Team: suno (Flash/Director programming), Vincent Steurs (graphic design)

A place is not only a spot on the map- it is also associated to an specific context and stories. However, it is usually ignored by people in their daily life. The Urban soundtrack assigns each area within a city its own unique and representative sound which can be received by the special bicycle bell. For example, when people pass a bridge across a canal by bicycle, their bicycles will receive a piece of romantic music which can be associated to this place. In this way, a historical building, an open market and even a construction site can be more meaningful to the citizens.

The observation on the road

To obtain more inspiration and insight for the design concept, I walked around the central area of Amsterdam and took lots of pictures which represented the interesting phenomenon regarding the use and situation of bicycles in this city.
As a result, I categorized these photos into three main topics:
1. The symbols and signs on the road regarding the behaviors of using bicycles. (e.g. suggestion and forbiddance)
2. The places and approaches people park their bicycles.
3. The relationship between bikes. (What if bicycles can sense each other?)

A bike bell as the interface of collecting and playing urban soundtrack

I chose a bike bell as the interface of a bike to collect and play sound from the surrounding because it is an “ordinary” accessory for most bikes. People do not need to attach any other additional gadgets on their bicycles for the Urban soundtrack.
Moreover, a bike bell is usually considered as the representation of personalization which has the potential for being enhanced in order to improve people’s experience.

[Scenario]

Based on the lectures during the workshop, I made this structure of the scenarios in order to answer these essential questions: Design for whom? Why? What to achieve? How?

Scenario-01: Collecting and playing Urban soundtrack

Once the new coming sound is restored by the bike bell, people can trigger the bell to play it as the ring of their bicycle.
The bike ring is no longer the ordinary “ding ding” sound, instead, it can recall people’s memory and identification with the places they have ever been. It is like the theme song which belongs to the specific area.

Scenario-02: Modifying and mixing received sound according to the relationship between bikes

In this scenario, I tried to personalize bikes as they have real emotion and feeling.
These bikes not only receive and play locative sound, but they also change the tone and pitch of these sounds by their “emotion”.
For example, if someone parks his bike just near another bike, these two bikes will feel “touched” and then change the sound they have restored before into happier and more cheerful tone. On the contrary, if one bike is placed with lots of bikes in a messy situation, it will feel terrible and thus modify the sound more depressed.
In consequence, the Urban sound is not only determined by the location but also depends on the behavior of people and the different situation.

[Prototype]

Hardware: RFID tags and reader, bicycle bell, mouse hack
Software: Processing, Flash

[General info.]
May 7-11, 2007
Hybrid World Lab workshop
Mediamatic, Amsterdam, the Netherlands
**Special thanks to the trainers-Timo Arnall, Nicolas Nova, Giles Lane and all the staff of Mediamatics.

This project is implemented for the “Exploring Interaction” course in TU Delft. The theme of this year is “trade” which can be interpreted at will.
I chose “knowledge exchange” as my design subject because I’m interested in “intangible, invisible” social interaction.
Introduction
Mindbee Keeper is a social game to trigger knowledge-based interaction between people. The concept is to consider everyone’s mind as a “curious bee”. When people learn something new, their bees in mind will become stronger and happier. The interaction between each bee composes the knowledge exchanging network. To represent this network, a physical and public garden-“Mindbee Garden” is formed which visualizes the invisible knowledge network as a real growing garden to motivate more people to join Mindbee Keeper. As a result, more and more people are willing to share their knowledge and learn new one. Moreover, the living environment will become more beautiful by the blossom of Mindbee Garden.

In this game, people have a mobile device-“Qbee” which consists of a digital bee and the operation system. Qbee can support people’s demand including seeking other people to learn or setting their share lists. In addition, Qbee behaves as an artificial pet to interact with its owner. By Qbee’s feedback, people will notice their balance of learning and sharing knowledge. To sum up, Mindbee Keeper provides people a funnier and more convenient way to exchange their knowledge and visualizes the invisible knowledge network.

Date: 2007/1

Night shoot–A shout-to-shoot game in the nightmarket
Night shoot is an interactive game which combines the feature of a blowgun and a balloon-shooting game. It consists of a projective wheel with six virtual balloons on it.

Shout to shoot, shoot to be shot
While people shout to the wheel via the microphone connected to this game, an virtual arrow will be triggered on the projective screen and shot toward the continuously rotating wheel. The flying arrow may hit one of the balloons or not according to the probability. Once one of these balloons is broken, a new balloon will be generated at the same position.

Shoot politicians, shoot yourself
Each balloon shows a picture of a famous politician in Taiwan or other countries. People can try to hit any specific balloon with the politician they dislike. Once that balloon is broken, the shooter’s picture will be capture by a camera hidden in front of him/her and be placed on the next new balloon. Sooner or later, the participant will break all the original balloons with politicians’ image, and eventually he/she will have to shoot himself/herself instead.

This shout-to-shoot game is aimed to help people who suffer from the chaotic situation of domestic politics to release their pressure. However, it also implies that people should aware their responsibilities to a better political condition in a democratic country.

[Prototype]
Hardware: webcam, microphone
Software: attention meter (provided by MIT Media Lab), Flash

[My contribution]
Idea brain storming
Flash programming (video detection and sound sensing)
Integration of hardware and software
(Team work with Sean, Carven, Tu ,Dong and Zhong)

[General info.]
June 16-18, 2006
Nightmarket 2006:Workshop on Interaction Design, Augmented Reality and Telecommunication Taipei, Taiwan
Photo: courtesy of Carven and Show

“OFFICE LIVE” is one of the experimental projects launched by TechartGroup. It represents the typical scenario and power structure within a comtemporary office in a ironic and humourous way.

How do a goldfish, a vacuum cleaner, and 13 pieces of crumpled paper put on a lively performance of an absurd but yet realistic office scene?

Techart Group’s “Office Live” is an interactive chain-reaction installation that consists of a series of four interconnected units. “Office Live” is an attempt to use the concept of kinetic art to represent the characteristics of modern office automation as well as the working life of the human involved.

The core concept is that the modern office, under a standard management procedure and automated office network and system management, has become a self-organizing and self-generating organism. In that respect, what are the relationships between the working tools and the people involved? The theme of “Office Live” is represented via the working environment of an office and its essential elements. The four units personified a fish manager, creative concept staff, work executor, and administrative staff respectively. Each installation is set on “standby” and “ready to activate”. The “fish manager” plays the role of an immediate domino effect activator. By printing work instructions automatically from a printer and activating various devices sequentially, such as reviving the crumpled papers scattered on the desktop or automatically activating the screen, instantly switching the desktop from private personal tools to a ready workstation. Finally, during the whole process of reporting back to the fish manager, an automated working life circle is completed. There are no actual human involvement and activation throughout the entire process. The activation of the office scene domino effect is done through the swimming of the fish manager.

The four chain units consist of an interactive fish tank with a live fish, self-running crumpled papers, self-playing CDROM player and a desk with changing projected images. Rube Goldberg Machine and Kinetic Art inspire the concept of this chain-reaction installation, but the interactive technical skills enhance the power of chain-reaction and make the installation more dynamic.

This work stresses no actual “human” participation, but rather through interactive chain-reaction kinetic installation, to represent the concept of self-organizing and self-generating modern office operation. It also attempts to contemplate the nature of modern day office lives through this installation.

(以上中英文簡介感謝天工開物Techartgroup提供)

Award
Honorary mentions in Interactive Art, CyberArts 2006
Prix Ars Electronica (http://www.aec.at/en/prix/winners_honorary.asp)

Date: 2006/3
My contribution: Concept development, Multimedia programming (partly), Feeding fishes:P

Photo: courtesy of Techartgroup and Johnny

**Disclaimer: This project was developed with Techartgroup. I claim no ownership over it.

花朵視覺風格設定 (The visual style of these three flowers)：

This project is an installation with digital flowers blooming in the men’s room of Champagne Disco Pub. The urinal in the men’s toilet is designed as a ditch and there are three glass-shaped sensors embeded on it. When a man urinates on one of these sensors, the projective flower corresponding to this sensor will appear on the wall behind the sensors and begin to grow. As long as the man continues to trigger the sensor, branches of this flower will keep growing until the main branch reaches the top of the screen then the biggest flower bud will bloom. Otherwise the flower will wither away until it disappears. This interactive installation is a funny and easy game for men to compete to see who can get the biggest flower for aiming at the sensors the longest.

Video–>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1DXvsnh6Eo
For more detailed information, please refer to Techartgroup

Date: 2005/12-2006/2
Client: Champagne Disco Pub (Taipei, Taiwan)
My contribution: Graphic design, Animation, Multimedia programming

**Disclaimer: This project was developed with Techartgroup. I claim no ownership over it.

The Interactive Table
The interactive table contained a multiple-user answering game based on artistic knowledge. Visitors could touch the desktop to answer any questions about these artworks and the desktop would show the score and the answering time. Visitors were rewarded with special animation if answering correctly within the time. The idea of using the table as tangible interface was inspired by the traditional way how people enjoy Chinese paintings and calligraphy－they put artworks on a long table for detailed appreciation because of the long scale of creations.

Video–>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bN3yx2DM62w

Date: 2004/1-2005/4
Client: The National Palace Museum (Taipei, Taiwan)
My contribution: Multimedia programming (the interactive table)
Supporting the setting of hardware

**Disclaimer: This project was developed with Techartgroup. I claim no ownership over it.