83,7 Kilo Ohm: Hug, Kiss and Play in Public

What kissing in public has to do with sensor data and Norwegian art.

In May, we highlighted several experimental sound and music projects challenging the definition of art creation. A recent discovery spotted at The Norwegian National Opera & Ballet in Oslo should be added to the list. 83,7 Kilo Ohm is a sound installation by German artist Erwin Stache. The project is meant to inspire people to play in public spaces, while interactively conducting a series of musical pieces produced and recorded by Erwin himself.

The installation includes a series of wooden platforms with a varying number of metal tubes that spring up from the base. When you touch two or more tubes at the same time, sensors trigger an array of music from attached speakers. If two people touching separate tubes make contact, they can create music together by holding hands, hugging or kissing — encouraging public interaction in the process of art-making.

Depending on the pressure, speed and location of the contact, the music will change tempo, tone, pitch and volume, making each musical creation completely unique.

See it in action below:

Brian W. Jones is a designer, etc. who moves often to embrace the inspiration found in new places. Last year Brian helped open PieLab, a pie shop and community space in rural Alabama, and now lives in coastal Maine helping organize Project M sessions, riding his bike, and writing about his love of coffee.

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Street Knowledge: An Encyclopedia of Street Art

Globe-trotting via Banksy, or what 1980′s New York has to do with contemporary Iranian art.

We have a bit of a sweet spot for street art. So we’re all over Street Knowledge — a brand new encyclopedia and insider’s guide to street art culture around the world from King Adz and Harper Collins, tracing the evolution of the movement from its groundbreaking days in 1980′s New York to the bleeding-edge work of modern-day Iranian artists. From old-school graffiti legends to modern street art icons, including film-makers, designers, DJ’s, writers and poets, the book reveals the deep and lateral penetration of street art across just about every aspect of contemporary culture.

Street Knowledge features interviews with some of world’s most influential street art talent, including Banksy (but of course…), Quik, Shepard Fairey and the Obey crew, Martha Cooper, David LaChapelle, Tony Kaye and many more, in addition to an ambitious roster of up-and-comers from across the globe.

But perhaps what makes the book most compelling is that, by virtue of placing the featured street art in the context of the cities where it appears, it doubles as an underground guide to the hottest art, culture, music, fashion, dining and film spots in some of the world’s hippest cities.

Street Knowledge comes out in March 2011 in the US (but is already available for pre-order) and is out in the UK this week.

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Facadeprinter: Graffiti Meets Paintball

Automating anti-establishment, or what street art has to do with disaster relief.

Much of street art revolves around the cult of the individual creator, creeping through the night to meticulously paint, stencil or tag a wall by hand. But can technology subvert this ethos? Facadeprinter is an inkjet printer in architectonical scale — a simple, software-controlled robot that shoots artwork from a distance of up to 12 meters, dot by dot, onto the target surface area. Think Banksy meets paintball meets ChalkBot — in other words, graffiti for geeks.

Designed by German duo Martin Fussenegger and Michael Sebastian, Facadeprinter can render artwork as large as 8 by 10 meters and, depending on the paint used, can produce permanent or temporary images. Besides the obvious uses in large-scale street art and advertising installations, the technology could have some interesting and rather useful applications in disaster relief, where the rapid printing process can enable quick and effective visual communication signaling shelter, food and water, danger zones, or medical aid.

Design is research. Driven by the desire to discover and understand. Above all a new design comes from a foreshadowing, which is looked into. Step by step this turns into an insight. If someone finally senses the result as being ‘beautiful’ or ‘new’, these are the many steps required of understanding, which produce a coherent whole. New aesthetics through new technology. Thus the Facadeprinter and the resulting rough printed appearance inseparably belong together.”

Here’s how it works: An integrated laser displays a bounding box of the artwork onto the wall, affixing its position. A paintball system converted into a printhead then shoots the color balls onto the wall, conveying the gelatine-encapsulated color balls to the marker where they are accelerated to a speed of 200km per hour. Upon contact with the wall, the balls burst, leaving dots 5 to 10 cm in diameter. The emptied out gelatine shells fall down to the ground where they can decompose naturally after rain without residue.

What makes Facadeprinter particularly interesting is that it’s an odd intersection of art and algorithm, raising questions of whether we can automate street art and preserve its message, and whether urban visual communication can serve as a design-driven humanitarian solution.

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