Squarely in the “because you can” category: YouDisco is a research project at New York’s Eyebeam that simultaneously streams up to eight YouTube videos onto a rotating virtual disco ball. Frame rate is … well, impressive given what it’s doing. The project is the work of Jennifer Jacobs at Eyebeam “with the help of Jeff Crouse.”

http://youdisco.jenniferj.net/?id=51

What is interesting about this is that you do get interesting effects on a computer screen when you leave 4:3 rectangles behind, just as in projection.

Along the same lines, though focused on a mash-up of two videos side by side (sometimes to hilarious effect):

http://www.youtubedoubler.com/ (which is, for me, playing Shatner yelling “Kahn!”)

Lots of interesting graffiti and motion and illustration work on Jennifer’s blog, like this piece:

Nurse from jennifer jacobs on Vimeo.

Share, the thesis project of Yannick Assogba in the MIT Media Lab Sociable Media Group, is an interesting idea in coding: it’s basically a peer-to-peer sketchbook for creative code. All of your sketches are synced to everyone else’s sketches, and Share tracks the connections between users.

http://share.media.mit.edu/about

You get more from Share than you would from simply, say, sharing a Subversion repository. Share not only syncs code and changes, but also tracks each time you copy and paste code from elsewhere, so that code snippets borrowed from others can be traced through the people using the system.

Up to 30 people are now invited for an online competition using the tool.

The Share Experiment is an online competition/design-a-thon/hack-a-thon and exhibition that invites 30 participants form to use Share to make new creative works over the course of ten days. The theme of this competition is "Inspired By Pong". Though the final result need not be games, artists/hackers are invited to reinterpret and remix the concept of pong while at the same time being open to reinterpretations and sampling of their own work as it being created. The Share Experiment will run from June 5th - June 14th and we are inviting applications. There will be some prizes awarded to winners (including iPod Touch[es] and Arduino kits) and we have some interesting ideas about mechanics for awarding prizes!

http://share.media.mit.edu/participate (via toxi on Twitter)

What is the Best Way to Share?

It’s a very cool idea, but this does raise some questions about implementation. It’s too bad that Share can’t run as some sort of plug-in; it loses some of the functionality of the bare-bones Processing editor, let alone the capabilities of an IDE like Eclipse or NetBeans. If it used a standard IDE, too, it’d be easier to be “language-agnostic” as the creator suggests. (OpenFrameworks or Flash or Processing, it wouldn’t really matter.)

But as a concept and an experiment, this looks really fascinating. It should be interesting to see how people use the code. And will users in a “competition” do a lot of copying and pasting, or focus mainly on their own work?

Part of the reason I bring up this is that we’re interested on CDM in doing some shared work. “Share” I think would be too limiting; it’s back to the old-fashioned Subversion approach.

So, for instance, we’re organizing a hackday around tangible interfaces in June, the first of what I hope will be many more. We’ll have people working on it in person in New York, but also folks collaborating around the world online. I’ll post more details, but just to kick off the discussion:

http://hackday.noisepages.com

I first saw Linger in Shadows on the Playstation Store Dashboard - the poster image was intriguing, and the game itself is only $2.99. Curious, I clicked through for more information…

Holy crap. It’s Interactive Art. On my Playstation.

The developers are Plastic, a Demoscene group from Poland. Gamespot UK reported on it earlier this year, writing that Sony actually approached these folks and got them hooked up with PS3 dev kits.

Looking to the product itself, I’ve found it to be visually engaging, as well as a bit confusing. Instructions are eschewed in favor of simple icons and a black-box approach: figure out what you’re doing by doing it. I personally love this sort of system, but I can see it being a turn-off for many. Someone involved must have known that, as they offer two modes: Linger, which is the interactive mode, and Watch, in which the demo plays out for you with no interaction necessary.

Could this be the start of the PS3 as a platform for Interactive Art? While it leaves much to be desired in the departments of openness and availability to artists/developers, it does have a fantastically huge userbase and great interface devices (controllers/guitars/drums/etc).

Update: The Mogulus server seems to have been slammed today, and streams are running 5 minutes out of sync. So we’ll try this again another time when the free world hasn’t recently appointed a new leader…

Politics isn’t part of what we do here at CDM, or what I do here in Brisbane, but a new leader of the free world is a reasonably big event, so I’ve allowed myself to be roped in to playing a set for the conclusion of the Canada For Obama streaming web party tonight!

Streaming: No it doesn’t really require this much gear

The party will be mediated through (wait for it), Mogulus, and is organized by McLean Mashingaidze-Greaves, or “that geeky black guy” of Nimble.TV, who I hooked up with at X|Media|Lab Melbourne.

So, two hours from now I’ll be live in the Canada For Obama channel.

After this set, CDM will be running a parallel gig on our own Mogulus Channel. I had such a blast with the NetLag night, and so many audience members expressed an interest in partaking in future events, I’ve decided that an election party is the perfect excuse to give it another spin.

So, being short notice, I’m happy to keep this relaxed and free-form. Think of it like a streaming open-mic night for visualists and audiologists, a chance to give this streaming thing a spin. I’ll be around the CDM mogulus channel for most of today, and we’ll have rolling 30 minute sets from whoever is around and keen. If you’d like to take part come and say hello, send me an email, and we’ll get you hooked up. If you’re an AV artist or crew, great! Show us what you’ve got. If you’re a visualist, put on some tunes and take us for a spin through what you’re working on. Musicians? Turn your webcam on a lava lamp, or go Elija B Torn style with a web- or DV-cam.

Update: Not happening today as the Mogulus server isn’t playing nice, but if you’d like to be part of a future CDM Open Jam get in touch anyway.

If you’re not in to fluorescing trance, then perhaps the Cinesthesy Festival may be more your speed. Starting now and extending through Saturday is a mammoth lineup of fantastic AV acts from France and across Europe.

Live video chat by Ustream

Featuring French VJ blogger extraordinaire Le Collagiste (playing at the time of this posting), friend of CDM Solu (check out her video interview from ByteMe Fest), Incite, REP and many more, the festival has 18 acts spread across Friday and Saturday.

Cinesthesy is curated by Les Pixels Transversaux, who also produce the Visionsonic series of DVDs. They’ve been putting on interesting and innovative events, and it’s fantastic seeing this progress to a point where it can be watched, live, from places outside of Paris.

Previously: Les Occasions performance on Vixid.Noisepages.