Miyaoka Hitchcock's Automatic Playing Piano and Morse Code Factory

Posted by Bettina Tizzy

Oh, those wacky guys over at the SoftBank sim. Physics are their playthings and they have been playing... a lot!

Molly Montale is one serious explorer and consequently, she is always discovering cool stuff. This morning she pinged me with news of further developments over at Softbank.

Softbank Slim Japan is an amusement park sponsored by Samsung and Softbank, the Japanese mobile phone company. It is also home to that giant avatar-tossing bar-tilting 3-axis accelerometer and robot that Tori Teatime and a couple of others put together.

Now Miyaoka Hitchcock (aka Masaya Kazama) has joined the mix of creators there with several installations. Two among them are the Automatic Playing Piano that hurls balls onto piano keys to play the song Scarborough Fair, and then there is his Morse Code Factory, wherein the visitor uses a light or heavy touch on a small platform to input Morse Code that goes into an extruder and then issues the letters the visitor manufactured. Teleport directly from here.

Music composer, sound designer, machinimator and all-around nice guy Dizzy Banjo created this video to demonstrate what happens. Thank you, as always, Dizzy!


Miyaoka Hitchcock Interactive Installations inSL from Dizzy Banjo on Vimeo.

I first learned about Miyaoka through his involvement with the COM Fun Club. Manbo! With a rez day of 1/27/2007, he is one day younger than I am, which puts me completely to shame. He's accomplished so much!

Miyaoka is also the owner of the School for Tinies, and the creator of Miyaoka HomeElectronics, which must have been founded on a hot day. The two items for sale there are the Tiny Electric Fan avatar (3-speed oscillating fan with ribbons blowing in the wind), and the Tiny Refrigerator avatar, with a door that opens and shuts, and enough food enclosed to get you by over a weekend. You can pick those up by teleporting here.

New vid of that Real Life - Second Life interface

A few days ago I spoke of a novel Real Life interface with Second Life, using a 3-axis accelerometer. Via Komuso Tokugawa, I've learned that Tori Teatime has created a better video to explain what transpires.



You can visit that robot in Second Life (teleport directly from here), but somebody in Real Life needs to be tilting the accelerometer to make it all happen.

New Real Life - Second Life physical interface

Last night, musician and technologist Komuso Tokugawa attended a Second Life-related event at the bar BarTube in Tokyo. While there, he met with several people who are collaborating on a Havok 4 sim owned by Softbank (the company that acquired failing Vodafone and turned it around), to work with prototypes and try out new ideas.

According to Komuso, Tori Teatime and a couple of other people from the Softbank-sponsored sim have developed a mechanism that allows for an interesting new physical interface between Real Life and Second Life.

One person would stand there in the bar tilting a 3-axis accelerometer that was hooked up to a modified client to send control data via chat.



Now here's where it gets interesting... the accelerometer had a built in tilt sensor, and as he tilted it, so did a box full of avatars - some of them quite large - that was being held by a robot in-world.



You can visit that robot in Second Life (teleport directly from here), but somebody in Real Life needs to be tilting that accelerometer to make it all happen. Now that the Second Life client is opensource, we can expect more of these exciting developments. More pics and info on Komuso's blog.

Komuso, by the way, is the musician and particle master who - together with MoShang Zhao - gave us the real time-Internet/SL music jam SynaesthAsia, undoubtedly one of the best events I've ever attended in Second Life. Here's a great video of it by multi-talented Osprey Therian.