Saturday, November 27, 2010

OzCHI 2010 in Brisbane: plants that giggle and dairy cows that tweet~!

 The captivating keynote speaker and renowned scientist Elizabeth Churchill tried her hand at the MeetEater plant-computer interface. (sorry for the low quality image)


At the OzCHI2010 conference in Brisbane, Australia, attendees were intrigued by a human-plant interface known as the "MeetEater."  This installation by artist Bashkim Isai, brings the relationship we have with plants into the forefront.  The plant is watered when it makes friends on facebook, when people write on its wall, and when touched in person.  When the leaves are stroked it sets off the most contagious and surprising giggles you can imagine.  Visit the facebook page for more information and to reach out and water that plant!  http://www.facebook.com/meeteater

Artist: Bashkim Isai
www.bashkim.com.au

Then there were dairy cows that tweet!  Connor Graham presented a paper he co-authored with Denisa Kera about the future communities made possible with the diversity and pervasive "sensor networks."  Among the many interesting examples, Connor shared the udderly fabulous site that connects the dairy cows to the Internet to tweet about their teats!!!

 Connor Graham explaining the TeatTweet website and how these sensor networks are changing our sense of community. (sorry for the low quality image)

Take a look for yourself at the website and we'll post a link to the paper soon (Collective Sensor Networks and Future Communities: Designing Interactions across Multiple Scales)

http://criticalmedia.uwaterloo.ca/teattweet/
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