Many of you knows We Feel Fine, An exploration of human emotion, in six movements by Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar.
Jonathan and Harris recently published another work, called I Want You To Want Me, which explores our emotional existence in a digital world.

watch Johnny Lee demos his amazing Wii Remote hacks, which transform the $40 game piece into a digital whiteboard, a touchscreen and a head-mounted 3-D viewer.

This is the link to his website (including the software!!) -http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/projects/wii/

Robert Hodgin from flight404 did an amazing visualization on Goldfrapp’s Lovely Head.
check out :Solar, with lyrics

Solar, with lyrics. from flight404 on Vimeo.

Design and the Elastic Mind is a new exhibition at the MOMA that explores the reciprocal relationship between science and design. The exhibition highlights designers’ ability to grasp momentous changes in technology, science, and history—changes that demand or reflect major adjustments in human behavior—and translate them into objects that people can actually understand and use. The exhibition’s Web site presents over three hundred of these works, including fifty projects that are not featured in the gallery exhibition.

Links:
http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/2008/elasticmind/assets/pdf/Design_and_the_Elastic_Mind.pdf
http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/2008/elasticmind/

Mike Kuniavsky recently gave a talk at Baychi. His presentation was focused on ubiquitous computing and was called: sketching smart things. Specifically his talk revolved around several interesting ideas:
1. Embedded information processing and networking is a material – when the cost of the Ubicomp elements becomes low, the designer have the freedom to explore, make “errors” and design.

2. Applianceness (term coined by Bill Sharpe) - the cross section between application and appliances.

3. Physical objects cast information shadows – every object has a digital shadow, a Meta data entity that has a life of its own.

4. Devices are service avatars- a key hardware component of ubiquitous computing is networking which places the emphasis on the information accessibility rather then the device.

5. Granularity determines key aspects of experience design – while we are used to multi purpose devices, with one size fits all both in input and output, ubiquitous computing allows more purposeful design.

6. Magic is a powerful Ubicomp metaphor. Ubicomp allows designers to enchant and animate objects, and make the interaction clearer and more visible.

The idea that physical objects cast information shadows is one that captured me more then the others, mostly because it is so poetic. It assumes the equality between all physical objects, animated and non-animated. It assumes that a virtual entity retains their presences long after their physical caster had disappeared. Instant messengers Bots are (like Santa clause Bot) already creating a confusing experience. It is not that hard to think about a Facebook Bot that interacts with my friends better then I am. This reminds me the story of the guy that was fed up with his shadow so much that on day he cut it and left him behind. To this guy’s misfortune, the shadow had its own plans and soon enough he took the guys’ identity and life. The shadow was so successful in his mission that people thought that he was more lively then his former owner.

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links: http://www.orangecone.com/archives/2008/02/sketching_smart_1.html

John E. Flaherty explored the mind set of Peter Drucker, one of the biggest influences on modern management. In his book, Peter Drucker: Shaping the Managerial Mind, Flaherty shares many of Drucker’s thoughts, including the importance of evaluating the impact of perception on communication process:

ØPerception is limited to what the recipient is capable of receiving.

ØA person needs a mental vision of the individual he or she is trying to influence.

ØFigures are often more compelling than the power of reasoning.

ØThe more information is increased, the greater the need to grasp perceptual reality by constantly redefining incomplete messages.

ØThe quest for certainty is wrong; start off with what should be conveyed in order to make sense.

Ø Communication and information are different and indeed largely opposite- yet interdependent. Whereas communication is perception, information is logic.

ØThe most dangerous illusion of all is to think that the recipient has only one role and one reality.

ØThe focus should not be on what you consider important but on what the recipient consider important.

Ø Don’t try to find out why a person is wrong, but attempt to find out what he is trying to say; he might be right, who knows?

ØPerception is multidimensional, but people still see only one of these dimensions at a time.

ØPerception is limited by physiological factors: for example, the eye and the ear have different capabilities.

ØYou can’t cram a great deal of material in to a voice channel. In a good speech one gets one good idea across.

ØAccepts the fact that other people say things differently.

ØHearing is natural: listening must be learned by making sense of what we hear.

ØPeople have to receive communication and it’s up to them; the sender has no control over it.

ØInformation presupposes communication.

ØThe assumption that what is obvious to you is also obvious to every else is a mistake.

ØPerception is experience. This means that one always perceive configuration. One cannot perceive singular specifics. They always became part of total picture.

ØDifficulty in communicating can often be overcome by changing not what we say but how we say it.

ØThe fewer the data needed, the better the information.

Philippe Starck’s inspiring speech about contextual design, design that seeks for perspective and purpose (From TED 2007).

The Reactable is a tangible tabletop electronic music instrument. Users can compose music by moving and rotating elements on the Reactable.  The Reactable was used in Bjork’s 2007 tour.
This instrument is being developed by a team of digital luthiers (Sergi Jordà , Martin Kaltenbrunner, Günter Geiger and Marcos Alonso), at the Music Technology Group within the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain.

Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software (http://www.arduino.cc/) , which I use very often in my projects (http://www.tiltool.com/projects.htm). Tod E. Kurt (from thingm.com) just posted “Spooky Projects” -a set of four 3-hour classes, focused on microcontroller programming and interfacing with the real world using the Arduino physical computing platform.
Links:
http://todbot.com/blog/spookyarduino/
http://todbot.com/blog/bionicarduino/