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.

Can we create a device that makes people aware of their early cataract condition? Using a light-field display, the researchers’ method projects time-dependent patterns onto the fovea. Interactive software measures the visibility and point spread function across subapertures of the crystallin lens. By repeating this procedure for several light-paths, the cataracts size, position, density, and scattering profile are estimated.

Created by the MIT Media Lab, Camera Culture’s research group with Vitor Pamplona, Erick Passos, Jan Zizka, Manuel M. Oliveira, Everett Lawson, Esteban Clua and Ramesh Raskar, CATRA utilizes a forward scattering technique, which allows the user to respond to what they visually experience.

Their device scans the lens section by section. The user sees their projected patterns and presses a few buttons to map the light attenuation in each section of the eye. This information is collected by the device creating an attenuation map of the entire lens. This allows individuals to monitor the progression of the severity of the cataract.

The maps capture a full point spread function of the lens, allowing the researchers to simulate the visual perception of a cataract affected subject over time. Early cataract onset is difficult to diagnose. This device aims at measuring cataracts, which is highly portable and collects quantifiable data to help tackle a global health problem making it ideal for the developing world.
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BodyNotes was created by the MIT Media Lab. It contributes to a series of projects that enhance the interaction between patients and healthcare practitioners. BodyNotes is a mobile tool that combines anatomical landmarks to physical objects as a mean for a patient to discuss body pain with her doctor.

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The video introduces Anna, an amputee who uses BodyNotes to track the pain and comfort she feels throughout the day when wearing her prosthetic limb. Anna can view visualizations and summaries of her reported pain by location, intensity, time, duration and activity.

This data is also accessible to Anna’s prosthetist. BodyNotes also allows remote, real-time collaboration.

During their session, Anna uses a photo to indicate the exact points where she feels pain. Since this screen is simultaneously seen by the prosthetist, and the interaction is synchronized, he can show what modifications Anna could do on her own.

BodyNotes enables advanced logging and telemedicine functionality on mainstream mobile phones. It has the potential to improve health care and communication, allowing patients and doctors to better spend their time by reducing the need for office visits.

My current favorite pop up book for the iPad, the Three Little Pigs and the Secrets of a Pop-Up Book. Almost as interactive as a real pop up book! Thank you Sumit!
Of course, my favorite tech-pop up book for the iPad comes from les éditions volumiques!

You can find it -> here

Sun Boxes by Craig Colorusso are an environment to enter and exit at will. It’s comprised of twenty speakers operating independently, each powered by the sun via solar panels. There is a different loop set to play a guitar note in each box continuously. These guitar notes collectively make a Bb chord. Because the loops are different in length, once the piece begins they continually overlap and the piece slowly evolves over time.

Here is a video, Sun Boxes at the 12th annual Sculpture at Maudslay. Filmed by Kevin Belli on September 18, 2010.