>>	living in mixed realities, conference on communication of art, science and technology, 21 / 22-11-01 Sankt Augustin Bonn (D)

LAB[au] laboratory for architecture and urbanisme Manuel Abendroth, Jérôme Decock , Alexandre Plennevaux http://www.lab-au.com             go.to lab.files	> organization ... > space,navigable music ... > i,skin, electronic bodyness
	Cast01//: communication of art, science and technology Monika Fleischmann, Wolfgang Strauss MARS Exploratory Media Lab, Frauenhofer Institute for Media Communication   ' For the first time, the conference cast01/communication of art, science and technology is taking place in September 2001. The intention of the conference is to present the status of research, theory and teaching on the subject of "living in mixed realities" from such different perspectives as media art and interface design, as well as information technology and media communication. The dialogue among researchers, artists, and designers is intended to stimulate intercultural cooperation to reflect on and improve life in a digital networked society…' … Living in mixed realities ' Telecommunication and information technology, the Internet and mobile communication produce a globally interlaced space, thereby changing our understanding of space. The notion of Mixed Reality was mentioned for the first time in 1994 by Paul Milgrim in his paper on Mixed Reality visual displays aiming to enhance the limited research field of Virtual Reality. According to Steve Mann, wearable computing promises ubiquity any time anywhere…' ' Cast 01 presents examples addressing Mixed Reality that communicate information and locate the user in a situation of presence and awareness… Internationally well known keynote speakers like Roy Ascott, Bill Buxton,Manfred Faßler, Perry Hoberman, Natalie Jeremijenko will navigate you through the two-days field of inspiring new concepts in the ambience of Birlinghoven castle in Sankt Augustin near Bonn, Germany.' Conference Catalogue preface by Monika Fleischmann, Wolfgang Strauss, page 8-9. For conference program go to: http://www.netzspannung.org/cast01
	sPACE, Navigable Music LAB[au] laboratory for architecture and urbanism Manuel Abendroth - Jerome Decock - Alexandre Plennevaux - Grégoire Verhaegen Lab-au@lab-au.com Abstract : 'sPACE, Navigable Music' is an online project investigating the impact of new technologies and particularly, modelling languages and Real Time 3D rendering (such as VRML) on the notions of space and time. Space is a pure navigation space, a cyberspace experience which, through differentiated space-body relations, reveals its inherent characteristics, particularly the ones of displacement, dematerialization and the absence of gravity. Cyberspace as a mental space transforms the modes of perception, thus affecting our comprehension of space, our behaviors and questions differentiated and object-relationship systems such as gravity. The website links the theoretical researches to several experimentations on the forms of interactions in a real-time three-dimensional space relating architecture, music and cinema. The file 'Navigable Music' assembles several interactions into one experiment, in which the user experiments cyberspace (sound/space) by dropping sounds into space, mixing music throughout space and navigation, record its movements to produce an animation, a travelling in its acoustic space architecture, a music video clip. Keywords: Hypermedia formats (VRML) - Mixed Reality Environment- Virtual reality architecture. Project URL: http://www.lab-au.com/space Note: the Blaxxun vrml plug-in is required Year the Work was created: 2001 [1]:// e.space CONSTRUCTion In 'sPACE, Navigable Music', the object or architecture is generated in real time by an information process (geometrical transformations, mapping sequences, sound structure…) directly related to the position and movements of the user. Operating on basic parameters, the integration of spatial functions (x, y, z -displacement) and of time (t- speed), each interaction transforms the environment, a dynamic, multidirectional space, with information as the core substance and no pre-defined unalterable laws, such as the relation mass/gravity. The relationship between the object-space system and the body-mental projection system (subjective view/avatar) induces new modes of perception. The spatial coordinates and the orientation relative to the two systems affecting the formalization become, through movement, our senses of perception. The negotiation that is established between the spatial formalization processes and the interactivity (displacement) leads to a spatial experience, a differential gravity based on the 'open' relation (processual, generative and behavioural) between the space and the body. In this manner, Space is based on one question, this fundamental relationship (experience) between space, body, object… in the electronic medium, that does not only modify the mass/energy relation but also the spatio-temporal condition. [2]:// Shared If space conditions our relation to objects, it also acts on our relation to others (presence). 'sPACE' is also a shared space, allowing several users to share their individual experience of space in a continuous medium. 'sPACE' is a space reacting to the collective and individual interactions, re-defining space as an active medium of communication (negotiation), the objects being the supports for representation of these computation processes. [3]:// Installation The installation operates as an interface transforming our usual relationship to the screen and the modes of perception. In between two mirrors (one on the ground, one on the ceiling), the user finds himself immerged in a continuous projected space, that is infinitely multiplied and within which the image of the self, mirror, fusions with the projected image in the electronic space - cyberspace. Its perception mode shifted from horizontal to vertical, navigating by looking either upward/downards, the user moves through the immaterial space that is infinite whilst giving a multiplied vision of its self, the user's head and feet both reflected in the mirrors. While standing up, physiological condition, this transformation of the (cognitive and mental) perception induces a loss of orientation by improving the penetration of electronical space within the material one. This transformation of the confrontation user/screen leads to an unusual vision that provides the user with the sensation to float above and inside the projected space, to orient himself, to freely move and position himself, to be inside a multidirectional space, the sensation of a differential gravity. This immersion within a mental space and 'floating' experience is strengthened by the 'octa-phonic' sound system, reacting according to the movements, the users' navigation in the electronic space. The installation, based on the setup of two mirrors/screens, one on the ground, the other hanged on the ceiling, proposes an immediate immersion of the user in a projected space - by simply turning its head upward is plunged in another condition of perception, emerging out of it by turning its head downward again. The installation aims at this continuity between the physical space and the pure mental one, by proposing an immersion through the immediate transformation (with no initiation) of the perception system and by proposing an experience of differential gravity , a kind of anti-gravity. By involving two persons (one user, one operator) that navigate at the same time in the electronic space, the experience is enriched, complexified, with the interactivity, presence of the other - thus becoming a collective experience. This way, the installation - interface - proposes a navigation relating the mental space, VRML and sound, with the space of the body through a shared experience. This experience goes between at least two persons connected through a Local Area Network. This interfacing enlarges the navigation to an experience generated as much by the individual navigation as by the shared one. ... > top
	i-skin, electronic bodyness Manuel Abendroth, Jérôme Decock + Naziha Mestaoui + Christophe Beaufays LAB[au]+ Naziha Mestaoui +CRSTOF lab-au@lab-au.com / naziha@electronicshadow.com / crstof@yahoo.com Abstract: The i-skin project, conceived and realised by LAB[au],laboratory for architecture and urbanism ,the fashion designer CRSTOF and Naziha Mestaoui, architect in the scope of Avignon 2000 exhibition ' La beauté ', investigates the theme of identity by confronting it with the emergence and the social implications of modern communication and information technologies. By proposing an experience binding physical to digital through the vector of an "avatar", the installation underlines the questions relating to the perception, the representation and the extension of the individual in electronic space. The i-skin project is a construct on the migration of the human body into the electronic space of communication and computation technologies as a hybrid extension of body, clothing and architecture. The programming of these three skins into one single display includes complex identification and representation codes based on mental and cognitive rather than physical processes. The programming of behaviors and instructions into form - InFormation - is based on visual communication and identification code - image ; individual identification and social representation codes - identity ; processual thinking and programming - interactivity , coding of sign/shapes out of data structures - information Keywords: Avatarchitecture - DNArchitecture - Behavior mapping - mixed reality Project URL : http://www.lab-au.com/i-skin Year the Work was created : 2000 Project Partners / Projektpartner: La Mission 2000 Project Description : avatar : Today's avatars are mainly figurative representations, simple bodily transpositions possessing limited functionalities, limited codings, they are poor information transmitters. Yet, an avatar has the potential to become an incorporating vector of communication of the complex cultural and social identification and personal expression codes. (mixed reality) Consequently the avatar is the interface that will in the future enable people to experiment virtual environments through new senses and by extending the communication modes. Just like the face of a human, the avatar is a screen of faciality, an interface which veils and reveals the identity, the character and the expression; it is similar to a skin, being at the same time a mean of protection and a mean of communication.   The constitution of the i-skin The project is conceived as an interactive installation introducing each visitor to the creation of such avatar, weaving a link of identification between the person and its double. The visitor participates in real-time to the creation of its avatar, enriches it by selecting images from an interactive slideshow on a touch screen. The 'archetypal' and 'figurative' display (starting point) of the avatar, the i-skin, is transformed, individualised through each choice of the user of images. The images to be selected coming out of three for the user not readable classification categories (body, clothing and architecture), each one influencing one of the parameters and one of the skins, defining the form and the appearance of the avatar. 1. body: influences the colour of the i-skin 2. clothing: influences its texture 3.architecture : sheltering an individual by linking identification processes to representation. The process of creating an i-skin therefore builds up a codification of the avatar appearance by linking the spontaneous associations of the user's panel of selected images to the parameters of the i-skin transformation. The fusion of the ' three skins' in only one representation of the individual thus deals with the codification of appearance and the mapping of behaviors not characterizing the avatar as a blunt figurative representation of the body but rather as a representation of its psyche and behavior, like a mental cartography (Thinkmap). Indeed, the image, vector of complex visual codifications, translates the mental, cognitive and emotional processes leading, through interactivity and identification, to define the personality of an individual or a group. This method of image mapping has turned into a common step in industrial production in the development and qualification of new product series. The process of creating an avatar, building a representation out of images, thus illustrates the link between information and appearance: i-skin, an information skin. The question of identity in electronic space reveals the one of information structures and displays. Therefore, the generation of an i-skin is based on a dynamic process building up the i-skin as a personal display and host of information. Each image is treated as a piece of information transforming the avatar, and, according to the moment it is selected, builds successively a space integrated into the avatar, where it is recorded thus introducing the parameter of time. The 'metaball' moving up and down along the inner spiral of the i-skin defines, each time the user interacts, a point in space. Throughout these co-ordinates the i-tunnel, the inner structure of the i-skin is progressively constituted. This integration of the time parameter to the spatial and structural ones extends the i-skin to an organism processed out of information - as a specific, personal architecture of textures movements and sounds. The processing of specific forms through information- inFORMing - combined with the archetypal display of the i-skin and the recording of behaviors even more extend the question of identity from visual, to cultural an social parameters and determinates the question of identification throughout cognitive and mental parameters. This assemblage operates like a DNA spiral, a set of processual information, a transmitted and transmissible structure, and an encoded index of behavior. It is in the complexity of the relations among consulted links and the nature of their original organization in a visual sequence, that the assemblage takes its significance underlining the importance of the constitution of differentiated types yet, all originated from the same elementary material. From this signifying complexity emerges the possible reading of a behavioral structure, like the genotype of the avatar. The avatar thus constitutes a representation on two levels, an external codified "envelope", skin, and an internal space of recorded information. By touching, clicking on, the surface of a I-skin, one crosses this space and sees the information it absorbed, its code or its constitutive images. Therefore the i-skin, vehicle and personal representation, integrates an architecture of interpersonal communication, thus bridging appearance and communication.   The collective space of the i'skins Each i-skin created by a user is automatically placed on a specific space coordinate (x,y,z) in a three-dimensional electronic environment, the collective space. The different space coordinates correspond to the average value of users choices calculated according to the image indexing principle, the three classification axis ; (body - clothing - architecture). The 'i-skin' thus constitutes a qualification and quantification of all the user choices, becoming a general evaluation (3D mapping) through the spatialization principle. The more users create their i'skins the more the collective space reveals densities where users made similar choices. The visitors of the installation can navigate through this space using there own i-skin where the various stages of the navigation system, the "zooms" inside this space, make it possible to have not only a global picture, a statistical vision but ultimately also to discover a person through his/her space of information/code, vision of the individual. The collective space reveals, through the external and internal visions, the processes of personal affection and social sense of belonging. This AvatarArchitecture is the expression of the hybridization of body space and mind space, fusing abstraction with figuration, identity with representation. AvatarArchitecture is either a device allowing the presence of the user, its extension in the electronic medium but also the translation of self-consciousness. the installation: Extending the experimentation of a real world enhanced by the digital one, the installation scenography proposes the visitor to penetrate a space where the image turns into architecture merging the electronic space with the concrete one, mixed reality The visitor is dropped into a highly reflective space, a Plexiglas pleat, a continuous surface banded in space producing a multi-layered architecture. The pleat constitutes the projection screen, with folds to be crossed, creating a game of multiple forms of presence between shadow, reflection and projection combining the physical experience of body space with the mental, digital one.   The installation is based on the construct dissolving the dichotomatic relations (like inside-outside, ground and sky…) between surface and space, by fusing these binaries into one single element. Enhanced to information displays, the hyper-surfaces describe the passage from the bi-dimensional sheet, the surface, to the n-dimensional space of information - its perception and interaction. So these hypersurfaces can be defined as the programming of information and behaviors in space according to the relation of perception and conception of space and information displays. Through the themes of the body, clothing and architecture, the entirety of the i-skin project plays with the possibilities that new communication and information technologies offer in the mutation of these concepts and their respective value.   Authors: LAB[au], laboratoire d'architecture et d'urbanisme Manuel Abendroth, Jérôme Decock 19, Quai au Foin B - 1000 Bruxelles e-mail : lab-au@lab-au.com - http://www.lab-au.com CRSTOF Christophe Beaufays, fashion designer, 18, Rue Le Marois F - 75016 Paris e-mail : crstof@yahoo.com - http://surf.to/crstof Naziha Mestaoui, architect , 45, av Parmentier F - 75011 Paris e-mail: naziha@electronicshadow.com - http://www.electronicshadow.com ...> top
© LAB[au] 2001