Tim Devine

37ºC – Wearable Senseware

tim — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 19:54:27 +0000

37ºC is a wearable body temperature display in the form of a broach that alerts you and the public to your body temperature – indicative of your health.

Our experiences in public spaces are becoming increasingly rich with data – abstractions of the virtual and real environments. The devices we carry on our body are super-connective to the internet, the environment and each other. They ship with multiple acute sensors and softwares. As a statement object, it embodies a sense of intensity associated with health that is performative in social and public environments throughout crowded modern cities.

It is immersed and fused with the flow of media and information also ubiquitous in cities. Although, as it is a digital device, it affords a sense that it will change at any moment as the body shifts in a constant state of biological flux.

Project Questions:

•How will such a broach be perceived in public?

•How will the wearer feel when they wear it?

•Will people reflect further on information displayed in public spaces.

Thumb Fu!

tim — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 21:56:54 +0000

Thumb Fu! is super enhanced thumb wrestling.

We use conductive fabric and thread to create thumb suits. When the characters touch sound effects are triggered. If somebody is pinned down a countdown begins and then a winning fanfare is played.

The Mexican Standoff – Creating a Hyperreality

tim — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 19:58:57 +0000

The Mexican Standoff removes the link between the persons thoughts and actions; people are directly thinking about what they are doing – creating a hyperreality.

Two people use their minds via EEG headsets to fire their guns in a Mexican Standoff realised in an first person shooter (FPS). The characters take a long time to die so the game can last for quite some time. To trigger the EEG interface the person needs to think about pulling a trigger on their right hand. When this is detected the avatar will begin to shoot the other. In popular culture, a Mexican Standoff is usually portrayed as two or more opponents with guns at the ready, creating a very tense situation. A Mexican standoff is a slang term defined as a stalemate or impasse, a confrontation that neither side can win.

The Mexican Standoff removes the physical link between the persons thoughts and actions; people are directly thinking about what they are doing – creating a hyperreality.

Two players stand facing each other in a long room wearing EEG headsets connected wirelessly to a computer. The first-person view of each player from Counter Strike is projected onto the opponents body; so each player is ‘clothed’ in their Counter Strike character. When the headsets detect via EEG analysis that the player is relaxed they will fire their weapon.

In popular culture, a Mexican Standoff is usually portrayed as two or more opponents with guns at the ready, creating a very tense situation. A Mexican standoff is a slang term defined as a stalemate or impasse, a confrontation that neither side can win.

This was developed with Onur Sönmez at MediaLab Prado, Madrid in January 2010

Newsleak – A Hybrid Media Publication

tim — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 15:34:54 +0000

Newsleak is not an art project.

A Newsleak is a publication: a motivated functional hybrid of real and digital cultures and media. Press a button on a pink box in the urban environment to instantly receive a printed summary of the latest news from around the world, news from your current location, news of internet cultures, events, trends and social media.

Our aim is to cultivate a functional exchange between the real space and the virtual space. Think of a Newsleak as you would any other print media publication: it has a target audience, a distinct style and type of content, and specific intervals and methods of distribution. Most publications are fundamentally focused on the target audience and the target audience is defined by the content and distribution.

Who is our target audience?

Our target audience ranges from those who seldom use the internet and are unaware of cultures or services of the internet. To those who are often connected to the internet and engage in social media of some kind.

The target audience is a mirror of the content we provide and functions to overlap the borders of the real and virtual spaces. Think of how the content of a credible newspaper is structured – world, politics, business and sport. Not every section will be relevant to every reader, but every reader accepts that every section is relevant to their broader environment and culture. As our everyday begins to exist more in virtual spaces and information about how we behave and act in these spaces is made available the more we should reflect and report about it: the more, ‘we‘ should pertain to people from both spaces.

A Newsleak content structure -

Worldwide:

Latest news worldwide,
Top Twitter Trends worldwide.

Local area:

Latest local Twitter posts,
Latest local internet search trends,
Current temperature, time and location,
Latest music performances in area searched from MySpace.
Latest local photos from Flikr

Internet Culture:

Twitscoop tag cloud,
Reddit article,
Digg article,
Tumblr images or text collage.

A wonderful venn diagram mantra for Newsleak by Mahir M. Yavuz

Technical Description

Newsleak is situated in different parts of different cities as a button on a box on a street pole with a slot for the news to ‘leak’ from the internet. It is simple, light and fast.

Newsleak will download and store content every 30 seconds so that when the button is pressed the information is instantly printed from a thermal printer. We use a thermal printer because it can print up to 10 meters per minute and can print various lengths depending on how long each edition is. It is light, consumable relevant media. The content will also be accessible in the virtual space via a website that tracks your IP.

This is a collaborative project developed at Kitchen Budapest conceived by Tim Devine CV, Jayme Cochrane CV and Shervin Afshar

Initial Printing Tests

Two Computers at Leisure Playing Chess in a Park

tim — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 20:16:17 +0000

Two computers face each other and play a game of chess together using spoken moves and speech recognition.

Our encounters with technology spark a diversity of human emotions. Continuously extending in parallel with technological development. Technology is more embedded, sensory and mobile, and as a result, so is the behavior of the objects that embrace it. What experiences do we expect from our encounters with our everyday objects? How would we like our robots to relate to us: subservient, intimate, dependent, equal? How will the behavior of objects change our relationship to them. How would you perceive two computers at leisure playing chess in a park speaking english to each other?

This project embraces several themes from AI and gaming, to a technological spectacle and autonomous verbal communication between otherwise computational devices. By staging two computers in a park playing chess we are also establishing them in a role of leisure; the computers are perceived as not performing a task for the user but more as performing a task for themselves.

This project is in collaboration with Onur Sönmez

The Society of The Spectacle

tim — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 21:45:31 +0000

In The Society of The Spectacle an egg is taken from under a hen and set in an incubator 17 days before the exhibition opens. The incubator is installed in a room and as people look directly at the incubator it switches off, effecting the consistency of the temperature and humidity environment inside the incubator and thus the chances of the egg hatching. On the 21st day of incubation a chick is expected to hatch. If not then for the remainder of the exhibition the egg will rest in the incubator with no chance of life.

The Society of The Spectacle was exhibited at The Royal Interface Culture Masquerade Ball during the Ars Electronica Festival 2009 in Linz, Austria.

The egg did not hatch.

Temple Electronica

tim — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 19:00:01 +0000

The Ars Electronica building in Linz, Austria is very different to any other building in the city. It interfaces with the city similar to the way religious buildings have throughout history. As for what the building represents as The Museum of the Future, it could also be said that technology actually makes us behave in strange disciplined ways similar to religious customs.

Temple Electronica provides all the answers to everyone’s questions. The first ever temple of its kind in the world is situated in the heart of the city of Linz. Ask your private questions and let the answer out to the whole world.

Oh people let yourself be saved, assured or discouraged… BELIEVE!

To touch the frog and ask your question please visit Ars Electronica Museum’s Main Deck – September 5 2009 after 23 o’clock.

Temple Electronica is a project in collaboration with Onur Sönmez

A Game of Marbles

tim — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 12:44:33 +0000

A Game of Marbles

Oxfam Refugee Realities Landmine Experience

tim — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 09:11:11 +0000

This is a landmine experience for Oxfam as part of Refugee Realities. Refugee Realities is a simulation based experience that puts you in the shoes of a person displaced by war. The concept is that as people begin their journey as refugees they experience different ways refugees often have to travel, one of them being through a field of landmines. If a mine is triggered then a badge flips into the air with either a sling, eye patch or crutch printed on it. For the rest of the day they would have to either walk with a crutch, use only one arm or wear an eye patch.

The experience was run at Gasworks Arts Park in Albert Park, Melbourne, between 22 February and 13 March 2008.

7,000 visitors including 4,000 Victorian school children walked through the Refugee Realities installation, which included the landmine field, border crossing, shelter area, food and water collection points and medical tent.

The event generated significant media attention:

Evaluating impact

In July 2008, Oxfam Australia completed a thorough evaluation of the Refugee Realities event in Melbourne. The evaluation looks at the impact of the simulation on the 7,000 visitors who experienced it. You can find the evaluation here.

Landmine Installation

The Society of The Spectacle

tim — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 12:43:14 +0000

The Society of The Spectacle was exhibited at The Royal Interface Culture Masquerade Ball during the Ars Electronica Festival 2009 in Linz, Austria.

The egg did not hatch.

The incubator in amongst the spectacle