There are currently three main competitors in the console market Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft and all of them provide cheap sexy hardware so that all three platforms have been hacked and opened up for homebrew software. But things go further. It is not just the consoles that get “hacked” but also the interfaces, because they became more attractive the more intelligent as our old button based interfaces. Where are the challenges to hack a button? It really has to be a bit more challenging.

The WiiMote was possibly the first mass produced interface that had more than the average amount of actuators and sensors embedded than the rest of interfaces available to the market. The complexity is much higher than a simple joystick, but the price is nearly the same.

The Kinect, picked up Nintendo’s whole body interaction success and updated the xBox with new 3D sensing capabilities.

So what about Sony? Well, they updated the already existent EyeToy Camera + Ps3 combination with the PS Move controller. A really cheap solution for getting in line with the main rivals Nintendo and Microsoft. However, there is a more sophisticated controller from Sony which should attract more hackers, because it is currently unclear how it works. But strangely it is still un-hacked. Is it just un-cool or did the engineers at Sony just do a better job to protect their interface?

I am talking about the GunCon3.  It has similar functionality like the WiiMote and some claim it is even more precise than the WiiMote, but strangely it is not hacked yet. So what is the reason for that? Maybe it is the price. Here in UK the GunCon3 is 10 quid more expensive than the WiiMote and its far less widespread than the WiiMote. So here is the million dollar question: Could Sony by “opening up” the hardware make some more cash out of it or is it more profitable to leave the product catch dust in the department store shelves?

We can compare that a bit to the Apple theme Julian mentioned. In a commercial sense Apple is doing the right thing. Innovating, but restrict free access as hell and at the same time exploiting the open market of  App makers.

So here are my answers:

Q: “What does this tell us about how companies can profit from “hacked” or rather “open” products?”
A: “Nothing. We can not judge the cases, because we have not reviewed sales figures. However, when a companies IP gets “stolen” they could adapt to the situation like companies that have hardware on the market that does not sell. In the case of Sony (or NAMCO’s) Guncon3 we can clearly tell that “opening up” would be a rather bad management strategy.”

Q: “Isn’t all the buzz about the Kinect the best thing that could have happened to Microsoft?”
A: “There are a few companies and individuals that profited from the buzz. Especially PrimeSense, OpenNi, Johnny Chung Lee, the DIY people, etc. Microsoft? No.”

Q: “Shouldn’t that make other companies think about how they see their products? And especially rethink the restrictions they impose on their customers (yes, I’m looking in your direction here, Mr. Apple!)?”
A: “I think people will change their thinking about products in the future and companies will have to adapt when they figure out that sale figures have gone down. But that is nothing new. The problem is, that people will have to think about useage licenses of every product in the future and this will be the biggest pain I believe.”

(The list of featured projects can be found in the description of the YouTube-Video or in the comments on his blog.)

I very much share Christian’s view, that projects with spacial output (he called them “space to space systems”) are the most interesting ones. In this context I really like the research into mapping projections onto physical 3D objects (you might want to call it “projection-based augmented reality” or “spacial augmented reality”). Thus, I’m very happy to see, how this research profits from the Kinect’s technology.
While the mapping-process used to be a time-consuming manual process in its first incarnation (e.g. using 3d touch probe scanners like Raskar et al. did for their Shader Lamps, one of the pioneering work in this field), then became easier using structured light scanners (e.g. like Jones et at. in their last year’s ISMAR contribution) now really got easy! Furthermore, it is now possible to do it invisibly and in realtime. So, when the physical scene changes, the projection can change instantly without a time consuming re-calibration. With that, physical objects can act as both, input device and output display:

Kinect Hadouken from Elliot Woods on Vimeo.

Kinect-Projector Visualization from Augmented Engineering on Vimeo.

Now, I’m really looking forward to seeing the great potential this technology used in tangible interaction projects!

In addition to the technological possibilities, there are two other aspects that I’d like to see discussed in this blog over the next weeks:

• What can we learn about development processes in the internet-age from how all these Kinect-projects learned from, built-upon and were inspired from each other? What can we learn about collaboration?
• What does this tell us about how companies can profit from “hacked” or rather “open” products? Isn’t all the buzz about the Kinect the best thing that could have happened to Microsoft? Shouldn’t that make other companies think about how they see their products? And especially rethink the restrictions they impose on their customers (yes, I’m looking in your direction here, Mr. Apple!)?

Be Your Own Souvenir! from blablabLAB on Vimeo.

BlablabLAB produced an impressive set up using three!!! Kinect controllers for covering 360° and a RepRap Rapman3.1 to capture movements of people acting in front of a shopping window and produce them via Rapid Prototyping. The video shows very moody and nicely the idea of creating ones own souvenir in tradition to the freezed people standing in pedestrian areas. Though I think it might take a while to produce these little figuers of the actors, I see the potential in this idea towards photo booths that do not spit out photostripes, but little sculptures. And, to excuse the delay of printing the objects, the waiting time in analog photo booths can also take up to 10 minutes, queuing not included.
The software is all openFrameworks and openKinect, with a bit tweaking. The Labs Website is currently under construction, but i’m sure they will open their ideas to the public asap

So, let me introduce myself. I am a PhD student at the HCI research training group prometei (prospective design of human-machine interaction) at the Technical University of Berlin. My research is focussed on the process of prototyping interactive products. We’re exploring the concept of hybrid prototypes that combine virtual (using virtual reality technologies) and physical parts. With this, we aim at speeding up the iterative process and getting users involved earlier in the process.
Apart from my academic work, I am co-founder and CTO of the Sonice Development GmbH, a small product development firm based in Berlin. Our best known project is currently the Facadeprinter. The Facadeprinter is a machine that paints large graphics onto walls by shooting color balls (paintballs). A more physical approach to digital graffiti – but not really interactive at this point. More information about this project can be found on our website.
This already says a lot about my interests which are: HCI in general and especially tangible interfaces, product development, prototyping, and the creative use of technology.

I’m really happy to be posting on this blog regularly now and looking forward to the things to come. We’ll try to get in a lively discussion among the authors and would be happy if you’d join in by posting comments with your opinions and views.

Julian

It´s been a long time of silence on this site! I know. It was a tough last year for me personally and professionally. The SMSlingshot, a project of me and my collective went straight through the ceiling, I was taking care of my daughter, i had to rest a lot. All that stuff. And as Chris o Shea used to say: My heart wasn´t blogging any more. I tried to, but the list of projects and festivals got longer and longer and so much other stuff was way more important than putting out on this site. But now I found some people to join me here to create a more fluent and regular output. In the following weeks, you will find articles that relate more to each other and may look like a little ping and pong between the authors. With this method we will try to get one topic featured and discussed in many ways and from different point of views. What readers were mentioning, is the way we corelate to other projects. We keep on doing this. Everything will be put in a general and personal context, so you will not find pingbacks, and copy/paste articles here.

And to start all this I just put the last video up from our SMSlingshot project. It features our little world tour 2010 and is edited by Dominic Kießling from Berlin Based visual crew Pfadfinderei.  There are a few other projects that work with textmessages and augmented graffiti in public space, maybe this will be one of the first topics in the next posts. So keep online and drop by from time to time!

The countdown for this years Tangible and Embedded Interactions conference is coming to an end. On 23rd of January the confrence is starting in Funchal / Madeira / Portugal. Unfortunatly without the TUI Blog crew for the first time since three years. Yeah, it´s a pity, because it would be great to be there, meeting all the guys and seeing fantastic projects. Next time!  For sure!

Meanwhile in the batcave, we´ve been updating some of the mising videos from last TEI. Check out the updated articels to Nic Villars Peppermill and the Bio Circuit from Dana Ramler

Currently I am in Sao Paulo Brazil to attend the FILE electronic arts festival. The event is about interactive art in public spaces, game design and sonification, which exactly matches my interests. By now there is not much to say: everyone is busy in setting everything up, adjusting projectors and de bug last parts of the applications at the SESI theatre which is the main venue. The whole festival opens on monday with an award ceremony and opening night, where all the objects can be used and tested. On tuesday a lot of public art projects take place on Avenida Paulista, one of the main roads in Sao Paulo. The metro station transform to public gaming areas and the facades on the street will be digital augmented messageboards. If that wouldn´t be enough, a symposium is schedule for the whole week featuring lectures about physical gaming, sustainable media, sonifications and hybrid estates.It will be also live streamed via the festivals website!

In the hotel I allready met one of the artists from austria, Peter Votova from the TerminalBeach. Together with Erich Berger and brazilian orchestra he will perform as the “heartchamber orchestra” So there is a lot to see and do these days. I will keep you updated

Just a brief post on another worthy archive that i stumbled over the last days and still even need a month to check out everything…

The blog is about an upcoming exhibition at the MOMA in New York that features projects on interactive design. I´m allready super curious what they will further choose from their allready impressing list.

Please take yourself time to scroll through the projects, click at the hyperlinks and repost some ideas that are worth to be presented at the MOMA aswell.

Another proper filled archive comes from Micheal Shirley. My Future Me features a truck load of interesting and inspiring projects all related to interaction design and interactive media art. Enjoy

For everyone interested further in generative design and scripted shapes, the ARCH+ issue n°188 will provide a perfect overview on the topic.

Also the Modules 3 and 4 on rapid prototyping are recommended. The 3D Lab is well equipped with several object printers and a 3D scanning facility so there will be hands on experiences and professional guided courses.

When it comes to scripting plug ins, I also would like to share Scriptographer for Adobe Illustrator with you. Scriptographer is an open source development with a broad bunch of contributers pushing up new scripts for graphical and free use. The Plug in is easily installed and has incredible features in his current build, such as a live scripting environment using Java. But the most handy part is the rasterizing section, that enables you to make any vector grids out of bitmap graphics. OK, that doesn´t sound so stunning, but everyone who once tried to make one these dot matrixes on his or her own will really appreciate that function.

By working on a mediafacades project in the last days I tumbled over the pixelsumo blog by Chris o´Shea. He seems to has a similiar approach to our work on the blog and presents interesting and “worth talking about” projects in the field of interaction design, interface research and media art. His latest entry fits very well to our report of Chris Cerritos drawing bots. While a workshop at this years transmediale representatives of the Liverpool based FACT organisation showed us this amazing urban media screen installation.

It´s so wonderful how he involves and attracts the people in the streets. By quite simple means, he builts up an environment so strange and fascinating, that the people rest stunned in front of the screen. The awareness, that these huge mediascreens are more than just oversized advertisingtools, is transmitted by a playful and honourable way. Chris is linked to rAndom international one of the most inspiring and innovative british design studios. rAndom international has made the audience installation for the royal opera house in London.

You see, there is an obvious tendence to leave fixed pixel grid and move towards more playful and spatial designs. One before all advantages of these interfaces is the relation to the location. It seems to live in it´s own habitat and by reflecting the surrounding light building structure and of course the people. This makes it so unique and should be an aim to every interface design posted in public space. We will post a report from the TEI conference´s demo session with a wonderful spatial interface aswell. So… Chris o´Shea is all around.

Another project I really dig and think everyone should know is the cloud by TROIKA, tho other stunning british design studio. An impressive mediascreen, but not with a plan grid of illuminated pixels, but with a poly-warped morphed object with attached little motorized facettes that can turn in two states by a mechanical rotation. I saw it once live in the Design museum in London, where it was honoured as one of the best british designs in 2008. For everyone who knows the facettes at Hackescher Markt in Berlin, the phenomenon should be clear. For the others, a video:

But this wouldn´t be this blog, if there isn´t still something more wonderful to come. Chris, together with Joel Gethin Lewis and Andreas Müller founded a series of talks to interaction design. Ok this happenes in Berlin as well, such as the continious lectures at the T-Labs or the upgrade sessions. They called it “This happened” and have documented every talk (over 50!!) with also nearly all the slides of the presentation. They know how to do it. Check out the talks here. Referring to the last article on fashioning technologies, here´s one of these talks of Moritz Waldemeyer who was working with Hussein Chalayan on his kinetic dresses. Enjoy!!

Another wearable project combining sound and textile computing comes by Holly Schmidt and Dana Ramler from the Emily Carr University in Vancouver. The project is about capturing the mood of the wearer and displaying it with ambient sounds. The Interface is a vest to be worn over your all day cloth and integrates a polar rate heartbeat monitor designed by Danjuliodesigns with elements avaiable via sparkfun. By detecting the rate an somehow according sound will be played by a little speaker sewn in the collar right next to the ear. Depending on your mood, the sound varies. The more active you are, the sound increases in intensity as well. Though this sounds logically on first sight, a lot of questions occur. Why do the sound has to react in the same way i feel. Can´t it be more like a remedy, so if i feel down it pushes me up? How does the interface has to look like for these decision processes when the only material is fabric cloth. Some of these questions get answered in the interview video we shot during the demo session.

On this point I have to link to some projects of Hussein Chalayan. Chalayan is working on the edge of fashion and technology since a long time and had an impressing exhibition at the London Design Museum while last years TEI conference. His work is pushing the boarders of wearables while in the same time being into fashion through and through. This is the way it should be: trying to be cutting edge when it comes to technology and maximum fashion on the other hand. The projects I seen on wearables beside his work put the technological aspects too much in the foreground. They should support the fashion, but not be it´s reason.