During the ars electronica festival this year we also saw the exhibition IMPETUS of the MIT Media Lab. There have been really interesting projects, here are some….
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Technology has allowed people to develop larger social networks than previously done. But as a result, we have more relationships than we can manage. Social Gardening explores using plants as metaphor for relationships, hoping to encourage us to tend our social connections like we do our garden. By tracking and analyzing communications through email, instant messaging, social websites, SMS, and phone, Social Gardening proposes to give feedback on how our relationships are flourishing or wilting. It may also provide a practical interface to browse and manage conversations and contacts.
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Drawdio: Turn Almost Anything into a “Theremin”
Imagine you could draw musical instruments on normal paper with any pencil (cheap circuit thumb-tacked on) and then play them with your finger. The Drawdio circuit-craft lets you MacGuyver your everyday objects into musical instruments: paintbrushes, macaroni, trees, grandpa, even the kitchen sink…
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is devoted to musical expression for everyone, from high level virtuosi to the general public, to children and families, and to promote health and wellness.
There are over 20 projects related to this theme, here one example:
Toy Symphony alter how children are introduced to music.
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We believe that people have the right to know where things come from and what they are made of. Sourcemap is a platform for researching, optimizing and sharing the supply chains behind a number of everyday products.
Introduction to Sourcemap from Matthew Hockenberry on Vimeo.
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Cherry Blossoms gives witness to the tragedy of war. The project starts in a backpack outfitted with a small microcontroller and a GPS unit. Recent news of bombings in Iraq are downloaded to the unit every night, and their relative location, to the center of the city, are superimposed onto a map of Boston. If the wearer walks into a space in Boston that correlates to a site of violence in Baghdad, the backpack detonates. A compressed cloud of confetti engulfs the scene, looking like a mixture between smoke, shrapnel and the white blossoms of a cherry tree. Each piece of confetti is inscribed with the name of a civilian who died in the war, and the circumstances of their death. With Cherry Blossoms human loss resonates beyond the boundary of conflict.
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If you are interested in all the other projects from IMPETUS, which are not mentioned here, follow this link.
