Anyone thinking what I’m thinking?
DIY video projectors (or and commercial portable projectors)
TagVirtual Graffiti
using a phone with Bluetooth, you can create a phonebook contact and write a message, eg. ‘Hello, you’ve been bluejacked’, in the ‘Name’ field. Then you can search for other phones with Bluetooth and send that phonebook contact to them. On their phone, a message will popup saying “‘Hello, you’ve been bluejacked’ has just been received by Bluetooth” or something along those lines. For most ‘victims’ they will have no idea as to how the message appeared on their phone. So, personalised messages like ‘I like your pink top’ and the startled expressions that result is where the fun really starts.
Will Location Blogging Take Off?
Although his customers are the operators who sell their services to consumers, WaveMarket’s founder and CEO Tasso Reoumeliotis believes his job is to enable users to create the content and the applications. My conversations with with Reomeliotis and product designer Julian Whitaker convinced me that their knowledge of social networks, reputation systems, blogging, buddy lists, privacy concerns, and user-generated content is more than superficial.
The Nokia 3220 has a “wave messaging feature” Abe calls “air graffiti.”
As a commentor on Smart Mobs pointed out, if you don’t want to wait for or spend money on this phone, you could always pick up a Sky-Writer
For my reference, here’s a list of the various virtual graf systems that I’ve found:
1. Geonotes. Web site is down, and the program failed to connect to the server. This is/was a project based out of Stockholm, but it was the only international system that I’m aware of. It stored messages on wifi hubs, and if I remember correctly, had software out for win2k/XP, Linux, and some obscure PDA OS. I once left a note at Thee Aurafice. Info and screenshots.
2. Tag and Scan a new UK only system. Commercial.
3. Virtual Helsinki: Slashdot discussion
4. FLIRT, also in Helsinki, Financial Times article
5. Urban Tapestries London only, I think
6. Wave Market Global? (Howard Rheingold reviews it here)
Anyone know any others? Seems like there’s something in Tokyo I’m forgetting.
Editor’s note: sTaRe was a blog that ran from at least mid-2002 until at least late-2003. I was a guest editor there for about six months in 2003 before the site shut down. I posted a list of all the links I shared there below before the site went away.
Uncle Roy All Around You (site gone, check out the Wikipedia entry)
Landscape as Interface (cancelled Evergreen program)
Tribe 13 (old homepage for the Tribe 13 gallery in Seattle)
Kris Kuksi (old homepage of artist Kris Kuksi
Memo to Barbie: You Aren’t The Only Model Ken Knows
Knock it off with the trucker hats already
Reefer gladness: Drug users in the next office and atop the corporate ladder
I Can Believe It’s Not Real Absinthe!
On occasion I’ve thought about the potential of using “spam” as an art form… graffiti is un-authorized use of space for art, so why not use spam as e-mail graffiti? And of course, there are various political chainletters that periodically go round (usually right-wing, but a couple leftwing one’s as well).
I’ve not thought too hard about it, since there’s generally a huge opposition to unsolicited e-mail. But I’ve seen studies that say that the reason companies spam is because it works. And if it can work for penis enlargement, why can’t it work for art or activism?
But it may be too late to do anything with this since Bush signed an anti-spamming bill. If this works, it will be a boon to ISPs everywhere who are dealing with the terrible bandwidth burdon of spam. And no one will miss the onslaught of porn, scams, and other misc. crap that builds up in their “bulk” mail folders. But think of this: that’s one less tool for activists and artists and small businesses. Megacorporations can afford to advertise to millions of people. The rest of us cannot.
Update: See also this Salon article on artist Netochka Nezvanova and this Wikipedia.
Thus far I’ve not thought much about what to actually do with video graffiti. As far as I’m concerned, the medium is the message. I’ve been more concerned with figuring out how to do it, assuming content will follow (hell, I don’t know if I even want to do it… I’d just like to see it happen).
But, Tate’s got an interesting idea (not exactly graffiti, though): he remembers seeing a documentary about a video art project from the 80s where an artist setup video cameras and projection screens on busy street corners in two cities (San Franscico and New York, possibly). The projectors and cameras were connected via sattelite. They were left on for three or four days. The project wasn’t announced… people only discovered them by accident. “Say you’re walking down the street and see a projection of a street scene on the side of a building. You stop to look at it for a while. In the other city, somebody stops to look at the projection of you looking at them. At this point, neither side knows the projection is live. I think that moment of discovery would have been uncanny.”
So the idea is this: with web cams and wifi (and a homemade projector) this sort of thing could be done much cheaper now. Tate suggests doing this, only keeping within one city (I say, perhaps even in the same neighborhood). I was thinking it could also be done in coffee shops or bars, not announced and just sort of setup in a corner out of the way or something.
BTW, check out Tate’s newly redesigned blog. Especially the picture-blog section Detritus.
A couple weeks ago I metioned the idea of video graffiti, and the expense of video projectors, to Sauceruney. He sent me this link: build your own LCD projector. They link to a guy who claims to have built a 8,255 lumen projector for under $200. Sounds too good to be true.
I’ve been poking around looking for rental information for projectors and plasma screens but haven’t come up with much… everyone wants me to call them to get a quote. I did find one place with some numbers online but lost the link. It would run about $800 to rent a 5,000 lumen projector for a day through them. And I think a 2,000 lumen was about $200… so building one seems like the way to go.
After seeing Steve Safarik‘s Laser Space Wars at Dorkbot last week, I realized that shooting for perfect video quality might be too much at this point. Although Safarik’s laser stuff is also quite expensive (the mirrors for his project cost $2000), I realized that other light experiments could produce interesting results. Particularly interesting about Safarik’s work is that it’s interactive (it’s just an arcade game, but interesting none the less). See also: LaserMAME (link currently down) and More Laser game anyone?
Just got home from Dorkbot, and realized I never posted anything about last month’s Dorkbot. A couple very cool things I may write some more about… tonight featured Steve Safarik talking about his very cool Space Wars project, and Jeremy Winters of the Madness Machine talked about Max/MSP and showed some of the stuff he’s done with it.
A related Wired story by Erik Davis, for personal reference.
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