It was a good experience to present this rather large and long project from my Design Interactions course to an external audience as it becomes clear, that all academic preparations are usually held within a closed community of experts. Taking it to an external community raised a number of unexpected but valuable questions about what a "design scenario" of the like we are creating at the RCA actually is and why we are doing it. This kind of reality check is probably a very important interaction for utopians and other missionaries.

The work of Patrick Cunningham sounded really interesting as well, as he is currently setting up a series of workshops in Synthetic Biology to promote access for the non-academic DIY home tinkerer. I think we will hear more stories of that kind soon.

About the summer school's focus:

"The convergence of technologies like information and bio sciences, and also nano and neuro sciences, characterises the recent challenge in science and technology, promising new technological outcomes like nano-bio processors, smart dust and innovative materials. Because manipulating matter on the nano scale, information bit by bit, and life on the scale of cells and neurons raises the hope of creating a new form of science and technology, convergence is being hailed as the new paradigm of the 21st century, referring to the 'unity of nature'." (from "Embodied Information" FU-Berlin)

You can find more photos at my flickr photoset.

The principle of "Crowdsourcing" is applied in order to collect nature's genetical diversity in a digital DNA database for the application in Bio Informatics. This principle could be used by a bio-tech corporation to collect vast amounts of gene samples from hardly accessible places. If parts of the DNA sample are utilized and patented the submitter will win a monetary price. This allows for cheap access to an incredible diversity of bacterial cell cultures, which wouldn't be reachable for research teams otherwise.

Project "Gene Collect"

A specimen sampling machines which is set up at arrival terminals of international airports and similar places of high microbial diversity. The machine is able to collect bacterial probes of salivae, shoes and hands of a participating person. At the end of the process, the donator is linked to the sample with an ID and will benefit from the potential margin after the genome of the sample has been patented.

Project "Genomaloto"

A lottery system for the accumulation of ultra-diverse bio samples from tropical developing countries. The "lots" are kits compiled with simple tools for picking up specimens of tissues and substances. Especially in poor countries these are deployed and re-collected for free. $0.1 is paid for each handed in sample. In the case of a successful, commercial application of a probe, the participant receives $1000.

Research background:

Digital computation, sampling and processing are expanding into the biological sphere. Thinking about the exponential performance growth of the digital domain it becomes obvious, that at some point industry and science could aim at the genetical cataloguing of life on earth. Which methods would industry develop in order to occupy another part of public space most cost efficiently? Through objects and photography a story about the daily insanity of a future world is being told in order to highlight hidden parallels to Computer Science.

The recent and coming decades are increasingly coined by information concepts. The digital storing and reading is still growing exponentially in capacity and speed. Gigantic data collections are becoming accessible through the Internet and are mostly created by private persons. The pinnacle of this data movement is indexing and search. In 2008 Google announced the size of its corporate index: 1.000.000.000.000 entries in the World Wide Web, an explosion since the 10 years anniversary of the enterprise. But since a while digitalisation is also incorporating DNS information. The human genome has an uncompressed size of 750 MegaByte and in 2003 has been completely „sequenced“ for the first time. This „Human Genome Project“ ended significantly before the estimated project duration and with a tenth of the planned costs. The increase in speed especially of DNA sequencers has been extremely high and outranged the expectations.

Synthetic Biology is trying to understand the bio-chemical processes in model species such as E.Coli and to reprogram it through DNA modifications. The approach of the biologists is quite similar to the one of computer scientists: In Cambridge (USA) a „BioBrick Registry“ is being created, which is collecting standardised DNA components including data sheets for the use in own programmings. The expectations and hopes of the researchers are enourmous. Fuel and plastics could be produced by re-programmed bacteria in future, medication could be adapted to one‘s own personal genome and a number of not yet foreseeable application could be made possible.
Recently, another milestone in Synthetic Biology has been taken: the complete synthesizing of a microbial cell out of a digital representation. But it has to be emphasized that this microbe has been copied from nature almost 1:1 and has not been created by humans unlike it has been announced at many places. The finding and use of existing gene material is a common and absolutely necessary practice since the complete creation of genes would be way to complex.

Therefore it is not surprising that increasingly the incredible variety of the global microsphere is explored besides the model species in order to learn from „genetical solutions“ of nature. Thus Craig Venter initiated the Global Ocean Sampling Expedition already in 2004 with the aim to create a random survey of the biological diversity of the oceans. One milli liter of ocean water carries in average 1 million bacteria and 10 million viruses, for the most part these are species that have not been researched yet. It is obvious that also genes for the re-use in Synthetic Biology could be found within this wealth. But what „concept of creation“ is behind the systematical reuse of natural genes that are branded as „designed“? Is it really artificial life from man‘s hand? And ultimately, who owns the existing solutions of nature?

Direction: Steffen Fiedler & Ludwig Zeller
Scientist: Leslie Csuth
Test Subject: Kevin Grennan
Camera: Ludwig Zeller
Assistance: Laurentia Genske
Editing: Steffen Fiedler
Sound Recording: Jonas Loh
Sound Design: Ludwig Zeller

Behaviouristic Instruments transform people; physical, mental and emotional, into instruments that can be played by another individual, be it lover, mother or stranger.

We dream of an orchestra of people, each instrument paired with a musician who has carefully learnt to play them. We wonder which people will make the best instruments. Who will emerge as a shrill piccolo, a smooth bassoon, a crude drum, or a wailing cat? Who will make the best players? Will it be the manipulative or the most empathetic amongst us? What is the best technique to play a person? Tenderness, torture or titillation?

We Play Bodies is a series of objects, an instruction manual and a performance. In collaboration with Steffen Fiedler and Charlotte Jarvis.

Download the instruction manual

About OffTopic:

"off topic ist eine neue Zeitschrift für Medienkunst, in der die Vielfalt der elektronischen und digitalen Kunstformen in Praxis und Theorie zum Ausdruck kommt. Als Zeitschrift der Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln greift sie gegenwärtige Entwicklungen und Ereignisse auf und gibt zugleich Einblick in die Aktivitäten und Projekte der Hochschule."

The issue can be ordered from their website:

OffTopic Magazine

My articles are available for download:

Human Computation as PDF

Extract from the editorial:

"Ordnung ist das halbe Leben. Aufräumen schafft Ordnung - zu Hause, in Medien, Kunst, Gesellschaft und in der eigenen Geschichte. 

Der Romanautor Uwe Johnson begegnet der "Katze Erinnerung" mit Misstrauen: "Unabhängig, unbestechlich, ungehorsam" mischt sie sich in den Versuch, Vergangenheit zu rekonstruieren. Er macht damit deutlich, dass jegliche Ordnung, die das Aufräumen zurückbringen soll, erst dessen Ergebnis ist. Aufräumen versucht nicht nur, jedes Ding an seinen Platz zu setzen, mitunter schafft es die Dinge und Plätze erst - und das durchaus im Wortsinne. Denn auch die Produktion von Raum ist ein Aufräumprozess.

Informatik und Medientechnologien sehen das Problem des Aufräumens dagegen als eines von Signal und Rauschen: Wenn uns die Flut der Informationen im Netz zu überfordern droht, sollen technische Lösungen die relevanten Inhalte aus dem irrelevanten Hintergrund herausfiltern. Solche Lösungen finden ihre Entsprechung in der garbage collection der Informatik: Dieses automatische Auffinden nicht mehr referenzierter Inhalte spart Arbeit, erschwert aber die Kontrolle darüber, welche Speicherbereiche wann freigegeben werden. Einmal automatisiert, wird der Vorgang des Aufräumens unbeherrschbar. Im Internet, wo Referenzierungen immer Spuren von Nutzerverhalten sind, entstehen so Anwendungen, bei denen zunehmend unklar wird, wer hier aufräumt: Nutzerinnen und Nutzer oder Algorithmen. Da Algorithmen immer mehr Teil der Medien werden, die sie verarbeiten, beginnen die vernetzten digitalen Medien, sich selbst aufzuräumen."

More information will follow soon.

The book is available for download:

Cognition On The Edge (PDF, 100MB)

Extract from the preface:

Inter - Trans - Multi - Disciplinarity 

In the beginning, this book was started as the formal, written part of my diploma thesis at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne. It was my declared goal for that to bring some of the thinking that I learned there to the world of Computer Science. In a way that is taken serious within the formal literacy of that discipline. By having been invited to the CHI conferences in Boston and Leiden as well as many other venues I can state that this goal as successfully achieved. 

But the revised edition of my thesis that you are reading right now has been lead by yet another motivation. During all the presentations I have had with this project so far and with all the nice feedback I received, people asked the same question over and over again: How can somebody come up with this? How can you leave the paths of the known to create something like a CubeBrowser? And people wanted to know about my background, the discipline I have been educated in. They wanted to know whether you have to be an engineer and inventor or if you have to be a designer and artist. My answer to these questions is that you have to be all of them at once. You cannot make it if you stick to one discipline alone. 

Technology is mirrored in society and vice versa. Since the machines we create become more and more a part of our lives, serving ever more purposes and senses, we have to think broad and interconnected between different disciplines, techniques, materials, styles and philosophies. 

As mentioned above, the initial motivation was to contribute to the current discourse of computer science, but in the end I had the impression that I had adopted to that style of science with my project too much. The effort and concentration that was necessary to finish the prototypes of this project have kept much time from thinking in that really interconnected way of design and development. Therefore, I decided to create this overworked edition of my thesis, that documents much of the processes around the CubeBrowser in a more design oriented way. 

Whom is this book for?

Obviously, it addresses the interests of engineers, artists, philosophers and designers. With these designated goals nothing else would be appropriate. This project is an adapter between man and machine and this book should be understood as a bridge between the professions as well. I hope that everybody who is coming from his side of the bridge can find something valuable on the other side.

But being a diploma thesis, this book can only touch the peak of the iceberg. Therefore, I would like to encourage you to have a look into the work of the other people who I am referring to. 

How to use this book?

The single chapters and appendices of the book can be seen as mostly modular and independent. After two chapters of theoretical background and introduction to cognition science and hyper-text theory the CubeBrowser project is presented. While these chapter should be easy and brief to read, it makes perfectly sense to skip them and jump directly forward to the CubeBrowser chapter. The most important ideas of this project will be repeated there. After that, you find four CubeBrowser related appendices with a mostly photographic documentation of the different international presentations, exemplary user paths through the Flickr database and a technical documentation. 

Acknowledgments

I want to thank many people at the academy: Prof. Georg Trogemann and Lasse Scherffig for teaching their unique, experimental approach to Computer Science and running the fabulous lab3, Prof. Zil Lilas for his incredible talent to motivate and fascinate people to explore unknown terrains of design and play, Prof. Peter Friedrich Stephan for his seminars on philosophy and hyper-text theory, which created the foundation for many thoughts in this project, and Prof. Frans Vogelaar for his steady encouragements towards a radical rethinking of design. 

Special thanks for Andreas Muxel and Charlotte Krauss, their early interest in and helpful hand for the project gave it a marvelous kick-start at the Yahoo! Design Expo in California. And I want to thank Martin Nawrath and Bernd Voss, none of the prototypes could have been built without their technical support.

Furthermore, many thanks go to Anselm Bauer, Martin Rumori, Therese Schulheit, Charlotte Krauss and Jana Paapenbrook for being the beta-readers of this document. Special thanks go to Christoph Haag: without his LaTex magic this book definitely would not have been possible. Last but way not least I want to thank my family for giving me the freedom to develop my ideas.

The Science Adventure Odysseum opened in early April in Cologne and offers insights into various fields of science.

In cooperation with 235 Media and Uniplan in Cologne I have designed and developed a network specification and server application that integrates several third-party biometrical scanning devices into the exhibition.

http://www.odysseum.de

Description from the 235Media website:

[...] 235 Media made the exhibition room Biometry a reality, in which information about the compilation and handling of biometric data is imparted. Visitors operate the devices, which are normally employed in security-relevant areas, by themselves, supported by animations and speech. In this way they lose their fear of touching the highly complex technology. Using their own fingerprint as an access code, they can decipher their own individual biometric characteristics on the finger, iris and facial scanners, which are then presented on 40 inch TFT screens and as a print-out.

Database Server / Identification System

This complex installation is controlled from a database programmed by 235 Media. The temporary visitor IDs generated by the database enable verification at the individual stations and the correct assignment of scan results. All scanning processes are integrated into a graphical overall concept, which contains animation and voice guidance and permits visitors an intuitive usage.

Station 1 : Scan of the fingers

Upon entering the room, visitors are invited to carry out a scan of the fingers. The fingerscan is presented on a screen, graphically processed. Visitors are then directed to the next station.

Station 2 :3-D Scan of the face

After activation by the fingerprint, visitors place themselves in the scan position that is right for them. To guarantee the best scanning results, the facial scanner is vertically adjustable. The completed 3D scan is displayed immediately in the graphics menu.

Station 3 : Scan of the Iris

Analog to the previous station, the scanning process takes place for the iris. At this station the interaction between the visitor and the device is particularly complex. The graphical and aural user guidance enables the best possible result.

Station 4 : Complete edition

At the complete edition station visitors receive, after verification, an overview of the scan operations carried out on them. This data is saved for two hours and then automatically erased.

Station 5 : Print-out in the shop area

Within these two hours visitors can acquire a high-quality print-out of their biometric scans at the exit of the Odysseum. Also here, verification is carried out on a finger scanner. On the back of the print-out further explanations of the various scanning processes are given and general information on the topic of biometrics.

CubeBrowser is a six display cube with digital screens that connects to online databases like Flickr.com. The visitor is able to move through thousands of image-sets by turning and shaking the small cube in space. The pictures, which are streamed onto the cube from the internet, are grouped by tags. Horizontal turns change images, while vertical turns change to other tags and therefore associations. This creates a situationism-like "derive" in a collaboratively created archival architecture in your hands. What lies next to the mountains, what is next to the sky? CubeBrowser unfolds an awe-inspiring trip through the hidden realms of online databases.

Originally, this project has been started with the help of Andreas Muxel and Charlotte Krauß.

A tool for chronophotography through video-postprocessing

"timeslots" is a program that allows you to use normal video cameras (DV, HDV, anything) to be used as a scanning device. By using just a narrow slit out of the captured video, the working principle is comparable to normal desktop scanners, but with the benefit of better optics, portability and flexibility for experimental purposes.

My first use of this software was the creation of surrealistic imagery for the "timeslots" exhibition starting in June 2006 in Cologne. More documentation about this project will be available soon.

Basically, this software can be used comparable to the classic analog slitcam photography that is invoked for panoramas. There, the chemical film is transported against the rotating camera, so that the environment is "written down" as a panorama. But if you keep the camera still, while the film is moving, you get the changes of time within your slit projected in your resulting image. This is also the base of many other works by KHM artists like Sascha Blume or Irena Paskali, who have used a digital panorama camera by Spheron VR.

Since you can set the width of the slit as you like, you can fine-tune it to reproduce objects, that are moving through the slits, with little distortion while the background gets repeated and thus wiped away - because it doesn't change fast, normally. The look of the resulting image is very dependent of your footage and your processing settings as well. After some experimentation it gets easier to anticipate the results. Rapid-prototypes taken with little digital cameras can help to find good pictures.

My intention in writing this software was to be able to use every motion camera technology from simple cellphone cameras to high-definition video to broaden the use of this expterimental technique and to be independent of expensive equipment like the Spheron camera.

Furthermore, since it is a commandline program, it can be used efficiently through the powerful scripting techniques of shells like the bash (which is standard for most modern NIXes). Another design goal was to maximize processing performance which is useful for quickly adjusting parameters or generating motion imagery. The second is an application, which was not possible with still imagery approaches like the Spheron. The next release of timeslots will be dedicated to this application.

Comparable but different approaches:
"Querläufer" by Christian Keßler
"Streak Photography"
"Improvised Scanning Digital Camera" by Andrew Davidhazy
"Scanner Umbau" by Markus Keinath

Read more to download and use the timeslots. Comments are welcome.

timeslots v1
------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2006, Ludwig Zeller

DOWNLOAD:
timeslots1.zip

CONTACT:
ludwig( at )khm.de


COPYRIGHT:
timeslots is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
timeslots is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

I would be glad if you inform me about ideas and improvements in the code!


HISTORY:
This software is based on ideas presented in

stich.sh V 0.5 c KHM 16.3.2005
wsdrec V 1.1 c KHM 30.3.2000
abi_rec V 1.0 c IFNM 3.1.1991

REQUIREMENTS:
A contemporary UNIX derived operating system like Linux or OS X and an installation of ImageMagick.

FIRST RUN:
0. ImageMagick!
Before we begin to install timeslots, you have to install ImageMagick. This can be done by invoking the packet manager of your distribution (e.g. aptitude, yast or darwinports) or by downloading it from http://www.imagemagick.org.

1. Compile!
If you are not running on a i386 architecture, you have to compile the ddim.c for your CPU. ddim is the actual working horse of this program, since it is responsible for the copying of the slots. To improve efficiency, this is written in C. Many thanks to Martin Rumori for his support.

gcc -o timeslots timeslots.c

If you are running it on Intel Macs, please tell me if the included ddim build is running without any problems.

2. Install!
Make sure to add timeslots.sh and ddim into your program search path. This could be done by moving it to /bin, if you have root privileges. There are other ways to accomplish this, of course.

3. Prepare your footage!
timeslots only reads image sequences in BMP format. So you have to convert your video footage into a BMP sequence. This can be done by e.g. FinalCut and many other packages. A good choice is also ffmpeg, if your video is already cut and setup all nice and you just want to convert without editing. There is an OSX GUI version available named ffmpegx - haven't tried it yet.

Please mind that your sequence has to be enumerated properly.

Wrong: name99.bmp, name100.bmp,... Correct: name0099.bmp, name0100.bmp

It doesn't matter, how many numbers you use as your index, as long as it stays the same over the whole sequence (See the -0 option). You can use the little enumerator.sh script, that it is found in the bin folder, to batch rename your misnamed files. Try enumerator.sh -? for a little help.

4. Run!
You are ready for your first run. An initial command could look like this:

"timeslots.sh -v -a1 -b1000 -04 -f1 -s8 -w576 -y288 -o outputname inputwithoutindex" (e.g. "input" for "input0008")

This will read inputwithoutindex0001 to inputwithoutindex1000 and extract a 8 pixel wide slot starting at line 288. Both input and output paths are relative to the working directory, of course. So the output will be placed in the same folder - you could as well specify another folder for input and out like "-o outfolder/outname inputfolder/inoutname".
The output file will be named something like "inputwithoutindex-1-8-1-1000-288.jpg". This helps you, to distinguish the different output files.

There are other options available, that are not documented yet. Try timeslots.sh -? to see a list of available options.

The Project was coordinated by Uniplan Live Communication, Kerpen and 235 Media, Köln. 

A sound installation by Christoph Haag, Martin Rumori, Franziska Windisch and Ludwig Zeller.

English title: Open Circuit

A silent labyrinth created out of open copper trails on the floor carries the electrical signals of a multichannel sound repository. By putting wireless speaker-cylinders on them, the carried sound layers can become audible and the interpretation by the visitors gets possible. "Offener Schaltkreis" reacts depending on the manner in which the speakers are used: If nothing is moved, the sounds stay calm and soft, but as soon as a single cylinder is placed elsewhere, the sounds of all speakers intensify simultaneously. This results in a dynamic relation between silence and noise, which is influenced by the visitors.

Der Offene Schaltkreis from Ludwig Zeller on Vimeo.

Frosted People shows footage of travelling people taken from below through a frosted window floor at KölnAirport. The fast pace of these travellers is rendered as a diffuse impression.

This video has been a contribution to the public video wall at Rudolfplatz in Cologne, which showed many artistic videos in a special 1:5 format between 2003 and 2006. In most of this time I managed the administration of that urban installation.

Sound design and music for an experimental animation short by Eike Mosler. 

The Cologne series

Timeslots is using the so-called "chrono-photography" to render the progress of time in space to a image in a scan like process. A self-developed algorithm is translating video frames slit by slit to a scan image, that rearranges the time to a transition from left to right.

In this series that technique has been used to highlight specific moments of urban motion. Our cities resemble tight networks with shifting moments of high density of motion and halt. These images put daily experiences into a different light: an escalator in the KölnArkaden is transform into merely endless stairway, an old "Paternoster" in the VHS Köln resembles a "Setzkasten" and one hour of the morning rush hour on the Severinsbrücke is rendered as a list of car slits.

Despite the technical process, the images put emphasis on the specific people's perspective and context.