Meeting with Joachim Sauter

28 September, 2005, discussing installation of the information ecosystem (DmInfoEcoInstall)

Feedback

• what kind of meaning?
• creating a system only based on relation is a bit weak
• how can a physical plant play a role in the installation?
• explore plant as filter, a personal plant, helping each individual use their own perspective
• information filtered through plant and back to human, how does that change it?
• what does the echo of information coming from a human through a plant feel like?
• how does a plant filter information?
• when we breathe out, we pass information as well as cO2 to the plant, the plant then filters that information as it filters the Co2, and releases changed information along with the Oxygen
• simply projecting onto a wall is "don't do that!"

Related projects

• plant and internet - measures co2 and buys stocks based on this, performs as well as the average person
• Christa Sommerer & Laurent Mignonneau Interactive Plant Growing
• Digital Talmud at Jewish Museum Berlin: breathing on the blank pages of the Talmud pushes letters and words onto the page, assembling into passages (The breath of God)

Joachim Sauter on UdK Berlin

Computational Design

• genetic (iterative): genoTyp
• behavioral: rats

Physical Computing

designing objects with

Awareness Design

object of desire

• bowl that captures your heart beat in vibrations on the water when you grasp the handle
• lampy thing that respond to strokes, etc.

Sensitive Skin/ Intellignet surface

• balls on air - bernouli effect as interface
• tie that shows relative status (thermochromatic cover)

Joachim Sauter presentation at Risd auditorium

Joachim Sauter talk, 27 September, New media art and design. 1st lecture for the Christiane Paul DmLectureSeries

History

• 1st big change was the personal computer, which allowed us to have the tools 24 hrs/day
• then it changed from just a tool to a (mass)medium

(mass)medium

different from previous media in that it introduces Connectivity

Interactivity

• screenbased applications
• interactive installations
• interactive environments
• interactive architecture

screenbased applications

De-Viewer (1992)

viewing a painting distorts it

• bringing interactive digital to a typically passive medium

interactive installations

Invisible Shape of Things Past (1995)

• seeing a film's history by positioning it where and when it was shot
• architecture of camera movement, turning it into an object
• mapping time and space to an object

Floating Numbers

• a table/ river full of floating numbers
• the table makes it more conversational than a screen, and enables easy interaction with the river
• adding autonomy to an application (defining each number as a typobot with its own flow path and characteristics) encourages people to interact with it
• "autonomy makes computational design"(?)

Space defined by media/ interactive environments

The Famous Grouse Experience

you can get in and on the media (The Famous Grouse Experience (2002))

Medial Stage and Costume Design

• projected stage set for an opera
• content defines the structure
• projecting onto planes gives a sort of three dimensionality
• the main character controls the set (bunker)
• dynamic costume design that shows the characters inner-feelings, the costume is projected onto the actors, real-time masking

interactive architecture

Media Facades

key attributes

• Integrated and not added; should be skin and not mask or make-up
• appropriate narration

New train station in Berlin

• were asked to project onto, but they refused, worked with the grid of the building itself, integrating leds

Interactive building (Blinkenlights)

• rooms' lights go on and off controlled by computer, create a huge screen of sorts
• can play PONG: I can play a game on my mobile on a house!
• or make animations
• blinkelights is like tupperware I am so enthusiatic about it!
• follow up BMW project on a bigger building

Final World

• the 80's and 90's were full of innovation, now innovation is replaced by quality!

Process/ Logistics

• politics: convince the architect and the funders
• feasibility
• then go for it

Random bits

• if artists try to pretend to be designers, and if designers try to pretend to be artists, they usually fail
• new tech as a building material
• the essence of a building?...
• awareness design: no functionality but an idea