Tag Archives: 2009 International Symposium on Electronic Arts

A dress that lights up according to reactions on Twitter

I don’t usually have an opportunity to write about red carpet events but the recent Met Gala, also known as the Costume Institute Gala and the Met Ball, which took place on the evening of May 2, 2016 in New York, featured a ‘cognitive’ dress. Here’s more from a May 2, 2016 article by Emma Spedding for The Telegraph (UK),

“Tech white tie” was the dress code for last night’s Met Gala, inspired by the theme of this year’s Met fashion exhibition, ‘Manus x Machina: Fashion in the Age of Technology’. While many of the a-list attendees interpreted this to mean ‘silver sequins’, several rose to the challenge with beautiful, future-gazing gowns which give a glimpse of how our clothes might behave in the future.

Supermodel Karolina Kurkova wore a ‘cognitive’ Marchesa gown that was created in collaboration with technology company IBM. The two companies came together following a survey conducted by IBM which found that Marchesa was one of the favourite designers of its employees. The dress is created using a conductive fabric chosen from 40,000 options and embedded with 150 LED lights which change colour in reaction to the sentiments of Kurkova’s Twitter followers.

A May 2, 2016 article by Rose Pastore for Fast Company provides a little more technical detail and some insight into why Marchesa partnered with IBM,

At the Met Gala in Manhattan tonight [May 2, 2016], one model will be wearing a “cognitive dress”: A gown, designed by fashion house Marchesa, that will shift in color based on input from IBM’s Watson supercomputer. The dress features gauzy white roses, each embedded with an LED that will display different colors depending on the general sentiment of tweets about the Met Gala. The algorithm powering the dress relies on Watson Color Theory, which links emotions to colors, and on the Watson Tone Analyzer, a service that can detect emotion in text.

In addition to the color-changing cognitive dress, Marchesa designers are using Watson to get new color palette ideas. The designers choose from a list of emotions and concepts—things like romance, excitement, and power—and Watson recommends a palette of colors it associates with those sentiments.

An April 29, 2016 posting by Ann Rubin for IBM’s Think blog discusses the history of technology/art partnerships and provides more technical detail (yes!) about this one,

Throughout history, we’ve seen traces of technology enabling humans to create – from Da Vinci’s use of the camera obscura to Caravaggio’s work with mirrors and lenses. Today, cognitive systems like Watson are giving artists, designers and creative minds the tools to make sense of the world in ground-breaking ways, opening up new avenues for humans to approach creative thinking.

The dress’ cognitive creation relies on a mix of Watson APIs, cognitive tools from IBM Research, solutions from Watson developer partner Inno360 and the creative vision from the Marchesa design team. In advance of it making its exciting debut on the red carpet, we’d like to take you on the journey of how man and machine collaborated to create this special dress.

Rooted in the belief that color and images can indicate moods and send messages, Marchesa first selected five key human emotions – joy, passion, excitement, encouragement and curiosity – that they wanted the dress to convey. IBM Research then fed this data into the cognitive color design tool, a groundbreaking project out of IBM Research-Yorktown that understands the psychological effects of colors, the interrelationships between emotions, and image aesthetics.

This process also involved feeding Watson hundreds of images associated with Marchesa dresses in order to understand and learn the brand’s color palette. Ultimately, Watson was able to suggest color palettes that were in line with Marchesa’s brand and the identified emotions, which will come to life on the dress during the Met Gala.

Once the colors were finalized, Marchesa turned to IBM partner Inno360 to source a fabric for their creation. Using Inno360’s R&D platform – powered by a combination of seven Watson services – the team searched more than 40,000 sources for fabric information, narrowing down to 150 sources of the most useful options to consider for the dress.

From this selection, Inno360 worked in partnership with IBM Research-Almaden to identify printed and woven textiles that would respond well to the LED technology needed to execute the final part of the collaboration. Inno360 was then able to deliver 35 unique fabric recommendations based on a variety of criteria important to Marchesa, like weight, luminosity, and flexibility. From there, Marchesa weighed the benefits of different material compositions, weights and qualities to select the final fabric that suited the criteria for their dress and remained true to their brand.

Here’s what the dress looks like,

Courtesy of Marchesa Facebook page {https://www.facebook.com/MarchesaFashion/)

Courtesy of Marchesa Facebook page {https://www.facebook.com/MarchesaFashion/)

Watson is an artificial intelligence program,which I have written about a few times but I think this Feb. 28, 2011 posting (scroll down about 50% of the way), which mentions Watson, product placement, Jeopardy (tv quiz show), and medical diagnoses seems the most à propos given IBM’s latest product placement at the Met Gala.

Not the only ‘tech’ dress

There was at least one other ‘tech’ dress at the 2016 Met Gala, this one designed by Zac Posen and worn by Claire Danes. It did not receive a stellar review in a May 3, 2016 posting by Elaine Lui on Laineygossip.com,

People are losing their goddamn minds over this dress, by Zac Posen. Because it lights up.

It’s bullsh-t.

This is a BULLSH-T DRESS.

It’s Cinderella with a lamp shoved underneath her skirt.

Here’s a video of Danes and her dress at the Met Gala,

A Sept. 10, 2015 news item in People magazine indicates that Posen’s a different version of a ‘tech’ dress was a collaboration with Google (Note: Links have been removed),

Designer Zac Posen lit up his 2015 New York Fashion Week kickoff show on Tuesday by debuting a gorgeous and tech-savvy coded LED dress that blinked in different, dazzling pre-programmed patterns down the runway.

In coordination with Google’s non-profit organization, Made with Code, which inspires girls to pursue careers in tech coding, Posen teamed up with 30 girls (all between the ages of 13 and 18), who attended the show, to introduce the flashy dress — which was designed by Posen and coded by the young women.

“This is the future of the industry: mixing craft, fashion and technology,” the 34-year-old designer told PEOPLE. “There’s a discrepancy in the coding field, hardly any women are at the forefront, and that’s a real shame. If we can entice young women through the allure of fashion, to get them learning this language, why not?”

..

Through a micro controller, the gown displays coded patterns in 500 LED lights that are set to match the blues and yellows of Posen’s new collection. The circuit was designed and physically built into Posen’s dress fabric by 22-year-old up-and-coming fashion designer and computer science enthusiast, Maddy Maxey, who tells PEOPLE she was nervous watching Rocha [model Coco Rocha] make her way down the catwalk.

“It’s exactly as if she was carrying a microwave down the runway,” Maxey said. “It’s an entire circuit on a textile, so if one connection had come lose, the dress wouldn’t have worked. But, it did! And it was so deeply rewarding.”

Other ‘tech’ dresses

Back in 2009 I attended that year’s International Symposium on Electronic Arts and heard Clive van Heerden of Royal Philips Electronics talk about a number of innovative concepts including a ‘mood’ dress that would reveal the wearer’s emotions to whomever should glance their way. It was not a popular concept especially not in Japan where it was first tested.

The symposium also featured Maurits Waldemeyer who worked with fashion designer Chalayan Hussein and LED dresses and dresses that changed shape as the models went down the runway.

In 2010 there was a flurry of media interest in mood changing ‘smart’ clothes designed by researchers at Concordia University (Barbara Layne, Canada) and Goldsmiths College (Janis Jefferies, UK). Here’s more from a June 4, 2010 BBC news online item,

The clothes are connected to a database that analyses the data to work out a person’s emotional state.

Media, including songs, words and images, are then piped to the display and speakers in the clothes to calm a wearer or offer support.

Created as part of an artistic project called Wearable Absence the clothes are made from textiles woven with different sorts of wireless sensors. These can track a wide variety of tell-tale biological markers including temperature, heart rate, breathing and galvanic skin response.

Final comments

I don’t have anything grand to say. It is interesting to see the progression of ‘tech’ dresses from avant garde designers and academics to haute couture.

Interview with Julie Freeman about her nano art show at the UK’s House of Lords

An invitation arrived in my email box from the BioCentre in the UK for a nanotechnology workshop and reception featuring some ‘nanotechnology’ art work at the House of Lords. I was pleased to notice that the artist, Julie Freeman, was someone I met a few years ago at the 2009 International Symposium on Electronic Arts (ISEA) in Belfast. As attending the event was not possible, I decided to approach Julie for an interview and she kindly answered my questions.

Before launching into the interview, here’s a little more information about the BioCentre’s 2nd workshop in a series titled, Revolution, Regulation and Responsibilities; Technology & Democracy in the 21st Century (from the PDF) ,

Products, Privacy & People: Regulating on the Nanoscale Monday 28th February 2011, 14:00, House of Lords, Committee Room 3

The manipulation of matter at the nanoscale represents a ‘rebound revolution’ reframing our understanding and engagement with science and technology. As nanotechnologies continue to evolve the promised nano structures which offer novel and new properties currently present unknown hazards. Nanoparticles have been found to pass through the skin, offering exciting possibilities of targeted drug delivery. Conversely, given their size nanoparticles could also interfere with the functioning of proteins on the surface of cells, or be taken up into cells and bind to intercellular proteins. How crucial is public awareness of these issues? Should there be a mandatory labelling system for nano products? This becomes all the more important as nanomaterials are adopted commercially and taken up into global supply chains.

Nanotechnology will present new possibilities for collecting new data and intensifying debate and discussion surrounding ongoing questions of privacy. There is the potential for tiny senses to be embedded in clothes, products or even bodies which could record and collect a multitude of data, including the movement of people, products, health and financial details.

Increasingly, it appears that the distinction between human and machine could become blurred through the convergence of biology, nanotechnology, information technology and even neuroscience. If some of the grander ideas which nanotechnology would seemingly promise are believed to be true, then fusion between people and technology could occur like never before. Yet public and civil society debate remains limited despite dramatic efforts to frame the significance of such developments ranging from Eric Drexler’s ‘grey goo’ scenario, to technology guru Bill Joy’s Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us, to Ray Kurzweil’s imminent expectation of the sci‐fi “singularity”.

As attempts are made to develop effective and proportional regulation in response there is also the inevitable tension between divergent approaches to risk management on the national, regional and global level. One thing is for certain, transdisciplinary discussion, fresh thinking and understanding is essential if we are to avoid a repeat of the GM foods debacle and re‐emergence of the ‘yuck’ factor. Through short expert presentations, panel and Q&A discussions you are invited to join us as we discuss and examine the regulatory issues at the nanoscale.

A drinks reception will follow the symposium during which the work of Julie Freeman, Artist‐in‐residence at Microsystems and Nanotechnology Centre, Cranfield University, will be on display. [emphasis mine]

Now, here is the interview with Julie Freeman,

a) Which work (or works are) is being shown at the House of Lords on Feb. 28, 2011? [if you have any images of the piece or pieces, I would be happy to include them.]

A set of 16 A3 prints from the Nano Novel collection, which are part of the In Particular project.

(b) How did your work come to be selected for this display? Was it specifically created for this show or was it chosen as something that would be relevant to the workshop themes “of revolution, regulation and responsibilities surrounding the issue of emerging technologies?”

Each of the works are accompanied by two pieces of text, one factual, one fictional. The factual texts describe a process, issue or reaction that is related to the nanoscale, so although there is a broad range – from how nanoparticles are moved to the future of self-diagnostic implants – some of them address issues of regulation and revolution. The director of a UK think tank called BioCentre asked me if I would like to exhibit the work at the seminar. I had been previously asked to show work at a BioCentre event, but it was too complicated to install just for a few hours. As the Nano Novels work are framed prints they are the most portable piece of work I have ever created, so are ideal for an exhibition with a quick turnover!

(c) Could you discuss some of the challenges of representing the invisible (that which occurs at the nanoscale) and some of the specific challenges, technical and/or conceptual, that you encountered with the work being shown at the reception?

The work shown, as I mentioned, were digital prints. The prints are the first stage in the In Particular project, kind of a way for me to contextualise nanotechnology in a way that I could understand it. I have prototype works in progress that are proving tricky to realise – at the nanoscale materials take on different properties and behaviours. Stresses and strains that act at the macro level are different at the nanoscale so even creating something as seemingly simple as a rigid nanothin film is very complex. I think the challenge for artists working in the realm is how to avoid the obvious, how to depict something that is beyond our sensory perception, and how to create work that is true to a nanoprocess or material without simply showing it at a macro scale.

(d) How does someone with an MA in Digital Arts from the Lansdown Centre for Electronic Arts, Middlesex University, London come to be associated with the Microsystems and Nanotechnology Centre at Cranfield University?

I knew when I started my MA that I wanted to work with life and technology – life in terms of living biology. My MA show consisted of a fish tank containing 4 rudd that were tracked and created a soundscape (a precursor to a future larger project called The Lake**), so although it took ten years, it was a natural progression for me to end up working in a laboratory with scientists.

The residency was instigated by Professor Jeremy Ramsden, Chair of Nanotechnology at Cranfield University. He says “I’d read a very interesting book by Cyril Smith* in which he argues that the primary motivation for new technology was aesthetic” so he thought an artist on his team would push the technology in a new direction. He approached a local arts agency, HAPPEN, who had visited my work The Lake, which is another piece of work that involved much scientific collaboration, and they brokered the relationship. We quickly ascertained that we had a lot of common curiousity, so we collaborated on a funding proposal and were very fortunate to be successful.

*C.S. Smith, The Search for Structure: Selected Essays on Science, Art and History, MIT Press, Cambridge (Mass.) (1981).

**http://www.juliefreeman.co.uk/lake/

(e) What are you currently working on now (nanotechnology-influenced or not)?

I have been working on ideas that bring my love of data together with the bionanotech area, the fusion of biology and technology at the ‘invisible’ level. Consequently I’m working on some new kinetic objects that incorporate nanomaterials and utilise conversational network activity to give them dynamic actions. I can’t say much more, but it’s an ambitious one!

(f) Is there anything you’d like to add?

Thanks for being in touch. Great blog!

You’re welcome and glad you enjoy the blog.

You can find out more about Julie Freeman and her work at her website, Translating Nature.

ETA Mar. 8, 2011:  Julie Freeman sent two pictures from her show at the House of Lords.

Nano Novels at UK's House of Lords, Feb. 28, 2011. Photo: Julie Freeman

And then, the crowd arrived.

Feb. 28, 2011 reception at UK's House of Lords where Nano Novels shown. Photo: Julie Freeman

Happy T Day! Robots; Nano-enabled prosthetics; ISEA 2009 aesthetics and prosthetics; Global TV (national edition): part 2

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone as Canada celebrates.

Since I have mentioned military robots in the not too distant past, this recent headline Two Military Robots That Rival the Creepiest Sci-Fi Creatures for Kit Eaton’s Fast Company article caught my eye. One of the robots, Big Dog (and its companion prototype Small Dog), utilizes artificial intelligence to navigate terrain and assist soldiers in the field. The larger one can carry heavy loads while the smaller one could be used for reconnaissance. The other robot is a cyborg beetle. Electrodes have been implanted so the beetle’s flight patterns can be controlled. There are two videos, one for each robot. It is a very disconcerting experience watching the beetle being flown by someone standing in front of a set of controls.

Keeping with the theme of planting electrodes, I found something on Azonano about a bio- adaptive prosthetic hand. Funded by the European Union as a nanotechnology project, here’s more from the news item,

What is unique about the sophisticated prototype artificial hand developed by the SMARTHAND partners is that not only does it replicate the movements of a real hand, but it also gives the user sensations of touch and feeling. The researchers said the hand has 4 electric motors and 40 sensors that are activated when pressed against an object. These sensors stimulate the arm’s nerves to activate a part in the brain that enables patients to feel the objects.

Led by Sweden’s Lund University, the researchers continue to work on the sensory feedback system within the robotic hand. The hurdle they need to cross is to make the cables and electric motors smaller. Nanotechnology could help the team iron out any problems. Specifically, they would implant a tiny processing unit, a power source and a trans-skin communication method into the user of the hand to optimise functionality.

It’s a fascinating read which brought to mind an ISEA (International Symposium on Electronic Arts) 2009 presentation by Dr. Lanfranco Aceti (professor at Sabanci University in Istanbul, Turkey). Titled The Aesthetic Beauty of the Artificial: When Prosthetic Bodies Become an Art Expression of Empowering Design Technologies, the presentation was a revelation. Dr. Aceti’s research yielded a rather surprising insight from a doctor in London, England who specializes in prosthetics. According to the doctor, women want limbs that most closely resemble their original but men (under 50 years old usually) want limbs that are metallic and/or look high tech. Lanfranco suggested that the men have been influenced by movies. Take for example, Wolverine (Wikipedia entry here) where the hero’s skeleton has been reinforced with metal and he can make his claws (now covered with metal) protrude from his arms at will. You can view Lanfranco’s site here or a simple biography about him here.

A few months back I posted about  prosthetics and design student projects and I’m starting to sense a trend emerging from these bits and pieces of information. There is the repair aspect to prosthetics but there is also an increasing interest not just in the aesthetics but in the notion of improving on the original. At its most extreme, I can imagine people wanting to remove perfectly healthy limbs and organs to get an improved version.

I got a chance to see part 2 of Global TV’s (broadcast in Canada) nanotechnology series, Small Wonders. As I’ve noticed that my link for part 1 of the series is no longer useful I am providing a link to part 2 which will land you on the search page. If you don’t see part 2 listed, go to the mutimedia tab which is just above the search results and where you can find part 1 and I assume, at some point, part 2.

As I hoped, they focused on nanotechnology projects in the materials field in part 2 of the series. They noted that nanotechnology-based materials in sports equipment and clothing are already available in the market place. An interview with Dr. Robert Wolkow at the National Institute of Nanotechnology and at the Physics Dept. at the University of Alberta, featured a discussion about replacing silicon chips with more efficient materials built at the molecular level.

ISEA 2009 and bioart (part 1); Nano-Society book

I’m mentioning a bioart panel discussion that I attended at the 2009 International Symposium on Electronic Arts (ISEA) as a precursor to part 4  of my series on Science Communication in Canada.

The panel discussion, Is the (Art) World Ready for Bioart?, held on Saturday, August 29, 2009 was moderated by Andy Miah and featured  Tagny Duff with Kathy Rae Huffman, Laura Sillars, Kerstin Mey, and Anna Dumitriu.  The panel arose as a consequence of a controversy that erupted after Duff’s art work was accepted for exhibition. Duff had proposed a showing of her work with a modified (dead) HIV/AIDS virus injected into pig tissue and also into human breast tissue with resultant ‘bruising’ marks in the tissue.

First off, the only comment I’m going to make about the art aspect to this project is that it’s highly conceptual and not my kind of thing. There are many people who find these kinds of works (bioart) important and worthwhile.

Duff is a Canadian and an assistant professor in communication studies at Concordia University (Montreal, Canada) and has an extensive background in media and studio arts.  About her latest work (from the faculty page at Concordia),

The research-creation project “The Cryobook Archives investigates the strangeness of wet and cryo-suspended bodies in an era when art and science is increasingly turning to computer generated and digitized bodies to extend human knowledge (and life). In particular, the project considers how book form is evolving from the skin of trees (paper) and animals (leather), digital pages via the internet and computation screens, to biotechnological applications and cryogenic tissue banks. The creation of limited edition book/ sculptures series made from human and animal tissue, biological viruses and immunohistochemical staining is the means for thinking through the changing status of bodies in the postbiological era. This project is funded by The Canada Council for The Arts.

I wish Duff had mentioned this description when she spoke at the panel as this helps me to understand her work much better. At the panel, she was focused on the process that occurred after her work was accepted for exhibition. Because the exhibition was being held in Northern Ireland the laws of the United Kingdom came into effect when Duff applied to send her artwork to Belfast for the exhibition.

There is a law/regulation which is unique to the UK. I’m not sure if it had something to do with the dead virus or the tissues that form Duff’s art pieces but a government bureaucrat misapplied a set of rules which pertain to this law/regulation and refused Duff’s art work entry in the UK.

Duff did some detective work and determined that the law/regulation did not apply to her art work and the government official reversed the decision. However, the institution that was hosting the exhibition had some concerns and wanted to exhibit the work in a room that was removed from the other exhibits and (if I remember rightly) would require that a visitor open the door to the exhibit with a key. The artist agreed and then somehow the institution (or perhaps it was the ISEA 2009 organizers?) decided that this particular art work could not be exhibited.

All of this led to the panel discussion where Duff discussed the entire process and the chief ISEA 2009 organizer (Kerstin May) talked about some of the difficulties from her perspective.  ISEA 2009 is organized by various committees and it’s those committees which make the decisions about who will and won’t present and/or exhibit. There are many, many potential exhibitors and conference presenters from around the world making submissions so it’s already quite demanding. The symposium was further complicated by the fact that it took place in Belfast, Londonderry/Derry, Coleraine, Dundalk, and Dublin. I also had the impression that much of this transpired in the last few months (if not weeks) before the conference and anybody who’s organized anything will tell you, you can’t deal with this kind of a problem at what is effectively the last minute.

I found the whole discussion quite illuminating. First, Duff displayed a mindset that I associate with scientists. She presented a logical, well-reasoned case. She’d gotten permission from the patient who donated her breast tissue for the project and the virus she used is a dead virus commonly used by researchers around the world, including the UK. She mentioned that she’s a professor and she noted a couple of papers (along with a list of her co-authors) that will be published soon. All of it identical to behaviour I’d expect from the science mindset I mentioned earlier right down to the fact that Duff did not seem to grasp the nature of the concerns (panic) she had set off.

We (not just scientists) sometimes forget that other people are not us. They have different experiences, reference points, and opinions. I can’t be certain of my insights but I do think the ‘mad cow’ disease in the UK has had a profound effect on how the population there views any number of issues associated with science. As well, the GM food (aka frankenfood) controversies affected European populations in a way that I don’t think Canadians understand very well.

More on this tomorrow.

Meanwhile, Michael Berger of Nanowerk has written Nano-Society – Pushing the boundaries of technology. You can read more about it by clicking the link (Nano-Society). I imagine that the book is an expansion of the articles he’s written on the Nanowerk site. I’ve always found Berger’s writing to be very clear and informative, presumably the book will be the same.

2009 ISEA (International Symposium on Electronic Arts) talks

It’ll be impossible to describe everything at ISEA in this or even several postings and I’m eager to get back to nanotechnology.  So, I’m going to summarize ISEA keynote speeches  briefly today and then fit in various observations about the sessions over the next week or so, as there’s room.

I didn’t manage to get to the opening keynote speakers as the travel agent I used decided that attending the first few days was not a priority for me. (Yes, I’m still steaming about that and more but enough about the travel agent.)

The first keynote speaker (for me) was Clive van Heerden of Philips Design (part of Royal Philips Electronics), the creative director for their Probes program. He seems to be some sort of futurologist who rather than simply speculating actually designs new objects that might be sold as products one day. I have oversimplified this vastly as the Probes Program seems to be an adventure into social science as much as it is designing future-oriented products. You can check out their Food Probe here which features a “diagnostic” kitchen.

“Ubermorgen.com is an artist duo from Austria” (that’s straight from the program notes) who gave an enthralling, provocative, and disturbing presentation about their work. According to Wikipedia (retrieved Sept.9.09),

Ubermorgen focuses on exploring contemporary legal issues, especially those of security, privacy and copyright. Übermorgen is the German word for “the day after tomorrow” or “super-tomorrow”.

You can go to their site here. You should know that their latest work is about extraordinary or irregular rendition and so there are images of people (some of them children) being shackled. These are not pictures of actual prisoners but people who have agreed to participate in their art project.

One of the best questions asked at the ubermorgen.com session was about the art duo’s research. What type of research and fact checking did the pair do? The process seems to be informal and they rely on the number of stories and mass of information which supports the claims rather than checking out individual stories. In short, they talk to a lot of people and they read a lot and then they distill the information which they use for their pieces.

The Sala-Manca Artist Group based in Israel presented something that struck a chord with me. They examined the use of pastoral images (starting from the 1920s) to attract immigrants and visitors to Israel. So much of the tourist work done for Vancouver (where I live) relies on the pastoral images that I’ve taken it for granted. Being presented with something that seemed familiar but referenced in ways that are unusual (to me) made me view landscape painting from a different, more politicized perspective. (Pun was unavoidable.)

Moritz Waldemeyer was one of my favourites largely due to the fact that he’s an engineer and he discussed the issues involved with creating fabulous, out of this world design pieces that are partly machinery. He’s worked with Bono, Hussein Chalayan, and Swarovski Crystals amongst many other clients. (Oh, and he worked with Clive van Heerden at Philips Design earlier in his career.) The images are stunning but what really makes it for me is hearing about the technical issues and the work required to pull off these feats. For example, Chalayan designed dresses that transformed as the models walked down the runway while Waldemeyer was tasked with making it happen.

“Mika ‘Lumi’ Tuomola is concept designer, writer, dramaturge and director – and occasional performer – for procedural, participatory New Media.” (Again, this is straight from the programme notes.) He had a big hit on Finnish tv with a musical romance between a hot young (30ish) rock star (male) and older (looking late 50ish) cabaret singer (female). Viewers were invited to text the show and affect the progress and outcome of the relationship. Multiple options were shot for each episode and they received millions of texts as the relationship progressed from one episode to the next. What they hadn’t anticipated was that people would start writing their own scenarios for what they’d like to see happen next. I was much struck by the fact that the project was entertaining and attractive in a way that a lot of new media projects aren’t. His next project is an opera about Alan Turing (considered the father modern computer science). It provided an interesting contrast with the other piece which had a more light-hearted air although that was due to viewers’ choices. Tuomola had created a darker ending for the romance where the older woman starts on a course of plastic surgery but the viewers wanted a happy ending.

The final keynote was Sadie Plant. From the Wikipedia entry (retrieved Sept.09.09),

Sadie Plant (born 1964 in Birmingham, England) is a British author and philosopher.

She gained her Ph.D. in Philosophy from the University of Manchester in 1989, then taught at the University of Birmingham‘s Department of Cultural Studies (formerly the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies) before going on to found the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit at the University of Warwick, where she was a faculty member. Her original research was on the Situationist International and contributed to the Situationist-inspired magazine Here and Now (published between 1985 and 1994), before turning her attention to the social potential of cyber-technology.

Sadie Plant left academia in the early 1990s to pursue a writing career.

I was very excited to hear a writer speak at this conference and, sadly, was disappointed. She told a great story (she’s a good speaker) but it’s one I’ve heard many times before, i.e. mobile phones are opening new opportunities particularly in the developing world.

Tomorrow: Preston Manning.

Back from the 2009 International Symposium on Electronic Arts

I was a little optimistic about being able to blog while I was in Ireland and Northern Ireland for the 2009 International Symposium on Electronic Arts (ISEA). I’d forgotten just how jampacked conference schedules can be.

First off, my presentation (Nanotechnology, storytelling. sensing, and materiality which was part of the Posthumanism: New Technologies and Creative Strategies track) was on Aug. 26, the first day (thank goodness), and according to the moderator, it went well. It’s the first time I’ve had a relatively full room for one of my presentations. Of course, I had a typo on my first slide … I’d misspelled my name. We had some good discussion after my talk which is usually a sign that people have been engaged at some level.

I was excited and thrilled to find out that the moderator for the session was Andy Miah (you can find him here or here) as I know he’s been interested in nanotechnology (he had a nano project for a PhD student a few years back).  He’s currently a professor at the University of the West of Scotland and much in demand at various conferences and symposia.  His interests are broad ranging from literature, sciences, philosophy, and more. I found out from him on the last day of the conference that 40% of the submissions for my track were accepted.

I also got to meet Julie Freeman, an artist who worked with Jeremy Ramsden (scientist) to produce: in Particular; Nano Novels – Art & Science from the Tiniverse. She very kindly gave me a copy of their work and I have to say it was a thrill to meet her. If you’re interested in the “novels”, go here. (I think the word novel is being used in a form of word play as is “particular” i.e. playing off nano particle.) If you’re interested in Julie Freeman’s work, go here.

Unfortunately my notes are nowhere near as coherent as I imagined them to be but I will be blogging more about the conference in the next day or so. Also, I will be posting an interview with Preston Manning later this week.