Luther Thie and Eyal Fried

Acclair is a security and neuromarketing service that points to a new form of discrimination: Acclairism, a discrimination based on the individual’s bio-data and membership in an “acclaired” elite. Through Acclair, a company providing brain-testing services as part of an exclusive security clearance for air-travelers, we explore a situation wherein people freely accept a highly invasive, highly authoritative manipulation in return for financial, tangible rewards and an upgraded social status. We illustrate the financial and social benefits of such a system through its Neurocapital and Amnesty programs that offer alternatives to racial profiling.

Marc Böhlen

Amy and Klara have similar interests. They both read Cosmopolitan and Salon.com, for example. But they do not get along. Not at all. Maybe Klara's thick German accent bothers Amy. And neither of them particularly likes the color pink. Unfortunately for Amy and Klara, they live on the same block and have pink houses! And when they become agitated they tend to fall into mutual accusations and even rants. Yes, it can get rather nasty at times. Best then just to leave them be and to stay clear of the hissy fits. Else you risk being drawn into the fighting.
 

Noam Toran

Desire Management is a collection of five short films about the use of objects as vehicles for dissident behaviour. In the film, the domestic space is defined as the last private frontier, a place where bespoke appliances provide unorthodox experiences for alienated people: An airline hostess with a unique relationship to turbulence, an elderly man who enjoys being vacuumed, a couple who engage in baseball driven fantasies, a man who is forced by his partner to cry into a strange device. Based on real testimonials, the film presents the inherent need for self-expression in the face of socially imposed conformity.

Natalie Jeremijenko

Feral robotics is an open source robotics project designed to enable distributed and co-located teams of lay participants to 'upgrade' low-end commercially available toys with chemical sensing equipment, additional microprocessor hardware to enable environmental data collection and coordinated flock (or pack) behavior. The adapted robots 'sniff out' environmental toxins, that is, they follow concentration gradients of toxins sensed by their dog's noses. Not dissimilar to popular robot wars events, this project instead involves the release of 'packs' of feral robotic dogs that are designed and modified for release on sites of community interest, including public parks, school grounds and industrial sites. This creates mediagenic events, coverage, and discussion on contaminants in the local environments.

Crispin Jones

Mr Jones Watches is a series of seven wristwatches which seek to question the social currency of the watch and also propose some alternatives to the conventional representation of time. They were all produced as one-off working timepieces.

Fabian Winkler

description: PI (personal interpreters) is a set of small robotic devices, which deconstruct TV broadcasts' audio signals. The robots interpret the regular audio signal as control code and translate it into abstract rhythmic sounds using the actual TV set as resonant body. In this translation process they create surprising image/sound relationships, challenging the audience to watch well-known TV content in novel ways.

Links:

project URL: http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~fwinkler/PI

http://artscool.cfa.cmu.edu/~winkler/PI

Takehito Etani and David Tinapple

Cranked-up bass sounds leaking from cruising pimped cars are a familiar annoyance of the city streets in the world. What if the bass sounds are the drivers’ real-time heartbeat instead of beats of music? Does our relationship with the vehicle/driver and the pedestrians change? The HBBB system amplifies the heartbeat of the driver in real-time by interfacing the car audio with a heartbeat sensor. By hacking on the technology/hobby that is often used as psychological armor, territory-marking tool, the project turn the body/vehicle relationship inside-out, addressing the vulnerability of human body and emotion and aims to understand our obsession on automobiles and it’s modification rather than dismissing the culture as something aggressive. A group of local car enthusiasts will be involved in developing the design of the demo vehicle, as well as driving around the visitors to night cruises on their own vehicles with HBBB.

SONIC FABRIC is an audible textile woven from recycled audiocassette tape. Many pieces incorporating SONIC FABRIC can be included in an installation, including the "sonic shaman/superhero" dresses, a large SONIC FABRIC umbrella, and the "tell-tail thangkas", strings of silkscreened flags (based on the idea behind tibetan prayer flags).

SONIC FABRIC is a textile woven from recycled audiocassette tape that has been recorded with a collage of sounds collected from a wide range of sources, including music, ambient nature and urban noise, spoken word, etc. The material can actually be made audible by running a tape head over its surface. A dress made from the fabric was worn and "played" on stage by Jon Fishman, former drummer of the band Phish, on April 16, 2004.