Dorothy R. Santos

An incredible exhibition of new media and interactive art at the New York Museum of Modern Art. I took an insane amount of photos but wanted to share the pieces that stood out. All of the works were impressive but this would be a ridiculously long post. Please feel free to comment and/or ask questions start a dialogue. Enjoy!!!

SMSlingshot was made from the following: high-frequency radio, Arduino board, laser, batteries, plywood, and ash wood. The SMSlingshot marries a traditional weapon with text-messaging technology, projecting digital information onto building facades and other surfaces and turning them into public screens. The battery-powered device is a wooden slingshot with a display screen, keypad, and laser. Users type text messages and then release the slingshot to “blast” them onto nearby surfaces, where they appear within a splash of color and linger as long as the writers decide: at the same instant, the text is transmitted globally via Twitter. For the designers, the SMSlingshot is a tool for reclaiming and occupying increasingly commercialized urban space.

~ Text Source: New York MoMA Exhibition Plaque text

Hide & See by artist, Jaakko Tuomivaara

A constantly ringing phone doesn’t delight anyone – especially when you have guests around. A discreet cue showing incoming calls and their relative importance gives you the chance to ignore anything that can wait and make your excuses when something can’t.

Every call shows up as a dot, with the red dots around the lips reserved for important numbers. This way the owner of the piece can quickly decode both the number and relative importance of the calls.

~ Text Source: Artist Site (Please click on the image above to learn more about Hide & See and other works by Tuomivaara)

Prayer Companion (2010) is made from Photopolymer resin, dot-matrix, display, and printed circuit board. The piece was created by Interaction Research Studio at Goldsmiths – University of London.

Prayer Companion alerts the nine Poor Clare nuns cloistered at a monastery in York, England, to issues that need their prayers. The nuns, whose everyday lives have changed little since medieval times, take vows of enclosure, and presently their connections to the outside world are occasional and limited. Designed to be understated and unobtrusive, the Prayer Companion – the nuns call it “Goldie” – sits on a table in a well-traveled hallway, scrolling a ticker tape of current issues sourced from RSS news feeds, social networking sites, and blog entries aggregated by the website We Feel Fine (which compiles the emotions of anonymous strangers who have posted the words “I feel” or “I am feeling”). The nuns report that Prayer Companion “has been valuable in keeping (our) prayers pertinent”.

~ Text Source: New York MoMA Exhibition Plaque