Picture by Christian Iten & Daniel LüthiAnd here is another interactive multitouch display from the Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst, Zürich.
If you like this you might also find the following interesting:
Multitouch interaction research at NYU
and the interactive multitouch instrument Reactable
Wow, only a few posts and already there’s a war around my writing on the Berlinaleblog (Watch more pictures and read the whole story about how I sneaked into the big gala night).
This campaign is maybe the best blog / brand / personality campaign so far in Germany: Schlämmerblog, branded entertainment.
German bloggers are tough on the recently issued German Vanity Fair and critizise the big gap between pretension and reality, some even rip it apart visually.
Check out Agnes Obel on Myspace – beautiful dreamy and elegant music from Kopenhagen.
I got this hint via an sms, somebody believed having seen a blogpost about the Reactable here and wanted to inform me that this fascinating digital music-interface is in Berlin for Transmediale at M12. Actually, I did not know about this project by the Audiovisual Institute at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona but it is similar to the Multi touch interface I posted some weeks ago. Watch this demonstration and be amazed by the blend of the visual effects and the music controlling capacities.
“The reactable, is a state-of-the-art multi-user electro-acoustic music instrument with a tabletop tangible user interface. Several simultaneous performers share complete control over the instrument by moving physical artefacts on the table surface and constructing different audio topologies in a kind of tangible modular synthesizer or graspable flow-controlled programming language.”
Spending my days in the library and reeling in between insight and confusion, I’d just like to use this as a little sketch of what organization identity might be, in science and in practice.
Science
Ever since the ground-breaking article by Albert & Whetten, defining organizational identity as what is central, distinctive and enduring about an organization, a wide range of scholars have emerged, trying to theoretically describe and analyze this field. In their views, organizational identity serves as a cognitive frame for understanding reality, as shared assumptions about the world that lead to collective actions (just like in organizational culture), as a discourse about sense and reality (therefore there can be multiple identities to organizations), as collective claims about the contents of the organization and room for personal identification (e.g. “I am with Boston Consulting now, boy, I’m proud, we are so going to do a good job on this project!” social identity theory).
I just filled out a survey about the students’ expectations for a new portal and social network for all students of the Freie Universität Berlin. I have to admit, I was quite surprised about the quality of the questions, the whole approach seems very promising to me. Let alone the fact to actually ask the users and recruit them for beta testing through a survey before starting to develop a social network platform is a plus. It seems ironic because this should be the case for all user driven online platforms but sadly enough is seldom the case.
If you are a FU student, take part in the survey until january 15th! Continue reading
Hans Rosling on TEDtalks“TED was born in 1984 out of the observation by Richard Saul Wurman of a powerful convergence between Technology, Entertainment and Design. The first TED included the public unveiling of the Macintosh computer and the Sony compact disc, while mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot demonstrated how to map coastlines with his newly discovered fractals and AI guru Marvin Minsky outlined his powerful new model of the mind.”
Now TED Talks features many, many highly interesting speeches online that are really worth watching. I especially enjoyed Hans Rosling’s speech about Gapminder and data visualization (sounds boring but he is entertaining, educating AND funny) and Barry Schwartz, author of “The paradox of choice” who explains why more choice does NOT mean more freedom, on the contrary. A point, I am pretty sure, all of you have discussed with friends considering what you want to be in this world and how the many possibilities we have these days are more a burden than alleviation.
I’m pretty sure that the T-Mobile brand managers celebrated their scoop to place T-Com’s corporate sound into the stylish fashion movie “The devil wears Prada“. Everytime protagonist Andrea’s phone rings you can hear their insistent “tüdelüdelü”. Hands down, good job!
But: The phone slowly becomes the symbol of Andrea always being at her boss’ command, under pressure, a servant in this overwound fashion world. The sound makes her boyfriend sigh, her father frown, it’s pure stress, it’s irritating, waking you up in the morning, preventing you from sleep at night.. I don’t know if that message is the one the said brand managers thought about. Maybe the scoop actually was pretty stupid.
Rember “Minority Report”? The best thing in this movie were the fascinating interfaces the policemen used to gather information. Big touchscreens that react to the movements of several fingers or even several hands on interactive walls or table tops. Well, there is something like this in reality and of course, I liked the idea of the digital touchscreen turntable (as seen in the picture).
Jeff Hahn and his colleagues at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University are working on that and there’s an impressive movie clip to visualize their efforts. Mindblowing, music by Peter Kruder.
[via sounds.imnetz]
“It is a dance organized by the drug lords, where the violence and frustration explodes.”
Remember “City of God?” I recently watched this great movie again.
So, what’s the origin of violence and war? The answer seems simple: Angry young men. Sociologically this is summarized in the theory of the “Youth Bulge” which describes the battle of the sons for the powerful positions in a society. Happens all over the world for centuries, again and again. Terror and war are the most recent outcomes, the scientist Gunnar Heinsohn has written a fascinating book about the connection between the spare sons, fundamentalism, terror and war: “Söhne und Weltmacht” And now enjoy a short clip from the VICE travel DVD “Surviving the slums of Rio” Continue reading
I wish, we had such a sharpminded satiric in Germany to confront politicians with their everyday madness. Here are my favourite interviews with US congressmen from the Colbert report (the series is called “Better know a district”). Hilarious: A Republican who doesn’t know the ten commandments, the unopposed candidate whom Colbert asks to say things that would “really lose you the elcetion” (had he a challenger) or the Oregan congresswomen he asks if she is high. Click for the videos
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