“Coming Soon: Nothing Between You and Your Machine” is another excellent article in this Sunday’s New York Times. Although nothing new to anyone at DMI, it’s a great summary of recent steps toward redefining human-computer interactions, and it even gives a shout out to Processing.

A great article, and a great headline, from Sunday’s New York Times: “Text Generation Gap: U R 2 Old (JK)”. One highlight from the piece:

“Texting is in between calling and sending and e-mail,” he explained while taking a break from study hall. Now he won’t even consider writing a letter to his mother, Jan. “It’s too time consuming,” he said. “You have to go to the post office. Instead, I can sit and watch television and send a text, which is the same thing.”

Ummm… no. That’s not the same thing at all. If writing a letter were the same as writing an SMS, then you wouldn’t always choose SMS.

Semantics aside, it’s scary to think about how SMS and other, similar technologies are already mutating our methods for interpersonal interaction. As the author points out in the article, the telephone was similarly (if not more) disruptive, but of course, to me, the landline telephone is “normal,” because I grew up with it. So the proverbial kids today are growing up with email, IM, VOIP, and SMS, and all of those communications media are, to them, just “normal.”

From Toothpaste for Dinner, of course.

I noticed this graphic during my first visit to Obama’s website. In case the candidate needed another means of inspiring potential supporters, he now has the techno-teen and dynamic media crowd. Howard Dean may have pioneered the use of the Internet for campaign fundraising, but Obama is the first I’ve seen to enlist SMS. (I was unable to find any SMS features advertised on Clinton’s site.)

With the Wyoming primaries coming up on Saturday, I visited Obama’s site again today, just to see if he had any special messages for supporters in that state. Notice that a different code is presented on the Wyoming page:

I thought I’d test this out and try to figure out how the system works.

Scott: MA

66262: Thanks for joining Massachusetts for Obama, For additional Obama updates Reply JOIN to this msg. Text HELP for help. STOP to quit. Std charges may apply.

Scott: Join

66262: Welcome to Obama Mobile NEWS & UPDATES. Reply with your zipcode to get local Obama info. Text HELP for help, STOP to quit. Std charges may apply.

Looks like the system is using all best practice recommendations, including double opt-in, support for required SMS commands (e.g. HELP and STOP), and reminding us that charges may apply.

Scott: 02139 [A Massachusetts zip]

66262: Thank you for updating your zip code with Obama Mobile. We will contact you shortly about upcoming events and local news. Send HELP for help & Stop to quit.

I suddenly realize that the campaign will not care about Massachusetts again for months, and I likely will not receive any updates. Help!

Scott: Help

66262: Obama for America! More info on http://barackobama.com/ To stop, text STOP to 62262 or call 877-822-5093

Okay, the “help” wasn’t that helpful, and the attempt to communicate excitement using an exclamation mark falls flat. (It’s trying to a evoke a different kind of excitement than “Ok C U L8r!”) Let’s try sending the main signup code of HOPE.

Scott: hope

66262: You are already subscribed to Obama Mobile. Text HELP for help, STOP to quit. Std charges may apply. More info at www.barackobama.com/mobile

At this point we can infer that you can sign up for “Obama Mobile” by sending essentially any text message to 66262. Your message could say “hope” or could contain a state abbreviation — it doesn’t really matter. Let’s tell it we’re in Wyoming, since that’s where all the action is this weekend.

Scott: Wy

66262: Welcome to WY for Obama Mobile. Text HELP for help, STOP to quit. Std charges may apply. More info at www.barackobama.com/mobile

Scott: 82601 [A zip in Casper, Wyoming, where the candidate is campaigning today]

66262: Thank you for updating your zip code with Obama Mobile. We will contact you shortly about upcoming events and local news. Send HELP for help & Stop to quit.

Okay, I guess that’s it. Now, we wait. In the meantime, we can think about how Obama Mobile appears to be a stateless server, which means that it’s not smart enough to remember what I said a minute ago when I say something else now. Each exchange is an independent conversation, which I think is typical for SMS systems today. I want to research this further, though, since I ultimately want to develop an SMS application of my own.

One other thing to note is that Obama Mobile also offers ringtones for your phone. Yes, Obama ringtones. My favorite is #12: “Hi, this is Barack Obama asking you to answer the phone.” Yes, it really is his voice, and yes, you bet he felt silly recording that, but hey, whatever it takes to win, right, Hillary?

Political commentary aside, it’s fascinating to see how everyone today becomes a media producer at some point. Candidates used to make sound bites in front of cameras — now they’re doing it in recording studios, and they’ll beam the audio straight to your phone. We’re still consumers, but now we’re producers, too, whether we want to be or not.

I’ll update this post if and when any TXTs from OBMA come in. It’ll be interesting to see what he has to say.

Updates: Received this message at 4:17 pm MST today:

Ready to caucus for Barack tomorrow? Fwd this msg & make sure everyone knows their caucus time and location. Info: 866-675-2008 ext 4 or WY.BarackObama.com

Received this message at 7:39 pm MST:

Our moment is now! Fwd this msg & tell all your friends to caucus for Barack tomorrow. For caucus info call: 866-675-2008 ext 4 or http://WY.BarackObama.com.

Received on caucus day, Saturday, March 8, at 11:01 am MST:

Make sure everyone goes to their caucus today for Barack! Times change across WY. For caucus times call 1-866-675-2008 or visit http://WY.BarackObama.com.

Received at the end of the day, Saturday, March 8, at 6:24 pm MST:

Barack wins Wyoming & the campaign moves on to Mississippi for Tuesday’s primary. Help us grow this movement for change, ask friends to text HOPE to 62262.

I recently had the good fortune to visit the Design and the Elastic Mind exhibit at MoMA. It’s on exhibit until May 12, and I recommend that everyone interested in dynamic media and emerging technologies go see it. If you are reading this blog, that means you. (The image above is Jim Lambie’s installation on the first floor of the museum — literally, on the floor — and is not part of the design exhibit.)

I found out about the exhibit in a roundabout way. I was doing some research on the Make Controller Kit, an open-source hardware device that I’m considering for future projects. That site points to a number of great projects made with the kit, my favorite of which is Lightweeds by Simon Heijdens. Heijdens’ site mentioned that his work was on display at MoMA, so I went to the museum simply to view his project, with no idea that I’d also see a number of other phenomenal projects.

Lightweeds is a brilliant concept: Project lifelike “weeds” onto interior walls of a space, or what Heijdens calls the “artificial” space of a gallery. Collect live data from the environment outside the building (temperate, sunlight, wind velocity), and make the projected weeds grow and behave in response to that data, thereby establishing a connection between the natural and built environments. Here’s a close-up of one “weed” blowing in the “wind”:

Another highlight is the piece I Want You To Want Me, by Jonathan Harris and Sep Kamvar, who I recognized immediately as the same folks who brought us We Feel Fine.

I Want You To Want Me mines the Internet, looking for people who themselves are looking for someone else: a date, a partner, a spouse. The touch-screen interface represents each individual as a balloon which can be tapped to reveal something about who that person is (e.g. Mike, age 29, in Philadephia) and what he’s looking for (e.g. “a hot babe” or “a man my age I can really settle down with”).

The project is extremely engaging. Users’ innate voyeuristic instincts make the content interesting and relatable, and the balloons (data) can be manipulated through multiple views and filters, which enables the discovery of people who may want each other in real life. Both of these characteristics were inherited from the We Feel Fine project, but I Want You To Want Me employs far-superior graphics and a touch interface. (As an installation, it doesn’t have to struggle with the limitations of a web-based distribution platform.)

The absolute highlight of the exhibit, though, is Shadow Monsters, an installation by Philip Worthington. You enter a small room with a very bright light on the wall behind you, and your “shadow” is “cast” on the opposite wall. The shadow, however, is augmented in real-time to suggest how it would be seen in the mind of a child who’s been told to sleep, but can’t stop worrying about monsters under the bed. While your projected shadow grows horns, teeth, scary eyeballs and shaggy hair, the space is activated with growling, grunting, and gargling — the sounds of hungry monsters preparing to devour little children. My favorite moment was when I made an alligator-like shadow puppet with my arms, and it grew large teeth and spat in disgust toward the opposite wall. (There was audio for the spitting, too.)

Not to brag, but that last bit of computationally enhanced performance art drew a brief standing ovation from a crowd of onlookers. You see, with Shadow Monsters, there are the shadows, and there are the people casting the shadows, both of which could be considered performers, since they both contribute something to the space. And then there are the people outside the space looking in, watching the performance.

But, in reality, the onlookers are part of the performance, too. They unwittingly play the part of the little child, peeking out from under the covers, afraid and confused, unable to explain what’s real and what’s not, and unwilling to get out of bed (and into the space) until they can figure out what’s really going on. My theory is that I drew a few claps because I wasn’t afraid to “get out from under the covers” and really explore the system. (I was fairly confident that it would not actually eat me.) I raised my arms, stuck out my legs, made enclosed shadow-spaces (which is how to trigger eyeballs, I discovered), and did a number of other physical actions that would have gotten me kicked out of the museum, had I not been within that installation space. But I didn’t care, because I wanted to know how the algorithm worked, and besides, my attention was on the large projection in front of me, so I wasn’t thinking about how silly I looked until people started clapping.

I will end with the beginning. Most visitors to the exhibit won’t even notice the first piece, Genomic Cartography by Ben Fry. It’s a sequence of human DNA, visualized as extremely small, pink and gray letters, printed on a white wall. But the exhibit title and introduction are set on top of the piece, so it looks like just an interesting background.

I took away three profound insights from this exhibit:

1. The fact that the Museum of Modern Art, a venerable institution, staged this exhibit completely validated my decision to study dynamic media. This is absolutely the future, and absolutely what I want to do.

2. About half of the dynamic installations, including Shadow Monsters, were built using Processing. Awesome. Again, I feel like I am totally going in the right direction here, and I am inspired by the high quality of work that can be done with the Processing environment.

3. Most of the exhibited artists and designers are within a few years of my age. And they have stuff in MoMA. That gives me hope and also scares me. I better get crackin’.

I cannot recommend a visit to this exhibit highly enough. If you can’t make it to New York, the exhibit’s website is a nightmare to navigate, but at least you can read about all of the projects there.