Yesterday evening, I went to the SimpleTEXT audio/visual performance by Family Filter. I was looking forward to it, but was a bit bitter as someone had just stolen my beloved mobile phone, so I coulnd't really participate.

Only two of the Family Filter members, Tim Redfern and Duncan Murphy were there. Jonah Brucker-Cohen couldn't come.

People in the audience are invited to submit messages to control the audiovisual output of the installation (guiding how the music is created, and rhythmically driving a speech synthesizer) and the images that appear on the screens. Tim and Duncan had warned that the sms or e-mail had to be short as the images came from a search on Google.

I found it really good. Unfortunately, the performance was a bit spoilt by the fact that many people found it more amusing to send each other long messages such as "Hi Jos�, I'm here, were are you?" which of course triggered only a "No image found" result with the text of the message underneath.

Yesterday evening, I went to the retrospective of RND# (computer jargon for "random number") by British film director Richard Fenwick . Four years ago, he embarked on a very ambitious project: create 100 shorts illustrating how information technologies have been contaminating every aspect of our everyday life. So far, he made just 20 of them. His language fuses real images, graphics, animation.

He compares technology to "a bad girlfriend" because you're addicted to her and live a love-hate relashionship.

They're very small, sort of sketchbook films, made with no budget.
I hate it when people want to tell me the story of the film or a book, so I won't comment more on the films.

Have a look by yourself at some of them.

Can't believe how lucky I am! I had lunch today with Andrem Shoban from Greyworld whose work I already knew and admire. Then I discovered the work of Fiona Raby, fascinating, totally fascinating.

So let's start with Greyworld. Shoban founded Greyworld in 1993 in Paris then 2 year after they were back to London where they still have their studio now.

They do interactive urban art for the "people who buy cans of beans,"not for the elite. Their installations try to involve the public as much as possible in a ludic and surprising way.

In 2002, they created the ColourStops installation for five bus stops in Bradford, UK: In the bus stop shelters, Greyworld concealed colour-recognition cameras that create sounds according to the colours they detect. The work tries to reflect back the variety of differences in people, Bradford being a very multi-ethnic city.

Three years ago, on the Millennium Footbridge in Dublin, they inserted sensors in the carpet covering the bridge, they detect the size of the feets and the speed of your walk, according to these data, different sounds are generated so that you can walk to the sound of music or hear the sound of crunchy leaves or snow or the flop flop of water.

See also The Source that opens and closes the London Stock Exchange since April 2004.

The group is now working on Bins and Benches (flash presentation) to be installed in The Junction (London)
These urban furniture are able to roam free in the Piazza area.

The benches love to be sat on, and they often take up position in new spaces to make themselves more attractive to potential human sitters. Sometimes, when it rains, they move themselves to drier, shadier areas of the square. To attract potential human sitting folk, they like to form patterns - the benches moving in to shapes in the centre of the piazza.

Rebecca Allen gave a brief presentation of the Human Connectedness group and in particular of the following projects:

- tunA, a handheld ad-hoc radio device for sharing music with people around you,
- Habitat, connected furniture to enable distant family members to stay connected,
- and Breakout for two, an exertion interface for sports over a distance or how to play soccer with someone who is at the other end of the planet.

Still during Rebecca Allen's talk:
The MindGames group at MIT media lab Europe which develops technologies that can expand and improve human potential, they rely on signals coming directly from our bodies to interact with technology.

One of the Games is "Collective Calm", it observes the "Galvanic Skin Response", that phenomenon that happens when we are stressed or nervous, we start sweating and our body betrays that nervousness whether we want it or not.

Collective Calm is a biofeedback video game where you have to relax if you want to win.

Relaxation is measured via a handheld orb that measures each player's Galvanic Skin Response, which is then wirelessly transmitted to the game.

It's the exact opposite of many usual games that put players in a nervous state. Collective Calm also has the benefit to help players learn how they body react, responds, work to stimuli.

Rebecca Allen also taleked about MIT media lab group called "Palpable machines", which works a lot with our sense of touch, a sense that works only when someone is getting close to us.

The "Body Mnemonics" project is a meta tool for portable devices that uses the body to store information: your bank account could be on your right leg, the photo of your family near your heart, your music archive could be located at your ear.