berg

a Robot readable world

9 February 2012

Terminator was very right when looking humans over the shoulder. We are so blind when analyzing our environment, machines can identify frillions of cars within a fraction of a second, can we?

Well, some still can’t differentiate between a van, a lorry and a car but time will tell. Matt Jones (from Berg) joined a growing discussion back in 2007 around creating a RFID-covered world, so instead of teaching machines to relate, identify and gather data based on how humans see reality, facilitate this task by covering reality with markers codes and signs that to us, humans, may not mean anything but for machines is another world.

Robotreadableworld
Robotreadableworld

Regardless of the outcome it’s particularly interesting to see the ever-growing number of sophisticated techniques and algorithms machines use to identify and quantify human life. From the artistic point of view the good people @ Shynola are now immersed in their very own track&trace film “The Red Men Movie” based on the novel by Matthew De Abaitua and produced by warpfilms.

PeopleTracking
PeopleTracking

And while they get it done Norwegian director Timo Arnall (remember his previous “nearness” project with Berg?) has compiled and uploaded this little video up here to give us a hint of how machines currently see us… and make sense of our messy world. Discussion this way.

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Hello Little Printer

29 November 2011

Maybe future generations will never miss (maybe they wont even get to know) supermarket receipts… with all that useful information we verify to check the cashier hasn’t scanned our vodka twice, or those ice-cream vouchers you get during winter printed at the back with their bar code. I will.

For nostalgics like me, Berg design studio (remember their SVK or incidental media projects?) just announced today their “Little Printer“. A mini-gadget (inkless, thermal printer) that brings you a selection of your app-managed subscriptions creating a receipt with your daily updates (headlines, image of the day, crosswords, to-do lists…).

Little Printer, The Guardian, Daily Puzzle, Picture of the day
Little Printer, The Guardian, Daily Puzzle, Picture of the day

For now they’ve partnered with Arup, foursquare, Google, the Guardian, and Nike, although before it’s launched next year we’re expecting to see a few more “publications”. No word on pricing or exact availability, what we know however is that “Little Printer” is the first of many products that Berg have planned to launch as part of their “Berg Cloud” strategy.

Little Printer, current publications
Little Printer, current publications

You see, LPrinter is just a teaser, a marketing tool to promote Berg Cloud, basically a technology that will connect all their products wirelessly (the Berg Cloud Bridge connects to your router and talks with your devices)  so you can control them via your smartphone, internet and deliver content (or whichever their purpose is).

Needless to say LP has become a massive viral success in the past few hours since it was published and they’re even aiming at big businesses to use their technology, which usages would you give to the smiley box?

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SVK

8 July 2011

It’s not only the MIT Lab & all those trendy Jotta or Dentsu projects that make dream-useful news everyday, also smaller ideas  like this one by one of our favorite London design agencies… Berg, can bring some sort of innovation to already established (and decaying) media formats (ok Berg are sort of very famous too…so…).

SVK is their latest project, a collaboration with writer Warren Ellis (Transmetropolitan, Planetary, Crooked Little Vein, RED) & artist Matt “D’Israeli” Brooker (Stickleback, Lazarus Churchyard, 2000AD).

SVK in Judge Dredd Megazine (photo by Berg)

SVK has been conceived as an experimental publication, a 40-page comic which comes packaged with a UV torch… because a lot of it is printed in invisible UV ink, and therefore elements of the book can only be seen by shining the torch on the pages.

the UV torch "SVK object" essential for reading

In essence SVK uses a third ink invisible without the SVK object. The object is a UV light source which unlocks hidden layers woven throughout the comic book. Reading SVK becomes a unique and strange experience as you see the story unfold through the eyes of Thomas Woodwind.

First and foremost SVK is a modern detective story, one that Ellis describes as “Franz Kafka’s Bourne Identity”. It’s a story about cities, technology and surveillance, mixed with human themes of the power, corruption and lies that lurk in the data-smog of our near-future.

SVK comes with a foreword by William Gibson, and articles by futures expert Jamais Cascio and comics historian Paul Gravett. It seems that unfortunately for now, Berg have run out of copies, but given the success they’ll be printing new issues in the coming weeks at 10£ (+ expenses) each. More info on their dedicated page.

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