Outsiders, Interactive Newsprint, Fieldguide, Brompton Design District, London Design Festival. Or to make it simpler, some of my images are involved in a paper technology experiment in London from Monday September 17

[gallery]
Yes, I know it's a lot to take in. Briefly the Interactive Newsprint (IN) project is displaying its prototype designs - including some of my images – at London Design Festival (Sept 14 to 23, 2012).

The images include printed buttons which play back various pieces of audio. The paper is also connected to the internet via wi-fi. It's very exciting.

If you want to go along and see it and other amazing examples of the groundbreaking technology, it is at 4 Cromwell Place, just up from South Kensington tube station and just down from the Natural History Museum and V&A.

I wrote about IN a previous blog. And here is the website for Brompton Design District.

The London Design Festival is rather amazing and anybody interested in innovation will love it.

If you've gotten this far and are still interested, here are some words sent to my by the Brompton people about what's going on at Cromwell Place:

For London Design Festival, Fieldguide has brought together a diverse mix of designers, technologists, artists, musicians and journalists to show some of their most exciting work from the last year. These projects, prototypes and products will demonstrate how insight journalism can be used as a tool for design research, how paper can connect to the internet and how design can be used to speculate on a physical digital society.

The exhibition features new work from Brendan Dawes, author of the inspirational book “Analog in, Digital Out” which collected his thoughts on interaction design and featured amongst other things: books wrapped in brown paper, bits of code, cheese, hardware hacks, Play-Doh and stories of origami swans left on trains. For London Design Festival he’s collaborating with Bare Conductive, electrically conductive materials pioneers, to create a new version of his Happiness Machine, an Internet connected printer that prints random happy thoughts by random people from across the web. 

Alongside Brendan will be #UNRAVEL, a collaboration by FOUND, best known for Cybraphon their BAFTA-winning ‘Autonomous Emotional Robot Band’ and Aidan Moffat, the Glasgow-based author and musician formerly of the seminal band Arab Strap. The interactive sound installation encourages people to unravel the truth about The Narrator’s life by playing records from his collection. Each 7” record represents a different memory, but unlike conventional vinyl recordings they sound different each time they are played. The memories embodied in the installation will distort, evolve and warp depending on external influences: the time of day, the size of #UNRAVEL’s audience, the local weather, and what people are writing about the installation on twitter from moment to moment. 

The exhibition will also include work from design consultancy Uniform, design provocateur Patrick Stevenson-Keating, and design researchers Product Research Studio as well as feature work from two groundbreaking collaborative research projects funded by Nesta and the Digital Economy programme from Research Councils UK that pioneer the use of insight journalism to uncover the potential of digital R&D in the cultural sector and explore how newspapers can harness the potential of printed electronics.

The end. Well done.

Outsiders at London Design Festival with Interactive Newsprint

[gallery]

This pioneering technology, used for the first time with any form of photography, is part of the Interactive Newsprint project, led by the University of Central Lancashire in Preston.

I’ve tried to work out the best way to describe what Interactive Newsprint is.

The best I can come up with is through these two definitions.

OUTLANDISH: Interactive Newsprint is internet-connected paper on which microphones, speakers, buttons, LED displays and moving images can be printed with specialist ink.

SCEPTICAL: Interactive Newsprint will be limited to novelty-value gimmicks on expensive paper, an unnecessary piece of technology to sit alongside more robust media devices like tablets and smartphones.

The truth is somewhere in the middle. It will take some time and major technology developments for the paper to fulfil this outlandish definition.

Already, Interactive Newsprint is an internet-connected paper allowing an increased evel of interactivity between the user and the writer/advertiser. This includes instantly updateable audio
But the development of some of these outlandish technologies – perhaps a printed battery, a printed solar power source or printed moving images – will move a step closer with this project.

And that’s the beauty of this project, the possibilities Interactive Newsprint (IN) could lead to. The product currently is wi-fi enabled and uses circuits made of printed ink (though I’m not sure how far the printed circuits will be developed in the prototypes).

Technologists believe that eventually moving LCD images will be cheaply printed on to paper and other products, such as drinks bottles or crockery.

Designers hope that by developing IN they will enable new ways to fund content, a crucial development if any kind of print industry is to remain in years to come. Music could also be a key element for IN’s progression.

As we approach the fall of 2012, IN is a prototype which has been seen at SXSW in Austin Texas and is about to unveil its latest designs at the London Design Festival (in September 2012).

Several community, news and arts-based groups are helping develop the technology.

As part of the development my own Outsiders project is being used for IN, with three of the interviews from the book printed on to the paper.

The interactivity comes from embossed buttons on the images which, when pressed, play either audio from those interviewed, my own thoughts and views on the subject or opinions from those who have experienced the IN paper at the deign festival.

My personal favourite possibility is a localised paper with an advert from the local butcher, who can update the embedded audio in the advert at any time to tell customers of special offers or that he is closing early because he has to take his son to football training.

For photography, the project is a unique way of engaging viewers and we hope to develop this arts-based approach to the newsprint as the project continues.

NOTE: IN is funded by the Digital Economy (DE) Programme and led by the University of Central Lancashire, with technology company Novalia and Dundee and Surrey universities.

More details on IN at the London Design Festival will be announced soon.