The "internet of things": The internet of hype | The Economist

Interesting discussion about the limits of the Internet of Things in The E.:

Is it worth it? Many of the problems that the internet of things is supposed to solve actually have simple, non-technological solutions. Google likes to boast that your smartphone can tell you the ratio of men and women in any given bar. But there is actually a much simpler solution: you can look through the window! Many of the wonders of the internet of things fall into this category. Sensors can tell you when a baby's nappy is full. There is a perfectly reasonable old-fashioned solution to this problem. Sensors can turn the stem of an umbrella to glow blue when it is about to rain. You can always listen to the weather forecast. Mr Kvedar argued that hooking people up to the internet would reduce their need to go to the doctor, because they will be constantly updated about their health. But will elderly people, who are nervous enough about mobile phones, really embrace this high-tech wonderland? It might be better to loosen the grip of professional doctors on medical advice, and allow nurse-practitioners and other para-professionals to monitor people's health. In health care, above all else, technology is a poor substitute for the human touch.

via economist.com

Why do I blog this? this is the excerpt that struck me as interesting in the Economist but the whole article adopts a fresh perspective (especially in this kind of press). I do not necessarily agree with all the arguments here but it's relevant to see how people ponder the IOT.

Fiction - Reality A and Reality B by Haruki Murakami (NYTimes.com)

There has been an especially noteworthy change in the posture of European and American readers. Until now, my novels could be seen in 20th-century terms, that is, to be entering their minds through such doorways as “post-modernism” or “magic realism” or “Orientalism”; but from around the time that people welcomed the new century, they gradually began to remove the framework of such “isms” and accept the worlds of my stories more nearly as-is. I had a strong sense of this shift whenever I visited Europe and America. It seemed to me that people were accepting my stories in toto — stories that are chaotic in many cases, missing logicality at times, and in which the composition of reality has been rearranged. Rather than analyzing the chaos within my stories, they seem to have begun conceiving a new interest in the very task of how best to take them in.

By contrast, general readers in Asian countries never had any need for the doorway of literary theory when they read my fiction. Most Asian people who took it upon themselves to read my works apparently accepted the stories I wrote as relatively “natural” from the outset. First came the acceptance, and then (if necessary) came the analysis. In most cases in the West, however, with some variation, the logical parsing came before the acceptance. Such differences between East and West, however, appear to be fading with the passing years as each influences the other.

In my latest novel, 1Q84, I depict not George Orwell’s near future but the opposite— the near past — of 1984. What if there were a diffe- rent 1984, not the original 1984 we know, but another, transformed 1984? And what if we were suddenly thrown into such a world? There would be, of course, a groping toward a new reality.

via nytimes.com, pointed to me by David Calvo

Why do I blog this? these curious excerpts are interesting IMO both in terms of creative process and speculation. Something to be connected with the design fiction meme.

Observations about a networked key

This key I've been using for few weeks reveals an interesting assemblage: a tiny LCD display inserted in the key. Some observations:

• A smiley that smiles only if the door is inserted in the door it's meant to open. This means that the door detect which key has opened it and of course the list of visitors is kept somewhere on a server. The basic human-like representation on this key is highly odd as it reveal a sort of door guardian... that you eventually hide in your pocket afterwards.
• The indication of a battery life... which is not very relevant for the key itself but itindicates whether the screen will be readable or not.
• The quantity of information on a small device like this is quite intriguing.

Why do I blog this? I am fascinated by doors and the use of various technologies in door control. In this case, we have two curious ingredients of recent technologies: networked objects (this might very well be the "door case" for the Internet of Things) and a tiny display (much subtler than the so-called "urban screens").

With this kind of assemblage, the level of delegation left to the door is even more important than what it used to be. This is surely of interest in conjunction to Bruno Latour's work on this topic (see my blogpost). Opening a door is not that simple and would leave more traces than previous version of doors. As a side note, it's also interesting to contrast this version to automatic doors in train/public space/etc. In the former case, the necessity to control who opens what (in an office environment) seems to make it necessary to use this solution (before retinal scan?).

Mapping EMF around everyday devices by Anthony DeVincenzi

"What surrounds us? More than what we can see, touch, and feel. Beyond atmosphere, particular and solid matter, our bodies encounter many forms of invisible radiation: electromagnetic, wifi, gsm, audio and white noise. The Invisible Forces project provides a framework for the measurement and spatial mapping of radiation. "

via thinkwithdesign.com

Why do I blog this? yet another interesting example of mapping "invisible" waves.

Session about game design at Lift11

At Lift 2011 in Geneva (yes we do have a new website) we will feature various speeches about game design, gameification and transmedia approaches. Video games have long escaped the realm of nerdy teenagers to become one of the most important cultural product of our time - ahead of cinema and music. Now we hear our life will be "gamified", with many of the mechanisms invented in games showing up to our "real life". Is this really happening? What are the real possibilities and pitfalls of such a proposition? We will also talk about how games can be used to engage people into an activity like reading, and discuss the implications of transmedia approaches. We’re going to have 3 speakers about these topics:

• Steffen Walz (GEElab), The lowdown on "gameification": With the advent of gameification, we've seen a recent proliferation of points, badges and other game mechanics in lots of on-line services. Based on various projects, Steffen will offer an insightful and critical perspective on how game design is not just about forcing users to earn points and that there is much more to it.
• Etienne Mineur (les éditions volumiques), The paper book as a new computer platform: If you're interested in how designing old fashion paper book can be transformed by video game mechanics and computing technologies, you'll be intrigued by Etienne's talk. The work he is going to show is about creating “Paper Video Games”, mixing paper in either books or board games with the digital world.
• David Calvo (Ankama Play), Beyond transmedia: David is a game designer, writer and cartoonist interested in how to go beyond current transmedia postmodernist approaches. In his talk, he will describe his quirky, whimsical way to spin contexts on various platforms (games, books, social media) and how it can be fueled by careful observations of users’ activities in and out of the games.

Lift seminar at imaginove abt User-Generated Content

Last week, I organized a Lift seminar at Imaginove in Lyon, France. The focus was on user participation and user-generated content in digital industries. The idea was to give attendants an overview of the field, to address recent evolutions and possible futures. Given that I think it's important to have a transversal approach, I invited three persons from different fields. We had Florence Devouard (Wikimedia Foundation Advisory Board member, consultant at Anthere Consulting), Sabine Dufaux (independent Digital Strategist) and Alexis Lang (game designer at AtOnce technologies). The idea was to understand the implications of user-generated content with 3 cases: the Wikipedia, the role of UGC for brands and how the video game industry look at UGC. The Wikipedia case

Florence Devouard started off with a description of the Wikipedia case. More specifically, her presentation focused on the evolution of participation on Wikipedia, as well as the motivation users have to be engaged in this project.

Understanding usage pattern on Wikipedia is not that easy because people do not necessarily log in (and when they do they use a nickname), they may contribute with different nicknames, sometimes contributions are anonymous and sometimes handled by bots (correction, etc.). Moreover, most of the studies that has been carried out focused on the anglophone wikipedia, which does not account for cultural differences.

That being said, some lessons can be drawn:

• The notion of participation on Wikipedia is broad: participants are not only people who write articles, they can be users who only correct mistakes or individuals involved in fundraising.
• Regarding the participation stats, less than 0.05% of the visitors are active contributors, which is far less than the 1-90-100 law.
• Most of the contributors are male between 18 and 28 years old (students or people having their first job, not married yet and no kids) as well as lots of retired people. The enabling factors are pretty basic: they have time, skills and a will to share content.
• "North" contribute to 81% of the modifications and consultations (although they represent only 18% of the word population). Europeans contribute to 35% of the modifications (and account for 35% of the consultation). North americans take care of 23% of the modifications amd 38% of the consultation.

Interestingly, as shown by the graphs above, the the number of active and very active contributors (those making 5+ edits in a month) peaks after 5–6 years, around 2007 on the anglophone Wikipedia. The reason for this might be that: (1) a sentiment that there's already a lot of content (and hence participation can be more focused on small corrections), (2) the community is less welcoming for newcomers, (3) technical difficulties to editing (and the mediawiki technology is a bit old), (4) social networks put a lot of competitive pressure (in terms of on-line attention from users). That being said, there are clearly some success factors: a clear and engaging vision, a low barrier to participation, good incentives to participation (people are happy to exchange, rewards on user pages, etc.) and a functional governance.

Brands and UGC

Sabine Dufaux (see her slides) followed up on this with a different angle. She address the relevance of user-generated content for brands and the way they communicate. Sabine showed that technological and social conditions are now good enough to provide an abundance of content and participation. These conditions enable a dynamic and collaborative model for which there's a social gain for people in participating, a virtuous circle of some sort.

Sabine also showed that there's a need to go beyond the 1-90-100 law of participation by pointing the "participation ladder" described by Forrester Research:

For brands, this is important and as much as 25% of the content of brands are made of UGC. Technology converted part of the "spectators" into users, which in turn can prescript products and services (only 14% of consumers trust ads, 78% trust recommendations from friends and family). However, ad men seem to have a love and hate relationship with UGC. They know it can lead to success and consumers' engagement but they fear the inherent loss of control. The advantage for brands are clear: create a relationship with people, develop a certain proximity, favor adhesion and recommendation, etc. The risk to loose control is there but it was already present beforehand.

What's interesting is that design can produce gaps and holes that people can fill. These gaps can lead to new form of dialogues between companies and the users of their products.

UGC in the video game industry

Based on various examples from the Role-Playing Game field, Alexis Lang showed first that user-generated has already been there for a while, without technology. RPG were based on a simple pyramid of participation with pros at the top (writers, cartoonists), game masters (who created their own scenarios), players (who created a character and "play" it) and readers/spectators. Content circulated between these different actors and sometimes got published in books, fanzines and magazines.

The advent of the digital media led to other forms of participations in video games: MUDs, level editors (Starcraft + FPS), games such as Little Big Planet or Lego MMO. The new forms of pervasive and location-based games also offer interesting possibilities in terms of user creation. See for example platforms such as Hidden Park, GPS mission or SCVNGR.

Alexis is interesting in how to go beyond these examples and how a relevant narrative can be co-created by a crowd of players (like encyclopedia with Wikipedia). His current project (called "project c") is about designing a collaborative storytelling platform by using design gaps are source of creativity (and narratives). The obvious problem here is both to keep a certain level of quality and coherence. In his project, the history if a jigsaw puzzles: virtual objects (in the form of narrative bits) have to be collected and assembled... and the user-generated content lies in the holes that people have to fill and speculate about (by creating hypotheses).

Why do I blog this? These 3 perspectives are highly insightful. It's curious to see how such a focused topic can be addressed with a different vocabulary and distinct perspectives. However, there are clearly some common trends:

• The success of participation lies in the "gaps" left by designers... and which users can insert their contributions. The size of the gaps can be very wide (the beginning of Wikipedia) or super tiny (typos in Wikipedia, some examples from how brand use UGC).
• The growing importance of mechanisms to orchestrate what is going to sit in these gaps: the curation.
• Time is an important issue as motivation evolves, some spaces are filled and other can be opened

Thanks again to the three participants!

Understanding communities through ethnography (Tricia Wang)

Via marketsentinel.com:

My primary output is analysis of how new technology users are living at the intersection of macro processes. Examples of questions that I ask are: What does the future of the internet look like? What happens when the next 300 million migrants with digital tools are able to get online? How will the state, the world, and technological infrastructures accommodate such a massive change in scale? How do we design and market to this group?

I hang out with people and spend a lot of time trying to see the world through their eyes. I make long and deep observations of how everyday life is achieved and negotiated. I then interpret my observations and contextualize my analysis in relation to past, current and future socioeconomic, technological and cultural developments.

By answering these questions I am able to provide context and explanations for why people engage or don’t engage with certain technologies, to explain how this all interfaces with historical and present day life, and how designers, engineers, and organizers can meet the daily needs of both low-income/marginalized users and the burgeoning middle class.

People want to know how new users engage with their devices, how they access information, and why their tech behaviors are so different from Western consumers and contexts. Companies and entrepreneurs really want to understand what’s going on. They want to know why the Chinese don’t use Google Apps or why paid music services haven’t taken off there.  They enter these communities with lots of market data about their interests but without a deep understanding of their context.

There was (and still is) this expectation that every region’s historical arch would just all of sudden parallel the history of the internet as used in the West. But it doesn’t work like that. The internet was (and still is) introduced in different ways in each country.

Why do I blog this? Following her work for some time, I find interesting the way she described her approach (ethnography contextualized with broader perspectives) and how she applies it to cultural differences in technology usage.

Brewbot Espresso Machine: IoT + coffee

TASSIMO is not just a coffee maker, it’s a Brewbot, an advanced brewing system made by the engineers at Bosch. The Brewbot is programmed to make seven different beverages at the touch of a button. That’s because Brewbot uses T DISCs, which are
single-serve discs packed with a variety of coffees, teas and hot chocolates. The Brewbot reads the barcode found on each T DISC to know exactly what to make and how to brew it.

It’s this technology that distinguishes the TASSIMO Brewbot from regular brewers and guarantees a perfect cup of whatever you're in the mood for every time.

via tassimodirect.com

Why do I blog this? I started collecting how internet of things technologies now pervade kitchen appliances.

Frascati Definition of Research

The Frascati Manual is the internationally recognised methodology for collecting and using R&D statistics. It defines research as follows:

Research and experimental development (R&D) comprise creative work undertaken on a systematic basis in order to increase the stock of knowledge, including knowledge of man, culture and society, and the use of this stock of knowledge to devise new applications.

The term R&D covers three activities: basic research, applied research and experimental development.

• Basic research is experimental or theoretical work undertaken primarily to acquire new knowledge of the underlying foundation of phenomena and observable facts, without any particular application or use in view.
• Applied research is also original investigation undertaken in order to acquire new knowledge. It is, however, directed primarily towards a specific practical aim or objective.
• Experimental development is systematic work, drawing on existing knowledge gained from research and/or practical experience, which is directed to producing new materials, products or devices, to installing new processes, systems and services, or to improving substantially those already produced or installed. R&D covers both formal R&D in R&D units and informal or occasional R&D in other units.

via admin.ox.ac.uk

Why do I blog this? Collecting definitions of what is defined as "research" (i.e. what I do) is always interesting. Especially when it comes to normative material such as Frascati manual (which is used as the de facto definition of research in the European Union). Always important to keep up my sleeve when discussing potential project with partners.

Urban Screens and Jacques Tati by a456

Eiffel Tower reflected onto Tativille glazing, from Playtime (1967)

This collapsing of window onto facade becomes yet another way to erase any distinction between building and image.  And this is even more so in Tati's film, where glazed curtain walls reflect other parts of Paris.  Here, then, glass becomes architecture.  Architecture becomes a screen that reflects images onto public space.  In short, as demonstrated by the various buildings (and reflections of buildings) in Playtime, architecture has become a true urban screen.

via aggregat456.com

Why do I blog this? interesting perspective about the role of images and reflections on Playtime (by Jacques Tati) that could be seen as early instantiations of "urban screens".

Overfutured by Joanne McNeil

"The future was once represented in fantastically romantic ways: white spacesuits, buildings infinite in height, interplanetary travel, alien interactions, an abundance of wealth, and robot servitude. Now the future is represented as something more compressed and accessible. The future is on the Internet, in those screens we glance at intermittently at all waking hours of the day. Our expectation is the “IRL” world will look not much unlike what we see today. It is a future of gradual changes, incorporating familiar aspects with new but not too crazy updated technology. What is in abundance is not wealth but information.

The idea of the future is now a distorted mirror. It is the future of screens. Like the daguerreotype, screens contain memory and reflection, as well as an unknown difference only discerning eyes can see. We are overfutured. We’ve reached the point where the past, present, and future look no different from one another."

Overfutured by Joanne McNeil, via newmuseum.org

Why do I blog this? a great quote that echoes with personal observations.

Tom Sachs' DIY Lunar Module

The book called "Space Program" by Tom Sachs stayed on my shelves for quite a while and I never went beyond flipping through it. A vague fever and the continuous fall of the snow gave me a good occasion to read the whole thing cover to cover... and it was a fascinating read.

"Space Program" is first and foremost an art exhibit. It's based on the re-enactment of the Appolo program, in a peculiar way by Sachs and his team. The cornerstone of this oeuvre lies in the reconstruction of various devices, of which the most intriguing one is certainly a 1:1 model of the Lunar Module made of simple stuff-foamcore, hot glue and standard materials such as plywood. Given the importance of the performance, it's important to read the book in conjunction with the video of the Moon exploration designed by Sachs and the team.

What struck me as fascinating in this work is described by Sachs in an insightful discussion with Buzz Aldrin in the book. He basically highlights why, IMHO, his work is of interest and far more important than the being accumulation of weird pictures. The quote below shows the uniqueness of the process and how it leads to relevant design implications:

"Our space program is expensive, slow, and crappy... but that's why it's magic. In my studio, by building functional elements, by making systems really work, we create new problems that require even more work to solve. This compounded work process, with things built according to our strict code of love and haste, defines the look of what we do. So for us, going to the Moon is a physical armature for continuing to practice what we do.

I could argue that our is just as real, although it's maybe more theatrical and more representational (...) my sculptures are not just studies of "real things"; they are real things. Building a spaceship out of plywood creates some special problems that force unique solutions. It's in those solutions that the work has value to me."

Why do I blog this? As shown by Arthur Dento, in his introduction to Sach's book "the work is full of surprises, visual jokes and winks of complexity that are there to assure Sachs' viewers that he and they are on the same page, and that for all that he is a cultural critic". So, to me, this work exemplifies three important things:

• The strong capability of designed artifacts to support a critical viewpoint about human culture: the commodification of space, NASA policies, the role of technologies, etc.,
• The magic of DIY/bricolage and how actually doing something lead to constraints which force to invent original solutions,
• The very notion of design fiction. Personally, I read less and less Space Opera but this kind of book makes more curious and passionate about issues which used to be address in SciFi literature... which are now addressed by designers and artists with their own means of expressions.

Traverse Me: map for pedestrians

"Traverse Me is a map drawn by walking across campus with a GPS device to invite the viewer to see a different landscape to that which surrounds them. It questions the possibilities of where they are and inspires a personal reading of their movements and explorations of the campus. (...) I responded to the structure of each location and avoided walking along roads and paths when possible. The route was recorded with GPS technology and was walked in stages over the 300 hectare site."

via gpsdrawing.com

Why do I blog this? interesting attempt to produce a different form of map. Interestingly, it exemplifies the performative nature of the GPS technology. The map is influenced by the structure of the locations, and, in return, it can influence movement.

A simple value prop: food wifi musik liquors

A value proposition that is clearly stated by these tag/keywords: food wifi musik liquors. What matters at the beginning of the 21st Century in a cafe. Seen in Lyon yesterday afternoon.

Keith Richards about portable cassette recorders

" What is important, Richards declares, is “being able to replay something immediately without all that terrible stricture of written music, the prison of those bars, those five lines. Before 1900, you’ve got Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Chopin, the cancan. With recording, it was emancipation for the people. “It surely can’t be any coincidence that jazz and the blues started to take over the world the minute recording started, within a few years, just like that.” (...) “I’d discovered a new sound I could get out of acoustic guitar,” he writes. “That grinding dirty sound came out of these crummy little motels where the only thing you had to record with was this new invention called the cassette recorder....Suddenly you had a very mini studio. Playing acoustic, you'd overload the Philips cassette player to the point of distortion so that when it played back it was effectively an electric guitar. You were using the cassette player as pick up and amplifier at the same time. We were forcing acoustic guitars through a cassette player, and what came out the other end was electric as hell.” "

via changeobserver.designobserver.com

Why do I blog this? An inspiring quote from a practitioner (!), to be re-used in my course about the evolution of technical objects. It leads to an interesting discussion about how to go beyond technological determinism.

Demon's Souls: location-based communication in a role-playing video-game

When connected to the PlayStation Network, online play is integrated into the single-player experience. Throughout levels, players can briefly see the actions of other players as ghosts in the same area that may show hidden passages or switches. When a player dies, a bloodstain can be left in other players' game world that when activated can show a ghost playing out their final moments, indicating how that person died and potentially helping the player avoid the same fate in advance. Players can also leave messages on the floor that can also help others such as forewarning safe or hostile positions, trap locations and tactics against enemies or bosses, among general comments. When playing with other players, co-operative play allows up to three characters to team up in the host's game world where visiting players appear in soul form that can only be returned to their bodies when a boss is defeated. In competitive play, players can invade a player's adventure as a Black Phantom to engage in combat with the host player. If the Black Phantom kills the host, they can be returned to their body in their own game whereas if killed themselves, the host gains a portion of the Black Phantom's souls.

via en.wikipedia.org

Why do I blog this? An interesting example of geolocalized communication pointed to me by my friend Mirweis Sangin. The idea here is that location-based written traces (left by other players) can inform and help.

Smule's Ocarina design

I guess all of you know Ocarina, a very simple music application on the iPhone. It was kind of hip 1-2 years ago. Interestingly, I ran across this academic paper which describes how Smule designed this app.

Some excerpts I found interesting:

"Given that there are now over a million Smule Ocarina players around the world, this is significant. Over 20 millions snippets have been created and shared, each with precise timing, key, melody information. We have only begun to mine this significant body of musical data. The anonymity of the social interaction is also worthy of note – everyone is only identified via a self-chosen handle (e.g., Link42), their GPS location, and through his/her music. And yet, according to overwhelming user feedback, this seems to be compelling in and of itself. (...) there is a sense of “magic” in wide-area, massive scale location, and furthermore, identity is perhaps not crucial (and anonymity can be just as powerful as it encourages different types of social interactions). Finally, the sheer number of Ocarina users at large shows that perhaps with the right approach and settings (e.g., mobile, personal, easy), we can encourage a large population to engage in expressive music making, and even create global communities virtually overnight. "

The tablatures for user-generated scores are also interesting. Look at the shape:

Why do I blog this? it's always interesting to understand the designers' intentions and reflect upon what has been produced. Ocarina, is basic but its social and locative media component is quite interesting. It's perhaps one of the best example of having an interface that gives a community a mirror about its ongoing activity.

The Economist on the Uncanny Valley (#robot, animation)

"Dr Ho and Dr MacDorman accept the general idea, but they began by throwing out the idea of shinwakan. In their study, just published in Computers in Human Behavior, they say that Dr Mori’s ideas of familiarity and comfort level do not properly get at the quality of uncanniness (...) The volunteers were asked to apply ratings from dozens of scales to each video: machinelike to humanlike, synthetic to real and so on. Scales that turned out to measure the same qualities with different words were eliminated and the researchers eventually lighted on 19 that described aspects of four underlying qualities that they dub attractiveness, eeriness, humanness and warmth. (...) The robots were the Roomba, a disc-shaped autonomous vacuum cleaner, and four anthropoid machines of varying degrees of humanness."

via economist.com

Why do I blog this? Some interesting material to prepare the robolift conference, we'll have a panel about the shape of robots to come. Let's grab the scientific paper mentioned in this article: Too real for comfort? Uncanny responses to computer generated faces

"Robot renaissance map"

The Institute For The Future (IFTF) has just released an interesting map [PDF] of signals and forecasts about robotics:

"After decades of hype, false starts, and few successes, smart machines are finally ready for prime time. (...) This map, and the associated series of written perspectives, are tools to help navigate the coming changes. As we scanned across ten application domains, seven big forecasts emerged. In the process, we also identified three key areas of impact where the robot renaissance will change our lives over the next decade.

In each domain we focus on three levels of impacts: (1) Robots helping humans understand ourselves (2) Robots augment human abilities (3) Robots automate human tasks"

Why do I blog this? Both because I am working on a project about robotics and due to my interest in how technologies fail and re-appear on a regular basis. I am not sure about the term "renaissance" and do not necessarily agree with some of the trends but there are some interesting aspects in this anyway. Above all, what I am interested in here is:

• The variation in terms of shape/forms and what is considered here as a "robot",
• The assumpttions made about humans needs and desires,
• The mix between engineering projects, quotes from sci-fi movies and pictures,
• The rhetorical tricks (present tense, "from XXX to XXX", "Rise", "Every machine", "self-manage".

Grafikdemo: Transition between reality and 3D representation

Grafikdemo by Niklas Roy is another interesting project I stumbled across in Basel two weeks ago. The set-up is pretty basic: it consists in a physical wireframe model of a teapot included inside a Commodore CBM 3032 cabinet. The user/viewer can rotate the model by pressing some keys on the keyboard. As formulated by the artist, "Sophisticated lighting of the model makes it hard for the viewer to distinguish whether he sees a real digital model or a fake computer screen".

This project hence "explores the transition between reality and representation in a playful way" and the choice of a teapot is definitely not fortuitous: ""The decision of using a teapot as wireframe model is a result of this object’s outstanding importance in computer animation history".

In an interview, Roy explained:

"My intent was simply to create a physical copy of a digital object and look what happens. It was an experiment. And I did what I've done all the years before as a 3D animator: I've built a 3D wireframe model. When I started to build it, it was funny to recognize that I did everything in the same way and order, like if I would have done it with a 3D modeling software. The lighting was also an experiment: I wanted to let the wireframe model glow, but I don't really like the look of UV light, because It always has this cheap disco touch. So, I've put a green gel (maybe the better word is filter?) behind the monitor glass, which blocks the UV light. The result was that you only see the green wires but no blacklight. At the end, the piece worked much better than I had expected. Many people who play with it don't understand at the beginning what they see and how it is done. They first think is that it is a very sophisticated 3D display in an old computer. But when they start to wonder about the strange motor noises, which happen when they push the buttons, they start to recognize that this is a simple mechanical device."

Why do I blog this? I simply loved the beautiful design of the artifact, as well as the teapot rendering with this green color. IMHO it acts as a sort of tribute to the internet/cyber-culture. The idea of manipulating a real wireframe model is brilliant.