(b)AR is an augmented reality game, an interactive music installation designed to be used in pubs, parties or public places.

The nine Men's Morris is new kind of spatial board game.
The game is also known as Nine Man Morris, Mill, Mills, Merels, Merelles, and Merrills in English.
Compared to the 2D version, here you can leave the plane and play in other dimensions.
The goal of the game is to form triads of LEDs of the same color in straight line.

This called the mill. The game figure can move on six interconnected orbits in the space.
Both players have 9 figures at the time of a departure.The orbit of the nine men’s Morris is a tubular frame.

Animata is a real-time animation software for live performance, with the aid of which we can easily create scenes with virtual puppets. Creating and moving characters is as simple as loading an image and attaching a skeleton to it. Images can be placed in different depths of field so that they have a three-dimensional effect. We can move among the layers of various depth, creating a spatial effect, with the help of the camera, covering various segments of the scenes. The characters’ movements are controlled by external devices.

AniMobil is animation software which utilizes mobile phone cameras to make stop-motion animation. The result can be saved as an animated gif and uploaded, as an avatar or, as a simple video to be used for example on YouTube.

Arbour light, an intelligent lighting system can reproduce the visual atmosphere of natural phenomena. It recreates the ambient atmosphere rather than a photographic image, hence it extends communication into non intrusive modalities.

AutoCut is a sound-based "self-editing" video application. There are many short videos shot by mobile devices. They usually stay on the hard disk or be uploaded to a video-sharing portal without any editing.

Within the thick visible breath that we exhale in cold air, tiny fairies come alive. Tough we can’t see them, if we are drunk they get drunk too; our breath is their flora and fauna. The Breath Fairies machine exposes these little creates, and lets people keep them on their mobile phones.

Bycall is a bicycle alarm, which transmits warning sign from the bicyclist to the radiostations in the cars, within a radius of 15 meters.

Climate Hack! | a collaborative hacking workshop

Joint venture with Pixelache, and Tinker.it and KIBU

What the heck?

Climate Hack is a workshop for emerging researchers, designers and artists dedicated to reframing the international political climate using means well-outside the traditional political rhetoric. Using both old and new technologies, live internet data streams and a diverse collection of hacking skills, workshop participants will produce a series of projects for public exhibition during the finals days of the Transmediale festival in Berlin, Germany.

The installation consists of floating bubbles that carry conversations happening in the “private” space of a “public” phone.

“Cross-connections” is a term that was commonly used when one call between two people from a landline phone was superimposed by another call making both the conversations heard by all four people involved. Often leading to the four speaking with each other. This is interesting because privacy, suddenly becomes a relative term. It has little to do with isolation but with the hope of not being discovered in a crowd. The dispersed conversations out of a seemingly “private” space indicate towards the presence of “listeners” and “hackers” at various levels of the current communication model.

Prayer wheel powered LED display in the Himalaya

New media installation in Sándor Kőrösi Csoma’s(?) sanctuary.

Flashing prayer-wheel: pieces of a bicycle and concrete, in a place where even Lara Croft couldn’t get to. In Ladakh, a region of the Himalayas, Kitchen Budapest, a technology focused media lab, has prepared a relatively low-tech installation: Csoma’s wheel. This installation is appalling and unique both in its material and in its form.

This project focuses on the continuous flow of social data fragments that herald our transitions between online and offline worlds.

Each time a person goes comes online or goes offline, servers all over the world are alerted and these simple messages are transmitted to that person's friends. While most of these transitions are ignored, our project captures this data in order to expand and dwell within the liminal spaces between our real and virtual worlds. This continuous and dynamic data flow inspired us to create an installation where these transitions are metaphorically represented by physical and nonphysical phenomena.

To embed digital source of text documents in their printed format. We want to create an easy way to process documents received on paper without the necessity of scanning/digitalizing them.

Kitchen Budapest feat. Szakál Bros.

A few months ago we proposed the idea to Magyar Telekom to develop a multiple screen system. Kitchen Budapest's assignment was to design a wall-mounted installation for a 10 sq. meter space in accordance with the office's architectural concepts. The scheme for the assignment was produced by Kitchen Budapest and developed, designed, and executed by Szákal Bros. The key points were organic, plant-like visuals and ubiquitous, multi-functional technology in contemporary spaces.

The success of iphone is a result of a carefully designed easy-to-use user interface. Using a multitouch interface you can take control of your application by making more free gestures, not repeating the unanimous button pressing. The intelligent sensors equipped with multitouch interfaces are likely to overthrow the only option of the more than a hundred years of keyboard-display combo.

Flights are personal lanterns, extraordinary lightning objects, party-accessories based on communication and simple interaction between people and their surroundings.

A comparing account of a journey performed in two different ways, as for our load on the environment: fuel consumption, air pollution and waste production. The unit of this account is the "ecological footprint". Some researchers of Kitchen Budapest traveled the distance between Budapest and Helsinki in mid-March. Some arrived in the festival Pixelache Helsinki 2008 by plane, others
by minibus. On the way they were documenting their environmental expenses, by taking pictures and making notes. For the birthday exhibition of Kitchen Budapest the project is summarized in a presentation.

G-mouse is an input device for computers, a combination of mouse and Fit Ball, known from gymnastics. It replaces all functions of mouse: you can click and also navigate with it across the screen. When sitting on it, the spine moves constantly and both hands are free.

Nowdays we spend more and more time at the computers, since, apart from being essential in our work, thanks to internet and computer games. Comps are involved in our private lives, too.

Hímes is a special USB flash drive which was designed by the researchers of KiBu to 100% Design Tokyo design festival and market. It is small, girly, tricky and wicked.

We recycled the leftover body of the laptop we used for our 'The History of Computer Art' project. We covered the motherboard with layers of soil mixed with seeds and thus buried the old functionality. But we kept the backlight of the screen providing light to the new creatures. The grass we planted in the soil growed to 20 cm height within 3 days pushing the keyboard keys aside.

Click this link to see video of the project

In Memory Of is an interactive memorial. Viewers add to it using a custom designed interface.

Names that become part of the memorial are displayed in an animated video projection, cascading down as if in a waterfall. In Memory Of creates a quiet, contemplative space. The text interface is responsive and intuitive, but slower than a traditional keyboard. Viewers must spend time with the work to become part of it.

CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS

12-18 december 2009

Kitchen Budapest is seeking for participants: we are looking for programmers, artist and designers, architects, urban designers, ecologists, biologists, chemists, sociologists, anthropologists to participate a one week workshop about the air quality of Budapest.

We are in the process of rethinking street furniture designs in Budapest Hungary - so we could redefine function, form and informational architecture. Our desire is to create prototypes that could become crystallization points for an interconnected, inclusive and more usable metropolis.

street furniture design should:
1. utilize solar panels and power over ethernet
2. have input and output capacities
3. be interconnected, low-maintenance and super durable
4. have multiple functions: decreasing urban clutter and creating landmarks

Local Wifi/Telestreet/WebTV/activism project
============================================

Social access, local content, community action!
Escape from the Internet ghetto!
Bridge the digital divide!

Independent media always have to operate in a media environment
characterised by an assymetry of resources where the mainstream media
commands more access and more content than independent media could
ever seize or produce. The subordinated position is always a source of
inspirationo for innovative tactiques that emerge from the reality and
the experience of repression.

LANdelion

Kitchen Budapest has created a new flower species - its name is derived from the English word ‘dandelion’ and the acronym 'LAN' (Local Area Network). The organically shaped LANdelion is crafted from reused cables, and it is revived by blowing its petals. The one diameter sphere behaves as a round blow-sensor and reacts to the actions of the participants. The sculpture is gently glowing by default. When a visitor blows into one of the microphones a lightwave flows through on its vibrating surface backed up by hexaphonic sound.

The aim of the Landprint project is to reproduce subtle patterns and photos by combining various species of plants with programmed robotics.

Plants and flowers that spawn seem to make continuous patterns with their various colours and shades seen from a distance. With the use of programmed robotics for the planting and cutting of plants, we can manipulate the evolving patterns, to render photo-like, delicate images.

Our experimentation started with two projects fLight and Cross connect made in 2008.

We were excited about the richness of possibilities of making experimental projects with balloons, so we decided to establish a team and name it Lufilab.

Therefore Lufilab is a series of explorations using balloons in social spaces as an alternate medium for interaction between people.
Our project balances itself between creating simple amusing accessories and experimentation with ephemeral "things" such as transient light, sound and human conversations.

Our aim

We imagine a light space which can be controlled by physical human force. Soft, tensile, elastic rays of light stretched through the space which can be grabbed and stretched and so controlled.

MacsEk is an asymmetric button eyed vaguely stitched USB tailed cosmopolitan traveling pocket thingy. It is usually found in geeks and other maniacs pocket (last seen > KIBU, red desk).

Interactive techno-social flock of e-Sheep

diplomawork

Mllamp project is an experiment for simulating emotions with putting minimal intelligence into everyday things.

If it has some anropomorph character, the viewer can easily go into with recognizing human gestures.

The interaction between the pair of Mllamps associated with human behavior can be recognised as emotions in lamps.

Nowadays, we interact with mobile phones via 15-20 small buttons, which makes it extremely hard to reach certain functions. To write the word "hello" needs 15 button presses on an average mobile. We also need long keystrokes to find someone in the contact list with hundreds of names. Voice dialling has been available for many years, but it isn't reliable at noisy places, and we just don't feel confortable to talk to our phones when others are listening.

Mobile Hero is a prototype of a brand new j2me based mobile game, with witch you can play your favourite songs with your mobile phone. While you are playing, the game shows you when and which button to press (and hold down). If you do well, you can hear your favourite hit. Of course its not as easy as it seems...

Jamming with mobile phones
Music sharing website

Our goal is to create musical content that was specifically created using (interconnected) mobile phones by utilizing phone interfaces that radically expand music-making competency for a larger number of people. Mobile musicians could create increasingly more complex sound loops from samples and they could mix and manipulate the created music further .

A game that is played in an urban space. There are virtually existing points in the city that the players have to find or evade with the help of their mobile phones. A central website keeps record of what objects are positioned on each point of the map, while the mobile clients send information of their actual positions to the server from time to time. The final goal of the game can be to reach a given score which could be exchanged to valueable prizes.

Our project aims at creating a mobile application that will be a personal and essential guide for touring the city of Budapest. While you cruise through the city, this product will enable you to watch videos about nearby interesting places with the help of mobile Internet. These videos are created by researchers from Kitchen Budapest with the help of a friendly-faced Hungarian stand-up comedian.

Our multi touch wall is a 2 by 1 meters touch sensitive surface, where one can interact with the projected media with one's fingers, hands, as well as more people at a time. We programmed a set of simple applications, where one can paint with hands, navigate a mind-map collaboratively, for example. We built this interface so we can learn and develop interesting and new kinds of contents for such interfaces, which are becoming more and more popular nowadays.

Murmur Study is a work-in-progress that examines the rise of micro-messaging technologies such as Twitter and Facebook Status Updates. Twenty thermal receipt printers controlled by Processing, Arduinos and custom circuitry, continuously produce an endless waterfall of Tweets, which accumulate in tangled piles at the bottom.

Our aim
We wanted to develop a game that is capable of creating complex systems based on simple rules. Each cube is composed of the same hardware elements and runs the same programs. The cubes are able to detect each other depending on their correlating situation and can interact with each other in the form of light and sound plays. The more cubes there are in the game, the more difficult it becomes to control them, but the number of hidden functions that can be accessed grows as well. The game basically offers logic puzzles that can be solved by changing the cubes’ correlating positions. The cubes in themselves can even be used for interior decoration.

Nighmo(with original name Home Moonlight) is a night-light object which starts to operate when it detects motion in the room, and makes just little light, enough to sense the space, furniture, and things around in the room.

If you have several nighmos placed in different parts of the flat, the pleasant light follows the direction of your movement, and slowly fades out when movement ceases in the space. This light is weak enough not to disturb sleepers in the room.

The curtain is an interactive curtain on witch u can play the well known the nine Men's Morris game.
It can be controller with and old game controller, optionally with a keyboard or a mobile phone,
while colored LEDs show the state of the game.

Malom game is an implementation of the Nine Men's Morris game which is extremely popular in Hungary. The original board game is now mounted on a curtain and it contains an Arduino, LEDs, some more electronics and a joystick as game control.

(Project file (Add a ZIP file with all files, PCB, schematic, video etc!!))

ZIP (max 60 MB)

No Copy Paste generates music and visuals in real-time, utilizing live coding, which emphasises the expressive possibilities afforded by programming languages as a means for defining and manipulating computational processes. The aesthetics of the performance is determined by the programming method, in which all musical and visual materials are built from elements found on the spot.

Built on our previous experience from the MobileJam project Opera Looper creates a collective musical experience by controlling musical loops using four iPods.

Opera Looper is a combination of two software tools: a sample based sound system written in Pure Data, and a real-time animation system created in Animata. Opera Looper made its debut at the Opera Unbound event in cooperation with Samu Gryllus, Brooklyn Museum and Extremely Hungary.

Where COMPUTING serves the very SOCIAL action of lending a very PHYSICAL piece of CULTURE... a book.

Books (yes, we think of physical pieces of books) are still of relevance in our age when file sharing, music and video download became our daily routine. We can carry them with us, read it on the tram and have wonderful smell!

PIXELIGHT - is an intelligent lighting system based on two geographically different places linked by Internet.
Usually we are not conscious about the complex role what light plays in human life (among many issues: it shows how time passes, it influences our perception of space and time or simply how it can determine our daily mood...). The project focus on phenomenas of light, which could provide communication between people and places in a metaphoric and sensitive way.

The PiXspacer is an experimental application that turns digital image sequences into virtual 3D shapes. The software has a new kind of approach on image viewing and browsing by using the images’ metadata for creating the computer vision.

Our aim

A sensor-equipped autonomous potted plant, which seeks to meet the needs of plants with special needs. On the other hand, robotic and ecological experiment.

Why do we prepare it?

diploma work

We wanted to design an eco-kitchen product that calls the attention to eco-conscious way of living and consuming, and gives high priority to up to date technical possibilities.

The poetry-bean is a little, smart and loveable gadget with a beetle-sized silicon body, containing a button, LED and light sensor. You can store a poem or any personal message in your bean. Like a tiny new media hero, it carries a modern-day message in a bottle, and also connects literature and new media. The bean shows us how to rediscover poetry with the help of technology and morse signs.

bab-making process:

Why do we prepare it?

The Portable Multi Touch is the easily transportable version of touch sensitive surface, where one can interact with the projected media with one's fingers, hands, as well as more people at a time.
Our goal was to develop a multitouch that we can fold into a minimal size that is easy enough to be portable. We programmed a set of simple applications, where one can paint with hands, navigate a mind-map collaboratively, for example. We built this interface so we can learn and develop interesting and new kinds of contents for such interfaces, which are becoming more and more popular nowadays.

This project shows the power of inherent human playfulness. While modelling the process of learning, with the help of evolutionary algorithms everyday objects become capable of playing. By using a video camera, foam desk lamps track the path of a beachball, trying to keep it going. The complex and dynamic movements of this game are difficult to programme. For this reason the greatest challenge of the project was to create the appropriate algorithms, which harmonize the motion of the lamps.

Prezi is a zooming presentation editor which allows you to easily create stunning presentations. With the help of Prezi you can create dynamic and visually structured zooming maps of texts, images, videos, PDFs, drawings. Prezi has a very intuitive interface and support for online sharing.

More on the prezi.com website.

Some people believe that global warming is just a fiction, but we know it is happening, because we feel it and we see it every day. Reservoir of Seasons is not about presenting phenomena which many people will never experience, like dying polar bears, melting icebergs or the cooling of the Gulf Stream, but about the subtle changes we experience every day.

Rotary cellphone is conventional inside, but retro designed outside. You can connect your mobile device to this phone via bluetooth. Then dial the number and call anybody you want, with your own cellphone.

Some years before, when rotary phones were usual, nobody could imagine, that some years after phones will be chordless. Using this phone is a good opportunity to remember, that the technology is developing by leaps and bounds.

What is this?
This is an extraordenary clothing accessory, a technicaly enchansed belt.

Why do we prepare it?
This project is an experiment in the name of „smart-fashion”, trying to bring new ideas in the room. User can control a mobile to simulate a fake call for example. It can help to find a lost key or mobile in a room, or even to find friends in a club. Safety Belt can also be used as a remote control for TVs and HiFis.

In this project we make patterns by using plants as they were photographic materials. We set plants and use artificial light covered by different pattern to leave trails.

In this project we explore the topic of smoking. This habit has a rich social context and cultural background despite its negative health risks. We are interested in the space occupied by smokers, designed objects related to smoking (i.e. ashtrays, lighters) and the cultural romance attached to it.

Our first goal was to build a closed area that allows the caughing objects to be tried in exhibitions with real smoke.

More and more European countries decide to ban smoking in public spaces. The ones who would like to light up a cigarette must find the smoking area, which is mostly outside of the building, in the fresh air. Generally speaking the area reserved for smokers is becoming smaller every day and because of this they became isolated.

Smoquito is a simple game which is a specific fusion of our childhood self and the yearly repeating bad experience for the summer, when enjoying a romantic moment you suddenly have to face a cloud of mosquitoes, especially on a beach with sunset. In this situation a cigarette can be useful, which is a tool for getting in touch, and it really works though it is undesirable in general.

QR code is a two-dimensional bar code, which has been developed in Japan in 1994. It has become extremely popular there, where standards were adopted in January 1999, where posters, and ads often include QR codes and where the most mobile phones are already able to read. In June 2000, it has become an international standard. It became even more popular after it was launched and quickly spreaded around the world.

Or as it started Plantogochi is a microcontroller driven communication tool for plants. It uses an online database to identify the needs of the choosen plant, and collects realtime data like soil and air humidity, light, wind and temperature. With this "upgrade" the plant can communicate in short messages through gsm, microblog and e-mail. It has a small screen and a speaker for direct notification. Connecting to a computer via USB she's personality, display and sound can be configured like an avatar.

For 21 days straight, our guest researcher Jason Dunne was a multi-webcam street photographer in Budapest during September-October 2009.

Using still-captures from these multiple webcam fractured vantage points, all of the images were downsized to ultra-low pixel counts. On Day 1, each image was downsized to 1x3 pixels; Day 2 the image was downsized to 2x6 pixels, Day 5 became 5x15 pixels, and so on, until Day 21, when each image is 21 pixels in height (and about .001694 megapixels in total), and the original image reappears.

Concept

Tone tags are small devices that can record and loop sounds. Once the button is pressed, you can make some noise and each tag starts cycling it endlessly. You can throw it on any surface, it stays there, and your sound is fixed at that specific point.

(By summer resident David Boardman during August of 2007.) TransDanube is a networked object, a spime, a blogject, a "thing that thinks". It is a home-made boat equipped with technological stuff that flows randomly along Danube river according to its unpredictable dynamics. It's our Balkans' Voyager I spaceship. No way to control it. We can just collect data from TD's boat as they come. Right now it should be located somewhere between Budapest and the Black Sea. Google him. Or watch what's going on around the tiny and fragile boat.

WifiPed is an electricity supplier driven by the pedalling force of the cyclist. The rotary movement of bicycle can easily be used for generating electricity during sport, which feeds the Wi-Fi router.

Participating researchers

Szonja Kádár, András Böröcz

Why do we prepare it?