What’s yellow, round, and can dance independently to music? Keepon (pronounced, “key-pong”) is a Carnegie Mellon robotics project turned internet sensation. CMU student Marek Michalowski and Hideki Kozima of Japan’s National Institute of Communications Technology featured the adorable Keepon robot in a music video for Spoon’s “I Turn My Camera On”, which has now been viewed more than 1.3 million times on YouTube.
The bot uses a gimbal-based system to move through about as full a range of motions as two spheres are capable of, and is able to react to both music and visual stimulation. According to the designers, “Keepon is designed to perform emotional and attention exchange with human interactants (especially children) in the simplest and most comprehensive way.”
Although the robot is still in the lab, this little guy already has fans across the globe. Looks like we’re all really children at heart.
The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust recently announced it will host Interpol at the downtown Byham Theater. Better known for presentations of “High School Musical” and crooner Patsy Cline, it seems that someone at the Trust is hoping to finally bring in a younger demographic.
According to SPIN, the band added new tour dates after they received a warm welcome last month at Coachella. Although tickets for the Pittsburgh show don’t go on sale until Friday, 24 users on LastFM already plan to attend. Hopefully this is just the first in a series of big concerts to brighten up the downtown nightlife.
The national arts service organization Americans for the Arts (AFTA) is finally taking a leap into web 2.0 with its new blog and first podcast. In addition to regular postings throughout the year, AFTA is making a special effort to include blogging in the upcoming national convention in June. I recently found out that I will be an official blogger for the Americans for the Arts convention, focusing on sessions in the Leadership track sessions.
In addition, I will be presenting my thesis project, Technology Motivators and Usage in Nonprofit Arts Organizations, along with my colleagues Katie Guernsey, Samir Bitar, Abigail Santner, and Cary Morrow.
French philosopher Rene Descartes is credited with the phrase “I think, therefore I am”; now, nearly four centuries later, a young British woman may have taken the idea one step further – I think, therefore I create art.
Interactive artist Luciana Haill uses medical electroencephalogram, or EEG, monitors embedded in a Bluetooth-enabled sweatband to record her brain activity, and send the data to a computer that plays it back as audio. Since the human brain operates in the same frequency as sound waves (hertz), it’s a relatively simple process to use software to convert the brain’s raw data into a sound format. Haill has been honing her craft over the last 14 years, and she now uses Apple’s OS X operating system to trigger digital samples in GarageBand with each type of neural activity.
Haill’s music has been featured in new music festivals, including Cybersonica 2006 and the recently completed Future of Sound tour, but she hasn’t yet brought her music stateside. To hear it for yourself, visit Luciana’s MySpace page.
With summer finally on its way, ice cream trucks around the country are revving their engines and turning up the loudspeaker. Tired of the familiar (annoying) theme songs, New Yorkers Jeffrey Lopez and Lauren Rosati decided holding an online remix competition to come up with a new tune.
The winner of the Ice Cream Headache contest will have their new song played on a Mister Softee truck driving through New York’s five boroughs during Memorial Day Weekend. The contest has already received more than 40 entries, including the quirky Balinese Softee by Nina Katchadourian (my personal favorite).
To enter the contest, e-mail your entry to info@suite405.com. But hurry before it melts — all entries must be received by Friday, May 5th.
If Web 2.0 is about collaboration through online tools and and “the market as a conversation“, then DonorsChoose.org is a shining example of Philanthropy 2.0. This innovative website connects public schools in need of resources with donors, who can fund any of the educational projects posted online. Requests for classroom range from pencils and paper to digital cameras and computers, and potential donors can search for projects by the school’s geographic location, subject area, keyword, or amount of the funding request.
In an age of charitable and corporate accounting scandals, the transparency of DonorsChoose.org is refreshing. After a proposal has been fully funded by one or more donors, the organization purchases the necessary items and ships them directly to the school. Donors then receive thank-you notes from students and teachers as well as an expenditure report so donors know their tax-deductible gifts were spent as intended.
But if 100% of the contribution goes directly to classroom materials, who funds the overhead expenses of DonorsChoose.org? According to a recent Slate.com article, 93% of donors elect to add 15% to their donation to cover operating expenses.
To date, DonorsChoose.org has raised more than $12 Million for students across the country, and has funded 3000 proposals for art and music classrooms. A quick search for the keyword “technology” in “art and music” subjects yielded 233 open proposals, including “Writing Pictorial Instructions For The Technology Center“. In this proposal, a high school teacher requests funds for the materials needed for her students to create a manual for the school’s technology center. The students will write a description of a task’s step-by-step process, take a photograph of each step, and develop a PowerPoint presentation of the task for the teacher. The Technology teachers will use the work instructions to help teach new procedures to technology students.
With many grassroots arts organizations also struggling to purchase materials for administration, education, and community outreach, there is a clear need for a similar service to connect these organizations with potential donors. And indeed it may not be far behind. DonorsChoose.org has already inspired spin-off websites in China to find donors for small rural schools. Can arts managers work together to form a similar philanthropic network for the arts community?
Michael Wesch, an assistant professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State, created this fantastic video, “Web 2.0: The Machine is Us/ing Us”. The short film describes the development of the Internet, recent developments and their impact on communication and communities. Since it was posted to YouTube four weeks ago, there has been an explosion of interest, generating more than 1.5 million views on YouTube and more than 5,000 blog posts.
I came across this video during a presentation of applying broadband technologies to the field of arts management. Through the video, Wesch’s excitement and optimism contributed greatly to the discussion that followed; I was so excited by the abundance of opportunities that I could hardly contain myself. Since the presenters are still in the planning stage and their institution has not finalized plans or shared them more publicly, I will sit on my hands and respect their privacy; sharing this video must be enough for the moment.
On Sunday, February 18, the Pittsburgh Symphony will host a “Blogfest Extra” concert - a two-part community outreach event. The afternoon’s concert will include traditional works from Mahler and Beethoven as well as a new work, Rainbow Body by Christopher Theofanidis. The work’s title is derived from a Buddhist idea that when an enlightened being dies, his or her body doesn’t decay, but instead is absorbed back into the universe as energy and light. As a spectacular display of technology-enhanced art, the PSO will perform Rainbow Body along with projected images of dying stars taken by the Hubble Telescope.
Following the concert, the PSO will host a blogging reception, during which “blogging after the concert is strongly encouraged!”
The PSO recently established its own pair of blogs, one featuring staff contributors and the “internal perspective” and the other featuring community members, composers and volunteers who provide the “external perspective”. The PSO blog has come a long way since its founding last fall, and now even includes a few video blog posts. It’s clear that the blog has become an internal priority, and I hope the Symphony’s artistic team will continue to create innovative events like this one.
[Listen to an excerpt from Rainbow Body or read a blog post from the composer]
A group of Swedish artists recently developed the Bacterial Orchestra, a musical organism made of audio “cells”. Each cell is made of a microphone and a loudspeaker, and is programmed to record ambient sounds and play back the recordings in sync with the noise it picks up. Each cell is programmed slightly differently, so the orchestra’s performance constantly changes and reacts to the audience.
The conception of the work clearly draws from the work of John Cage, a twentieth-century composer known for creating “chance music”. Cage’s groundbreaking work 4′33” is a three movement piece during which the performer sits silently, allowing the sounds of the performance hall to become the composition. Cage’s career was driven by his desire to find new sounds and move beyond the traditional model of composition in which a composer is the controlling authority.
The Bacterial Orchestra, developed by Olle Cornéer, Christian Hörgren and Martin Lübcke, was unveiled in 2006 at New Media Meeting in Norrköping. Although the orchestra currently has 16 cells, the artists hope the project will continue to evolve and increase in size. Help them out by adopting a cell.
The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust recently announced it will host 
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