1. Title: Date: Place:
Presentation of Diffus 2009 Copenhagen
1/24
D I F F U S
design - research - interactivity - tangibility
www.diffus.dk
2. Title: Date: Place:
Presentation of Diffus 2009 Copenhagen
2/24
D I F F U S
! Who are we?
Diffus: is a five year old interdisciplinary art
and design company. The goal of DIFFUS is
to work with a combined practical and
theoretical approach toward information
technology, art, design, architecture and New
Media.
Michel Guglielmi: Architect and teacher at
the Danish School of Design. Michel has a
comprehensive experience with interactive
systems and design perspectives.
Hanne-Louise Johannesen: Art historian
with several years of teaching and research
experience within the field of visual culture
and New Media. Hanne-Louise brings an
aesthetic, cultural as well as sociological view
into the projects.
www.diffus.dk
3. Title: Date: Place:
Presentation of Diffus 2009 Copenhagen
3/24
D I F F U S
! What we do
Projects: We have created a number of projects and
project proposals. All with practical as well as theoretical
dimensions. All the projects include digital media and
tangibility.
Workshops: The ideas from the projects is also focal
points for our workshops. We have arranged workshops
in collaboration primarily with Danish School of Design
and Visual Culture at University of Copenhagen.
Products: Through projects and workshops we
constantly look for new product ideas. The product are
more likely to be larger interactive systems than
singularly design objects.
Research: In order to secure theoretical depth in relation
to the practise based projects, and at the same time
investigate practical aspects within theoretical problems,
we write articles and conference papers about our work.
www.diffus.dk
4. Title: Date: Place:
Presentation of Diffus 2009 Copenhagen
4/24
D I F F U S
! Project proposal: East England Landmark 2004
The East England Landmark project was created in order to meet the guidelines of an ideas
competition initiated by the new region East England. As many other countries, England has gone
through a comprehensive structural change, with the result that many small municipalities merged
and became larger regions. The competition asked for solutions that created affinity and coherence
within the new circumstances.
In stead of creating a single landmark for the whole region, our solution was to construct a mytholo-
gical magic fiction in order to provide common affinity for the people who would be affected by the
project. All the elements of the project we connected to this constructed myth about an ancient
population called Draugemits (palindrome for timeguard) who lived in East England ever since Great
Britain, according to the mythology, was little and only existed of the area of East England
www.diffus.dk
5. Title: Date: Place:
Presentation of Diffus 2009 Copenhagen
5/24
D I F F U S
! Project proposal: East England Landmark 2004
While visiting one of the approximately 100 caves spread throughout the region, it is possible to feel
the presence of other visitors in other caves through sound, light and temperature. The traces of the
Draugemits are visible, but as time they are invisible themselves.
... If all the Draugemits some day disappear the time will stand still, because then nobody will drag
the time along in through the lungs and out again....
www.diffus.dk
6. Title: Date: Place:
Presentation of Diffus 2009 Copenhagen
6/24
D I F F U S
! Project proposal: The New Denmark 2006
In January 2007 Denmark went through a
structural reform, which had a substantial
consequence for the municipal composition.
Inspired by our own East England
Landmark project and the public frustrations
and alienation toward the plans, we created
a space for democratic storytelling about
old and new municipal borders and events.
The idea was to create a memory archive,
that at the same time - in order not to
become nothing but nostalgia- could look
ahead and become memories of the future.
www.diffus.dk
7. Title: Date: Place:
Presentation of Diffus 2009 Copenhagen
7/24
D I F F U S
! Project proposal: The New Denmark 2006
Cairns are positioned in strategic suitable places around Denmark where old and new municipal
borders cross each other. The cairns of old days worked as marker of roads and guidelines. The
cairns of The New Denmark project mark histories and work as storytelling guidelines.
Equipped with audio guides you can navigate the countryside and when you meet a cairn
information and memories about the specific place is transmitted to you. Faced with a cairn it is also
possible to contribute with your own story.
www.diffus.dk
8. Title: Date: Place:
Presentation of Diffus 2009 Copenhagen
8/24
D I F F U S
! Project proposal: Sofa Shelter 2006
The Sofa Shelter project is meant for a busy metropolis somewhere in the world. To large and
comfortable chairs are placed by a central bus shelter. Through GPS the sofa chairs and the
approaching bus are connected and if two waiting passengers choose to sit down in the sofa chairs
sound is transmitted from the bus and mixes with the sound around the bus stop.
The chairs also change colour when a bus approach, and return to the starting point when the bus
leaves the bus shelter again. This happens with the help of thermocromic print on textile and heat
transporting threads that can be regulated according to the position of the bus.
The general idea with the project is to create a sort of intimity by the bus shelter and at the same
time point toward the space inside the bus that the waiting passengers will become a part of. This
way we create a connection between where you are and where you are going to be.
www.diffus.dk
9. Title: Date: Place:
Presentation of Diffus 2009 Copenhagen
9/24
D I F F U S
! Projekt proposal: Konfuse Bar, 2008.
The idea is to play with the
expectations you have when you
meet interactive technologies.
We have a skilled familiarity with
many interactive technology to
an extend that we take them for
granted.
Konfuse Bar is meant as a
teasing but polite installation, that
is able to challange the guests of
the bar.
Behind the bar desk there will be a cabinet filled with bottles, from where the bartender collects the
drinks that the guests order. Every bottle casts a shadow on the translucent glass cabinet door.
The shadows will be brought to live when the cabinet is closed. This is possible because the
shadows that at first seem real is made as a computer animation.
www.diffus.dk
10. Title: Date: Place:
Presentation of Diffus 2009 Copenhagen
10/24
D I F F U S
! Project: Angel, Copenhagen 2004
Angel was a public space intervention where the public
got the chance to become an Angel. The project
contained a pair of angel wings placed on a pedestal in
a public space.!The presence of the wings triggered the
curiosity of the people passing by.!Some eventually
wrapped themselves into the soft and silky wings.
When this happened, they BECAME an angel and
EXPERIENCED what angels do: !Hearing surrounding
peoples thoughts!! (via inbuilt speakers).! Sounds and
thoughts got louder when people came closer and then
seemed to vanish again, when they passed by.
A real time effect was obtained by an automatic
distance evaluation system using camera and
recognition technology. A poetic illusion of the “human
angel” immersed in to an unearthly reality, listening with
kindness and sympathy to the thoughts of the
surrounding people with hopes and fears, anxiety and
desperation. Much like in Wim Wenders film Wings of
Desire (1987), where angels are walking among
people, listening to their inner thoughts, able to touch
their fears and anxieties.
www.diffus.dk
11. Title: Date: Place:
Presentation of Diffus 2009 Copenhagen
11/24
D I F F U S
! Project: Costume Choreography (!!), Copenhagen 2007
!! is a performance where the choreography of the costumes have a leading role. The costumes
became protagonists rather than "only# supporting other elements of the performance. With the use of
electric leading material, light, heat and sensor based circuits of information it is possible to make
costumes and scenography central actors in the scenic space. !! was a research of the relation
between one of our oldest technologies; textiles and one of the newest; sensor technology.
www.diffus.dk
12. Title: Date: Place:
Presentation of Diffus 2009 Copenhagen
12/24
D I F F U S
! Project: Costume Choreography (!!), Copenhagen 2007
www.diffus.dk
13. Title: Date: Place:
Presentation of Diffus 2009 Copenhagen
13/24
D I F F U S
! Projekt: Cypherdusa, October 2007
A dancer in an interactive costume investigate the relations between movement, costume, light, sound and
space. Cypherdusa is a combination of Cypher, that refers to an algorithm for crypting language - this means
complex coding though operation, and the mythological figure Medusa, who can petrify someone with her
gaze. The mixture of dance, costume and space becomes a thematic story about the relation between man
and machine and the costume appears as a sort of membrane with it!s own meaning.
www.diffus.dk
14. Title: Date: Place:
Presentation of Diffus 2009 Copenhagen
14/24
D I F F U S
! Project: A fantastic tale - Karen Blixen Museum, Aug 22nd - Nov 9th.
In August 2008 the Boganis
room in the Karen Blixen
Museum in Rungsted, Denmark
will be transformed to an
interactive installation.
The installation will be a poetic
space playing with contrast of
intimity and extravagance and
visual and auditive text. It will be
a space clear in the outer form
and fluent and unpredictable in
the inner. Just like Karen
Blixen#s stories.
www.diffus.dk
15. Title: Date: Place:
Presentation of Diffus 2009 Copenhagen
15/24
D I F F U S
! Project: A fantastic tale - Karen Blixen Museum, Aug 22nd - Nov 9th.
The installation circles around an over dimensioned book (1,5 x 2 m) where the action of the
visitors mix with the staging of Karen Blixen, her stories and the role of the "Storyteller#.
www.diffus.dk
16. Title: Date: Place:
Presentation of Diffus 2009 Copenhagen
16/24
D I F F U S
! Project: Costume Choreography II,
Istanbul November 2008
As a continuum of our own Costume Choreography
and as a result of a fruitful workshop connected to the
art and technology festival a-m-b-e-r (www.a-m-b-e-
r.net) we created a performance with textiles,
interaction, movements, light and sound.
www.diffus.dk
17. Title: Date: Place:
Presentation of Diffus 2009 Copenhagen
17/24
D I F F U S
! Project: Interaktive Sample Book, 2009
A sample book is a series of samples on a given material put together as a book (as the one you
can borrow if you are choosing new wallpaper). In other words, it is displaying material that can
illustrate what kind of materials you are working with. It is our desire to create a sample book
that can demonstrate a range of possibilities within what you might call interactive textiles.
Sample 1: Dynamic light transfer - solar cells, conductive thread, LED, optical fibres and arduino
lilypad.
www.diffus.dk
18. Title: Date: Place:
Presentation of Diffus 2009 Copenhagen
18/24
D I F F U S
! Project: Interactive Sample Book (ISB), 2009
ISB consists of 5 textile pages all showing a distinctive aesthetic and interactive functionality.
The 5 pages are as different from each other as possible, and shows something relative to the
technology used. The senses are stimulated by the individual pages and their inputs and outputs
vary in that way from page to page. All pages are subtle, aesthetic and surprising. The goal is to
inspire!
Sample 2: Touch generated shape change - pressure sensor, conductive thread, shape memory
alloys and arduino lilypad.
www.diffus.dk
19. Title: Date: Place:
Presentation of Diffus 2009 Copenhagen
19/24
D I F F U S
! Project: Cafe Pantopia, 2009-10
Imagine that you enter a cafe. Here you will meet not only local customers but you also have the opportunity to
people who are far away from where you are. Here you can chat with a friend sitting in the other end of the No
Atlantic enjoying a cup of coffee,together or you can play a board game, as you were in the same room. Well,
a video connection, but the entire interior and frame of the experience creates a social situation as if you were
cafe together.
You can order coffee
and food for one
another, drink from the
same kind of cups, hear
the same music and in
general have a common
experience. You may
include others in your
conversation, all
depending on who is
entering the cafe and
what kind of new
contexts may arise.
Diffus is connected the project as consultant and provider of design solutions.
www.diffus.dk
20. Title: Date: Place:
Præsentation af Diffus 2009 København
20/24
D I F F U S
! Project: Cafe Pantopia, 2009-10
Cafe Pantopia seeks to create a common meeting place for people associated with the North-
Atlantic countries: Greenland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands and Denmark. Cafe Pantopia will thereby
support the creation, maintenance and restoration of human relationships across the North Atlantic.
Technologies like e-mail, chat and video telephone already support this kind of contact, but many
people enjoy the informal atmosphere at a cafe. Cafe Pantopia supports both close contact despite
the distance and the intimate and casual city life.
Diffus is preparing the design
solutions for the project,
especially the connection table
that makes it possible and
natural to talk together across
the North Atlantic.
Read more about the project at:
www.cafe-pantopia.net
www.diffus.dk
21. Title: Date: Place:
Presentation of Diffus 2009 Copenhagen
21/24
D I F F U S
! Workshop: Interactive textiles, sound and space 2007.
The workshop Interactive textiles, sound and space
gathered students from The School of Design,
Musicology and Visual Culture University of
Copenhagen and Interactive Sound Institute,
University of Lund
One of the results was the interactive installation
The Blob. A pressure sensor was placed in a pillow
in a sofa. When seated in the sofa a swelling slowly
appeared and grew in the ceiling made of latex.
The swelling disappeared when the person raised
again. For the installation there was created a
soundscape supporting the rather strange and
slightly spooky feeling in the installation.
www.diffus.dk
22. Title: Date: Place:
Presentation of Diffus 2009 Copenhagen
22/24
D I F F U S
! Workshop: Tangible Media Bar - December 2007.
The workshop Tangible Media
Bar, culminated in an event in
December 2007. The result
was a party called Enteract.
The main theme was a
fragmented bar made of three
woollen sculptures with
intertwined illuminating wires.
Light and sound reacted when
the guests took a drink from
the sculptures. The project
became thereby a ‘common
creation’ made by the guests.
www.diffus.dk
23. Title: Date: Place:
Presentation of Diffus 2009 Copenhagen
23/24
D I F F U S
! Referencer: Material tests - interactive textiles
www.diffus.dk
24. Title: Date: Place:
Presentation of Diffus 2009 Copenhagen
24/24
D I F F U S
! Work-in-progress and workshop pictures:
1) Interactive Tablecloth: Tablecloth with thermo chromic ink reacting on spilled liquid 2) The Blob: Latex-ceiling and water pump pumping
water into the latex ceiling when seated in the sofa 3) Power wallpaper: when power is switched on flowers ‘grow’ on the wall paper 4+5)
Interactive textiles workshop: Test with electroluminiscent wires 6-9) Costume Choreography: textile and light tests.
www.diffus.dk