Category Archives: surveillance

Blinking Chairs

Ryota Kuwakubo’s Nicodama is a project that – to put it simply – puts blinky eyes on inanimate objects as a means of giving them personality. From the placard at the Ars Electronica Center: “Nicodama” combines findings from the field of behavioral biology (ethology) with technology and Japanese philosophy. The “Nicodamas” communicate with each other […]

Also posted in animation, furniture, interaction, product design | Comments closed

craft cam

At distancelab last week I saw Elena Corchero’s Handmade, a wearable camera for capturing the work you do with your hands. This is a simple, wearable solution to the problem of documenting manual tasks for a variety of new media, including DIY sites such as instructables for which the process of documenting a task can […]

Also posted in fabrication, futurecraft, marketing, soft/glowing, supply chain, traceability | Comments closed

shill pill

Counterfeit medicine will amount to a $75 billion market in 2010, leaving death and disease in their wake, but it’s unclear whether Authentix‘s system for verifying pharmaceuticals are genuine is the right direction. Their method works by adding a chemical with a distinctive signature to the inactive ingredients – so that the suspect medication can […]

Also posted in human2.0, livingbreathing, supply chain, traceability | Comments closed

the war on heroism

In response to New York City’s ‘If you see something, say something‘ campaign for mass hysteria, Alyssa Wright has made hero reports, a site where you can say something about all the good deeds that are passing unseen. Right now it only works inside the Medialab building, but she hopes to expand it to Boston, […]

Also posted in blogogracy, conviviality | Comments closed

sinister streetlight

i left out something about the solar and wind-powered streetlights at the panasonic center in tokyo: the company sells a modified version that contains a security camera, with the aim of tracking children on their way to and from school. the ‘Neighborhood Security Sensor Network System‘ detects children carrying an active RFID tag and takes […]

Also posted in children, energy, environment, possessed products, product design | Comments closed

camera diaries

lindsay williams’ sensecam is a wearable digital camera with a wide-angle lens that captures time-lapse movies of the wearer’s activities. her team has done a study suggesting that the camera can be useful to help someone with dementia remember events. a woman who watched the recording could then remember events for several months, as opposed […]

Also posted in blogogracy, human2.0, visualization | Comments closed

second office

josh lifton (of pushpin computing fame) presented his work on ‘dual reality‘(pdf) at the moda+tecnologia event. as part of his phd thesis he deployed activity sensors all around the medialab which look (and act) as power strips, but they record activity in the form of sound level, power consumption and movement. the data is collected […]

Also posted in 3d, blogogracy, hyperexperience, visualization | Comments closed

voodoo chat

schulze and webb’s availabot is an ambient reminder of whether your friend is logged in to chat. it’s a good idea to take non-essential functions off your computer desktop, but it’s too bad you have to connect the doll via USB and keep it on your physical desktop. i’ve always imagined a set of dolls […]

Also posted in evil robots, livingbreathing, possessed products, tangible, visualization | Comments closed