Painteractive 2.0

Painteractive 2.0 is the last interactive work created for the project "Verhalen van het Schoolplein" (en. "Tales from the schoolyard") in Forum Images, Groningen (NL). The event’s organizers asked to create futuristic games for kids from 8 to 12 years old.

Four aims where the choice of the field of interest of the game and I decided to exploit “Creativiteit” (creativity) to create a new version of Painteractive! (link) which would allow to video-painting and play sound and videographies with the body.

Painteractive 2.0 is a VJ/DJ platform with which is besides possible to add own tags or graffiti sketches with a "real" spray-can.

The iconographic choice for the projects refers to a life cycle.

The triptic of the previous three icons: the hand with the finger up (the come to life marking own presence and questioning); the feet (the steps through the walking paths); the notes (the research of the harmony in the surrounding).

The little collection of photographs below explains a bit about the process of production for Painteractive 2.0, a project realized in two weeks that now includes 3 devices and the software (opening post photo).

The first public tryout of the prototype was on 6 of november in occasion of the theatre premiere show linked to Schoolplein project in Theatre Citadel, Groningen. The project is now working at Groninger Forum togheter with other interactive games made by artists from Frank Mohr Instituut.

The photo that opens the post illustrates the software interface for the interactive system.

Soon I will publish on this blog the MaxMSP patch that you can download and try yourself with your own DIY system.

Painteractive 2.0 collects the tools of Painteractive! in a unique spray-can hacked into an electronic device that allows to paint, choose colors, erase and choose video graphics to be inspired with pressing few buttons.

Three tools compose the system: two wooden boards and a color spray-can (revisited).

The system I made for this first experimental platform will be developed soon into applications like virtual environments gestured in real time by body balance and motion through the space, VJ/DJ multilevel platforms for disco-club performance.

TICK ~ Telecom Italia Culture Killer

In 2005, the italian technological pride IDII, Interaction Design Institute Ivrea, got to close because the Telecom Italia ownership decided not to renew the founding.

IDII was the graduate school researching and prototyping in the field of Interaction Design, operating in the town of Ivrea, in Italy.

The Master program in Interaction Design operated from 2001 being involved in many projects that later became base-structures for the development of interactive multimedia art and interaction design.

The caliber and the carry of IDII's research signed a relevant revolution in the field of digital and electronic media and devices. Wiring and Arduino, the micro-controllers used nowadays by a wide number of people and artists and designers through all over the world were prototyped properly in Ivrea.

Processing, the graphic software prototyping environment (project started at MIT of Boston), that today is developing in a gorgeous web community sharing tons of code, was developed in the IDII.

Other interesting projects came out from IDII are, for instance, CICCIO or the Curiously Inflated Computer Controlled Interactive Object and the Interaction Design Primer design manual.

A so interesting center for digital and electronic culture was properly killed by Telecom Italia that invest money on later discovered dirty business in the Stock Exchange.

Erase a so wide potential of culture means to erase the future innovation of a Country. Thanks to a nefarious conduct of the political entourage both-sided, acting most of times through the shadows of corruption and personal interests, Italian Government cuts the feed and the financing of Culture, tracking the soil for a cultural desert which will be more and more difficult to transform back in a "flowered field".

There's still an "oasis" on the web where is possible to appreciate the "beauty" of a project such as IDII: http://interactionivrea.org/it/index.asp

To watch that website crystallized on a 2006 capture, with no "life" anymore, represents a waste of energies and "virtualities" that maybe will not be recovered for ever.

Interaction Design Institute Ivrea alumni have set up, after the experience in Ivrea, the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design, an excellence center for research in new media technologies, obviously well founded by the Danish Ministry of Culture and other private companies.

Italian Ministry of Culture instead decided , less then one month ago, the cut to Culture financing giving the blame to the international economical crisis.

Different ways of thinking and acting.

This document would be the wish for the re-found Culture in Italy, the only way to solve then all the other social problems this Country is meeting under a literally anti-democratic government.

Painteractive!

Today I presented Painteractive! and Painteractive! 0.1 for the semester assessments of IME, Frank Mohr Instituut. Last Sunday I released the first version of the software dedicated. No bugs anymore for it and quite simple to use also for consumers...

Painteractive! finally comes out.

It is the multimedia interactive system for videopainting and play sounds with traditional painting tools.

To change the perspective of traditional painting colors on canvas, to augment the perception of the act of painting, to go across the largest available number of media and to re-mix them togheter, to make the people have fun and think on how much ways are around to transform things in something else, this, the concept.

To investigate possibilities, to keep the look on virtuality, as theorized by Pierre Lévy, to keep the look on Rhizome, as the concept in developing after Deleuze and Derrida discoveries, this the practical approach.

And then sharing and switching research and knowledge, asking questions, making connections, going near the borders and pass through or, when possible, destroy them.

Painteractive! borns with a little "manifesto" written before its creation:

Make your visual art be naked,

open the matter,

recombine the technologies,

remix the media,

Painteractive!

Three tools compound the specific interacive system:

• the Cypencil: interactive pencil made with an original tool of painting then modified to become an infrared transmitter that communicates with a Wii remote controller;
• the Cypalette: interactive palette made hacking a Wii remote controller and modifying an original palette for mixing colours;
• Painteractive! 0.1: the software made to run in Max5 Runtime (free running downloading the Max5 software on http://cycling74.com/products) or in Max5.

Few months ago I started to work on the idea pactically, practising with different solutions that developed then in the prototype you can see in the last photos below. The early approach to the job is documented in one of the posts below. Hereunder a photo-story of the last development till the end of the project.

Painteractive! Represents a first dowel in the mosaic-project that I'm working on, T.A.I. This project, Interactive Art Therapy, supposes, at the first level of analysis, to start investigating the possibilities around the connection between the human health and wellness and the multimedia interactive art. It is the concept about creating site specific interactive environments with real-time or/and generative multimedia contents reacting to the people that are acting those environments. The interactive system I created for painting with the digital multimedia technology is a tool for fun as toy for children and adults. It could be a nice toy to have, for example, in the hospitals where children and people get bored and need distractions and a bit of physical activity. My next step will be to propose it as interactive toy for pediatric departments in hospitals. This will be the first step for T.A.I. project as well.

Now, everybody would like to build her own Painteractive!

Could be very nice to write your own code making it work in base of your style.

But I like the "sharewoods", and next lines you can copy on your MaxMSP new patch and start to communicate with your own cypencil and cypalette.

Enjoy Painteractive! 0.1 and create your own Painteractive:

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