We’re glad to announce that two one project of Stefan Kainbacher have been selected for the ARS ELECTRONICA Exhibiton 2007.

HOMETRAINER

Interaction design for animals: a tiny rodent savoring the opportunity to get some exercise on its hamster wheel activates the installation’s interactive component.

The movement of the hamster wheel is linked to a video that shows footage from the hamster’s perspective and thus enables the user to go for a virtual jog. Hometrainer is an ironic treatment of the modern-day reduction of sport to training far removed from nature in health clubs in which people run on treadmills while immersed in TV shows.

HOMETRAINER @ AEC ONLINE CATALOGUE
CORRESPONDING BLOG ENTRY

TOUCH ME @ AEC ONLINE CATALOGUE

NET CULTURE LAB, VIENNA, AUSTRIA
NET CULTURE LAB, DORNBIRN, AUSTRIA

We are happy to announce that the net culture labs which are a cooparation between Telekom Austria and OS-Alliance opened this week. Stefan is responsible for the design part in the team of the OS-Alliance. Especially he designed the net culture rhizome, which reflects the digital culture in the real space. We will post more about that soon. Further Tim and Stefan reached in one of the first projects which is named “Playground” and deals with hacked soft toys and devices to explore sensor based inferfaces. We work with arduino and Max/MSP. We’ll also open soon a category for that project in our blog to show a bit around what we are doing.

http://futurezone.orf.at/it/stories/200973/
http://bredlbloggt.telekom.at/media/117/view
http://lab.netculture.at

We are currently working on a collaborative graphical toolkit which enables the members of the digital community to build their analogue representation in the “real” world. Based on the RGB colour-system which stands for digitality, the participents will build ther own organic network structure (rhizome) following a few simple rules. This artwork is the headstone for the identity of the netculture.labs which will be set up in Vienna (MQ) and Dornbirn. The rhizome dissolves the static 3-dimensional structure of analogue space which is oposed to the ever-changing n-dimensional digital structures.

First impression from the playground in the studio.

Interaction design for animals: While the hamster is running (in) his wheel, he is able to control the video on the screen in front of the cage. By spinning the wheel a light barrier which is connected to an arduino-board is hit and a signal sent to Pure Data which runs via USB connection on my Powerbook. There the video is processed and the manipulated video is sent to the TV screen. Still work in progress … more to come!

Some Impressions:
Hometrainer.pdf

Online Catalogue of the ARS Electronica:
http://www.aec.at/…

Below are links to video and text documentation of selected projects from 2006 in an effort to move into 2007.

MOVIES

DESIGN INTERACTIONS 2006 - HEROES AND VILLAINS EXHIBITION (QT/H.264/~ 14,2 MB)
DESIGN INTERACTIONS 2006 - ELICIT* 1 of 6 (QT/H.264/~ 10,2 MB)
DESIGN INTERACTIONS 2006 - ELICIT* 2 of 6 (QT/H.264/~ 15,1 MB)
DESIGN INTERACTIONS 2006 - ELICIT TV 1 (QT/H.264/~ 18,4 MB)
DESIGN INTERACTIONS 2006 - ELICIT TV 2 (QT/H.264/~ 9,4 MB)

Another Proposal for ( C ) lick Me – A manifestation about internet pornography

A series of paintings (digital print on canvas) showing screenshot-like images referring to the aesthetics of internet pornography. The erogenous zones are covered with the obligatory “stars” and “bars”. In order to see the hidden parts of the image the audience has to touch the image at these certain areas. Due to the thermochromic ink (temperature sensitive) the overprinted color a these points disappear and release/free the hidden part/s. After cooling down, the stars/bars appear again.

This piece also deals with the missing haptics (surface) in digital communication, as well as it explores the reaction of the audience. On the one hand, the audience is normally never allowed to touch an image or a painting, on the other hand, touching the described regions of the images exposes the mind of the user to the rest of the audience … Make it hot to see what’s beyond :-)

Artists:
Stefan Kainbacher (Neon Golden)
Jeldrik Schmuch (Sinisthere, Futurelab)
Jona Hoier (Sofa23)

The idea of two of more vj’s playing their own channel/stream and feeding that to the other vj(’s). So every vj mixes his own interpretation of the sound with the channels/streams of the other vj(’s). That means they all will fit together, but the more vj’s there are, the more different canvas’ are there … Detailed proposal will follow soon.

The idea of projecting the audience in the past, the present and the predicted (computed) future.

To investigate methods for predicitng movement, (of pixels), within digital video in realtime. As such a setup is simple in concept but computationaly intensive it may be interesting to think about what it would look like. If for example a subject runs from left to right across a screen the result would display the faster moving elements of the subject further right than their origin. It would stretch and extrude the subject with an elasticity relative to the speed of the elements or pixels. So the faster the framerate and higher the resolution the more accurate the prediciton.

This is not a realistic software for current computer processors but as a challenge I will investigate what is possible with current technoligies. Let’s say, hypothetically, you can only process 12 pixels, a 4×3 video matrix. The trick will then be to see what you can do with those 12 pixels. In addition how else could you predict, or what else could be predicted with computer vision and what could it be used for.

Proposal for ( C ) lick Me – A manifestation about internet pornography

This installation targets the relationship between human and machine. Seeing the personal computer as an equivalent partner using a dildo (human shape but technically [re]produced) mounted on a joystick (gaming device) as interface the audience is able to “visualize” the feelings of the computer. The more the user “interacts” with the installation by rubbing the phallus the more processes are triggered, until the computer is totally occupied by the interaction. Error messages appear due to the excessive usage. The digital orgasm will crash the computer. A reboot resets the installation.

The exhibition setup changes the paradigm of the voyeur perspective. Private turns to public. Also playing with that fact, the user himself gets part of the installation and is exhibited to the visitors.

Work in progress … Documentation will follow soon.

Cave Navigator

Der Cave Navigator ist eine Single-User-Application mit Infrarot Technologie. Ein Experiment im Feld der Wahrnehmung. Die Orientierung mittels dieser Installation funktioniert ähnlich wie die einer Fledermaus und dient als Referenz zu den Höhlentieren, welche sich in der Dunkelheit der Höhle fortbewegen.