Foray into augmented reality with Layar

Just got hold of 'Layar', an augmented reality app for iPhone. As well as the incredible possibilities it has for locating information, local services and businesses, and for social connectivity I can imagine using it to make drawings. It works by pointing the phone's camera at an environment and allowing you to call up information about the area, which is represented in the form of graphics layered over the top of the real environment on the screen. It provides apps within the app, providing another layer of possibility for third party developers. It has me thinking that you could add drawings as information within an environment, which could be a city or maybe just a gallery space. Images can be layered on top of the actual environment - in the way that the Terminator does when he looks around the room (thanks for that,Simon Cox, Click On, BBC R4).

Remote control iphone drawing!

Another Mehmet Akten innovation

Body paint by Mehmet Akten

Body paint by Mehmet Akten

Gold dust iphone app

Gold dust iphone app

Drawing experiment with the Wii

I've just done my first drawing using the Wii, following on from a discussion I had with Stephen Farthing about comparing proprietary software with more informal tools for digital drawing. I've worked out a way to draw with the Wii by using the photo application found in the Wii menu. You can open an image from an SD card and then use some very basic editing tools to draw on top of it, copy and paste sections etc. I am interested in the constraints in place when using such limited tools, and the fact I am subverting them from their original purpose - ie to entertain. The most interesting thing for me, though, is interacting with the drawing using the Wii remote;
- you are drawing in mid air, with no connection to surface
- marks are made in response to your movements
- marks change in scale as you move closer and futher away from the television
- It is difficult to control in any careful way so results may be haphazard

The image produced is not particularly sophisticated and the composition is random - reflecting the playful approach that I had to making it. But I definitely intend to develop this technique .

Project Natal - Xbox E3

Bloody incredible. I've only just got a Wii, and this comes up! Like a wii, but with no controller. Complete motion sensor recognition.Watch the vid on youtube

'Tecura' - a collaborative drawing tool created by Evru. I saw this work in the exhibtion Souls&Machines in Madrid last summer. What interested me is that they describe it as a painting tool rather than a drawing one. Could this be to do with what someone (forgotten who...) said about vector=drawing, raster=painting?

A kid who has hacked a Wiimote to be able to recreate a 'Minority Report' style of interacting with a surface.

Tag tool

"The Tagtool is a performative visual instrument used on stage and on the street. It serves as a VJ tool, a creative video game, or an intuitive way of creating animation".