Computational Design
Our 2 Semesters computational design course developed different apps. These Apps show you the right way to feed your hamster, visualize the information aesthetcs of used letters in different languages, play arcade games with different interaction possibilities like headtracking, use glitch tools or augmentation apps. All this was developed and presented in the pathway week …
Read moreInteractive Light Bar
Interactive Light Bar is a project created by Constanze Link during her 6-month internship at Limbic Media. The intention of Constanze’s project was to expose the Canadian audience to a visualization of European electronic and deep house music. To do this Constanze created a coin-slot interface that selects from one of 10 music tracks. For …
Read more20 years NCSA Mosaic browser birthday cake party
20 years ago, on the 22nd of April 1993, NCSA Mosaic browser version 1.0 was released. It was not he first browser and not the one that became really popular. But it was the first cross platform browser. It meant that what ever you used: Unix, Windows, Mac — you could connect via HTTP, you …
Read moreWeb Surfing Competition at Transmediale
Trailblazers #5 took place on 3rd of February 2013, the last day of Transmediale festival, on the stage of Cafe Global. It was a wonderful event. Experienced surfers, including such celebrities as Lorna Mills, Anthony Anthonellis or Aram Bartholl made their trails from Amazon to Pirate Bay, from Instagram to flickr, from http://www.lol.com/ to http://www.nooooooooooooooo.com/ …
Read moreSlacking and other VR stuff
In our New Media virtual reality (VR) introduction we realized some interesting spatial interactions. The goal was to learn how to work with tracked immersive environments. Students developed and implemented different interaction techniques that are realizable within their first VR course. Slacklining is a application made by Charlotte, Constanze and Laura that simulates the popular …
Read moreFoodU
Download App (send the apk to your gmail account) With FoodU students of the Merz-Akademie can check out the daily menu of Merz-Cafeteria and DaCapo Restaurant in one simple Android-Application. FoodU was designed and Programmed by last year’s 3rd Semester New Media course in Object Oriented Programming, guided by Jan Schäfer.
Read moreedu.game
Today user engagement is one of the biggest challenges in user interface design. Marina Gröpel’s bachelor’s project “Gamification als Bildungsprinzip” (“Gamification as a principle of education”) explores the possibilities of a gamificated social network and didactic tool that augments education by motivating students to discover literature and tutorials. While self-responsibility was always an important aspect …
Read moreWeb Design Timeline. The Real One.
Don’t Hassel the WWW is a new project by three brave students of last semester’s project “Timeline”, guided by Olia Lialina. Darja Daut, Susanne Müller and Lisa Hofmann staged the history of David Hasselhoff’s personal webpage. How would it look in March 1993? July 1996? On Geocities? During the Dotcom craze? The students investigated the …
Read moreChristina Xu opens Do You Believe in Users
Christina Xu, co-founder of Awesome Foundation and ROFLcon (Boston) gave a talk in Stuttgart on the 31st of October — “The Power of User Error” “So we have the people who just create, and people who just use, but what about all the people in the middle who come up with innovative ways of using …
Read moreLecture Series: Do You Believe in Users?
The series is organized in cooperation with the Stadtbibliothek, Stuttgart. Lectures will take place at Stadtbibliothek am Mailänder Platz (Max Benze Forum), beginning 19:30. Do You Believe in Users? This question, asked in the legendary 1985 movie Tron, nowadays would have to be asked with a smile, as a nostalgic remark about the days when …
Read moreUne Grand Place
Digital Archives, Jan Schäfer Wintersemester 2011/2012 The Project deals with the remediation of archives, collections and exhibitions. It is a collaboration with the civic Archive „Les Archives“ in Bruxelles. The theme of the work is the Grand Place and its eventful history, “Trois Hommes- Une Grand Place”. The goal was to enable users to continue …
Read moreAs we may forget
As We May Forget — A Cyberspace Dystopia Daniel Kurfess finished his studies with a 3D interactive journey addressing threats to the openness of the internet and net neutrality. In the article “As We May Think” (published in 1945), Vannevar Bush described a machine for the organisation of knowledge in which documents were not filed …
Read moreMakerbot Tutorial (auf Deutsch)
Denis Hofmann and Thomas Notschka put together detailed tutorial to help you make proper 3D plots with the Makterbot. The videos are split into two main parts. 1. The modelling with rhinoceros 4 2. How to prepare the Makerbot for printing This tutorial is from students for students hope u will enjoy. The Makerbot was …
Read moreOpen Hypervideo
In February 2012 Joscha Jäger presented his Bachelor’s Project “Open Hypervideo as Archive Interface”. The project uses hypervideo techniques to allow users access to documents from the Archives of the City of Bruxelles (Archives de la Ville de Bruxelles). Josha’s interactive video is based on scenes filmed inside the archive by film-student Mona Mohr and …
Read moreBilum
Final project by Ulrike Schock: Digital Media in the Exhibition Design in Ethnology Museum. Digital media is used in more and more museum for the presentation and information transfer. How far is it possible to use digital media to support the museums exhibition design? And at which point do they destroy the mission and objectives …
Read moreEndless, Timeline for Buddhists
Endless is a new experimental online narrative by Shirin Sparr. In her work she questions the core principle of the Facebook Timeline — to give its users only one life. Endless considers previous and future lives of its users. Endless is of course in progress — further reincarnations are to be added. For ultimate endlessness …
Read more2012-08-05
Computers on Weels — The Timeline
Kristina Spurgat, a student of the Timeline project, finished her In-car Computer Technology Timeline. Six leading automobile industry brands were compared, seven innovations examined. A beautiful interactive SVG chart, though it can be a bit depressing for fans of German automobiles.
Read moreZOMBASE
2012 Julia Böger and Mona Mohr finished their fandom studies with an impressive project – ZOMBASE. ZOMBASE is a mixed-media open-source game concept for Nintendo DS. The game play is very fast and should not be interupted by long cutscenes and dialogues. Storytelling mainly happens through webcomic episodes. The use of both media allows to …
Read moreDuragram is a new Instagram
A new consumer electronic device was built during the one week Interface Art workshop given by Johannes p. Osterhoff. Duragram is its name. Duragram is much bigger than Instagram, needs at least 5 people to take a photo and five more to develop it. Apart from it, filters are to be obtained separately. We like …
Read moreWhite Cube Inside Out
A result of the one week workshop “Digital Material—Glitch culture as a new popular trend?” with glitch evangelist Rosa Menkman. Daniel Kurfess invites you into his Glitch Gallery. Look around, discover the different exhibition pieces—but be warned: The more you get drawn into the White Cube’s winding corridors, the more the glitches begin to leak …
Read moreSugar – Daily Diabetes Manager
The main focuse of sugar app from Jasmin Sipahi is to adress young daibetics. The research of the bachlor thesis showed that there is a gap between the need of people and the tools offered. Those tools all lag usability and a propper concept to enable an efficient discourse from patient to doctor. Sugar got …
Read moreVirtual City Scapes
Jörg Frohnmayer presented the Virtual City Scapes at Hannover Messe. It is an information visualization demonstrator made for the Fraunhofer IAO. The Magazine C’t showed some pictures of the work in an article. The representation is shown within a 3D stereoscopic environment while the user interface is a website that remote controls the representations of …
Read moreComputers Getting Mental
Tho recent projects that could make us revise “Computer Power and Human Reason” Scott Kristina Spurgat: “Scott is a left-over of the old technology, an old computer looking for some attention in a world full of new technologies. When Siri was introduced, Scott decided to make some use of voice recognition himself. Scott however is …
Read moreAUDIOCHOPSUEY
If you are into music, adventure and file sharing, you should definitely try www.audiochopsuey.com by Oliver Rübener, a new platform to exchange audio files. Its core is a tool that chops your MP3 Files into little pieces and puts them back together in a new order so everything sounds like noise. However, the process works …
Read moreDaughter of all Demos
Cyberfeminism is back! Saskia Aldinger — professional internet amateur — presented her new project, the photo series Daughter of all Demos. Saskia as Douglas Engelbart, Saskia as Ivan Sutherland, Saskia as scientist of the future as imagined by Vannevar Bush. The history of computers and user interfaces is dominated by great men. But Saskia is …
Read moreNM Reception 2012
The New Media Pathway invites to reception of summer semester 2012. Our students will present their works on 18.04.12 from 17:00 – 19:00 in and around the Virtual Reality Lab 2.6 Pass by and see projects like Audio chop soye, WYSIWYG pacman and The Daughter of all Demos. beer there or be square!
Read moreTo the Scrollbar, with Love and Respect
Daraja Daut’s work in last semester’s Magic Paper group was centered around scrollbars: their invention and acceptance, their metamorphoses through time and operating systems and their gradual disappearance from interfaces in the last couple of years. Prism, Feather and Infinite are three pages that show that scrollbars are too early to write off. Scrolling is …
Read moreI Can Has History?
I Can Has History, Helene Dam’s final project that mapped the world of lolcats, got online in July 2008. Since then no other page on the Merz Akademie’s servers got more hits than this one. The cat memes’ family tree also comes as a poster with the book Digital Folklore. None of its pages is …
Read moreTroll Culture
Stefan Krappitz, author of Flyer Generator, Save my Job and other useful applications, finished his studies with the essay Troll Culture, A comprehensive Guide. It can be read online through a typical imageboard interface. Other options are free PDF dowmlod and print on demand at lulu.com. The book introduces the history of trolling on- and …
Read moreProjects in Summer 2012
Next 15 weeks New Media students will be busy with the following three projects
Gamification with Sabiha Ghelal
WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW with Dragan Espenschied
Timeline with prof. Olia Lialina
Apart from it, we’ll be visited by Rosa Menkmann and Brendan Howell, Manuel Burger and Johannes p Osterhoff.
Prof. Mario Doulis will be in Stuttgart for a week to do a 3d prototyping workshop.
Happy New Semester!
Mediaglobe
Our Pathway completed the research on user interfaces for mediaglobe. Mario Doulis, Jörg Frohnmayer, Stephan Schröter and Joscha Jäger developed different scenarios for the mediaglobe research project. The focus was on the generation of different novel interface elements for the Semex video search engine programmed by the HassoPlattner Institute. Additionally to the web interface for …
Read moreGIF Disco
Happy Graphics Interchange is a perfect tool to make your own Animated GIF party. It helps you to find GIFs. Then it provides an interface to collage them, to scale and rotate. The next step you get an HTML code to paste wherever you find appropriate. The Disco section inspires you with the examples of …
Read moreApps Kill
Back to the Web! is a final project of Christopher Heller. A killer app that should kill the apps by attracting attention of the users to beauty and openness of the WWW. You can get it for free at the market.android.com “Back to Web! An app that gets you back to surfing! This is a …
Read more</frameset>
The frameset HTML tag was introduced in 1996 with version 2.0 of Netscape browser. This tag made it possible to divide a browser window into parts and show several HTML documents at once. A lot has been written about this most controversial tag in the history of markup languages. Already in the year it was …
Read moreProjects in Winter 11/12
Dragan Espenschied WWWWWWWWW (2nd semester) Prof. Mario Doulis Spiel [Film] Prof. Olia Lialina Magic Paper
Read moreUncanny Valley
In SoSe11 Johannes p Osterhoff offered to the students of the 2nd semester to visit Uncanny Valley of User Interface design. He writes: In the seminar at Merz Akademie in Stuttgart we found ourselves between the once reduced styles of Susan Kare and the currently opulent Apple icons, between the by-nature minimalistic Kindle Interface and …
Read moreDeaddrop in Stuttgart
Aram Bartholl worked with the Merz Akademie students this semester. Beside several speed projects and the Speedshow, he infected the students with one of the greatest illnesses of our time — the deaddrop feather. As a result, there is a Deaddrop in Stuttgart now! Hidden at a perfect place, namely at 48.77420 N 9.17993 E …
Read moreFun is back / Speedshow Stuttgart
The best way to exhibit net art is to do it in an Internet Cafe (CallShop, CyberCafe). This is what we did on the 8th of June 2011 at Ch@troom, very friendly and open space next to the Stuttgart Stategallery (Staatsgalerie). Works and artists of the Speedshow Fun is Back: Save My Job by Stefan …
Read moreTypo
Some wise and spectacular typography projects made during “Typography in Interactive and Dynamic Environments” course by Lutz Eberle last year. Linus Suter TypoSnake TypoSnake is an interactive flash game coded in ActionScript 3. All your favourite fonts are there, but moving very fast. Chris Heller, Michael Ruß, Theo Seemann VisualBraille.ttf is a font that combines …
Read moreOn Stage / Guitarhero Contest
Finally some photos of the Guitarhero even! Stefan promises that soon there will be more on the official site of the contest. And that it is not long to wait till Real bands and Wii bands will share the stage of Merz Akademie again. Thank you Nocean, Learning from Larry, and Apetown! Contestants of 2011: …
Read more8bit Hero &more
In Mai 2011 Hans Peter Wyss Swiss artist was giving a processing workshop at the Merz Akademie. 8bit Hero by Oliver Rübner and Susanne Riexinger: 8bit Hero is a prototype for a game, where you have to hit “notes” on a midi keyboard or on your pc keyboard in the right moments, to increase …
Read moreS3D.VR.x
In Mai 2011 German artist Sebastian Denz ( www.denz.cc/ ) was giving a workshop at Merz Akademie. Students explored the field of stereo photography and learned how to compose high quality stereoscopic pictures. For the presentation they combined the static pictures with our immersive virtual reality system.
Read moreLong Tail Money
The processes of transfering money and virtual goods over the Internet was the main focus of the winter 2010/2011 semester’s project. Using Paypal, Flattr and more obscure mechanisms, students had to actually make money. Whoever would earn the most would be awarded with a T-Shirt from our idol Money Boy http://moneyboy.at/ A lot of ideas …
Read moresave my job
Up the Social Ladder! ——————— Traditionally, in Germany people are very serious about privacy and data protection. With the advent of social networks, millions of users exposed embarrassing photos to anybody daring to look. A seemingly unsolvable conflict was created: How could you still be cool, hang out with friends in rancid clubs and the …
Read more2011-03-28
Hot or Hotter
Attention is serious business on the Internet. Student Marina Gröpel’s Hot Or Hotter serves as a battleground in between Facebook Likes (hot) and flattr donations (hotter). The hottest person taking part (order by “clicks”!) will win all the flattr money at the end of the month, so don’t wait and upload your photo!
Read more2011-03-11
I HERD U LIKE HAMSTERS
Saskia Aldinger is sharing the cuteness of her little Hamster Jupiter with the whole world through a streaming web cam! If you want to contribute to Jupi’s well-being, donate one Euro via Paypal and a yummy goodie will drop down for him to chew on! Fully web enabled e-commerce remote controlled automatic hamster pleasure!! Remember …
Read moreI’ve got mouths to feed
Obtaining and using software is a story by itself; commerce and its circumvention through piracy is an engaging experience. While big software companies like Apple and Google are trying to unify these narratives to controlled, boring AppStores, individual exchange of monetary values, brought forward by Paypal or flattr, is certainly a form of communication. And …
Read moreWild Wild Wired
Bernadette Neuroth finished her studies with a paper about WWW standards — Wild Wild Web: 15 years of browser wars, software competition and other conflicts; 17 years of W3C’s effort to regulate the development of languages and protocols. Bernadette’s design project — programmed in HTML5 and CSS3, according to the newest and hottest standards, but …
Read moreProjects in summer 2011
“… SPIEL DEIN SPIEL! …” by Mario Doulis Web-Design and -Development by Dragan Espenschied Peepshow by Olia Lialina
Read moreOne Terabyte Blog
One Terabyte of Kilobyte Age is a research blog started by Olia Lialina and Dragan Espenschied in January 2011. The idea is to collect, comprehend and document artifacts of amateur web found in and through the Geocities Torrent. The free web hosting service Geocities.com was founded by “Beverly Hills Internet” in July 1995 — exactly …
Read moreGhosttown
When Google released Street View in Germany the world was shocked. Because it looked like Germans wash outside. Wherever you look there would be a huge shower cabin in the street. Well, the reality is not so exciting. The milk glass constructions are just houses, blurred by Google on request of the house owners who …
Read moreRaumnutzung2020
In the theoretical part of ‘Raumnutzung2020′ several ideas concerning the way people may interact with computers in their homes in the near future, are developed and discussed. Within the discussion Thilo Schulz refers to both new developments like Microsofts Kinect and abstract ideas like Weisers Ubiquitous Computing. In the practical part he implemented one of …
Read moreFirewall Ball
New media students are physically fit. They do tennis, surfing, skating and a lot of jump and run. In December 2010 our program was enriched with a new sport: Firewallball — it is like Volleyball, but for the information age. Photo documentation on Johannes P Osterhoff’s Flickr.
Read moreID Reception 2010
On tuesday 7.12 from 17:00-19:30 everyone is invited to the interface design reception at our Virtual Reality Studio ( room 2.6). You can see and try out our recent projects, talk to the the students and teachers, play Minecraft and have drinks.
Read moreExhibition at WKV
The Merz Akademie present their results of remediate research project from the 19 to the 21 november at Württembergischer Kunstverein in Stuttgart. The projects supervised by Mario Doulis are the following: Reverse Remediation #0 – Interacting Space Interaktives Filmmuseum: Sebastian Otto Raumkrümmer: Jörg Frohnmayer Alterung in virtuellem Welten: Benjamin Wingert Reverse Remediation #1 – Interaktive …
Read moreTrail Blazers #3
On the 13th of October 2010, the Beautiful Zeros and Ugly Ones invited Users “to surf the classic way” for the third time. 16 teams (more than 20 surfers) registered. This time the trails were really difficult. Only very experienced and devoted web users managed to come from www.facebook.com to www.joindiaspora.com, from www.ursula-von-der-leyen.de to www.zuguttenberg.de, …
Read more2=00000010
On he 7th of July 2010, Wolfgang Schneider presented the CodeVis Tabe to the group of Beautiful Zeros and Ugly Ones. It is a a device that makes you learn to make up decimal numbers from 0s and 1s. In 2012, when computers take over, it will be a very demanded skill. Those who can …
Read moreZalgos
Zalgo Image Creator v1.0 Freeware Linus Suter just finished this software that transforms a bitmap image into a character based image consisting of special characters from the unicode set. It allows you to make your own Zalgo-Art-Image quickly and easily. Due to widespread support for unicode characters you can now post Zalgo-Images anywhere you want. …
Read moreCSS with Cortes
In June 2010 Spanish designer and CSS artist Roman Cortes (3d Meninas, Coke Can, Tribute to the Beatles, etc) was giving a workshop at Merz Akademie. After exploring new options of CSS 3 and HTML 5, students deconstructed Picasso’s Guernica and reconstructed it with CSS3 transitions. You can see it and listen to it here: …
Read moreShadows of the User
Shadows of the User Strike Back:D is a photo series by Brandi Bryant developed during the Drop Shadow workshop. She wisely notices: “Conformity is generally, NOT seen as a modern thing… yet corporates who pride themselves on their ”support” of individuality, symbolize that very thing as a blind, deaf, speechless stereotype Unisex. Wonderful. That’s about …
Read moredrx at TypoBerlin
Dragan Espenschied, author of the the most bitter article of our times — “Put yer fonts in a Pipe and Smoke em !!” (The Digital Folklore Reader,) talks at TypoBerlin today.
Read moregetting physical
Media artist Yunchul Kim held a workshop about physical computing. Students made experiments based on the Arduino and Max/Msp software. Some results of the workshop are documented here. The Media producers Antony Rayzhekoff and Emanuel Andel made experiments with natural user interfaces. The students learned how to handle the this.play touch interface and programmed an interactive …
Read moreLacks of Limitation
Last week of April 2010 Manuel Buerger demanded that students “Try to bring the software to its knees!” because “Only if you know your tool you are ready for the next step.” It worked. The Beauty and Lacks of Limitation project is documented now: http://sites.google.com/site/thebeautyoflacksandlimitation/
Read moreTrailblazers #1
The Beautiful Zeros and Ugly Ones invite: Surf the classic way from amazon to piratebay nm.merz-akademie.de/trailblazers/surfing/wednesday/140410/20h/teckstrasse58/container/beer Trailblazers is a live web surf event where you can show off your PRO surfing skills. No keyboard, no google, just pure links! WIN A COPY OF THE DIGITAL FOLKLORE READER! – * “There is a new profession of …
Read moreMaxBense100
Students of the Interface Design Pathway presented their work at the celebration of Max Bense 100 anniversary in Stuttgart. The exhibition took place in the Wilhelmspalais’s first floor. The selected projects are. Botpoetry from Michael Russ, Speak and Fips from Julian Bingman and the great Zalgo Project that unfortunately isn’t officially released yet. The preview …
Read more2010-02-08
Projects in Summer 2010
Machinima Interactions by Mario Doulis Web Development by Dragan Espenschied Beautiful Zeros and Ugly Ones by Olia Lialina
Read moreLast Midi got a Media Prize
The latest project of former NM student Sebastian Schmieg — Last Midi Background got a the 1st prize for Online works at the 23rd Stuttgarter Filmwinter Festival. No wonder. LMB is a beautiful and very alive archive of MIDI music. Like Animated GIFs formed the WWW’s look, MIDI files gave to the WWW its special …
Read moresecurity by obscurity show
On the 1st of July 2009 students of the Security by Obscurity project guided by Olia Lialina, presented their work. -Tobias Leingruber (and Dragan Espenschied) invited everybody to join Ursula von der Leyen-Fanclub. -Theo Seemann Flaged RFID ! -Florian Kroener gave an insight into audio CAPTCHAs. -Michael Russ read Bot Poetry. -Christopher Heller made a …
Read moreUnisphere
This semesters’ physical computing workshop was held by Yunchul Kim. The students produced an sound installation called “Unisphere” that can generate sound and light events, out of the weight changes of objects placed on the Unisphere platform. The whole project was technically realized with Arduino and Max/Msp. Presentation: Testing:
Read moreDigital Folklore Reader
Digital Folklore reader is out! Edited by Olia Lialina & Dragan Espenschied Designed by Manuel Buerger Texts and projects by: Cory Arcangel, Julia Böger, Manuel Buerger, Helene Dams, Dragan Espenschied, Jörg Frohnmayer, Mark Grimm, Christopher Heller, Yunchul Kim, Dennis Knopf, Stefan Krappitz, Florian Kröner, Tobias Leingruber, Olia Lialina, Leo Merz, Bernadette Neuroth, o+ro, johannes p …
Read moreRaumgenerator
This semesters’ creating virtual worlds workshop “Raumgenerator” was held by Tracy Krüger and Gabriele Bingula. The architects working in the field of digital content creation and virtual reality adressed two main topics: space as programmable mode and filters as structural elements of space. Some results of “Raumgenerator” can be found here.
Read moreThe Drop Shadow Talks
If you are n Berlin don’t miss The Drop Shadow Talks at Berliner Technische Kunsthochschule. The event is organized by Johannes p Osterhoff. He writes: “With the current generation of operating systems the drop shadow effect entered the graphical user interface to a new extent. In this context it raises not only windows from background …
Read more10 Years of Blasting
10 yers ago Merz Akademie students Dragan Espenschied and Alvar Freude created the Assoziations-Blaster. Soon this project became an icon of German net literature and hyper narration. On the 4th of November at the Stuttgart State Library Alvar and Dragan will recapitulate 10 years of unstable links and collaborative writing. German announcement: Mittwoch, 4. November …
Read more“Skate the Web” in Berlin
“Hi everyone! I’m SUPER EXCITED to announce the opening event of my little solo show in Berlin. Sa. 31.10., 20:00h The folks of Upgrade Berlin, Aram Bartholl, Jamie Wilkinson (Skype) and I will present FAT Lab projects and I will show new works, all around the title “Skate the Web”. The work will be on …
Read moreiF Award for Isabel
Isabel Pettinato, the designer of the site you are looking at, got an IF Communication Design Award 2009 for Gebührenrechner. Congratulations! You can read about it in German and in English. To see really good communication design and socially significant work you should visit Isabel’s final project — Viral Candy Shop.
Read moreLyriknacht’09
Students of the Interface Design Pathway presented their work about Elektrolyrik at the Lyriknacht’09 in Stuttgart. The exhibition took place in the Wilhelmspalais’s lounge. The selected projects are. Botpoetry from Michael Russ, Speak and Fips from Julian Bingman, Papertrust from Stefan Krappitz and Happytube from Jens Natzschak.
Read moreHow to DIY
Usually Aram Bartholl shows to his students how to make real objects out of digital artifacts. During his workshop at Merz Akademie he addressed this topic on meta level. Under the motto “How to DIY” workshop participants were following online tutorials, very famous and completely obscure ones, and are now offering their own Howtos to …
Read moreHappyTube &More
With the HappyTube Firefox plugin by Jens Natschka, YouTube will become an oase of peace and happiness. Simply install HappyTube on your Firefox Browser and enjoy the new, friendly YouTube community. HappyTube was realized in the 2nd semester web development course. Here are the links to the other exciting projects. Tagwall: http://tagwall.de.vu Wemob: http://wemob.de Weemind: …
Read moreThe transparency of attention.
Human attention equates to a form of inter-instance, through which contents become perceivable. Yet attention itself usually stays invisible. According to this, mediareception can be both, the immersion in contents and the attentivness on the materiality of medial surfaces. The installation intends to create a permanent shift between media transparency and media consciousness, respectively to …
Read moreVirtual Reality Mario Land
Christopher Heller, Michael Ruß and Theo Seemann finished their portation of Marioland on a 3D environment with real intuitive input devices – your own feet! The main aim was to produce a super natural interface. Thus the application, made in Jörg Frohnmayer’s VR-seminar with TCL and Lightning, uses tracking of your feet while you’re walking …
Read moreProjects 09/10
Future Tools by guest professor Femke Snelting Reverse Remediation by prof. Mario Doulis
Read moreSCOOTER IN A BOX
SCOOTER IN A BOX is an interactive box with a magnet stick. SCOOTER IN A BOX makes the music tangible. Based on Arduino, Max and the special physical attributes of magnet and inductor, SCOOTER IN A BOX lets you not only hear the music, but additionally lets you feel it via the magnet stick. If …
Read moreHappy Front End
On the 5th of May 2009 at 19:30 Happy Front End lecture series (Ringvorlesung), organised by New Media/Interface Design pathway will start. This time it will be about successful practices in the field of interface design, web design, game design, media art and computer history research. Note the dates and read the abstract in German …
Read moreMulti-Touch
There is a multitude of hard- and software development and a growing “community” in the domain of multi-touch interfaces. But are there really new application areas or will the new technology vanish into thin air after the euphoria of the useres and developers ebbs away? In the project students of New Media/Interface Design Pathway at …
Read moreOne Click Worth 300dpi
Once upon a time people had to spend from 10 to 22 seconds to design flyers for their parties. They had to take a skyline, a siluet of a dancing girl, crazy fonts and paint splashes, and put it all together. Everything changed early 2009 when Holy Stefanius, Patron of Graphic Designers, (at that moment …
Read moreNetArt Prize for Bootyclipse
Denis Knopf’s final project –Youtube channel Bootyclipse, got the Prize for Online Art at the 22nd Filmwinter Festival 2009. No wonder, Bootyclipse is one of the most interesting web project of our time, a beautiful statement on current video culture, amateur aesthetics and an answer to the question “What is net art today?” Read more …
Read moreProjects 09
Interacting Space by Prof. Mario Doulis Security by Obscurity by Prof. Olia Lialina
Read moreWiimote masters
After the great success of Wiimote Masters 2008, On & Off group of Merz Academy invites you to play again on the 24th of January, 18:00, at Ex-Ikea in Stuttgart. 4 projections, 32 teams. Online registration will be opened on the 20th of January. Dress properly, the best outfit will be awarded as well. Be …
Read moreIcanhashistory at Filmwinter
The social networks specialist Ethan Zuckerman noted: “Web 1.0 was invented to allow physicists to share research papers. Web 2.0 was created to allow people to share pictures of cute cats.” NM student Helena Dams made an extensive research on this phenomena. Her text “I Think You Got Cats on Your Internet” will be printed …
Read moreTwo Awards for Happy Real
On December 7th, 2008, Marc Grimm’s Happy Real got TWO (!) prizes at the DIY festival in Zurich. Both awards are in the category of DIY Ingeneering. Happy Real was Marc’s final project: a self-built and self-programmed arcade that questions ego shooter behavior and ethics.
Read moreChina Channel
Tobias Leingrueber is a master of Firefox Add-ons. His recent one — China Channel — he developed together with the great media artists Aram Bartholl and Evan Roth. China Channel offers internet users outside of China the ability to surf the web as if they were inside mainland China. Take an unforgettable virtual trip to …
Read moreProjects 08/09
Multi-Touch– Prof. Mario Doulis Keywords: Interactive surfaces, bi-manual & multi-user interaction, interface design. On and Off — Prof. Olia Lialina Keywords: Online event online, offline event online, online event offline.
Read moreThe Escape
StudiVZ is Germany’s most popular social network for students. Michael Ruß created a service that builds 1990s-style amateur home pages from StudiVZ profile pages and weaves them together in a new old web that is a joy to surf through. For those 1000 users, the WEB 1.0 PROJECT generated their first personal website out of …
Read moreCircuit Bending with Gieskes
Among the devices built in the Circuit Bending and Arduino workshop given by Gijs Gieskes in May 2008 were some really curious ones. For example the modest chip with tiny LEDs on the picture below allows you to write in the air. It should be completely dark though. Another group of DIY enthusiasts made an …
Read moreThe Final Frontier
After two and a half days in Johannes p Osterhoff’s seminar “The Final Frontier“, second semester students came up with the most radical presentation ever seen in the walls of Merz Akademie. Six minutes video of outer space wallpapers and screensavers: starring mondaufgang.jpg, cosmos07.jpg, cosmos04.jpg and many others, known from different times and systems.
Read moreDigital Visuals
During this semester’s pathway week, Julien Ducourthial (also known as otro), one of the main designers and VJs currently active in the home computer underground, came to do a workshop with NM students. He introduced them to a rich digital visual culture that is developing in parallel to “classic” graphic design around the special features …
Read moreTo all the ravers in the internet
New Media teacher Dragan Espenschied collects some of his design insights in his blog To all the ravers in the internet. It is written in German language and read by students.
Read moreVR Workshop
The Virtual Reality Workshop during the pathway week 2008 at the Merz Akademie was lectured by Roland Blach, Matthias Bues and Jörg Frohnmayer from the CCVE at Fraunhofer IAO. After a swift introduction students have build realtime applications within the field of game design and interaction design. David Ziegler and Felix Barth have build out …
Read moreIsa’s tips
Isabel Pettinato, NM student who made the theme for the old nm blog, came back from her internship at Feedback Media. She was designing and programming websites for Universal Music. Her projects for Schiller and Neue Töne are a success. Here are Isabel’s tips for the students getting ready for their internship. – Präsentiert sich …
Read moreGoogle apps and more
Among the online projects made last semester is a nameless but precious googlemaps-photo-service by David Ikuye, Christoph Brandin and Paul Steinhilber. It can be your personal photo album (or a global photo archive) that uses spacial navigation. You can register and store your photos there, look through other albums. And help the authors to find …
Read moreStreet Fighter Diagram
Alexander Schlegel, author of the 2007 hit Pixel Art released his new entertainment for the online community and game fans — Street Fighters: Relations between Characters Diagram. Look at it, the bigger screen or the more screens your can connect to your computer, the more fun you will have following connections between the heroes of …
Read morenew yorkers
Former NM student Dennis Knopf now works at Rhizome, the foundation dedicated to the creation, presentation, preservation and critique of emerging artistic practices that engage technology. At the same time our 5th semester student Tobias L. got internship at Eyebeam, one of the world’s leading art and technology centers that provides context and state-of-the-art tools …
Read moreUniversal Remote
Time and again Florian Dusch had to find out how to set up another model of alarm clock, until once he got the idea of Universal Remote. It is supposed to simplify our relations with the everyday electronic house equipment: TV sets, microwaves, vacuum cleaners and of course alarm clocks. A mock up of the …
Read moreProjects Summer Semester 08
Summer semester projects’08 for the students of the 3rd-7th semester are: The Ultimate Display supervised by Prof. Mario Doulis Beautiful Zeros and Ugly Ones supervised by Prof.Olia Lialina.
Read moreAlice with Diamonds
Alice with Diamonds is one of the generative graphics projects made last semester in the processing course given by Mona Mahall and Asli Serbest. Helene Dams and Stefanie Rückert combined processing techniques with the greatest glitter graphics of all times. Looks weird. To start the show you have to press glitter buttons on the modified …
Read moreDigital Garden
In December 2007 Swiss artists Monica Studer and Christoph van den Berg hosted the workshop Digital Garden for Merz Akademie students. Authors of Vue des Alpes, the most elegant virtual experience ever, taught students to model, film and assemble real and imaginary environments. Together these mixed media panoramas formed a smooth, seamless virtual world.
Read moreFirst steps
In the beginning of December, the 1st semester students of Merz Akademie got introduced to new media and their challenges. One of them is computational design. For four days students were left alone with code and Arne Michael. And only after they’ve managed to achieve the first results, we brought them to the ZKM to …
Read moreuber album release
Dragan Espenschied — NM teacher, web designer, information architect, net artist and rock star, — announced today the 12 inch vinyl release of Bodenständig 2000′s long awaited UBER ALBUM with 8 eurostyle conscious home computer tracks and awesome cover design by otro in Atari Desktop Green. For details go to the long Bodenstandig 2000 page …
Read moreJunk Jet is out
Please note that the computer fanzine Junk Jet is available now. New Media guest teachers Asli Serbest and Mona Mahall created a great laser printer publication that questions the mainstream usage of digital media to produce a standardized aesthetic. Asli and Mona work at the Institute for Modern Architecture of Stuttgart University; at the New …
Read moreIllustration with Miu Mau
Jana Frank, known online as Miu Mau, is an illustrator, graphic designer and author of the book Diary of a Maniac Designer. Last week she taught NM students different illustration techniques, like drawing and collaging. Students’ illustrations (PDF, 6 MB) selected for presentation.
Read moreProcessing Workshop
Warius Watz, the prominent Norwegian artist working with generative systems, spent last week in Stuttgart, teaching New Media students the principles of generative systems. He was showing how they can be used both as pragmatic tools and a conceptual frameworks for creative work. For 5 days students were programming in Processing and managed to achieve …
Read moreAll About Johannes
There are several news about our former student and current visiting teacher johannes p osterhof. Recently Merz&Solitude published Osterhoff’s final thesis IMG_SRC. It is in German and can be ordered online from the publisher. Secondly, Johannes insists on the emergence of a new art form — Interface Art. To promote artists working in that direction …
Read moreHAPPY REAL in ZKM
Till the 6th of January 2008, Marc Grimm’s ego shooter research arcade can be tried out at the ZKM (Karlsruhe) as a part of the ‘World of Games: reloaded” exhibition. Happy Real is a central part of Marc’s final project that aims to answer the question: How far can you go with shooting on your …
Read moreExhibitSpace
The ExhibitSpace project has investigated new ways of spatial representation and interaction concepts for art exhibitions. Therefore Virtual Reality was split in it’s main technical components and experimentally re-arranged in kind of interactive exhibition spaces. As case studies the students chose artworks of the New State Gallery Stuttgart and conceptually extended the real exhibiting space …
Read moreThe Complex
“The Complex” is a Virtual Reality application about the topic “labyrinth and maze metaphors for information structures” from Jörg Frohnmayer who finished his studies in summer 2006. He developed navigation techniques especially designed for a six sided projection system like the CAVE at Fraunhofer IAO. Additionally he came up with displays that support the user …
Read moreModels Make Reality
Former NM student Johannes Osterhoff comes back every semester to make students think about history and ideology of Graphic User Interface. Last semester his group came up with an outstanding realistic interface. Here you can see detailed documentation of the project. In Winter semester Johannes Osterhoff offers a new theme THE ISLE OF PARADISE.
Read more2nd Semester Projects
The 1st semester in New Media (2nd semester of studies) is the time when students come up with their first web project. After HTML, CSS, PHP training with Dragan Espenschied, Action Script classes given by Alexander Götz and an Interface seminar by Johannes Osterhoff, students are free to develop their own ideas. Then they make …
Read moreWeb 2.0 trend
In July two students finished their studies with works on web 2.0. It is quite understandable that both chose it as a topic in the end of 2006, there was hardly any other subject left for those interested in the Internet at that time. Nevertheless both were quite embarrassed by the fact that their topics …
Read moreProjects Winter Semester 07/08
There are 2 projects announced for the Winter semester 2007/2008: Interactive Spatial Maps by Prof. Mario Doulis and Data Information Wisdom II by Prof.Olia Lialina. The latter is a follow up to the research project from4 years ago. It is when Spy vs. Spy, /IMG SRC, Data for Wisdom and other great student works were …
Read moreTobi’s Timemachine
Students of the summer semester project Standarts and Revolutions had to came up with the projects that would show that they understand and respect the laws of webdesign. Tobias Leingruber went further and made a work that is full of love to WWW and its pioneers. He writes: In the 90′s People started creating webpages …
Read moreKlang Klötzchen Kiste
Leo Merz finished his studies this semester with an impressive Virtual Reality application. Klang Klötzchen Kiste presents a new, smooth, continuous interface to the step-sequencer approach of composing music.
Read moreKleider machen Piloten
Marcs’s last year experimental game interface Kleider Machen Piloten is fully documented, everybody can try to make their own augmented pilot jacket now.
Read more