[From PSFK]

Sonic Cradle Lets You Mix Soundscapes With Your Breathing

By Stephen Fortune on July 13, 2011

One can rest easy about the fate of the remix, as artists are constantly seeking new ways to push remix culture into new territory. Oftentimes, they do so by reimagining the interface by which one can cut and mash up (like such novel projects as the VJacket and Karina Van Heck’s internal organ mixing desk), and the latest experiment in embodied remix interfaces is even more ambitious than previous forays. Jay Vidyarthi and Darwin Frost have designed the Sonic Cradle that enables users to mix a soundscape using their breath alone.… read more. “Sonic Cradle, an experiment in embodied remix interfaces”

[From Japan Times]

[Image: Virtual venue: Takeshi Natsuno, managing director at Dwango, explains the features of Nico Nico Douga’s new Nicofarre venue. ALEXIS WUILLAUME PHOTO]

Website Nico Nico Douga goes live … house

By MARK JARNES
Special to The Japan Times
Thursday, July 14, 2011

Online video-sharing website Nico Nico Douga has become a popular place for young Japanese to check out new music. Now imagine stepping inside the site to experience those tunes live.

That’s the feeling you get when you enter Tokyo’s newest live venue, Nicofarre.

“We wanted to create an interactive musical experience where reality and virtual reality become blurred,” says Takeshi Natsuno, managing director at Dwango, which runs Nico Nico Douga. With a decor consisting of the Internet, LEDs and augmented reality (AR), Natsuno has come pretty darn close.… read more. “New Tokyo club Nicofarre blurs reality and virtual reality”

[From The Philadelphia Inquirer]

War games, not debates, are what this race needs

July 17, 2011
Jim Geraghty

Brace yourself: Seven Republican presidential debates are scheduled in the next four months, and even more may be added.

After two or three, the questions and answers are going to sound depressingly similar and predictable. Ah, yes, you’ll cut taxes and spending. You’ll respond decisively to foreign threats. Yawn.

With primary debates including so little debate and so much rehearsed recitation of stale sound bites, it’s time to shake things up. What could give primary voters a clearer perspective of a candidate’s thinking and decision-making? What would best give a sense of how each would perform as president?

How about war-gaming?… read more. “Test presidential candidates with simulations, not debates”

[From TechFlash]

[Image: The avatar for Dr. Brian Ross welcomes participants to an online training session using Xbox chat technology (Stephen Brashear photos/PSBJ)]

GAMING TECHNOLOGY

How Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Kinect help surgeons in the OR

by Brad Broberg on Saturday, July 16, 2011

The sight of a surgeon playing “Grand Theft Auto” in the operating room might raise eyebrows, but it’s one example of how consumer technology is being repurposed to advance the practice of medicine.

Rising medical costs — bloated by expensive, complicated machines — are wrecking the nation’s economic health, while off-the-shelf consumer gadgets keep getting cheaper and more powerful. So the health care industry has discovered it can tap into the innovative wonders of an Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 or an Android smartphone app.

Dr. Tom Lendvay, assistant professor of urology at the University of Washington, has studied whether warming up on a virtual reality simulator can improve a surgeon’s performance on the operating table, and he now plans to study whether video games could also put a surgeon in the zone.… read more. “How Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Kinect help surgeons in the OR”

[From The University of California, San Diego News Center]

[Image: Brain response as measured by fMRI to videos of a robot, android and human]

Your Brain on Androids

July 14, 2011
By Inga Kiderra

Ever get the heebie-jeebies at a wax museum? Feel uneasy with an anthropomorphic robot? What about playing a video game or watching an animated movie, where the human characters are pretty realistic but just not quite right and maybe a bit creepy? If yes, then you’ve probably been a visitor to what’s called the “uncanny valley.”

The phenomenon has been described anecdotally for years, but how and why this happens is still a subject of debate in robotics, computer graphics and neuroscience. Now an international team of researchers, led by Ayse Pinar Saygin of the University of California, San Diego, has taken a peek inside the brains of people viewing videos of an uncanny android (compared to videos of a human and a robot-looking robot).… read more. “Your brain on androids: An fMRI study of the Uncanny Valley”