LUSTlab researches, generates hypotheses and makes unstable media stable again. According to LUSTlab, the future of digital media lies in the design of its use. Humanizing the unhuman, bringing the internet down to earth and finding the missing link between the digital and the physical. The outcomes vary from (strategic) visions to new communication tools, man-machine installations and physical products using digital content. read more

LUSTlab approaches design as the most ingenious, beautiful and consolatory science when trying to understand the human being - from our molecular origins to the immense possibilities of the future. It is the catalyst to activate all senses; that helps to comprehend the myriad of possibilities that we accelerate towards. Using accumulated knowledge we can ask questions directly at everything that we do not understand.

Set up in 2010 by design studio LUST, LUSTlab takes advantage of more than 15 years experience and an insatiable passion for developments in the communication- and information-revolution. Research takes place on the verge of society, where communication, science and technology are united with design, interaction and technique, often even without a clear goal. The innovative research projects and products are mostly self-initiated, but can subsequently be transformed to fit the right application.


Kinect Application

Using the Microsoft Kinect, LUSTlab has developed custom software to allow the use of multiple sensors in one space, allowing complex user tracking. Having recently contributed to several LUST installations, this custom software was used to enhance the interactive experience. To further this research LUSTlab will document at Kinect Application, with intention is to release part of the software used in the coming year....read more The Kinect was primarily developed and marketed by Microsoft as a sensor for video games. However, artists and designers quickly realised the interactive capabilities it offered compared to existing hardware. The sensor captures both colour and depth data, allowing the distance between each image pixel and the sensor to be calculated. The addition of depth data greatly improves the reliability of user tracking.

The Kinect (or similar RGB-Depth sensors), in combination with software such as OpenNI and NITE, allows developers to determine not only the position of the user in space but also the user's pose at interactive speeds. Knowing the user's pose allows the creation of rich natural user interfaces in which interaction takes place through means of gestures and pointing.

Research and Development LUSTlab NL
Website: Kinect Reasearch

http://player.vimeo.com/video/23043336?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0&color=ffffff&autoplay=0&loop=1

Res Sapiens

The Res Sapiens project merges the digital world with the physical. It connects them seamlessly, treating both entities equally. It asks questions not only to us, but also to itself. Res Sapiens refers to thinking physical objects, from products to architecture, that surpass their visual representation and display their meaning, role and status in society. The continuous stream of (public) digital data and information form the energy on which the Res Sapiens can live. It builds the oil fields of the future, where an ever growing digital heritage increases our...read more understanding and knowledge and, most importantly, creates a stronger collective consciousness.

With our limited perceptual capabilities we can only surf on the surface of the Digital Information Bubble. Lamp001/1 is a visualization of a living internet organism, and moreover it attempts to fuse human and machine senses and build on finding answers of how it could help us.

Lamp001/1 is the first Res Sapiens of its kind. It is both a parasite and a paradox, an identical clone and a unique individual. It thrives on information, collecting and conveying data in seamless communication with others while continuously learning from its surrounding.

You can begin a direct conversation (tweet @ressapiens), interacting one on one but also observe as your interaction lingers, instigating new conversations and new streams of information.

In collaboration with Pieke Bergmans

Website: Ressapiens.com
Exhibited at Salone del Mobile - Milan - 2011

http://player.vimeo.com/video/23796825?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0&color=ffffff&autoplay=0&loop=1

Good Vibrations

According to FIFA, the history of games revolving around the kicking of a ball go back to the third centuries BC in China. At the turn of the 21st century football is played by over 250 million players in over 200 countries making it the world's most popular sport. While most players are just having fun, sometimes football seems to be to much about money, winning and rivalry. LUSTlab's goal to connect the physical world to the digital lead to the development of an interactive football, which on one hand encourages playfulness and on the other hand provides new insights in ball movements.

Things like the speed of a ball go when you kick it, how does it rotate and accelerate, can a player keepy uppy 50 times in a row; these are all...read more parameters you can measure when placing sensors inside of the ball. These sensors react to movement. Each kick, turn, bounce is registered and transmitted wirelessly to a computer or smart phone.

All this measured information can be used to generate visualisations which can be shown in real-time on screen. These visualisations can also be used for analysis and later to archive all the played games.

To demonstrate the possibilities of this technology LUSTlab developed an interactive football for the art project 'Terreinwinst' for the Amsterdam football club ASV Arsenal. The movements made with the football are linked to sounds that enhance the original atmosphere. For the art project, these sounds were sourced from well known movie soundtracks. The samples were played through quadrophonic speakers arranged on each corner of the field. Because of the rapid way the game is played, every kick and bounce turns the game into a unique soundscape and playing becomes a whole new experience.

This new technology will bring football back to the core of the game: hitting the ball and the effect it has on the game. The next step will be developing the technology and exploring the data it delivers. This can be with a focus on stimulating the game from a leisure point of view but also integrating the technology into training sessions, both professional and amateur.

Project (partly) supported by A.S.V. Arsenal, Amsterdam NL

Website: Terreinwinst.com
Demonstrated @ Arsenal in March 2011, next demonstration on September 10, 2011

http://player.vimeo.com/video/23579142?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0&color=ffffff&autoplay=0&loop=1

Urban Echo

Now that we are familiar with being connected digitally, the physicality of our interactions becomes important again. The globalised communication systems we use everyday exist on a level above our tangible surroundings.

Urban Echo brings some of this communication back to real locations, connecting public places and therefore people, cities and cultures. It extends space beyond our once concrete parameters. Webcams allow you to see into another space, mirrors allow you to see your own space. Using billboard screens and cameras, Urban Echo creates a hybrid of these two things, allowing not only see into...read more another city but maybe see yourself transported into another city or culture. A mid point between transparency and reflection, introspection and extrospection.

Placed in public areas, the screens have a variety of modes. Sometimes they create a recursive loop allowing interaction between people in multiple cities and sometimes they are just a window to another place, that might intrigue a passer by. They can connect regardless of distance, folding locations together and rearranging our perspective of public space.

IOM (Interactive Improvising Interdisciplinary Orchestra Machine)

IOM is a collaboration with sound studio LOOS that attempts to readdress how we control sound, subverting established links between image and music. In this first incarnation of IOM, it was an instrument, engaging in a performance with a live musician at the Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ in Amsterdam.

In an attempt to transcend the often passive relationship between sound and visual, our aim was to make a dynamic interaction, something we had influence over but could not control....read more Inspired by Johaness Itten's colour theories, we used parameters from a camera, like dominant hue, brightness etc., as the input for IOM. These values were translated into musical parameters, generating sounds, changing pitch and volume. The human performer could then take part in a conversation with their unusual fellow musician.

The camera parameters also generated a dynamic visualisation which had an effect on the performance, as the colours and movements fed back into the IOM. The integration of improvisation and randomisation, human and machine, sound and visual created a unique sound experience, where no-one had authority over the resulting performance.

Project in collaboration with Studio LOOS, Den Haag, NL

Website: loosfoundation.com
Demonstrated at Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ Amsterdam, Dec 2010

Next demonstration t.b.c.

TIJD/SCHRIFT

The tablet computer promises to be more than the missing link between printed and digital media. It is a platform on its own where design, interaction and content need to be redefined. TIJD/SCHRIFT (Tijdschrift is Dutch for 'magazine', tijd means 'time') does not aim to create another digitized version of a printed magazine. Instead, it tries to transform the way people read magazines. This inevitable transformation, which is already in progress, requires research and experiment. TIJD/SCHRIFT acknowledges all elements of the traditional magazine and tries to offer a solid digital alternative. The project approaches this...read more new medium from the bottom up and suggests innovative concepts for utilizing its full potential. It looks beyond hyping new technology, and relates to new media in a mature and progressive way. TIJD/SCHRIFT aims to give sustainable momentum to journalism, seen through the eyes of its designers. It is a prelude to a new era, in which entertainment, news, information and opinion more than ever promote personal well-being and progress by means of mass-communication.

TIJD/SCHRIFT leads to visual and textual research where the future magazine will be redefined by exploring the substantial capabilities of the tablet computer. A new model for content management and several interactive examples will accompany the results of this research.

LUSTlab received financial support under the Dutch Temporary arrangement for Press innovation and proposed a research project on the (digital) future of the magazine.

Context=Message

Design & Democracy is an interdisciplinary research project initiated by Anke Coumans and Stichting Visueel Debat (Foundation for Visual Debate).
Four designers and artists from different disciplines research the role of image and visual communication in politics and how this infuences the public political debate. The research produces an analysis on the current state of the relation between image in politics and the process of democracy. Part of the research is the redefinement of social concepts like politics, citizenship, the masses, public space, dialogue, immigrant, but also on the practice of design itself: image, communication from one to all, the social role of art and activism. LUSTlab is one of the four participants in this research and chooses its own point of view, the fasciniation and possibilities with and by new media. The results of our part of the research will be published here later this year.

LUSTlab & LUST

LUSTlab was founded by LUST in 2010. LUST works in a broad spectrum of media including traditional printwork and book design, abstract cartography and data-visualisations, new media and interactive installations, and architectural graphics. LUST considers design as a process: each design evolving from a concept as a result of extensive research (a design methodology which has been described as process-based or generative-systems based design).

The methodology is used by LUSTlab to transform and materialise its research and conceptual idea's into usable, useful and integratable products for everyday life, now and in the near future. More than just Research & Development, LUSTlab goes further by observing, inventing and producing in several disciplines. Information design meets...read more industrial design, technology meets emotions, hardware and software meet the objects that surround us. According to LUSTlab the future of the digital age is not in devices or technological objects, but rather in a network of nodes and a seemless integration with the physical world.

Finally, our third entity is the LUSTlab Foundation, a platform where knowledge, issues and ideologies can be shared.