Hasta La Ideas

In conjunction with media partner CBS Outdoor UK, creative team Smile For London has launched a new competition with the aim of raising the spirits of London’s Underground train commuters. They invite all emerging artistic talent to submit a twenty second silent film or animation as part of a campaign to exhibit a series of motion works on the large platform screens across the Underground network.

On weekday mornings for two weeks in January, at a time when most Londoners and the rest of the UK feel the January blues and are in need of a lift, platforms screens in the Underground will be showcasing artwork designed especially for the space to provide thought provoking visual stimulation for travellers.

The final day for submissions is 3rd December 2010 and the selection process will involve an online vote with a view to fifty successful submissions going forward to a panel of celebrated industry leaders to make the final selection.

For full submission details and to see features by industry leaders and current profiles of artists visit the Smile For London website.

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The newly established IDAT, the Institute of Design, Art and Technology of Barcelona, has begun a new series of interaction design competitions, beginning with the theme “Building the Internet of Things,” a call to imagine the reailty of networked products and systems in the 21st century.

Below, IDAT elaborates:

The term Internet of Things has come to describe a number of technologies and research disciplines that enable the Internet to reach out into the real world of physical objects. Technologies like RFID, short-range wireless communications, real-time localization and sensor networks are now becoming increasingly common, bringing the Internet of Things into commercial use. They foreshadow an exciting future that closely interlinks the physical world and cyberspace—a development that is not only relevant to researchers, but to corporations and individuals alike.

The idea is as simple as its application is difficult. If all cans, books, shoes or parts of cars are equipped with minuscule identifying devices, daily life on our planet will undergo a transformation. Things like running out of stock or wasted products will no longer exist as we will know exactly what is being consumed on the other side of the globe.

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Though the submission period does not officially begin until January 1st, this may be something to start thinking about, especially if you’re missing I.D.’s Annual Design Review. This year, Azure is steps up to the plate and launches its AZ Awards for Design Excellence, an international competition celebrating architecture firms and design studios that have produced stellar work over the past year. The categories include Industrial Design, Architecture, Interior, Concept and a Student Work. The jury has not been announced yet, you can sign up to receive a call for entries (when it’s ready) here.

Submissions open: January 1st, 2011. Deadline: March 31st, 2011.

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Years ago I drove an ambulance, and on my very first call I’d done chest compressions on a guy who was unfortunately too far gone to be saved. Afterwards the seasoned EMTs told me that CPR is a real Hail Mary that works less than 10% of the time, despite what you see in the movies. It’s a primitive way to try to pump blood to the brain, and they said that particularly on older patients, you could even accidentally crack their ribs while doing it.

Lars Imhof and Marc Binder, graduates from the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern in Switzerland, came up with the Reax concept as a more efficient, automated means of doing chest compressions.

“REAX” compresses the entire chest at regular intervals and forces the blood into the brain more efficiently and more evenly than with a manual cardiac massage. The flexible back panel can be installed quickly by a single person on the patient and adapts to the upper body. The paramedic is no longer carried out only deals with the heart massage but can take further action. Even during the transport to the operating room or in the CT continues the resuscitation.

The Reax took third prize in this year’s James Dyson Award. (First and Second prize, Samuel Adeloju’s Longreach Buoyancy Deployment System and Kimberley Hoffman’s Sea Kettle, respectively, have been getting plenty of blog love and we wanted to throw some spotlights on Imhof and Binder too.)

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pemMore food for thought regarding our latest 1 Hour Design Challenge. Teague’s awesome Radioball was the inspiration behind the project: a gestural tuner and radio in one. /em/p

pTouchscreens are everywheremdash;designers love their sleek looks and developers love their malleable pixels, but the implicit flatness of these omnipresent devices leaves much to be desired. From the perspective of human-device interaction, flat is boring. We crave real-world haptics, interesting textures, and functionally beautiful forms./p

pDeveloped by Teague’s a href=” http://bencollette.com/portfolio/”Benoit Collette/a and a href=” http://projects.kumpf.cc”Adam Kumpf/a, the Radioball is an exploratory device that encourages discovery through rich spatial interaction./p

pThe Radioball doesn’t use screens, buttons, or knobs; instead, listeners can actively engage with the radio by rolling and spinning it to find stations among the warm fuzz of the FM dial./p

pSee a href=”http://www.teague.com/2010/05/radioball-prototype/”Teague’s blog/a for more information including 3D files, code, schematics, and video of the Radioball in action (all released under Creative Commons for you to build upon)./pa href=”http://www.core77.com/blog/competition/teagues_radioball__16601.asp”(more…)/a
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