This is a very interesting approach and project that not only challenges everything that makes TV lame, but also what makes watching content on a laptop based on friends’ recommendations on social networks more integrated. TV becomes a new social activity, with tailored content. The only issue here is repetition that one might find in social networks. If your friends only watch gossipy content, you end up only hearing about that on your TV. On the bright side, it is also a channel to discover entirely new content by filtering and reviewing users “a la” stumbleupon.

It was designed and built by ReeD Martin, Ana Luisa Santos, Mike Shafran, Henry Holtzman, and Marie-José Montpetit at the MIT Media Lab.

This object is given as heirloom to the child who did not inherit the genetic mutation. While physically fortunate in avoiding the illness, in effect they are also excluded from a substantial part of the familyʼs narrative.

With the increased availability of genetic information, the view of our body and identity as a sequence of genes is becoming prevalent. This perception of ourselves has the power to reconstruct our familial relationships and challenge our conception of responsibility, risk and autonomy. Gold and silver, much like a number of genetic cancers, are traditionally passed down the generations as inheritance. The emerging use of precious metals in medicine and especially in cancer treatment draws parallels between material heirloom and genetic ancestry. This series of speculative heirloom objects is based on the medical applications of nanogold particles and responds to the new moral codes of genetic responsibility. Each object address a certain issue within this context; focusing on the emotional and psychological implications of genetic knowledge.How does the comprehension of genetic vulnerability change our behaviour? Can new materials have an effect on our morals and social structures?

Genetic Heirloom by designer Revital Cohen with Partner — The Wellcome Trust. Collaborators: Professor Richard Ashcroft, Professor of Bioethics, School of Law, Queen Mary University,London. Dr Ainsley Newson, The Centre for Ethics in Medicine, University of Bristol. Professor Andy Miah, Professor in Ethics & Emerging Technologies at the University of West of Scotland.Photography by Gary Hamill

Very compelling visual and sound work by Ryoichi Kurokawa, rheo: 5 horizons, 2010. Discovered on We Make Money Not Art.

See-Through 3D desktop done by Jinha Lee and Cati Boulanger in the Applied Sciences Group

I thought it deserved a spot on my blog too! So our See-Through 3D Desktop offers a behind-the-screen interaction with a transparent OLED with view-dependent, depth-corrected gaze.

Despite advances in 3D sensing and display technologies, our interactions with computer desktops have remained stagnant from the form that evolved under 2D I/O modalities. Our See Through 3D desktop is a 3D spatial operating environment that allows the user to directly interact with her virtual desktop. The user can reach into the projected 3D output space with his/her hands to directly manipulate the windows.

Users can casually open up the See-Through 3D Desktop and Type on the keyboard or use a trackpad as in traditional 2D operating environment. Windows or files are perceived to be placed in a 3D space between a screen and the input plane.

The user can lift up her hands to reach the displayed windows and arrange them in this 3D space.A unique combination of a transparent display and 3D gesture detection algorithm collocates input space and 3D rendering without tethering or encumbering users with wearable devices. See-through 3D desktop is a term for the entire ensemble of necessary software hardware and design technological components for realizing this volumetric operating environment.

Voilà!

Catapy from Yuichiro Katsumoto on Vimeo.

Summary
Scopemate is a robotic microscope that tracks the user for inspection microscopy. In this video, we propose a new interaction mechanism for inspection microscopy. The novel input device combines an optically augmented web-cam with a head tracker. A head tracker controls the inspection angle of a webcam fitted with ap-propriate microscope optics. This allows an operator the full use of their hands while intuitively looking at the work area from different perspectives. This work was done by researchers Cati Boulanger and Paul Dietz in the Applied Sciences Group at Microsoft and will be presented at UIST 2011 this Monday as both a demo and a poster!

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The purpose of his thesis is not to design an architecture that works perfectly within this new medium, but rather to highlight the medium itself, research potentials, create kernel ideas and discover the implications that this type of reality would hold.

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More versions:

Final segment here (2.5 minutes) Mediating Mediums - The Digital 3d (Part 3)
Short version here (5.5 minutes) Mediating Mediums - The Digital 3d (Short Version)
Long version here (19minute version)  - Mediating Mediums: The Digital 3d

You are probably familiar with the old saying, “You are what you eat” but how about, “You are what you tweet?” What if this concept were incorporated into garments of the future? Would you censor yourself, knowing you would reveal your statements to the world around you? The “Printing Dress” is an artistic piece that explores the notion of wearable text and its potential impact on the future of fashion, as well as our social identity. Built almost entirely of paper, the dress enables the wearer to enter “thoughts” on to its fabric and wear them as public art. By selecting materials and technologies that draw on the past, present, and future of communication media, we encourage viewers to reflect on the path that has brought us to ubiquitous digital communication and to contemplate its forward evolution.

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Aurelius Prochazka created a series of projects to help novice musicians to play the guitar. The brilliant idea here is that the more you train your ear to recognize what you hear, the more you will enjoy playing music. Because you’ll understand what you’re playing!

His most recent work, Guitar Games, allows you to plug in your standard 1/4″ plug electric guitar, a Rock Band 3 guitar, or a MIDI guitar and play on your Mac, iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch. Playing the guitar on small devices might not be the way to go, not to worry! If you own Rock Band, you owe it to yourself to take your guitar gaming to the next level and transfer all the experience you’ve amassed playing Rock Band into learning to play a real guitar!

Guitar Games teaches you how to play songs and how to hear better. Beyond that, it also helps you develop your own personal guitar playing style.

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You can try it out during Live Product Demo at Maker Faire on the San Mateo Fairgrounds May 21-22. If you’re already a backer by then, come claim your free Guitar Games guitar pick!

Max Mathews, the father of computer music.

By embedding electro-active inks, conductive threads and smart materials directly into paper during the papermaking process, they have created seamless composites that are capable of supporting new and unexpected application domains in ubiquitous and pervasive computing at affordable costs.

Pulp-Based Computing: A Framework for Building Computers Out of Paper from Marcelo Coelho on Vimeo.

Matthew Blackshaw created a nice 4$ (or less) touchpad with a copper-based matrix!

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Relief, created by Daniel Leithinger, Adam Kumpf and Hiroshi Ishii is an actuated tabletop display which is able to render and animate three-dimensional shapes with a malleable surface. A direct extension of this work, Recompose created by Matthew Blackshaw, Anthony DeVincenzi, Dávid Lakatos, Daniel Leithinger and Hiroshi Ishii, is the gesture control of such actuated surface.

By collectively utilizing the body as a tool for direct manipulation alongside gestural input for functional manipulation, we show how a user is afforded unprecedented control over an actuated surface. We describe a number of interaction techniques exploring the shared space of direct and gestural input, demonstrating how their combined use can greatly enhance creation and manipulation beyond unaided human capability.

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The Junkyard Jumbotron is designed by Rick Borovoy, Ph.D. and Brian Knep at MIT’s Center for Future Civic Media.

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Get the code to install it on your displays, here.