what programs it can run.
It is essentially a closed system, and the reason for that is that it is designed by a company that holds true to a business and design philosophy that states that you do not own the product that you purchased.While a pervasive business philosophy in many fields (you don’t own your iPhone, you don’t own your music, your movies or your books, your food is made from genetically modified or patented seeds that are never actually owned by the farmers who grow it) it’s not future friendly — or to be more specific, it is a design philosophy that is friendly to a future that is, simply put, a retail opportunity.
The iPhone’s use to any sort of a future worth having is in changing the way that many people relate to technology.It’s now cool to have a computer in your pocket.It’s cool to be on the internet (via 3G and EDGE and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth) 24/7.In the countries where the iPhone has been able to saturate the market, it’s instigated a real sea-change in the way that people react to electronic mediation of their relationship with their environments.Unfortunately it has come with the baggage of corporatization and loss of ownership that is also as pervasive as the new environmental relationships is helps negotiate.
I say that the iPhone is not the future, but what I mean by that is that the iPhone is not representative of a future I want to see.The future is not just a retail opportunity and a finer world is not built entirely of consumer goods.I’m not keen on a future where the major technologies of environmental and social mediation are owned and controlled by corporate ideology.As AR creeps closer and closer, the question of who gets to plant a flag in the liminal space of a technologically re-mediated environment becomes a more pressing concern - with new horizons there are always new forms of colonialism.
The question is, or at least my question is:How do you separate the positive technological and sociopolitical advances of the iPhone and its ilk from the anti-open source, anti-democratization, future unfriendly ideology that they bring with them?
The following speech by Karl Schroeder is an excellent summation of the future we’ve been documenting here, the world that lies just around the corner:
If you need proof that “Augmented Reality” is here, and that like many tech-related buzzwords, trendy ad agencies are racing to milk it for all it is worth, look no further than than the upcoming Blue-Ray/DVD release of Star Trek.
According to a recent Variety article, the new release will come with Paramount’s own version of “augmented reality”:
With the packaging feature dubbed “augmented reality,” consumers will be able to hold their disc packaging in front of any standard webcam to unlock an interactive hologram on the computer screen, through which they can tour five cabins on the Enterprise, even shooting enemies from the ship’s deck.
Users will have to log in to a website to access the feature, but they control the hologram by holding the disc packaging.
“If you took the visual cue in the package and turned your hand, then you’re turning the ship,” Paramount homevideo senior VP of brand marketing Bob Buchi said.
So, with AR taking off, will limited applications like this drive consumer interest in the technology or burn them out before the tech reaches furition, much like Web X.0?
Oh, and if you want to try an early version out for yourself, check out the Enterprise Experience, which was launched as a companion site to the international release of the film.
The ubiquitous barcodes found on product packaging provide information to the scanner at the checkout counter, but that’s about all they do. Now, researchers at the Media Lab have come up with a new kind of very tiny barcode that could provide a variety of useful information to shoppers as they scan the shelves — and could even lead to new devices for classroom presentations, business meetings, videogames or motion-capture systems.
The new system, called Bokode, is based on a new way of encoding visual information, explains Media Lab Associate Professor Ramesh Raskar, who leads the lab’s Camera Culture group. Until now, there have been three approaches to communicating data optically: through ordinary imaging (using two-dimensional space), through temporal variations such as a flashing light or moving image (using the time dimension), or through variations in the wavelength of light (used in fiber-optic systems to provide multiple channels of information simultaneously through a single fiber).
iPhone developers and users excited by the prospect of augmented reality apps, which overlay information and controls on top of real-world objects seen through a camera, have been told to sit tight until the next release of the iPhone OS exits beta.
Although iPhone 3.1 has so far only been known to expose some video camera controls for developers, third-party producer Acrossair was told by Apple that the future release would be needed for its Nearest Tube and future Nearest Subway apps to work properly.
The apps are already highly dependent on the built-in compass and autofocusing camera of the iPhone 3GS, both of which are needed to alternately recognize the direction the iPhone is facing as well as to get a detailed enough look at a subject to tag it with information. As a demonstration of the technology, Acrossair’s software can show the subway stops visible in a particular direction and their distance relative to the user.
Acrossair’s app looks very cool. If progress continues linearly, we’re really never going to get lost again.
How would you like to be able to point your iPhone towards an object – the Eiffel Tower, for example – and instantly see the admission price, working hours, its height and other information
…
A patent called ID App does just that; it recognizes an object based on visuals (through the iPhone’s camera), a RFID reader or through GPS, and then fetches the data from related databases…in the beginning it’ll probably just take you to a related Wikipedia page.
Another patent focuses on facial recognition… It could bring you info about a person (scary, I know) just by pointing a camera at him; or it could be used for security, enabling only recognized users to use the device
Do you hear that sound? It’s the Augmented Reality Future knocking on your door…
Swedish software and design company The Astonishing Tribe are currently developing Augmented ID, an augmented reality concept for mobile phones. This utilizes facial recognition software (supplied by Polar Rose) to visualize the digital identities of those around you.
By simply aiming your mobile device at someone, you would be able to access that individual’s pre-selected information through floating icons that would appear around their image. These could contain anything from a phone number and email address to links to their favorite content or social networking platforms.
