Ok so we’ve been working on something new in the R&D lab and this time it’s a mobile site. Here at Digit HQ we are situated alongside some very cool (and some pretty terrible) street art and we thought it would be great if we could find some way to leave our comments alongside these pieces for other people to read and add to. So instead of graffing up the surrounding walls with our comments we decided to leave QR codes next to each art piece that would link to a mobile site where viewers can have their say and also read what other people thought.
So if you’re hanging round the east end and spot one of our codes, either scan with your phone or enter the url and add your thoughts about the art. If you’re not local check out the desktop site to see what people have said so far and feel free to join in the discussion from there.
Poly is currently being exhibited as part of the Future Everything festival in Manchester. She is up here till Saturday so if you are around drop by the Hive space on Lever Street and check her out. If not visit the ask-poly website where you can see a live stream of the space. Vote and watch Poly move.
Meet Poly, the new data visualisation tool from the Digit R&D team. You can see Poly through a live webcam feed and interact with Poly by answering the question in our live poll. Or why not ask Poly something yourself? We’ll post it on our site and invite our followers to submit their answers. Then Poly will display the results live!
The R&D team have progressed to the current phase of the now titled ‘Poly’ project. The collapsible pvc/latex pillars are controlled wirelessly using xbee, and a discrete stepper motor and pulley system handles the motion. For those new to the project Poly is a modular physical bar chart system that can read online data and convey it to the real world. Each bar is a collapsible pillar suspended from the ceiling - an architectural and digital hybrid where information informs our physical space.
This first phase of the project will be an in-house installation of two pillars responding to user-generated polls. Simply submit a question and watch online participants give their response by viewing poly change length. The interaction is visible over the Internet through a webcam, further blurring the boundaries between online and offline content. The creation of a platform for people to quickly access a collective decision reflects our progressive cultural tendencies to instantaneously resort to the online ‘wisdom of crowds’. Not forgetting the importance of keeping it simple and playful : )
Yes it’s a working title but it’ll do for the moment and pretty much describes the project. Firstly there is a new member in our R+D team and his name is Matthew Plummer-Fernandez. Matthew and I have been working on Big Bar which is a physical bar chart that will change shape depending on the data it is given. It’s still at the breadboard stage but today we managed to get a working prototype together. Check out our progress below.
A new homepage on Digit’s website was created as an online interface to the Twittear project. The homepage responds to the data received from the ears in the studio. Depending on what time and from which ear tweeted last, the background video and layout of the homepage changes.
is what we have been doing at Digit today. Back to basics with papier-mâché, the perfect activity for a friday afternoon. Sorry no clues what it’s for, as it’s going to be a surprise. Don’t worry you won’t have to wait long.
Thought I’d get the ears out again and see if I could use them in our studio. Installed one in the kitchen area and one in the meeting room. Both detect sounds and using xbee radios they send twitter messages when they hear something, giving an indication about what is happening in the space. Don’t worry Digit staff they do not hear what you are saying but just how loud or quiet you are. So you can carry on happily with your morning gossiping.
If you want to check out what the ears are saying visit their twitter feed.
Went to see David Byrne’s playing the building last week at the Roundhouse. This is the third location for this installation which has previously been installed in sweden and new york. I like the idea which scopes out the interior of the building and sees what sounds can be made using anything housed within the walls. Pipes, structural columns and beams are hooked up to tapping hammers, vibrating motors and blown air. Wires attached to an old organ provide the interface for users to trigger these sounds so playing the keyboard now becomes playing the building.
Nice but when the space is filled with loads of visitors who decided to bring along their own instruments to jam along with the building, it became impossible to hear the effect of the keyboard. Eventually the other musicians figured that out too and later stopped. phew! I queued up and got my two minutes to play. Believed I produced something musical out of it before my time was up… hmm maybe. Ideal situation for this installation would be in a desolate warehouse which you stumbled across and no one else was there … or if they were, they were quiet and listened to my musical creation. ha. Defintitly would prefer more time to play the keyboard as some notes reacted in different ways and reckon there must have been many more possible sounds that I didn’t get a chance to explore… oh well. next time.
