On the friday we visited the Cube Gallery which showcased the other exhibitors in the Futuresonic Festival. Really lovely musical hanging plants which made music when you touched them. I’m guessing they used the water in the plant as a capacitance sensor but when I asked the artist she insisted it was the plant’s natural energy flowing through the leaves … electrical energy right? Anyway it was really nice and the plants made a great interface to play with. Another project was Usman Haque’s Natural Fuse. Quite a complex idea but my general understanding of this is that it looked at the idea of creating an online network that connected to real physical plants. Everyone involved has a responsibilty to the network and people’s plants suffered or prospered depending on everyone’s input… Not sure if that’s correct but I do really like the idea of a social responsibility to an online network (might try and involve this in our next R+D project) ….. anyway that description might be completley wrong so maybe check out the website for a proper insight.

We also managed to catch a presentation by RCA design product students who had collaborated with Yamaha to create an exhibition of unusual and innovative interfaces for making music. Projects included knitting music patterns, a ceramic bowl xylophone, an echo chair, d.i.y paper records and a musical mac. Videos of the projects and more info can be found here.

Inbetween exhibiting bob the lamp I managed to sneak in to a few of the conference talks and was glad I did as there was some brilliant speakers. Saw some great talks especially from Usman Haque, who talked about his recent project Pachube, Christian Nold and his new local currency for Bijilmer, the Bijlmer Euro, Stefan Agamanolis and his projects at Distance Lab, and Aaron Koblin’s data visualisation that included his awesome Radiohead video. There were also some really interesting panel discussions one of which was the Identity and Trust Panel, chaired by Stowe Boyd which looked at social networks, our trust and distrust in using them and what could we expect from them in the future. Very heated and animated discussion from everyone on the panel and really interesting to listen to. Trying to find a video on the net of this but no luck so far.

Bob has been away on holiday to the lovely rainy city of Manchester. A bit of a shock to the system from his normal hangout overlooking the truman brewery in sunny spitalfields …(yeah right). This excursion was actually part of the Futuresonic Conference and Exhibtion where Bob was exhibited for the length of the festival. He met and chatted to many people and hopefully spread the word about the great projects that are produced here at Digit’s R+D Lab. Many thanks to the Futuresonic organisers for having us and making us feel welcome.

The hot and sunny weather in Lisbon made it very difficult to go and sit in a dark room all day but this is what I did, and despite the fact there was no air con…. I did manage to stay put long enough to see some good work. Offf was not exactly what I expected, much more focused on motion graphics and design as opposed to technology or interaction design… (hmm maybe I should have read the website better before I went) but I did see some cool stuff and with Lisbon as the festival’s location, you can’t complain.

My favourite work was actually the most low-tech. Stefan Sagmeister’s talk was amazing, especially his giant sentances. Spelling out words in copper coins flowing out of a bank or creating letters with bananas that could only be seen as the bananas ripened and the colour of the fruit changed. His work although not techy targeted interaction in a different way often looking at how the work would evolve with time (like the bananas) or would change depending on human interaction (the coins lying outside the bank gradually disapeared into passing people’s pockets). I also love the compass coffee table he made for himself. It featured a display of compasses underneath a sheet glass, when certain cups with magnectic bottoms were placed on the table all the compasses would point in their direction. I’m gonna make myself one… one day.

Another great speaker was PES who’s vibrant stop-frame animation films use everyday objects in unexpected ways. Check out his website for examples. Really imaginative creations and visually stunning…. so much patience though… makes me twitch to think how long some of those shots took to create…. ahhhhh.

After working into the small hours of last night, several litres of coke and a spot of last minute soldering, we have finally moved the Roast restaurant installation into Borough Market!

The installation was inspired by the British seasonal food cooked up in the restaurant, and over the period of an hour cycles through a full year of farm produce. It interacts with movement from passers by as the countryside scenes transform from spring through to winter. This triggers events including snow in winter, leaves to fall off the trees in autumn, and tiny crawling ants in the tree scene. It also features a lazy farmer who ‘s identity will remain a closely guarded secret…

As time goes on, we can add in new assets to allow the installation to evolve with the seasonally changing menu of Roast. And maybe a robin for Christmas time too. We’ve yet to see it the daytime, but we’re hoping to take more pictures soon! Here’s some snaps from the build: