WiiSpray is Wiimote hack and piece of work by Martin Lihs – a student of my ex-colleagues over at the media faculty at the Bauhaus.

I like the addition of stencil usage – it takes it beyond the obvious paint program idea and you can also collaborate with other people (via the interwebs potentially). This part of the explanation is key:

“The actual hardware tool of the artist – the spraying can – remains constant in its shape and function and is a catalyst for this software supporting innovative computer interaction. The self-explanatory program requires no previous knowledge or reference of a user’s manual.”

(Via Daring Fireball, which probably means you have all seen it already. Sigh).

I’m delighted that the very brilliant and extremely well-connected Regine Debatty from we-make-money-not-art.com is giving a talk at the Bauhaus on Wednesday. If anyone is in the area please come along.

Details below:

Wednesday 17 January
19:30 h
Dachgalerie Limona
Steubenstrasse 8

(Photo shamelessly stolen from WMMNA.)

Markus Dressen has laid out a selection of his favourite books and created a Googlemap of them. Most of them are design and art books and provide an interesting insight into his tastes. And it’s a clever idea too.

I noticed that he appears to be German and that one of his books was about the Volksboutique work of one of my colleagues here at the Bauhaus, Christine Hill. Anyone know who Markus is?

Thanks to Mike at Digital Agency for the link, which originally came via RandomCulture.

UPDATE: It really is a small connected world. Interaction designer, David Schmidt posted in the comments a link to some Flickr photos of Christine and Shelley Jackson. I had no idea they knew each other (and I’ve not met David in the flesh yet either). (Christine wants it known that she won the tennis match they’re relaxing after!).

So of course I mailed Christine who then replied explaining who Markus Dressen is:

Markus is not my student, he’s a force of nature. He’s a stellar designer based in Leipzig, and did the complete layout of my monograph.  I will show you a copy in Weimar, it will knock you over.  He is amazing.  We are actually about to reprint that, including 32 new pages for the Venice Edition, and I am so looking forward to spending more time with him.  He studied at the HGB in Leipzig, specializing in books, his thesis is a hand made Unikat, that is a feat of both layout and printing, not to mention hand binding and well, I just can’t do the work justice in an email.

Markus also is the brains behind the journal Spector Cut + Paste.

The HGB is also the home of the Spherical Robots project/group who have created some great interactive/installation concepts, including Bitfall.

Not really a post that may be of interest to lots of you, but I have started a new blog for those of you who are/will be my students from the Bauhaus (or anyone who is interested in what we’re up to).

It’s called GMU (for Gestaltung medialer Umgebungen) and it’s here.

Anyone who has a del.icio.us account and wants to send us some links can add the username gmu to their network and tag their posts ‘for:gmu’ and we should see it. You can add apolaine and tag them ‘for:apolaine’ too if you like and I’ll get them too. (Without the quotes of course in both cases).

I’m off to Weimar tomorrow to start a six-month stint as Guest Professor “Gestaltung medialer Umgebungen” at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar in the Faculty of Media.

It feels quite odd (and rather flattering) to be following in the footsteps of luminaries such as Josef Albers, László Moholy-Nagy, Walter Gropius, Vassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee (to name but a few), though things have changed quite a bit since then. There are still plenty of the original buildings though (including original murals and relief sculptures on the wall).

Photo stolen from Hello World.

My predecessor, Ursula Damm set a project which resulted Bernd Hopfengärtner’s excellent Hello World! work – a Semacode measuring 160 x 160 meters was mown into a wheat field near the town of Ilmenau. I’m planning some playful interactive works (I hope!).

So, if any of my exchange students from Weimar or other folks that read this blog are there, get in touch. I’d love to meet up and see the sights.