randform

manicone is online now. The coloring of manicone took more time than expected. The coloring made it necessary to consider theories and examples of artistic color compositions, physical mixing properties, technological limitations (calibrations) and infoesthetic basics (For a glimpse onto the problem of coloring and infoesthetics see e.g. this video lecture by tamara munzner (who was a visiting scientist of the TU math department in the mid nineties) or the review on pingmag.

It is a difficult question to find the right portion between colorful and colorful. Colors may be shouting. If they unfriendly shout you down then this is not acceptable. If the are too faint and disappear among the other colors then this is not acceptable either. Due to the transparency properties of manicone, color mixing was likewise an important question.

Hospitals are often white in white. This doesn’t help to increase visibility for viruses and bacterias, but white has (at least in some cultures) the symbolic character of purity. However the traces of visitors on white walls need not necessarily be stain, they could be graffiti or art. A famous art example are the works of Robert Rauschenberg. (-> Link for some white Rauschenberg). From Wikipedia:

The “white paintings” produced by Rauschenberg at Black Mountain in 1951, while they contain no image at all, are said to be so exceptionally blank and reflective that their surfaces respond and change in sympathy with the ambient conditions in which they are shown, “so you could almost tell how many people are in the room,” as Rauschenberg once commented.

It is a plain observation that stylish western blogs (as seen from easteastBerlin) are currently often – very white. Concerned about our statistics and some critics about our oriental webdesign, we will follow this white trend for some days and make the vest or theme of our blog purely white and observe our statistics. We take this as a kind of miniblogdesignpoll analog with this poll. Be aware that if a suburbiablog picks up a trend then this may be mainstream.

But coming to the point – todays randform suggestion for web2.0 is a tool, which allows visitors to scribble onto the pages of a blog (a blog graffiti – poesiealbum-tool) – which would make the metaphor of the blog as a white space for communication etc. maybe more tangible. It is of course possible to scribble on Flash or processing applets but these need to be embedded.

In this context one should also mention that Tims jDvi (a viewer for dvi – the output of LaTex) has the option to scribble on the dvi file, which makes e.g. collaboration on a math paper easier.

Berlin this morning in a wireless spot.

(more…)

Manicone is a new work by Tim and me (daytar). It is a sketch of a humanoid form in fourdimensional space. It is also a sketch in the sense that we kept the technical realization as simple as possible, i.e. with the application there comes (sofar) no Wii remote or wand, no 3D glasses, no virtual cave like environment etc. – just mouse pointer and sliders.

The modularity of the underlying software jreality however allows in principle for all these extensions (even if Open GL doesn’t have the same transparency capabilities as Tims software viewer). A real 3D immersion in e.g. a cave-like environment with a nice input device may lead to a more direct perceptional access however it is not necessarily allways needed.

An advantage of the simplicity of the application is that it allows for putting Manicone as a Java applet or webstart application on our website (which we will do soon).

Further technical extensions are then a question of the given architectural, technical etc. circumstances. Manicone is a sketch – in any aspect but the work it took to do it.

->10 min. video description of Manicone on youtube

Berlin Potsdamer Platz

If it comes to 3D in google earth most cities are still more or less little grey bricks. Berlin however has lately provided a quite detailed view of itself. The software based on the LandXplorer technology was developped by the Potsdam Company 3D Geo GmBH together with the Hasso-Plattner Institute. It was produced by Berlin Partner GmBH and works with the newest version of google earth together with a link to www.3d-stadtmodell-berlin.de.

via Berliner Zeitung

->A funny script for the Wii remote called Wiitar by Jordan Sanborn available at WiiLi.org (see also this old randform post)

->another sportive Wii remote application: Tennis with a Wiibot

if you dont have a wiimote but just a brain then this artistic communication with an industrial robot may be interesting:
->empathizer by robotlab

(more…)

Together with collegues from London and Tokyo neuroscientist John-Dylan Haynes did an experiment (however up to now only with 21 test persons as it seems), where a person had to choose wether he/she wanted either to add or to substract two numbers. And even before the test persons saw the numbers and before they started to compute it was possible – by using a MRI brain scan – to tell with a 70% chance, what kind of desicion the person was going to make, or in other words: using the MRI the scientists could “read the mind” of the test persons (with a 70% chance). Freely chosen decisions are usually happening in the prefrontal cortex.

(more…)

(more…)

image from wikipedia
This is a followup to the last quantum computer post.

(more…)