Photos: ZeroOne's eye on electronic art

Karaoke Ice's resident DJ is Squirrel Cub, which distributes frozen treats in exchange for a song.

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A cart distributes Wi-Fi-equipped handheld devices that display constantly-changing maps of nearby nodes in the form of graphical clouds.

"Each map responds to a different state of the netowrk, examining the bindary qualities of being in and out of Wi-Fi range, in locked or unlocked zones," says a description of the project, called TRACE, prepared by Alison Sant.

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A handheld device, part of the TRACE art project, that's handed out to passers-by. The idea is that they'll borrow the device for a few minutes and walk around downtown San Jose--and seeing a graphical representation of nearby Wi-Fi nodes on the screen.

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It's not a blimp. It's a "flying interactive sculpture," according to the Canadian artists behind Fete Mobile, who have equipped this robotic airship with video cameras and wireless links. It's designed to point out how surveillance is becoming increasingly ubiquitous (think prowling the skies).

This airship is equipped with a tiny on-board Linux box, which streams video over 802.11b that participants can view on a laptop.

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Members of the Fete Mobile group, funded in part by art grants from the Canadian government, adjust the on-board payload and hold the blimp down as winds threaten to take it aloft.

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Swedish artist Bengt Sjolen created this unusual project that he set up in the courtyard in front of San Jose's Museum of Art. It includes 100 tiny computers embedded in the grey base of what Sjolen calls "pixels." Like RGB pixels on a computer screen, each of Sjolen's pixels can rotate to display a different color. The pixels also have light sensors and speakers. A laptop can direct the pixels over a 2.4 GHz wireless link so they form complicated patterns, depending on which program is running. "If you walk through and make a sound, they all turn toward you," Sjolen says. "It also runs a game of pong." (More photos of the full installation are here).

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One of the more bizarre and popular projects at the ZeroOne electronic art festival in San Jose was called "Baby Love," a project of artist Shu Lea Cheang. It includes Disney-style teacups large enough for a person to sit in. Soundtracks in the form of love songs are uploaded via the Babylove.biz Web site. Over time, as participants take a teacup ride with the baby, the music becomes jumbled and crashes.

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First there was the trusted traveler scheme from the Department of Homeland Security, which let participants who went through a background check jump to the front of airport security lines. Now there's Acclair, a combination art project and science fictional example of what brain scanning can do. Acclair promises to let its members experience benefits if the government deems them trustworthy: "Its special Trusted Third Party relationship with Government offers its members and corporate partners mutually beneficial opportunities that correspond perfectly with the current balance of political and financial power."

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Israeli artist Eyal Fried describes how Acclair's "neurocapital" brain-scanning device is supposed to work. "We're using the term 'social fiction' instead of 'science fiction,'" Fried says. "The technology exists...what we're doing is reinterpreting it."

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Artist Norimichi Hirakawa created this installation called "DriftNet" inside a shipping container designed for cargo. It displays a graphical representation of a Web page. Hirakawa calls it an "alternate viewpoint for the Internet" and a kind of "virtual surf."

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The south hall of San Jose's convention center was taken over by the ZeroOne show and the Thirteenth International Symposium of Electronic Art (ISEA2006), which ended on Sunday.

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Not all robotic expos took place in convention halls. Attendees of the ZeroOne show on Friday took a tour of all kinds of art installations that were in place for the event, both inside and outside. In this photograph, robotic creations are placed on top of a blanket in a city park in hopes of making them more accessible and less threatening to conference-goers.

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