A photo of a meeting between a participant in Must Love Robots, a small-scale alternate-reality game put on recently by the New York duo, Awkward Hug, and the game's signature robot.
(Credit: Flickr user Tim Scribbles)For Kiaya Steele, the men in suits and dark glasses who appeared suddenly through the raindrops of a New Hampshire morning were the first sign that something very unusual was going on.
One of the men stood under an umbrella next to the car Steele and her friend Kellin had been riding in moments earlier and delivered a message. As Kelli's sister Jenna was brought out of a second car that had pulled up mysteriously behind them, Steele was told that if she couldn't quickly prove that she was "the real Kiaya," the bomb planted inside Jenna would explode.
And this was just the tip of the iceberg of a day spent driving all around the countryside, complete with vans, staple guns, cameramen in trees, threats, red phone booths, and a series of hidden clues.
But this wasn't a situation for the FBI. Rather, it was a very small-scale--and low-tech--version of what is known as an alternate-reality game, an entertainment genre that has grown in popularity in recent years, especially because its traditional use of mixed-media--the Web, cell phones, social media, and others--can allow large numbers of people to play together collaboratively.
Over the years, the games have become a favorite marketing tool of large companies like Microsoft, which has commissioned huge ARGs, as they're known, for the launches of things like the video game Halo 2 and Windows Vista. Indeed, the first widely known ARG was called The Beast, and was used as a promotion for the release of the Steven Spielberg film "AI: Artificial Intelligence."
Those versions of ARGs have seven-figure budgets and allow thousands of people to participate. Yet while they get most of the ink written about ARGs, there has long been a steady stream of games built for very small audiences or, as in the case of Steele and the friend with a "bomb" insider her, an audience of one. It turned out that the intrigue was all part of a day-long mystery concocted by Steele's boyfriend, and involving several of their friends, as part of an elaborate marriage proposal.
"We use a lot of fictional analogies in our lives--gangsters in an alley (and) later in the quest there was a Soviet scientist, all themes that had played out in our courtship," Steele recalled. "We would write stories of sorts to one another before we dated. We'd take an image and run with it until it was too tired to move anymore. The whole thing was kind of a collaboration of our lives together."
Given that the game Steele's new fiance planned for his proposal had such a small audience, it was, to be sure, at the extreme end of the size and complexity spectrum for ARGs. But at any given moment, there are several ARGs being played that have slightly larger, yet still very small, numbers of participants. And it is these games, usually carried out at minimal expense and with no deep-pocketed sponsor, that may well be the true lifeblood of the increasingly popular world of ARGs.
And while there are practical limits to the kinds of interactions that are possible between the people running the larger games--the so-called puppetmasters--and the players, these smaller adventures offer everyone involved a much greater chance at direct communication.
"There are quite a few people making [small] ARGs, either without profit in mind or marketing [who are] saying, 'Look at me, I can do this,'" said Michael Andersen, who runs ARGNet, the leading source for news and information about the genre. "The motivations for a lot of these things vary. [One] advantage of doing these grassroots games is working for yourself. [And], it becomes a lot easier to have those one-on-one interactions [and the] feeling that not only can you communicate, but you can change what's going on" for fans.
Robot love
Earlier this year, a New York duo calling themselves Awkward Hug built and pulled off a small-scale ARG called Must Love Robots, which was centered around the idea of helping make love connections between people and robots.
Through a series of Web sites, social media, YouTube videos and more, Awkward Hug founders Jim Babb and Tanner Ringerud turned a $3,000 budget into a 3-month-long game with at least 300 participants.
Babb said that the project, which was entirely self-funded, came out of an original desire to create a Web series about a robot. But when the two realized that they could "make it so much more" by adding the various multimedia elements, they set out to build a bona fide ARG, one that would allow them to communicate directly with almost anyone who wanted to talk with them, even to the point of playing online games of Scrabble. And, of course, there were real-world meetings between prospective "dates" and the game's signature robot (see video below).
Given the huge gap in size between a large-scale ARG and something like Must Love Robots, it might be surprising that many of the ultimate goals are the same. It certainly was to Babb.
"What surprised me the most," Babb said, was that "players want more and they want to do things with you. It becomes a collaboration. The audience becomes characters."
And while it's not always possible for everyone to participate in person--Must Love Robots attracted players from around the world--one of the great things about the ARG genre is how many people who play do participate directly in one way or another. In Babb and Ringerud's game, for example, 20 people created costumes related to the story line and sent in pictures of themselves wearing the outfits, all of which were intended to be folded into the larger story line.
Kids creators
A different kind of small-scale ARG was Find Chesia, a project put on by the Finksburg, Md., library on behalf of its local schoolchildren and their summer reading program.
The story, said organizer Heather Owings, was centered on the story of Chesia, a 14-year-old girl whose parents have gone missing on an archaeological dig and who sets out to find them. The game was designed by five small teams of 11- to 15-year-olds.
Like with many small-scale ARGs, Find Chesia encountered a series of structural problems, most notably, Owings said, the fact that the kids turned out to be resistant--mainly due to regular conditioning about the dangers of online anonymity--to the idea of posting information in character to the game's Web site. In addition, there was the unforeseen problem that almost none of the kids were old enough to drive to the game's real-world locations.
This bracelet is an important element in the ARG, Finding Chesia, which was put on by a Maryland library on behalf of a town's schoolchildren and their summer reading program.
(Credit: Finding Chesia)Still, the game was successful enough for Owings to want to run the game again next summer, incorporating some of the lessons they learned this year. And despite the problems, Owings said that she came away with an appreciation for what the ARG genre can offer its organizers and participants.
"I like that ARGs use tools that were set up to do something else, and they're used to create something new," Owings said. "It's the taking of something and changing it and using it for something it wasn't intended [for] in a new and creative way."
Plus, she said, Finding Chesia turned out to be a perfect way to get the kids in on the enjoyment of building their own game, even though they lacked many of the skills generally considered necessary for such a task.
"It's a way for teens to create their own game," Owings said, "and we really enjoyed that aspect of it...They don't need to be computer programmer [and] here is a way for them to take ownership for creating a game on a fairly small level. [As well, it] helps them to realize how much the Internet does facilitate networking within the community, as well as outside the community."
These days, said ARGNet's Andersen, there are at least as many small, grassroots ARGs being produced as the larger, corporate-backed games. And those numbers could grow as an increasing number of people become versed in the tools for building them. According to Andersen, teachers at the University of Texas at Dallas and the University of Mary Washington are both teaching classes about ARGs.
But the real upside in the genre's growth will come naturally, as more people in more local communities get exposed to ARGs and discover the joy of playing something truly interactive and truly collaborative.
And while it's true that most small ARGs quickly peter out as players and organizers discover that they don't have the time or energy to follow through, there are those who feel that the ultimate payoff of participating is there for anyone with the stamina or commitment to grab it.
"For an independent ARG, the most successful thing you can do is complete it and have your core audience go all the way through," said Awkward Hug's Babb. "It's such a cool format, and the people who can make it through a whole one of these get an experience that no other media can provide."
On Thursday, Popular Mechanics magazine will unveil its 2009 Breakthrough awards. Included on the list is a series of innovators, as well as a number of products, including this lawn mower, the Hustler Zeon, which is the world's first all-electric, zero-turning-radius mower. It can cover an acre of grass on a single charge.
(Credit: Popular Mechanics)Popular Mechanics magazine on Thursday will unveil its fifth-annual Breakthrough Award winners, an august collection of designers and products that could do much more than their share to change the world for the better.
From famous inventors like Dean Kamen to a flying car for the Third World to bacteria-powered batteries--and much in-between--the awards are meant to highlight technologies that will shape the way people around the world live and how they interact with everyday products.
Each year, the magazine's editors scour the country for a worthy group of winners, and this year, in the end, Popular Mechanics settled on one leadership award winner, one next-generation honoree, eight Breakthrough innovators and 10 Breakthrough products.
"In all cases, there's a really practical application that we see coming about," said Jerry Beilinson, the magazine's deputy editor, "so these aren't theoretical scientific applications. (They're going to) change the world and have a really positive aspect on people's lives."
Beilinson said that after five years of identifying technological breakthrough products and innovators, certain themes have emerged in the editors' preferences. Among the most important, he said, is alternative energy and products and designers that push that category forward.
"If I look back (at the last few years of doing the awards), we looked at aviation and we looked at medicine," he said. "But over the last few years, I think the things that have been clear themes that we've been looking at that have emerged (are) alternative energy and appropriate technologies for the developing world."
And while the themes can be forward-looking, the individual awards celebrate a "moment in time," he said.
"We're sort of picking the moment at which it's become real, and passed the threshold and seems like its worthy of an award," Beilinson said. "But most of these kinds of things do take some time to develop."
For this year's Breakthrough Leadership award, Popular Mechanics honored Dean Kamen, an inventor with more than 440 patents who may be best known for creating the incredible but commercially disappointing Segway personal transporter.
... Read more
At the Pacific Pinball Expo in San Rafael, players of all ages can try their hands at nearly 400 different pinball machines. The expo runs through the weekend at the Marin County Civic Center.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)SAN RAFAEL, California--You might not think of pinball as an educational tool, but to some devotees of the age-old arcade favorite, that's exactly what they can be.
That's because pinball machines have been around for decades, and often have themes representative of the era in which they were built. And this weekend, visitors to the Pacific Pinball Expo here, an event billed as the "world's largest" pinball show, can see history on display in bright lights and enhanced with familiar bells and whistles, things like the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, the first man on the moon, contemporary music from the 1950s and much more.
At the expo, which opened Friday at the Marin County Civic Center here (admission is $25 for adults and $15 for kids 12 and under), visitors can see more than 350 machines from as early as the 1920s, and with names like "Wild West," "Quartette," "Dragonette, "4-Belles" and much more.
And the mission statement of the Pacific Pinball Museum, which is behind the expo, is as follows: "To inspire an interest in science, art and history through pinball and to preserve and promote this important part of American culture."
... Read more
If you've ever been driving down the highway and looked at the Google Maps application on an iPhone to see what traffic is like ahead, you may have wondered where the data behind the green, yellow, and red lines indicating real-time vehicle flow come from.
In fact, the data are coming from people just like you: users of smartphones with GPS who, by the very act of driving down the highway, are feeding back information about how fast they're going to Google, which in turn is sending it back to users of its mobile map apps.
Users of the Google Maps iPhone app can get real-time traffic flow data that is based on the passive participation of other users. This is an example of mobile crowdsourcing, something that is a growing trend, especially on iPhones.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)Which means, of course, that the application itself is crowdsourced--that is, based on the mutual contributions of many users, all of whom are participating in the product, and without whom, the product would be worthless.
These days, the concept of crowdsourcing--defined by Jeff Howe, who literally wrote the book on the subject, as, "the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call"--is all the rage, and there are no end of well-known examples, especially on the Web: the Netflix prize; Twitter search; public tagging of Library of Congress archival photos; even Wikipedia. Indeed, much of the concept of user-generated content is really about crowdsourcing.
But until now, much of the discussion about the subject has focused on what people are doing on their computers. Yet today, more than ever before, crowdsourcing has gone mobile. As more smart phones have brought ubiquitous Internet connectivity to the masses, more people have been feeding back into the system. And for now at least, nowhere is that more true than on the the iPhone.
"Why do I love my iPhone, which I do," Howe said in an interview. "Because I'm suddenly doing interesting things with my cognitive surplus. All these times (on public transportation)...are great times to contribute to these group efforts. It's crowdsourcing at its most root definition. Crowdsourcing is a perfect coupling of that downtime, of the very fuel that the crowdsourcing engine needs to run."
Today, the iPhone is not the most popular smartphone but it certainly is gaining steam. According to Gartner, during the second quarter of 2009, the iPhone's share of the global smart phone market had soared to 13.3 percent from 2.8 percent a year earlier. To be sure, the BlackBerry--with 18.7 percent share--and Nokia's offerings--with 45 percent share--still lead in total sales, but it's hard to argue with Apple's growth, or with its dominance in the community-developed application market.
"As Apple has so often done," Howe said, "they did it better sooner...crowdsourcing is only as effective as one's reach allows, because it does require either mass participation or at least mass viewership."
The iPhone app by The Extraordinaries allows users to volunteer small amounts of their time for the collective good.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)Which is why there is a growing number of iPhone apps--both those that seek to make money and those that are nonprofit--that are based entirely on crowdsourcing, and which without the buy-in by a critical mass of users would be meaningless.
Some, like the traffic feature in the Google Maps app, are subtle about it. But others shout it out: Their developers know that the public has a thirst for this and have specifically made crowd participation a selling point.
Traffic apps, it turns out, are a natural for mobile crowdsourcing. Because of the iPhone's built-in GPS--on the iPhone 3G and 3GS, at least--and the fact that many owners won't go anywhere without their precious device, it makes perfect sense to build tools that rely on user-submitted data.
Some examples are Waze, which relies on users to inform others about traffic conditions, about road construction and about the existence of angry drivers; Trapster, which lets users report speed traps so that other drivers will be aware of them, in real-time; Aha, which mixes both live traffic flow information with location-based identification of things like cafes, bathrooms, and restaurants; and others.
"I think what it comes down to is what this device right now excels at," said Jacob Colker, the co-founder of a company called The Extraordinaries that is leveraging crowdsourcing. "And that is really to use GPS, a camera, and the phone itself."
Yet there are a growing number of other examples, as well.
One is an app from The Extraordinaries itself. Already well-known for work harnessing the collective power of large numbers of Internet users for the common good, the organization has now put out an iPhone app that lets any user participate in a wide range of causes, right from the device.
For example, users can add tags to photos from the Smithsonian to bring more collective context to that museum's huge archives; help create a huge map of kid-friendly places by finding a "playspace" and snapping a photo of it; or help the city of San Diego cut down on water wastage by reporting any city agency watering during the day or ignoring obvious leaks.
Crowdsourcing can be silly, too. Take the famous Ocarina iPhone app. With that, countless people have used the device to play a kind of flute-like instrument. In and of itself, that's fun but not crowdsourced. But what takes it to the next level is that users can look at a 3D rendering of the globe and see and hear the notes that are being played by other Ocarina users.
That's crowdsourcing in action.
And then there's Yelp, which by definition is crowdsourced. With its iPhone app, the popular tool for letting people rate and comment on businesses, is bringing the power of the collective experience to merchants and retailers anywhere, anytime.
Smule's Ocarina iPhone app lets users play a flute-like instrument and automatically submit their play so that others anywhere in the world can hear it.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)So is the iPhone speeding up the process of taking crowdsourcing mobile?
"I think it's creating conditions for new ideas to flourish," said Colker, "and that's really important. Showing that it is possible, that, yes, I can demand YouTube in my pocket, and I'm going to pull up this app and play flute into it and I'm going to listen to someone playing the Ocarina app in South Africa. It's powerful. It allows people to think in new ways, and to create the kernel for those new ideas to exist, and the conditions for those new innovations to exist."
Every day, Apple is adding more apps to its App Store. And while most do not involve crowdsourcing, an increasing number do. And that seems like a trend that there's little that anyone could do to stop. Nor would anyone want to.
For now, it's hard to say exactly what the next crowdsourced apps will be to come down the pike, but it seems certain there will be an exponentially growing number of them over time. Games will be built that rely on users to locate items in a virtual world; Poetry apps will rely on users submitting their own stanzas; Lolcat sites will depend on iPhone users snapping pictures of cats, slapping funny captions on them, and sending them in; and much more.
In essence, as with the larger app ecosystem, the sky's the limit for crowdsourced apps. And while other smart phones will also have an increasing number of applications that rely on user submissions, the iPhone is likely to stay at the head of the field.
"I think the iPhone itself has done tremendous good for moving technology forward, and as a byproduct, paving the way for new forms of crowdsourcing to exist," Colker said. "And that's what really excites me about the iPhone."
Corrected at 10:16 a.m.: This story originally reported that The Extraordinaries is a non-profit. In fact, it is a for-profit company.
Each year, the Discovery Channel show shoots an episode for the network's Shark Week. The results of one of its shark shows, this articulated beast, hangs on the wall at the show's headquarters, M5 Industries, in San Francisco.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)SAN FRANCISCO--For some of the nearly 100,000 followers of "MythBusters" star Adam Savage's Twitter feed, communicating with him has proven to be more than just your average back-and-forth. For some, it's been a way to submit ideas that he and his Discovery Channel show costars have used for actual episodes.
On October 7, Discovery will begin airing its fall collection of new "MythBusters" episodes, and Savage said that he and costar Jamie Hyneman have taken at least four ideas that have come directly from Twitter users and implemented them on the show.
Among them are exploring the myth that dirty cars are more fuel efficient than clean ones; one that addresses the reality of a YouTube video in which a man shoots high off a huge water slide and lands, far in the distance, in a small inflatable pool; and one about insects.
To Savage, Twitter has become a terrific way for him to have a dialogue with the show's fans, especially since he says that the highly negative tone of the comments in the show's official forums turns him off and distracts him from doing his job.
By comparison, he said that because his Twitter followers know that he reads all of the tweets sent to him, there's somewhat of a "social contract" involved that improves the conversation. "I still have disagreements with people on Twitter," Savage said. "But it's much more civilized, and for me as a person who wants to give more value to the fans, I think about what I would want to read of someone who I admired, so I post funny things from behind the set" and lots of personal anecdotes.
For Hyneman, by contrast, Twitter, or any other social network, for that matter, isn't useful, and has actually become a bit of a distraction at work.
"I do notice that it's increasingly difficult to get Adam's attention when we're trying to work," Hyneman said, "because (if) you give him an instant of inactivity...it's like, okay," and he starts to use his iPhone.
Adam Savage often takes every available moment during the work day to communicate with people on his iPhone.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)Asked why he has an iPhone, Savage said only that he is "an Apple Kool-Aid drinker from way back...and I love everything they produce."
Duct tape and much more
This fall, just as has been the case since "MythBusters" first got started, Savage and Hyneman have been scouring the world for things that pique their curiosity. Indeed, the show has taken the two--plus the show's other team of co-stars, Kari Byron, Grant Imahara and Tory Belleci--on an unending quest for myths to bust that present them with a sense of adventure.
But this fall, viewers will see more on the show about duct tape, probably, than they ever thought possible. In fact, what started as a path towards a single segment on the popular adhesive ended up resulting in an entire duct tape special.
Both teams of "MythBusters" actually did two or three duct tape stories, Savage explained. "Some spectacular stuff came out of that," he said, "and if we could, we'd just move on to more duct tape stuff. But we've got to space it out so we don't over-duct tape the audience."
And while they wouldn't reveal too many details of what they'd done with the famous grey tape, Hyneman did allow that, in one situation, "We were on our way out the Golden Gate Bridge and had to turn back because the camera crew was complaining that they were getting too wet from the rough seas."
Whether that explains the boat covered in duct tape that is now hanging from the ceiling at M5 Industries, the San Francisco studio space where Hyneman and Savage do their work, is hard to say. But the boat is clearly from the duct tape special.
And while the two are cagey about much of what's coming up in the fall's episodes, they did share some information about one or two myths they attempted to bust.
One is the idea that a prisoner could use thousands of antacid tablets to create enough pressure to bust out of his or her cell. The two wouldn't say what the outcome of their experiment with more than 20,000 antacid tablets was, but they did admit that they were able to bust through a scale model of a jail cell made out of glass.
"It comes down to how well is the cell built," joked Hyneman.
The two were also willing to talk about the segment they did for one of the upcoming episodes on the aerodynamics of dirty cars, one of the myths that came from Twitter.
The myth, explained Savage, is that a dirty car is more fuel efficient than a clean one due to the "golf ball effect" caused by the dirt. The idea, he said, is that the dirt creates something of a "boundary layer that allows the car to be more aerodynamic."
Neither Savage nor Hyneman would say what the results of their investigation was, but Hyneman did say that they were both "very, very surprised (by) the results" and that what they found will be "of quite a lot of interest to the automotive industry."
Still another future episode has to do with the physics of bullet ricochets and whether it is possible for a shooter to hit him or herself with a bullet shot in an enclosed space. The results of that experiment also took the two by surprise, particularly because, as Hyneman said, "there are some basic flaws in the concept that you see in the movies with this 'ding-ding-ding and down you go.'"
At a much higher level now
"MythBusters" has now completed production on 134 episodes, and to Hyneman, that much experience has allowed him and Savage to be much more advanced in their approach to busting myths than they were at the beginning.
"The kinds of insights that we're seeing as far as the physics and the chemistry (and) all the dynamics of what's going on there," Hyneman said, "we're starting out at a much higher level now, and so the results that we're getting are not quite as basic as they were when we started."
More to the point, he said, he and Savage attack their work with greater clarity now, and have a better sense of what the best process is for attacking a myth. Oddly, instead of doing better science, or making things stronger or taking more risks, it all begins with the very concepts for each myth.
"The most important thing to get straight is the question you're trying to ask in the first place," Hyneman said. "It seems like a simple thing, but it's hard to get to that point and, a lot of times now, we're spending much more time defining that question before we do anything else."
Poetic Kinetics' Wi-Fi flowers
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)SAN FRANCISCO--A pair of Los Angeles artists have teamed up with Toyota on an unusually functional art project: a set of large, colorful flowers that have been providing free Wi-Fi and power outlets in public places around the country.
Currently on display in San Francisco's Yerba Buena Gardens, the flowers--the creation of a company called Poetic Kinetics and its principals, Patrick Shearn and Cynthia Washburn--are part of a campaign for Toyota's newest generation Prius.
Brightly colored by day and lit up with LEDs at night, the flowers have been on tour around the country for several weeks. According to John Lisko, the executive communications director for Saatchi & Saatchi, Toyota's ad agency on the project, the flowers have gone through Boston, New York, Chicago, Seattle, and will shortly be departing for Los Angeles.
Inspired, at least in part, by a set of giant, mobile flowers Shearn built for Burning Man in 2005 and 2006, Toyota commissioned the project to reflect the theme of the new Prius: Harmony between man, nature, and machine.
The Wi-Fi flowers are lit up at night.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)Run on solar power, the flowers pull in an Internet signal via a 3G network, explained Washburn, and then convert it to Wi-Fi, which covers a radius of about 200 feet around each flower.
For now, the project is no more than temporary art. But Lisko said that Toyota is "thinking through" the possibility of providing permanent versions, particularly because, he said, the public feedback has been so strongly positive.
Designed for Burning Man 2005 and 2006, these two art cars, a flower and a venus fly trap, were among the most popular pieces at Burning Man.
(Credit: Poetic Kinetics)
Who made this, and where is it located? If you're the first to solve this Road Trip 2009 challenge, you'll win a prize.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)Update (9:41 p.m.): We have a winner. The answer is that this beautiful kinetic sculpture is by the late artist Starr Kempf, and it is in front of his family's home in Colorado Springs, Colo.
MISSOULA, Mont.--Over the last 22 days, on Road Trip 2009, I've driven close to 4,000 miles, extensively covered three states and touched on three others. During that time, I've seen some pretty amazing things, some of which I've already written about, and others which I will later.
One thing I have discovered is that my Picture of the Day challenges have been too easy. After the first couple, I realized that folks were solving them with Google searches, so I tried to make them harder. And that didn't work. I even offered a second prize if someone could identify the last one, Newspaper Rock, in Utah, with a Google search of four words. I thought it couldn't be done. Someone did it with a two word search. Silly me.
So, today, I'm offering what I hope might be a harder challenge than the previous ones. This one is an artwork in a city I passed through during Road Trip, but I'm not saying which city, or even what state. I will say that the piece in this picture is large, is one of several by the same artist on this property, and that it moves with the wind.
If you are the first person to send me an e-mail correctly identifying the artist and the city this is in, then you win a prize. I'm not interested in any of the controversy surrounding the art, the artist or his family.
Please send your e-mails, with the phrase "Picture of the Day" in the subject, to daniel dot terdiman at cnet dot com.
Good luck.
Geek Gestalt at the tail end of Road Trip 2009. After driving more than 12,000 miles in the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest and the Southeast over the last three years, he's now writing about and photographing the best in technology, science, military, nature, aviation and more in Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota and Colorado. If you have a suggestion for someplace to visit, drop me a line. And in the meantime, join the Road Trip 2009 Facebook page and follow my Twitter feed.
A new $15,000 device from Live Spark makes fire dance to the beat of music.
(Credit: Live Spark)
Updated at 12:03 p.m.: To correct that Arc Attack did not synchronize music to its tesla coils.
Just in time for Maker Faire, I read in the San Francisco Chronicle this morning that a local fire artist has created a revolutionary machine: a fire pit, from a company called Live Spark, designed to make flames dance to the beat of music.
According to the Chronicle, Brett Levine--not surprisingly, a Burning Man and Maker Faire artist, as well as a former software entrepreneur--has begun selling his so-called "Fire 2.0," a $15,000 device that has gotten Las Vegas hotels and clubs hot and bothered over the prospect of entertaining their guests with synchronized dancing fire.
"Think of the illuminated bars on your stereo's graphic equalizer. Now imagine them on fire (links to video)," the Chronicle reports. "Algorithms analyze music in the room, even specific instruments, and send signals to the gas lines that rapidly open and close a series of valves to 100 different positions up to 30 times per second."
Now, I've seen some pretty amazing fire art in my day, but I'm guessing for your average Vegas visitor, this would be something they've never encountered before. And that's why, the Chronicle reports, Vegas hot spots are lining up to talk to Levine and his business partner about getting Live Spark hooked up.
This, of course, reminds me of some other artists that time visual art to the beat of music: Arc Attack, an Austin, Texas, group that uses the electricity from a pair of tesla coils to produce music.
Still, fire definitely has a primal attraction for a lot of people, and I can certainly see why Las Vegas would want to bring some of the magic that good fire art generates to its visitors. Now, as the economy continues to falter, Vegas' elders just need to figure out how to get those visitors to actually, you know, visit.
On June 22, Geek Gestalt will kick off Road Trip 2009. After driving more than 12,000 miles in the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest and the Southeast over the last three years, I'll be looking for the best in technology, science, military, nature, aviation and more in Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana and South and North Dakota. If you have a suggestion for someplace to visit, drop me a line. And in the meantime, join the Road Trip 2009 Facebook page and follow my Twitter feed.
This drivable cupcake sits idle while getting a charge at Maker Day--the set-up day for Maker Faire--on Friday at the San Mateo Fairgrounds in San Mateo, Calif. Maker Faire begins Saturday morning and goes all weekend.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)SAN MATEO, CALIF.--One of the great things about being at Maker Day, the day before the gates officially open at Maker Faire, is that every time you walk around the fairgrounds here, everything looks different.
That's because, of course, in the time it takes to make a circuit around the San Mateo Fairgrounds during Maker Day, the annual home of the do-it-yourself (DIY) celebration that is Maker Faire, a whole bunch of new "makers" have arrived and others have added a great deal to the projects they had only just started at the beginning of the circuit.
I was on hand for Maker Day on Friday because I find it's always refreshing to get a chance to see things in process. Also, with more than 80,000 people expected at this year's Maker Faire, I wanted to get a chance to see what some of the makers--the people behind the hundreds and thousands of DIY projects on display here--had worked on, without having to navigate unbelievable masses of people.
That's especially true if you see a really popular project and you want to find out something about it.
For me, that didn't take long. Only a couple minutes after I walked through the gates of the fairgrounds, I encountered a very familiar looking robotic structure. It looked very much like the "Rave 'Raff," a robotic giraffe I had first seen at Burning Man in 2005 and which I had seen several times since then at Maker Faire.
But the Rave 'Raff was white, so this couldn't be it. Yet when I walked over to see what it was, it was indeed the 'Raff, only with an entirely new paint job, it seemed.
In fact, it wasn't just a new paint job (which was now pearl sunset orange). The giraffe's creator, Lindsay Lawlor, told me that he and his crew had completely rebuilt the robot, and it was now well on its way to being an entirely interactive robot. (See video below.)
"We changed everything," said Lawlor. "We basically got out the cutting torch."
He explained that he and his team, with the help of some sponsors, had put about $10,000 worth of work into the redesign, and the end result was a giraffe with all-new hardware, hydraulic pumps made out of acrylic plastic sheets, shock-absorbing struts, and that new paint job. It also has a new hydraulic neck that is operated by a single piston.
It even has 32 "teeth," little rectangular pieces of plastic with embedded LEDs, that mirror the exact number, spacing, and setting of real giraffe teeth.
In other words, when the Rave 'Raff gets going, it's one high-tech giraffe.
Lawlor said that the giraffe also has touch sensors in its ears, eyes, head, and mouth, and that by next year, he expects to have it speaking.
"The idea is to bring it to life like a real giraffe," Lawlor said. "It will follow me around like he's my pet giraffe."
Lindsay Lawlor with his completely redesigned Rave 'Raff, a robotic giraffe.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET Networks)Not far away, some folks from a group called Lightning Temple were setting up "Interactivation," a musical instrument with a musical tesla coil in the center.
Evonne Heyning, of Lightning Temple, told me that the tesla coil in Interactivation is designed to sound more like music coming from a speaker than the traditional sharp, electronic-sounding devices. She also told me that at Burning Man this summer, Lightning Temple, among other things, will be running a tesla coil repair station in case any of the many artists with the huge electronic devices need such services.
Some people have called Maker Faire "Burning Man on cement," but that's not quite fair. To be sure, much of the art seen at Maker Faire has also or will be seen at Burning Man. But Maker Faire has a somewhat different spirit. While it celebrates the DIY spirit, it is much more about showcasing the work of the many makers who trek to the Faire. Burning Man, while also about showcasing DIY art, has a more party-like feel, and is also intended to be for "participants only."
By contrast, Maker Faire is intended to instill the participatory spirit in people, but in a way that they take it with them when they go home. In other words, to turn people into DIYers once they leave.
Back in the Lightning Temple area, Heyning told me that she and her crew are taking some of the things they've done with Interactivation and are working on an iPhone application that would give people a way to experience a collaboration of music composition and energetic research.
Only at Maker Faire
One thing is for sure at Maker Faire--or Maker Day as the case may be. And that's that whimsy is king.
I ran into a couple of friends who told me a story about someone they'd just talked to. The person had had his hand inside a plastic bag in the way that dog owners sometimes do when they take their pooches for a walk. But instead of keeping hold of some dog waste, this person told my friends that, in fact, he was holding onto some condensed moisture from New York State. And that he had to run and give it to someone.
Indeed.
What may seem like whimsy today, however, was once pure practicality.
That much was clear in an extremely beautiful, classic machine I saw sitting quietly on one side of the fairgrounds.
This was a 1917 Case Traction Engine which, I was told by Zachary Rukstela, the chief engineer of a group called Kinetic Steam Works, was the very first model of tractor.
A 1917 Case Traction Engine, the first model of tractor, on display at Maker Faire.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)Rukstela's group had purchased the traction engine from a defunct Yuma, Ariz., museum, and was working to completely restore it. He said they were about 90 percent along. And to be sure, this thing was absolutely gorgeous, and looked brand new. But entirely out of place in the 21st century.
That makes sense, however. One thing abundantly evident at Maker Faire the last couple of years has been an overpowering steampunk look and feel. Evidenced by rustic coloring, lots of rivets, brass and leather, steampunk seems to be the official aesthetic of Maker Faire.
And that was definitely true at Maker Day on Friday.
Much the same, some different
Maker Faire is growing, as organizer Sherry Huss told me, and one of the major components of the festival this year is DIY robotics. There are expected to be at least 24 different groups showing off such projects.
But while there is always a great deal that's new at Maker Faire, it's also clear that many of the biggest projects on display are ones that have been to the fair many times before. And that makes sense, I suppose, since things like the Lifesized Mousetrap are huge crowd favorites. The same goes for the Neverwas Haul, a steam-powered Victorian house.
Still, I'd like to see more new big art at Maker Faire than I think I saw.
I guess I need to get working on doing some serious DIY myself.
If you go to Maker Faire: Be prepared for giant crowds, slow traffic, and having to park a ways away from the fairgrounds. Maker Faire is running a Twitter feed that should give steady updates about the traffic situation.
Also be prepared with a hat and sunscreen, and remember to drink lots of water.
On June 22, Geek Gestalt will kick off Road Trip 2009. After driving more than 12,000 miles in the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest, and the Southeast over the last three years, I'll be looking for the best in technology, science, military, nature, aviation, and more in Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, and South and North Dakota. If you have a suggestion for someplace to visit, drop me a line. And in the meantime, join the Road Trip 2009 Facebook page and follow my Twitter feed.
Nifer Fahrion (left) was one of five winners of the CNET News Maker Faire contest. Entrants were tasked with submitting an idea for using DIY to remake America. Here, Fahrion is seen at a past Maker Faire showing off her felting skills.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET Networks)The submissions came in fast and furious at the deadline, and in the end, only five could win.
I'm talking about CNET News' Maker Faire contest, that is, in which readers were challenged to come up with the best way to use a do-it-yourself (DIY) philosophy to remake America.
After receiving the submissions, I forwarded a numbered, anonymous, set of finalists' entries on to our celebrity judge, Make magazine senior editor Phillip Torrone, who then chose the five winners.
Each winner will receive four tickets to the upcoming Maker Faire in San Mateo, Calif., as well as a festival T-shirt.
The winners, in order, were:
• First place, Karen Fraga:
My 90-year-old dad was the first I knew of that was a DIYer. He had coffee cans in his shed full of nails. If anything would break down, he would fix it. If America would repair more items, it would reduce the need to make more items.I brought out of my closet a game that Dad made over 30 years ago. He re-used the bottom portion of an egg carton, paper towel roll and some felt for rolling the dice in. I think in order to remake America we need to think of different ways to use things that we already have around the house.
Dad would tie up his newspapers for recycling back when no one else was even thinking about recycling. I think America also has been recycling more than when Dad first started but, still, make it part of your daily life.
• Second place, Nifer Fahrion:
As a crafter, I have witnessed and participated in skills sharing salons, from knitting and screen-printing, to computer programming and welding. Skills sharing salons provide infrastructure and collaboration opportunities for people, as well as encourage knowledge exchange, learning, and mentoring. These types of salons also allow for artistic collaboration and experimentation, birthing fresh and creative new ways of interacting with one's world.Whether skill sharing salons are held as a monthly crafting session, or are more semi-formalized through small collectives, they have the power to change the way Americans have come to interact with their world. By instilling each other with the DIY attitude, we no longer are passive observers of the world around us, but rather are creating what we want our world to be, one stitch at a time.
• Third place, Christopher Pepper:
As a high-school teacher, I am inspired to use the DIY spirit in our schools. I'd like to see our school as incubators and curators for the creative ideas that burst forth from our youth. I'd love to be able to teach about nutrition and actually have a space for students to cook and create meals. I'd love to have students learn about biology and ecology by planting and maintaining a garden. I'd love to bring back some of the mechanical arts--which, like cooking and sewing, have been taken out of many of our schools--and teach students some hands-on skills, like how to fix their own bicycles or how to build their own solar cell phone chargers. I think there's a lot of room for DIY ideas in our own schools.
• Fourth place, Mickey Staudt:
Recycle, Reduce, Reuse. I am a mother of nine and I find that we use a lot of everything in our home. So, it is very important for me to help my family understand this impact on our country's environment. In my small way I teach them this by finding ways to re-purpose items as often as possible. This winter, my twin 10-year-old daughters learned how to unravel old sweaters to use the yarn for new knitting projects. They learned how to felt discarded wool sweaters for new items, like pot holders or wallets/purses. For Christmas, my sons received sweater pillows for their beds. These had some small defects that might have landed them in the trash, but instead they kept them warm all winter. I think kids understand that the need to recycle effects everyone's future, especially their own.
• Fifth place, Jacob Rose:
"Victory Energy Gardens." Grow power at home with little generators everywhere. The same way we standardize energy-eating appliances, there should be a simple plug-in standard for energy producing devices. Update the national electrical code to include this standard, and set a timeline, the same as we did for HDTV. Got a creek? A windy rooftop? A treadmill? Figure out a way to make it spin a standard generator, and plug it in to produce power.
A big thanks to everyone who submitted, to Maker Faire for offering the tickets and T-shirts, and to Torrone for judging.
To the winners, enjoy Maker Faire, and to everyone else, let's keep on using the DIY spirit to remake America, and the world.
On June 22, Geek Gestalt will kick off Road Trip 2009. After driving more than 12,000 miles in the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest and the Southeast over the last three years, I'll be looking for the best in technology, science, military, nature, aviation and more in Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana and South and North Dakota. If you have a suggestion for someplace to visit, drop me a line. And in the meantime, join the Road Trip 2009 Facebook page and follow my Twitter feed.
