The number is the art is the limit is the price

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Last update : April 2, 2020

Bond PaintingOn the 17th of March 2008, I was the winner of the second collaborative bond painting (80cm x 60cm) that has been auctioned on ebay. The painting is a zero coupon bond created and signed by the swiss artist Marcel Salathé and the australian artist Anthony White. The artists guarantee to buy the painting back at a specific price, indicated on the painting, upon safe return during a specific month, also indicated on the painting. The summarized reasoning behind the Salathé & White bond paintings is that art is valued by the price someone is willing to pay, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and the longevity of an artwork is crucially depending on the first price paid. The complete manifesto is presented on the Salathé & White website.

Marcel Salathé alias Sala is the creator of onethousandpaintings.com, an art project that has considerable success since its conception in 2006. More than 780 paintings have been sold and the project was presented in numerous blogs and in many high impact media publications.

Webgraph

Sala is not only a famous artists, but also a biologist (with an ETH Medal for outstanding PhD thesis awarded 2007), a writer, a musician and a talented programmer. He is the author of the html-graph applet. Give it a try and see the tags in your webpage popping up like confetti.

Marcel Salathé’s reflections about the art market resulted in the following actions concerning his paintings :

  • remove all content
  • add minimum of uniqueness/limit
  • led content become metacontent
  • build in supply and demand mechanism
  • create a price formula to stimulate the early market

price : y = f(x) = c(1000-x)

where

c-ceil(n + 1/100) * 0.1

and

n = number of paintings sold

On July 10th, 2008, Marcel Salathé was invited by  Google TechTalks to talk about the Onethousandpaintings artwork. The video published on the YouTube googletechtalks channel is shown herafter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIbyLlnKk9s

My daughter bought the Onethousandpainting Nr 658 mid 2006. It was the first painting sent to Luxembourg and one of the first work of conceptual art purchased by my daughter who owns a contemporary artgallery in Luxembourg. On August the 2nd, 2006, Luxembourg was welcomed as the24th country to the list of countries where paintings have been purchased on the blog of Marcel Salathé’s website.

Money Series

Anthony White is best known for his “Money Series”, a project that he started using the Australian Dollar. The series has now been expanded to British Pounds, US Dollars and Euros, and over five hundred paintings have been sold to over twenty different countries in the past three years. On november 12th, 2007, I received my 130€ painting from the money series of Anthony White. It was the first painting that has been sent to Luxembourg.

The  combined paintings Salathé & White Bond Nr 2, the Onethousand-painting Nr 658 and the Money Series painting 130€ are exhibited at Leslie’s Artgallery, 66-68 rue de Luxembourg, L-6140 Bridel, Luxembourg. The gallery closed definitely early 2014.

Vivaty Scenes : a personal virtual 3D web community

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Vivaty

Vivaty, a company in the San Francisco area, has developed during the last two years a platform designed for rich web content and 3D experiences called “Vivaty Scenes“. The application was launched as a public beta on tuesday 8th July 2008 in AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) and in Facebook. Vivaty Scenes are realistic rooms that act as a virtual personal environment, a 3D version of your personal page. You can set the theme, decorate with furniture and other virtual goods, and chat with the avatars of friends who enter your room. You can bring in photos from Flickr and Facebook or videos from YouTube and display them on screens in your room. You can also play MP3 songs.

Vivaty Scenes is a platform which plugs straight and seamlessly into your already setup, defined and working social network. The program (a 4 MB player browser plug-in) currently only runs on Windows machines and in Internet Explorer, although Firefox and Mac versions of Vivaty Scenes are planned for release at a later date. 2 GB computer memory and 256 MB VRAM graphic card memory are recommended for using Vivaty Scenes.

Avatars

The avatar associated with one user can be changed at any time, a richer avatar customization will be available in the future. Avatars can be moved with the mouse or with the directional keys. The viewpoint (camera position) can be changed with a mouse right click and drag & drop, with the mouse wheel you can pan in and out. Avatars can be animated with gestures and express their moods in idle animations (sad, angry, happy, …).

3D objects

Scenes can be modified and customized at anytime, items can be changed and added. By double clicking on a media object (photo, photo gallery, video) the camera zooms in close but your avatar stays put. Some features of Vivaty Scenes are similar to Adobe Atmosphere discontinued on 19th december 2004.

BlinkM & ambient light’s

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BlinkM

ThingM Labs presents a smart LED (BlinkM) that makes prototyping, experimenting, and hacking with light easier than ever! An affordable drop-in replacement for a regular LED that can be any color, any brightness, and can blink and fade in virtually any pattern. Pick a color, fade between two colors, or make a crazy blinking sequence with our open source software, then just drop it into your project and go!

Designed by Tod E. Kurt, co-founder of ThingM who engineered hardware and software for robotic camera systems that went to Mars, BlinkM modules are distributed in Europe by Tinker in Milan and London and by Coolcomponents in South London.

MoodBeams

Another cool light device are Mood Beams, kaleidoscopic critters, a funky tribe of supremely portable, battery-operated characters that cycle through a spectrum of hypnotic colours. They’re sensitive to sound, so if you put them next to your radio or CD player they’ll change colour in time to the beat of the music. It’s like having a ravey light show emanating from within an amorphous Japanese cartoon character. Mood Beams can be set to perform at five different speeds: Heartbeat, Rainbow, Strobe, Colour Dance and Colour Hold – simply set the mode to suit the mood. Three series of four characters are available, they are called Curious, Surprised, Silly, Shy, Puzzled, Smiley, Chillin, Love Struck, Gloomy, Peppy, Dizzy, Chipper and are manufactured by Radica in Southern China for its customer Mattel GirlTech.

Ambient Orb

 

A glass lamp that uses color to show weather forecasts, trends in the stock market, or the traffic on your local homeway, called “Ambient Orb”, is offered as an online service by Ambient Devices.

The first emotional lamp, the Dal, a WiFi-connected device that can be programmed to respond to real-world events by emanating sequences of gentle color, was created in 2003 by Violet which created two years later the Nabaztag. The Dal lamp has been exhibited at some of the world’s most prestigious museums, including the Centre Pompidou in Paris and The City of Science and Industry in Seoul, Korea. It received the “Star of the Observeur de design, 2004,” a design award from the French Agency for the Promotion of Industrial Creations.

Dal Lamp

Active Worlds

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ActiveWorlds

Activeworlds Inc., headquartered in Newburyport, Massachusetts, provides software products and online services that permit users to enter, move about and interact with others in a computer generated, 3D virtual environment using the Internet. A 3D virtual environment enables users to move in three dimensions and  to create objects and structures which other users can see and move in real time.

The “Active Worlds Browser” runs on Windows and Linux. Active Worlds has two ways of entering its universe: as a free tourist or as a paid citizen. Tourist mode is Active Worlds’ version of a free account with several limitations. You can pay for a citizen for the price of $6.95/month or $69.95/year.

On June 28, 1995 AlphaWorld was renamed Active Worlds and officially launched as version 1.0. On June 16, 2008, Activeworlds, Inc. released the first major update to the browser in two years, version 4.2. The update was considered smooth and painless, being completed in a matter of only fifteen minutes, compared to the several days of version 4.1’s initial upgrade in 2006. Version 4.2 includes an enhanced graphics engine, captured web pages on objects, and, most notably, customizable avatars on a scale more complex than that of Second Life.

In 2008, Alphaworld is 429,025 km2 large, has more than 360.000 paid citizens, more than 200 million objects, more than 100 shops selling a wide variety of products and more than 1000 unique worlds to explore

i-dog, i-cat, i-cy, i-fish : Robotic Music Loving Pet’s

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Sega Cat

Sega Dog

Sega Pinguin

In 2005, SEGA Toys introduced a small robot dog called i-dog in Japan which played about 70 stored children’s songs and other favorites. A sensor on top of the dog was used to control the tempo of the song playback. The i-dog was also able to mimic the owners voice with sound that had similar wavelengths. The i-dog was licensed to Tiger Electronics, a subsidiary of Hasbro Inc for distribution in the United States. Today, a complete series of robotic music loving pet’s is available in different colors and looks. i-pet’s can wear clothing and they react to music from an external source, such as an MP3 player. They feature seven flashing LED lights on its face and have the ability to ‘dance’ to the beat of the music. They also have a number of switches to react to user input. They have various emotions (which change based on user interaction) that provide different color patterns on its LED lights.

I-CAT, the musical feline is fond of rock, punk, rap, hip-hop, dance, techno and more! I-DOG entertains you with electronic lights, movements and sounds based on the music you play.  I-CY, the performing penguin, loves to dive into music and flap its flippers to your tunes. You make him happy with lots of music and interaction! I-CY communicates moods through musical riffs, movement and tons of blinking light patterns! It even squawks to let you know when it needs more attention! I-FISH dances by swishing it’s tail and spinning around.

To switch the I-DOG off, press the nose button more than 5 seconds.

McDonald iDog

In 2007, a basic version of the i-dog was manufactured for the McDonald’s corporation, with reduced functionality, different styling and without speaker or movement. The toy has a switch on its underside that turns it on, subsequent pressing of the nose button causes the lights in the head to flash varying colours.

Virtual iDog

The latest creation, I-DOG AMP (Automated Music Personality), is aivalable in four colors.  Plug it into your music player and get stereo sound – louder than before – when he plays your music through his built-in speaker! Control the volume with his tail and rock out! And with cooler moves than ever before, this doggone-good dancer taps his paw to the beat, bobs his head, wags his tail and gets his ears movin’ and groovin’!

A virtual I-DOG (digital representation of the new I-DOG AMP’D) can be downloaded from the Tiger Electronics website for MAC’s and PC’s. Virtual I-DOG dances in synch to the MP3 music files stored on your computer. Browse for a song using Virtual I-DOG’s interface and play a tune to watch him groove.

Blink 3D : a multi-user Web based 3D virtual worlds platform

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Blink 3D

Blink 3D®, a platform for creating multi-user Web based virtual worlds and 3D environments has been developped by Pelican Crossing. Blink 3D can be used for: Virtual Worlds, Games, Education, Virtual Heritage, Business, Online Stores, Machinima, Product Marketing and 3D chat.

Blink 3D is available in different editions including a free Ultra Lite edition. Blink 3D’s drag and drop, point and click interface makes it is easy to learn and you don’t have to program if you don’t want to. You can use 3D primitives to quickly build your world or you can import your models from a wide range of modeling products. If you are a programmer Blink 3D has the most extensive API available on the market today.

Version 2.0 of Blink 3D was released on June 27th, 2008.

Pelican Crossing was founded in 2001 by Clive Jackson. The companies initial focus was add-on products for Adobe Atmosphere. However with the demise of Atmosphere in Dec 2004, Pelican Crossing stepped into the resulting void with Blink 3D.

Furbies : the domestically-aimed robots

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Last update : December 2, 2013

Furbies

A Furby is an electronic toy made by Tiger Electronics (subsidiary of Hasbro Inc.) which was first shown at the International Toy Fair in 1998. Created by Dave Hampton and Caleb Chung, the classical furby, which is 15 cm tall, originally retailed for about 35 $US. They were hard to find at the beginning and the growing demand for these toys drove the resale price as high as several hundred dollars in newspapers and in auctions. Nicknames were given to them, and sellers assigned rarity values to them. Furbies 1998 mainly had only 1 personality which is a calm and friendly furby. 24 Special Editions were produced, which range from all different genres of events.

Furbies 1998 can communicate with one another via a heart-shaped infrared port. Furbies start out speaking entirely Furbish, a language with short words, simple syllables, and various other sounds, but are programmed to speak less and less Furbish and more and more English as they “grow”. Simple electric motors and a system of gears close the Furby’s eyes and mouth, raise its ears, and lift it off the ground. The originals are still popular with many hackers as they can be dissected and made to do interesting things (see furby autopsy). In particular, their advanced audio capabilities and various sensory interfaces make them popular with the circuit bending community.

Furby Baby

In 1999, the Furby Babies were introduced, which are smaller than the original, have higher voices, and cannot dance. In the following years, novel furbys and furby friends were released, like Gizmo, Yoda, E.T. and Shelby. The third species of Furby, Emoto-Tronic, was released in August 2005. Larger than the previous version, the new Furbies have been upgraded with a more emotional face and a voice recognition system, enabling them to communicate with humans. One year later, emo-tronic furby babies and funky furbies have been introduced.

Furby 2012, also known as Furby 3.0, was the long awaited revival of the Furby series by Tiger. This serie was followed by Furby Party Rockers in February 2013 and by Furby BOOM in August 2013.

In 1999, McDonalds teamed up with Tiger Electronics to create McFurbys, their latest Happy Meal toy. These were small plastic Furbies in a variety of colours. Some featured limited sound effects and/or movement capabilities. There were a total of 80 to collect.

“Every furby deserves a home” is the motto of the Furby Adoption Center. Fun, chat, infos, artworks, photos, stories and overview of the furby generations are the content of this website.

IMVU : the leading global 3D community

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IMVU

Founded in 2004 and based in Palo Alto, California, USA, IMVU Inc., is an online destination where young adults meet new people in 3D. In public beta, the company has already reached major milestones including 20 million registered users, 100.000 registered developers, and $1 million in revenue each month. Members of IMVU have fun meeting new people with similar interests and expressing themselves through personalized 3D avatars, themed rooms, one-to-one chats, and the creation of new and unique virtual products. With over 1.5 million user-generated virtual items, IMVU offers the world’s largest catalog of virtual goods. Revenue is derived from the direct sale of virtual credits, which are used to purchase virtual products such as room decorations, clothing items and hairstyles.

Nabaztag “Aenderhues”

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Nabaztag André

Aujourd’hui mon Nabaztag “Ouschterhues” a accueilli un frère, le Nabaztag “Aenderhues”.

Signé par André, c’est  le premier love graffiti communicant, édité en série limitée. Célèbre pour son Mr. A, l’artiste André, né en Suède en 1971, dessine dès son plus jeune âge sur les murs de sa maison ou de son école. Arrivé à Paris, en 1981, la rue est devenue son atelier. André, armé de ses bombes de peintures dessine sur les murs des villes son icône fétiche, Monsieur A. Avec son grand chapeau, ses longues jambes, son regard en croix, son sourire à pleines dents, l’arrogant Mr A exporte de New York à Hong-Kong en passant par Londres, Berlin et Tokyo, son message d’amour et ses Love Graffitis. En 2005, il a signé une série limitée de téléphones portables Mitsubishi.

série limitée

Monsieur André est aujourd’hui gérant de boites-de-nuits très chics de Paris (Le Baron, Le Paris-Paris, L’Hotel Amour, La Johnsson etc…)  et il a créé un shop à Paris, au Palais de Tokyo, appelé BlackBlock. Ces lieux et tout ce qui ce fait de plus cool à Paris sont regroupés dans l’association La Clique.

CPE WAN Management Protocole TR-069

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The growing complexity of the different Internet access possibilities with modems, routers, gateways, set-top-boxes and VoIP-phones makes it more and more difficult for the end-user to configure these equipements. For these reasons a remote management of the end-user devices, called CPE (Customer-premises equipment or customer-provided equipment), by the Internet Service Providers (ISP), was developed. An application layer protocol for the remote management of these end-user devices, entitled CPE WAN Management Protocol (CWMP), has been defined by the Broadband Forum (former DSL Forum) in the technical report TR-069. As a bidirectional SOAP/HTTP based protocol it provides the communication between CPE and Auto Configuration Servers (ACS).  It includes both a safe auto configuration and the control of other CPE management functions within an integrated framework.

The Broadband Forum is a global consortium of a few hundred leading companies covering the telecommunications, equipment, computing, networking and service provider sectors.