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Last update: December 11, 2008, at 09:20 PM

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Award Winners!

PLAYTIME: ART MEETS TECHNOLOGY IN CULTURAL CONTEXT

Location: Shanghai Pudong Expo → more info

Exhibition time: Friday, May 16 daily to Friday, May 23 2008

About the PlayTime Project

The individual presentations in the PlayTime project all originate from the ETH Zurich Computer Science Department. They celebrate various novel methods of proactive participation. The project concern themselves with such diverse themes as information retrieval using cross media solutions, creating interactive art using wearable technology, electronic training systems for proactive health, and realtime panoramics for presentations related to culture. Although diverse in theme, the projects find a common denominator in the in the way they present information. Visitors have the opportunity to enjoy interactivity for purposes of arts, edutainment, and of course good health.

- Art Clay, Project Director © 2008




Tai Chi Trainer''

Dr. Dennis Majoe (Native Systems, ETH Zurich)

The Tai Chi project aims to use computer based sensors and multimedia feedback to teach exercises such as Tai Chi or Qi Gong, as well as to allow students to quickly enhance their ability to visualize the movement of Qi in their body under control of their mind. The projects role within the exhibition is to let visitors experience the convergence of Eastern and Western culture. Visitors can participate in conducting short exercises that insure a proactive approach to health issues.
download info sheet (english and mandarin) → PDF




China Gates / Sister Cities Version

Arthur Clay (Digital Art Weeks, ETH Zurich)

China Gates uses innovative mobile technologies to explore public space with networked performance. A GPS wrist device developed by the ETH Zurich signals each player when to hit a tuned gong. As the players playfully move around within the space, the music shifts from intense chords to exotic melodies. The projects role within the exhibition is create music as a group activity within an open space, in order to let people enjoy making music togehter without having previous musical training and for visitors to enjoy the sounds they hear in and around themselves and come to know how the listening experience changes as one moves about in a public setting.
download info sheet (english and mandarin) → PDF




Real Time Panorama''

Sven Stauber (CHE) & Philipp Bönhof ((Native Systems, ETH Zurich))

Real Time Panorama uses a fully self-contained wearable computer system to enable persons to dive into realistic or virtual panoramic images. An electronic compass makes it possible to track the person’s head movements that act as input parameters for the software that renders images and shows them on a head-mounted display. The projects role within the exhibition is to celebrate the city of Shanghais with breathtaking navigatable panoramic images and to involve key players within the Shanghai project by positioning them within the images using an interactive triggering mechanism linked to the users movement.
download info sheet (english and mandarin) → PDF




NOVA Display''

Martina Eberle (Horao AG) & Dr. Simon Schubiger-Banz (Native Systems, ETH Zurich)

The NOVA is a 3d color display that contains 1000 spheres. The presented NOVA is a miniature version of the NOVA display that is a cubic display, which consists of 25'000 light balls, which in turn consist of 12 light diodes each. It displays 16 million colors and is provided with new image information at a frequency of 25 images per second. Next to two-dimensional images, the display can also process three-dimensional abstract contents. In its portable ‘baby’ version, the NOVA is capable of bringing the experience of science in a fascinating way. One can explore the mystery of matter, delve into the world of algorithms and witness innumerable formulas from diverse fields of research made visible in millions of colors, in three dimensions. For a more artistically inclined and perhaps younger audience it is also to make 3d pictures and to game around with the baby NOVA by playing 3d versions of Pong and Tic Tac Toe.
download info sheet (english and mandarin) → PDF Δ




Drawing Code

Dr. Ling Liu ((Native Systems, ETH Zurich)) & Art Clay (Digital Art Weeks, ETH Zurich), Lars Vaupel & F18 Group Hamburg (DEU)

The “Drawing Code” project consists of creating an interesting software application for a set of drawing spiders from the robotics group “F18” from Hamburg, Germany. The application instructs the spiders to draw “fantastic webs” of high artistic quality using a real time interface concept that relies on editable commando strings that can also be used to demonstrate high level programming and system design effectively. The goal in developing the project was two fold: It can be used as an HCI application to test and evaluate new research in modern compilers for 8 bit mircro-processors in a unique and visible manner; It can also be presented as an open application that sparks interest in computer science and to contribute to making it creative and attractive to a younger generation.
download info sheet (english and mandarin) → PDF




Solid Air

Dr. Michael Bergdorf & Prof. Dr. Petros Koumoutsakos (Computational Science, ETH Zurich)

The Solid Air project translates the geometry of fluid flows, revealed by numerical simulations, into material sculptures. The physics of the flow field are described by conservation laws that are in turn solved using state-of-the-art numerical techniques applied by thousands of computer processors. The output of these simulations is commonly presented on computer displays and at times expanded into virtual environment, enabling the visual experiencing of the flow geometry. Solid Air enables the embodiment of the fleeting and it exposes to the multitude of our senses the anatomy of the untouchable.
download info sheet (english and mandarin) → PDF




Making Stereoscopic Film

Antoine Thomas-Gérald & Prof. Dr. Cary Kornfeld (ETH Zurich)

StereStereoscopic Imaging gives us a wonderful optical illusion of three dimensional perception. The resulting effects have the capability to captivate the viewer, providing images that are more stunning than real. Building a digital stereoscopic processing system for movie making requires a solid background in a variety of topics, ranging from the construction of computer systems and performance evaluation to an understanding of the human vision system. Traditional Film schools lack the engineering skills and background in binocular depth perception to teach 3D film making in all its aspects of cameras systems and software necessary to create these movies. Making movies in 3D quality requires not only special equipment, tools and knowledge, but teaching the subject proved to be a good “hands-on” example that can be used to develop a better understanding of visual perception and digital imaging.
download info sheet (english and mandarin) → PDF




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Page last modified on December 11, 2008, at 09:20 PM