URBAN EYES

last update

2008-12-09T03:58:00.000-08:00

everyone wants closure...;)

Have a look at the latest project description: pdf 1.2MB

RealSnailMail

2006-10-12T08:25:00.000-07:00

RealSnailMail is a project currently developed by boredomresearch. The system uses real snails with pet RFID chips glued to their shells to carry and deliver electronic messages on their own time, despite growing expectations of instant communication.

Commissioned as part of the Tagged exhibition in London, the launch of the project will constitute of a projection in the space gallery is a computer model created by boredomresearch, enabling them to test components they will need to build 'RealSnailMail'.

Eventually this system will be built into an installation version in 2007/08. You can visit the Real Snail Mail website and send a message which travels to a server where it is entered into a queue. Here it waits until a snail wonders in range of a hot spot. The hot spot is the dispatch centre in the form of a RFID reader. This reader identifies the snail from its chip and checks to see if it has not already been assigned a message to carry. If the snail is available it is assigned the message at the top of the list. It then slips away into the technological wasteland. Located at the other end of the pond (in the case of aquatic snails) is the drop off point. When, or if, the snail ever makes it here, it is identified by another reader, which then forwards the relevant message to the recipients email address; once again travelling at the speed of light.

The tagged exhibition runs until 21 Oct., at Space gallery, in London. The artists will give a talk tonight 7PM at [ s p a c e ].

via we-make-money-not-art.com

Birds NY

2006-09-05T09:42:00.000-07:00

Natalie Jeremijenko, who was also co-judging the fusedspace competition,
where URBAN EYES drew first attention just informed me of another bird
project as part of her OOZ series, this time in New York together with TerraSwarm and others.
Due to launch on the 7th september, I can't attend, but just recommend.

September 7 - October 7, 2006
NATALIE JEREMIJENKO
OOZ, Inc. (Šfor the birds)
Infrastructure and facilities for high-density bird cohabitation on the
roof of Postmasters Gallery
459 west 19th street between 9 and 10 Avenues

with public housing projects by:
Aranda/Lasch + TerraSwarm
bonetti/kozerski
Leeser Architects
Materialab with Gensler+Gutierrez
OpenSource Architecture
SYSTEMarchitects llc
theLiving

OOZ is ZOO backwards.
Expanding on her project at the 2006 Whitney Biennial Natalie
Jeremijenko has created a unique garden on the roof of Postmasters
Gallery - an environmental experiment in interaction with New York City
bird population. The complex 1,000 square-foot garden includes
architect-designed bird housing projects (multi-family dwellings), water
systems, as well as other amenities to improve the quality of life for
urban birds.
The installation creates conditions to observe birds' adaptation to
human-engineered technologies, testing formal and ecological theorems
for high-density lifestyles, sustainable resource sharing among urban
organisms, and the play of public/private division in cross-species
interaction.

everybody's doing the pigeon

2006-02-02T03:19:00.000-08:00

Some researchers in San Jose just gonna load GPS, mobile and air-pollution sensors on pigeons to mobile-blog pollution data. I guess if the batteries gonna last and the pigeon won't die from exhaustion, this will finally be a useful idea for attaching technology to these urban creatures.
Oh and it will have a camera as well. I didn't see any photos of the prototype yet, so you will have to go to San Jose yourself this august, I am afraid.

Aftermath

2005-12-02T07:59:00.000-08:00

Last day of the residency, post-presentation event. Everything went amazingly. Presentation went fine, my two pigeons I had borrowed for the evening perform as if they had been trained for years, some people in the audience have their bluetooth phones on and they all receive images based on some of the publicly available cams. Success and Lev Manovich gives his blessing for the future. The weather could have been better though, despite the fact that is was nothing in comparison of the day afterwards(see "let it snow" entry earlier).

Sorry just got to post this today...

URBAN EYES Feeding Box

2005-12-02T07:57:00.000-08:00

Our first feeding box design is finished and we go out to test if the pigeons (then equipped with rings) actually would climb the box to trigger the reader. Well, the photos speak for themselves.

Ain't nothing but the Real Thang

2005-12-02T07:55:00.000-08:00

Finally it's been time to test the reader with life pigeons. I borrowed myself one from De Rimboe petshop for one afternoon, put reader antenna in cage and get the pigeon equipped with a ring over the reader. The read works straight away and I am happy that everything finally comes together. You can slightly see the Director RFID read-outs on the screen.

In case of stick-ups, take one cam...

2005-12-02T07:43:00.000-08:00

Rotterdam's cabs have eyes. On one of my taxi rides I noticed the little camera box attached to the passenger's seat aiming at me and the seats behind me. According to the driver, it takes a couple of photos when opening the door, 3 seconds later and then once a minute whilst driving, same when leaving the vehicle. "They reduced stick-ups by 60% since", the company claims.
Makes sense to me, yet when the journalist from the rotterdam dagblatt interviewed me he gave me his anekdote about CCTV. Having his bag stolen in a bar and containing equipment worth a few thousand, he called the police, who didn't seem to know what to do about it and only after they asked him what they supposed to do, he mentioned to maybe check the CCTV footage available, which disturbingly seemed to have slipped the policemen's mind.
Every system is only as strong as it's scenario(including human senselessness).

Pigeon Hotel

2005-11-29T07:56:00.000-08:00

Just a few roofs away from V2 in Rotterdam is the Pigeon Loft, an alternative project to control the city's pigeon population. Since 2003, instead of killing off the birds or capturing them, the loft offers nesting space for about 200+ birds. Any eggs produced by the birds are replaced by fake eggs. The birds are fed proper food instead of pommes frites and the place is maintained by volunteers. According to the loft's designer/artist Stefan Gross the loft managed to reduce the population noticely in an area up to a 1 mile radius, including the popular shopping area around Rotterdam's Binnenwegplein. The germany originated project showed superior to methodologies like killing pigeons off, which in most cases only resulted in a pigeon populaton explosion as a reaction, sometimes ending up with more birds than before.
Despite it's success in other cities like Amsterdam and Bijenkorf.

Let it snow

2005-11-28T07:48:00.000-08:00

On friday 25th november 2005, the netherlands were hit by a surprisingly intensive snowfall and rainstorm in the south and east of the country, resulting in one of the biggest traffic jams, an estimated 800km plus numerous accidents, road blocks and even power cuts, due to broken tree branches. Schiphol airport also reported massive delays and cancelled flights as it was only able to use a single runway.

From our point of view: Valentina and me left Rotterdam at about 12.00am for Hengelow and we entered the snow zone, a reported 30cm+ snowfall right after Utrecht, which kept on getting whiter and stormier by the km. Our first unprogrammed stop happened about 3km before Apeldoorn, due to our train colliding with a car's hanger, noone harmed, but a stop for nearly 2 hours till it was cleaned up. Yet just about on the next crossing ahead, a stuck truck stopped our journey again, not moving back nor forth blocking the rails. Another half an hour later and after receiving information that already 6 lines are down due to branches, etc. the traindriver finally decides to drive back to the previous town due to the truck not moving, resulting in a rebellious traveller pulling the emergency break. Another painful half an hour later, we finally get going but the truck was finally pulled away and we arrive at Apeldorn at last. 17.00 and being 2 hours late for our meeting, we had cancelled an hour ago and decide to go back to Rotterdam. Yet again, lucky lucky, just as we arrive, trains are getting cancelled and chaos reports come spilling in no trains, no busses and no cars(taxis) whatsoever. Whilst waiting at the train station, power failure is experienced. Lights uncontrollably go out and on again, kids start crying and comments flying.
Hours later all hotels booked out, the town hall is turned into a crisis center, broodjes and koffie is handed out. People are slowy filling up the waiting hall, I count about 100 in the end. Mobiles are used, credits are running out.
24:00, the city managed to get us a space at the local army barrack's gym. We arrive, split up in Buben and Maedchens, the guys toilets manage to experience a 2cm high water puddle, due to melting snow as we all hope.
Slowly matresses arrive along with duvets and pillows, simple but warm. As far as I can tell from the men's department, it wasn't as smelly as I expected and we had few snorers, yet the light in the gym seemed to be motion-triggered or timebased, resulting in another switch-on and occasional additional stranded guests till about a good 4:00 am.
Somehow we managed to organize a car to the train station at 7am, skipping the city-planned 9am mass-transit, trains were running, we catch a train to rotterdam after 5 minutes and Valentina reaches Schiphol in time(to my knowledge).

Only winner Rob, who couldn't make it to the meeting on friday, he must have know this to happen cause he is dutch!

How fragile physical networks can be...
I had to double post this one.

Help for stranded travellers article (dutch)

2003 Aura

2005-11-15T04:21:00.000-08:00

Someone just sent me a link. About two years ago some artists from Belgrad did an interesting project with pigeons. It was about the loss of a message, as far as I understand. They equipped a pigeon with a radio transmitter camera, including batteries I suppose, to visualise the moment when the video transmission stops. Even though they lost the bird, I hope someone found it eventually to take that camera off the bird's back.

RFID threat

2005-11-13T15:03:00.000-08:00

I keep on getting URLs sent and find hundreds of similar articles about the threat of RFID tags being read from miles away and evil people with evil devices reading your tiny data on your chip and then owning your private life, your credit card account and your dog.
Don't get me wrong. I believe that it is possible to read RFID tags from far, and I believe that the data on a chip can be hacked, the issue is another one.
First of all, even though RFID tags (and there are quite a few different ones out there that require different readers) can be read, the data on them is still encrypted, so there is another hurdle. Second, in none of the articles (so far) have I actually found a serious example of data that could be used to damage your privacy rights or rids you off your money. Unless that is of course, if you put your pincode on your chip, but as far as I remember they still tell us not to put card number and pincode both together.
In one article, a US citizen mentioned the worry, that terrorists could filter out US citizens out of a crowd of people and kidnap only them. Interesting.
Apart from your behaviour, language accent, maybe way you dress or even your passport, I guess it would be nearly impossible to get this information otherwise and we all don't want to have peaceful canadians kindapped.
Passports have been copied(about every generation of them), creditcards, chipcards, phones have been phreaked, email accounts and servers hacked and spammed, audio tapes, VHS, CDs and DVD have been copied, Playstations have been hardware and software hacked, mobile phone adressbooks stolen over bluetooth, perfect medicament-fakes like Viagra-Pills enter the market on a level that the pharma-cons haven't full control over, bus and concert tickets have been copied despite hologram labels, designer label products have been copied to the extend that the counterfeiters have access to the same factories like the brand's company and last but not least, money has been reproduced. The list is endless.
Apart from your goldfish at home, everything out there could be a copy and you don't even know it. Understandable as our senses are pretty limited. The point is rather, who says it is a copy when we live in times, where every second pop song is not a copy but a cover version and your identity is more proven through non-living things rather than your own living persona.
And who is gonna pay for the inflation of product security.
I remember when we worked on global and growable creditcard concepts with IDEO, we ended up talking about the essence of trust that eventually lies behind all these transaction security procedures and disembodied accounts.

Electronics Documentation

2005-11-13T14:09:00.000-08:00

I always wish to find something like this on the web, yet understandably noone has the time for documentation like this, so I made myself some time.
I uploaded a hopefully helpfull documentation in PDF format on my server for everyone to enjoy. If you are planning to use the same reader, or just want to get an idea how much it takes to hook a RFID-reader up to your machine (especially your Mac), this should help a lot.

Reader Documentation (1.8MB PDF File)

Out in the Field

2005-11-13T04:40:00.000-08:00

Last week, I finally had the opportunity to see a racing pigeon RFID system in action. I visited Henk van Linden in Utrecht, about an hour from Rotterdam. As Henk only spoke dutch, I was lucky to have Hein, my project manager, with me to help me out.
Henk comes from a family of pigeon aficionados, his father introduced him to this intensive pasttime. Despite living in a tightly housed district, the pigeon cage, which is based in the backyard, covers a good half of the back yard and is two storeys high, the upper part which contains the landing platforms accessible by a small ladder.
The roughly 30 birds he owns are mostly his own breed plus a few bought ones to keep his own pigeon's DNA set active.

He normally spends about 2 hours each day for them to feed and let them fly. At the time of our visit, he had one that had an inflamed digestive system and therefore needed some extra care and time. During the racing season he spends a good 4 hrs a day with the pigeons and getting up as early as six in the morning for the first feeding, seemingly keeping a man of a 60+ age active and healthy. For the training, apart from a sophisticated feeding plan, he lets them fly once a day and some are then gone, especially the females for a good two hours.

When they return they then each trigger the reader's antenna which is located withing the landing platform, through their individual tags, in the small plastic rings attached to their feet(see "The Germans Are Coming" below for photo). He can check the readings with a small handheld controller that displays each tag when being read. We tested a few blanks and one of my own tags I had brought with me. As much as my tag contains a chip with an ID , there is no further information attached to it of course. The way it works is that he brings his pigeons to the clubhouse and they put the tag on the pigeon there, where the pigeon's information is then entered into a centralised database for future races and analysis.
Surprised that a hobbyist can afford such a system, he confirmed that apart from one member, the whole club is using it, he said it was an investment, but the additional data he and others are getting with the system is impressive, plus it makes lost pigeons be found easier, especially as it is not uncommon that pigeons fly with another flock and end up in other people's cages.

What I was still mosty impressed was not the technology, which works all fine and well, but the fact that this man spends so much time studying and monitoring these animals. His link with these animals is obviously a strong one and based on this he confirmed that when he walks through the city his perception of any bird in sight is a much different one than anyone else not involved in bird sport.
As odd as pigeon racing might seem to some(yet it is a worldwide phenomenon in a multi billion dollar range due to betting on races) the effect this fascination of animals has on an individual is impressive, and I can presume that Henk van Linden has found something others are looking for their whole life to keep them active and happy.

Is there such a thing as "Friendly Fire"?

2005-11-02T18:25:00.000-08:00

Unpleasant headlines of soldiers shooting rather each other than the enemy during missions like Desert Storm might just get less. US company Sandia has a system that equips soldiers and vehicles with radio-tech tags that can tell the shooter if it's friend or foe. Now let's just hope these batteries wont'leak.

RFID Radar

2005-11-02T18:17:00.000-08:00

A South African company claims to have come up with a brand new system that allows the scanning and detection of multiple UHF tags over a stunning distance and also be able to trace the location in 3D space and all with a single low cost reader.

Eindhoven Design Academy

2005-11-02T17:38:00.000-08:00

Been to Eindhoven to visit a friend who just started at Philips and visited the Design School's final show. I was impressed. Not only a good collection of nice and clever ideas, but very well presented. Worth the unusual 5Euro entry fee for a final show.
The bathroom plates that were covering the pipes in 3D style or the styrofoam lamp as well as the "glass" bulbs.

RFID life prediction

2005-11-02T12:51:00.000-08:00

Tagged World Project has developed a system that captures human behaviour patterns using RFID tags, stores them in an XML format, uses the data for predicting users' future behaviour patterns and provides services proactively. (From we-make-money-not-art)

Kader Attia’s Flying rats

2005-10-26T11:09:00.000-07:00

A rather disturbing art installation, where stuffed child puppets get eaten by pigeons over time.

Baja Beach Club

2005-10-18T07:03:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I visited the Baja Beach Club here in Rotterdam, one if not the only club in the netherlands that is using RFID tags for their customers. In combination with a VIP club membership, visitors can have a glass chip implanted to function as a creditcard to pay with at the entrance and the specially equipped VIP bar area.
We met one of the first VIPs to ever get a chip (photo). Check out the first implanting session held live in the Baja Beach Club last year.
According to Manager Jo van Galen, 70 people are already wearing a chip, they have a waiting list, and then there is also their branch in Barcelona.

Newspaper Heritage

2005-10-18T06:58:00.000-07:00

Have I mentioned the coincidences yet? It happens that the V2_ lab is in an old newspaper building, not only with a nice "penthouse terrace", but just outside amongst the roof tops, it has an abandoned birdcage for the homing pigeons, the newspaper was using.

RFID Live Event, Amsterdam

2005-10-14T07:54:00.000-07:00

Probably one, if not THE biggest RFID event in europe took place this monday to wednesday in amsterdam's prestigous japanese style hotel okura.
A collection of the biggest players in RFID technology like Oracle, IBM, Unisys, amongst many others, took three days to talk about their projects, promote and network around RFID technology and it's opportunities for the retail market.

Coming from an art and design background, I could not help, but feel a little out of place amongst a community which was not only at least 15 years my senior in average, but who's agenda was obviously on the other side of the public/business divide.
The first talk to mention about the power of RFID to fight counterfeiting, led by Thorsten Staake from Auto-ID lab concluded, after some examples of how well people are producing amazingly real looking fake viagra, that the main reason, why RFID would reduce counterfeiting is, that equipping each product with tags actually makes the product more expensive. So would probably wrapping it in gold foil, but who am I to judge. A slightly dissapointing start into the talks this day.

Nevertheless, during the following lunchbreak, taking a look at the showroom, I was pleased to not only enjoy delicious salmon, but to find out that I was not the only artist around. Offered by the RFID Journal, Den Haag's Royal Academy of Arts was present with their very own RFID Lab. As Pawel Pokutycki described it, the Lab works as, an experimental area of expertise running for about a year as a research and enabling platform for cross-disciplin projects involving RFID.

Less surprising, I ran into Bart Schermer, founder of RFID Platform Nederland, who was very helpful getting me in contact with various RFID distributors in the Netherlands before my arrival in Rotterdam and whom I, after all those emails could finally talk to in person about future perspectives and present applications.
Inside the showroom, I noticed the so far highest density of active bluetooth devices, including two computers there were 13 devices, which made about 20% coverage. Why aren't more people using thsi feature more continously?
After an impressive presentation of Oracle's project with NASA about the storing of toxic waste, the presentation schedule finished with the most convincing case-study by Marks and Spencer's James Stafford, a lively mustached chap, who, as if it would be the easiest of all things presented M&S's usage of RFID technology on item-level for their fashion department.

A clear situation analysis about traditional barcode scanning and stock availability at the branches, showed how RFID can really improve a business, if it's deployed in exactly the right places and amounts. Monday's inventory counting process can now be done in 10% of the time and the trust in the system is so high, that these local scans are actually overwriting the centralized database information. A perfect finish to the most impressive success-stories that day was, when asked why he didnt extend such a system to the cash till, he replied "we appreciate the human factor at the cash desk and why replace a good working system that is just slow enough to ensure a bit of chit-chat between customer and staff to ensure an enjoyable shopping experience."
(image: one of M&S' first mobile RFID readers)
No further comments.

The second day, I had a chance to look at Nokia's well-working RFID-phone-shell system, integrated with their DB-Server. Limited scenario application, yet I keep admiring Nokia's approach to always supply a very open Dev Kit for everyone to play and test.
I only had half of the second day as a to meeting with Virtual Platform after lunch, so my impressions from that day's talks were rather minimal.
It is to be mentioned that the overall feeling is that of caution. With a new technology like that it is not surprising, yet the scale of the event made you assume otherwise.
In the end RFID is re-approvingly a very scenario depending technology. Like Eric Peters from TrueDemand Technology said "RFID... ...is an enabling technology." Gen2 is just getting out of it's egg and standards and regulations still differ nearly from country to country.
//
The only annoying thing about the event gose out to my men (and women) from Hotel Okura:
1) Why was the Wifi not for free?
2) Why after filling out a rather detailed web account form and purchasing half an hour of online time, surfing for 18 minutes and logging out for the next talk, I found my remaining 12 minutes gone. I purchased 30 minutes, not 18, and the auto delete excessive minutes wasn't very much mentioned as far as I remember. Not quite the class expected.
//
Thanks again to Kim Ray from RFID Journal and to Sonia Russel from Modern Media Partners for the coffee, if remember that name plate right.

URBAN EYES and the media

2005-10-14T07:39:00.000-07:00

It is always welcome when your project gets publicity, yet intriguing how the perception of journalists can alter the context of the concept. In the end I have to blame it on my bad english.

We-Make-Money-Not-Art, July 2004

NY ARTS Magazine, November 2004

Damien Mulley's, December 2004

Turbulence.org, April 2005

Mediamatic "Triggered by RFID Workshop", July 2005

Concept Paper

2005-10-14T06:18:00.000-07:00

Upon request, I made the pre-V2 early concept paper of URBAN EYES available for download.
PDF document, 830Kb

The Panopticon, Jeremy Bentham

2005-10-14T05:53:00.000-07:00

Jeremy Bentham's famous concept as covered by Wikipedia. Interesting to see is that the public believe of it's similarity to the CCTV system is faulty in one essential part:

"The Panopticon is a type of prison building designed by the philosopher Jeremy Bentham. The concept of the design is to allow an observer to observe (-opticon) all (pan-) prisoners without the prisoners being able to tell if they are being observed or not, thus conveying a "sentiment of an invisible omniscience" (more)

With the CCTV system, we know that we are observed around the clock, as modern camera and storage technology allows. There is also the fact that the prisoners are in the state of having been found guilty, whereas in public space, this still has to be individually proven. This fact indeed shows a major shift in how police and the system perceives the public. From an old-fashioned view, only the suspects were observed. With CCTV everyone is observed and recorded, turning everyone into a potential suspect without filtering.

The Panopticon is also a centralised system that includes all surveillance data, where as CCTV (Close Circuit TV) exists "as a series of discrete, localised schemes run by a myriad of different organisations rather than a single state monolith." - Armstrong and Norris, p.7

Another big difference between Panopticon and especially Foucault's concept of Panoptic Surveillance and the CCTV system is the level in which disciplinary power is implied upon the surveillance data. You can read more on that in "The Maximum Surveillance Society", as mentioned in an earlier entry.

Books I - The Maximum Surveillance Society

2005-10-14T05:47:00.000-07:00

Highly recommended to get an overview over the history of CCTV, especially in the UK, the political situation, how it could be deplyed without major concern by the public and efficiency studies are neatly wrapped up in Gary Armstrong and Clive Norris' book "The Maximum Surveillance Society - The Rise of CCTV"

Swalloables II

2005-10-14T05:04:00.000-07:00

Similar to the previews entry is this newer development of a pill containing technology, which includes sensors that measure temperature and hydration level. Already used by the NFL in the US, it helps to monitor football players, who tend to overheat due to the use of body mass supplements, like Viking's right guard David Dixon, who died of a stroke, which was found to be related to a supplement players call "Ripped Fuel".
The pill shown here is the HQ Cortemp ingestible produced by Florida based HQ Inc and available for about $40 per pill.

Swalloables

2005-10-13T03:44:00.000-07:00

Is it only 5 years ago that this little piece of equipment entered our minds and literally bodies? An isreali company came up with the first swalloable technology and in 2002, CNN published a live experiment using the capsule for treatment. Still a bit chunky and unfortunately expensive due to not supported by the average health insurance, doctors hope that the video pill will become a standard.
A look at Given Imaging's company website gives you a good overall view on how it works. Check out the product description pdf.

URBAN EYES @ RFID Nederland

2005-10-10T09:09:00.000-07:00

URBAN EYES is now an offical entry entry at RFID Nederland project list.

The germans are coming...

2005-10-05T06:55:00.000-07:00

------------------------------------------------------------------ Nach all der Nachforschungsarbeit... Sorry, after all the research into getting the RFID tags attached to the pigeon's feet, I find these pigeon rings especially produced to do exactly that, attach glass tags to pigeons feet. Who is doing that? Cunning and innovative, the germans of course.
German based company MOTZ has been in the pigeon business for 20 years and been using computers to time arriving homing pigeons since 1994. Strongly pushing this modern technology against reluctant opposition from old-school Verbandsleitern, this systems has a huge benefit, as director Helmut Motz makes clear: ".... you don't have to catch the bird once it arrives at the birdhouse anymore. With the old Clock system you have to catch the bird to get the ring off into the timer-machine. Some Club members can't do that anymore due to their age or illness. With the RFID system that part of the process is cut out and allows our pigeon breeders to enjoy their unique sport for many more years." - now I like that, and did you know that pigeons regulate their body temperature over their feet?

Mobiles are first with news images of terror attacks

2005-10-05T03:23:00.000-07:00

Since reading Steven Johnson's book "Emergence", which very much underlined the findings of Rob van Kranenburg and my research on the phenomenon of extelligence and resonance design, I am more and more intrigued by the power of simple connection and gathering tools for seemingly uncontrolled and always 100% subversive lay crowds.
Obviously, the phone on yoru camera is one of them.

The Herald also reported a scottish firm started up to manage "free-agent" reporters, I call them human recorders, meaning that equipped with only a mobile phone camera, you could make a buck out of that one lucky shot you got when you popped over to that joint where VIPs hang around oh so often to misbehave.

On the brighter side of the technological revolution is not only the benefit of faster information channeling as in the case of the London bombing, what is much more important is the way it affects our responsibility towards our surroundings.
We don't only watch anymore. With the right, simple tools, we can react, even if it's only to send the photo we took to tell someone how severe the situation is.
What it means in the end is that there is a network of individual recorders, sensors, tool, hands and eyes that can react in a flock-like behaviour. Seeing this, it's no surprise, that the response time is so much superior to top-down hierarchy and filter systems in modern news organisations.
A flock of birds can change direction with hardly any delay of a single bird belonging to the flock. This is not because every bird knows what the rest is doing, it's because he/she doesn't.
If that means that mankind is in such a dilemma with it's own habitat because it inherits a high level of consciuosness is still to be proven.

See also: London Bombing Pictures Mark New Role for Camera Phones

Pigeon Clusters

2005-10-05T03:20:00.000-07:00

A not too serious take on "behind-the-scenes-of-technology"

By collecting flocks of pigeons in dense clusters, Google is able to process search queries at speeds superior to traditional search engines, which typically rely on birds of prey, brooding hens or slow-moving waterfowl to do their relevance rankings.

Rotterdam Pigeon Supply 2

2005-10-05T02:51:00.000-07:00

Imagine my luck as I found these two fellas in a Pet Shop at Middelland Straat, just around the corner of my new appartment in Rotterdam. They are €9 each and the owner said, it's easy to get them at the moment as the pigeon-season is nearly over. Yep, those are homing ones!

Rotterdam Pigeon Supply

2005-10-05T02:42:00.000-07:00

When I was shooting the video scenario during the DEAF festival last year here in Rotterdam, I remember running through the city and finally finding 3 poor little specimen and it took them 10 seconds to fly out of my reach.
Now this morning, things appeared different (thank god). Rotterdam actually has pigeons and they are the most fearless littel critters I came across so far.
The young stoney man on the lower right seems to have a couple of fans, so did the fellow Rotterdamien above, who was followed closely by the pigeon pack. Very Pied-Pipery!

Chips help morgue track Katrina victims

2005-10-04T13:17:00.000-07:00

GULFPORT, Mississippi (AP) -- As body counts mounted and missing-person reports multiplied after Hurricane Katrina, some morgue workers began using tiny computer chips to keep track of unidentified remains.

VeriChip, donated by a subsidiary of Applied Digital Solutions Inc.

V2 invite

2004-11-23T10:40:00.000-08:00

During Doors Round Table 2004, URBAN EYES is invited for a residency at V2 lab Rotterdam for further research and prototype development.

V2: http://www.V2.nl

FUSEDSPACE 2004

2004-11-14T10:28:00.000-08:00

The URBAN EYES concept is awarded 3rd price at FUSEDSPACE, an international competition for technology in/as public space. URBAN EYES is chosen amongst 307 entries from 38 countries and invited to present at DEAF(Dutch Electronic Arts Festival) in Rotterdam

FUSEDSPACE: http://www.fusedspace.com

DEAF Festival: http://www.deaf04.nl/

The Beginning

2001-07-12T10:18:00.000-07:00

URBAN EYES was first perceived by Jussi Angesleva and Marcus Kirsch as a concept in 2001 at the Royal College of Art as part of the MA Interaction Design/Computer Related Design course's projects. The brief was about new concepts for mobility with wearable technology in mind. Questioning the term wearables, we decided to use edible technology in combination with urban space networks, in this case London's vast CCTV camera network and it's natural pigeon population as agents.

see the original project at : http://www.unvoid.net/-singles/urbaneyes/index_u.html