Innovation Lab
Tangible Interfaces
Feel Crystal
A design concept by Mario Gagliardi on the possibilities of personal computers, designed and published in 2005. Feel Crystals are specialized memory devices containing sensory experience tokens which can be connected to sensory devices (Smart glasses, AI implants)to let you see and feel like somebody else.(C) Mario Gagliardi 2005
Handplant
This vision foresaw microchips inplanted in human hands to replace physical devices such as phones with hand gestures. In 2017, Swedish startup Epicenter implants its workers with microchips in their hand that function to open doors, operate electronic devices, or pay with a wave of the hand.(C) Mario Gagliardi 2005
Polapad
The Polapad is a small, flexible internet device for the consumption of media and social media with the thickness of a Polaroid photo.
Chromaglass
Chromaglass is a cocktail glass displaying its ingredients through colors. An inner insulating container with a chemoactive coating reacts on different chemical compounds in a drink and displays these reactions on its outer shell made of electrochrome glass.
Revoir
This is an interactive mirror, activated by emotion detection to create stories through visual landcapes. As observers change their facial expression, the visuals assigned to different emotional states are blended into the medium. This mirror makes the act of observation a part of the creative act: by observing, the audience influences the medium. The medium becomes an open-ended exchange with its audience. © Mario Gagliardi Design 2018. This project was selected as finalist in the Playable Museum Awards 2018 of Museo Marino Marini in Florence, Italy.
IoT
Design studies for domestic IoT Hubs for an electronics manufacturer. Full IoT installations will have a level of complexity that usual interfaces become difficult to operate. In this study, we attempt to make this complexity intuitive without using icons and symbols. Atmosphere, light, temperature, security and ambient sound can be controlled by touch. These devices measure user touch input on their entire surface and give feedback by way of subtly animated light patterns. © Mario Gagliardi 2013
Trace
Tangible human-machine interfaces such as remote controls are based on a linear logic with designated buttons. Still, their operation is still often subject to trial and error as signs, symbols and inscriptions on remotes can be unclear. This concept takes trial and error as the starting point for its design. Intended to be accessible without pre-existing knowledge, its operation is not mapped to designated buttons: Instead, it is mapped to intuitive gestures. The panel is haptic, responding to touch with vibration and light patterns. Its logic is based on self-learning algorithms, learning gestures from users and answering with distributed vibrations and patterns of light before initiating actions (changing room temperature, room light, sound etc).
Emotibots
Emotibots are shape-shifting social home robots interacting with humans. Robots will in the future increasingly populate households, and soft robots are intrinsically safer for humans than conventional robots made from metal and plastic parts. This concept combines several cutting-edge future technologies: an outer wire mesh made from shape memory alloy, an interior of electroactive polymer artificial muscles, perovskite solar cells and low-power IoT components with multiway sensing. The mesh can change its external form through micro-currents applied to each structural wire. Electrochromes provide for color changes, while moving activity is controlled by electroactive polymer strands. Electricity is provided through perovskite components. Envisioned to be the next generation of smart personal assistants, Emotibots learn about their environments and communicate through shapes, colors, movement and sound. They are small, lightweight, soft, translucent and shape-shifting companions, helping the kids with their homework or assisting grandma with writing an email.
Emodrone
タマ tama : ball, sphere; also jewel, spirit, soul タマタマ tamatama : by chance Balloon drones with graphical surfaces enter urban space, creating an instant exhibition, a happening, a moving installation. Tamatama is an innovative medium for advertisement and promotion, creating surprise and provoking conversation. This project was selected as finalist in the Playable Museum Awards 2018 of Museo Marino Marini in Florence, Italy.
Modular audio
Design studies for audio devices. Different audio modules - receiver, amplifier etc - are conceived as modules. These modules are placed on the main unit. The design of the speakers was resolved with parametric algorithms. Mario Gagliardi 2005.
AI assistant
With the advance of digitalisation, items which once had a central position in households have disappeared. The long case clock, for instance, once was a domestic center of information and an important focus in living rooms. A new household item to replace the position of the domestic clock is the AI assistant, a universal information device which answers every question and operates connected IOT devices on speech commands. This project aims to bring back the idea of the central domestic information unit to contemporary households while signaling that it is driven by artificial intelligence. It uses a particular computer graphic style for its visual feedback, the outlined stacked plot graph. It became popular through the 1979 album cover "Unknown Pleasures" by English band Joy Division, which showed a stacked plot computer graph of the electromagnetic radiation of pulsar star CP 1919.
Generative Interactions
Evolution bike
A learning algorithm randomly creates simplified body designs for bikes. As they race along the test track, the best performing bike shapes get selected. Race your own to see which bike design ist best adapted to the track at MACHINE
Mechanical Suprematist
Experience interesting architectural compositions being created as you look around. This generator works on Safari and Chrome browsers. (C) Mario Gagliardi Design 2017. Move your mouse to look around: MECHANICAL SUPREMATIST
100.000 Games
One Hundred Thousand Games is an online game with unlimited levels. It takes the genre of first-person shooter games with their point-of-view aesthetic and places it into surreal environments of art, design and fashion. Instead of the usual negative interactivity (shoot ’em up), there is an exchange of textured beach balls between moving canvases and players. (C) Mario Gagliardi Design 2016. Move your mouse to look around and change direction, press the ↑ key to go forward, click to shoot. Play the game at 100.000 GAMES
Area
Click 4 times on the canvas and watch how an abstract space is generated: AREA
Living Ink
Living Ink is a creative tool for the users of penccil. With Living Ink, users can create graphics in collaboration with algorithms. To create artwork, choose a preset on the top left, then click and drag on the canvas to paint with ´living ink´. The presets show different characteristics. For instance,´Biofoam´creates a stable mesh of lines, while´Turbulence´ permanantly fluctuates without settling to a stable structure. Try it out by sketching on the canvas and using different presets at LIVING INK (C) Mario Gagliardi Design 2012
AI SCHYLUS
Intelligent Personal Assistants are the link between AI-powered systems and human users. This is a prototype for a personal assistant interface reacting to the facial expressions of users to create a richer conversational experience. Named AI SCHYLUS after the Ancient Greek dramatist, this assistant reads and interprets your emotions and reacts with his own dramatic expressions. To try AI SCHYLUS, make sure your webcam is activated and navigate to AI SCHYLUS or watch a CLIP
Synthetic Paradise
Generative music combined with abstract graphics. Click the screen to initiate music generation and generate a new graphic: SYNTHETIC PARADISE
You're a flower
There are other ways to identify a human than names and letters. Type your name, hit enter, click "make GIF", then download your name as an animated word flower at YOU'RE A FLOWER
Vessels
A generator for digital vase forms. Move the cursor around the screen to choose colors, then click repeatedly to generate new vase forms at VESSELS
Timeweaver
How do you express time without numbers or watch hands? Clocks abstract time into a measurable, uniform process. The human experience of time is, however, not uniform: Some events seem to take very long, while others appear to happen too quickly. This experimental app lets users experience how human time evolves. To capture the human perception of time, the app starts with strings of time which expand into colorful, abstract forms. These time strands develop slowly, but occasional sudden topological changes (bifurcations) happen where new shapes get defined quickly. Experience it at TIMEWEAVER (C) Mario Gagliardi Design 2014
Contingency Complexity Symmetry
To research the contemporary appeal of ornaments and color combinations, we developed an algorithm to generate abstract patterns based on Arabesques with different complexities and tested the perception on different groups of people. Compositions with non-contingent connections are generally perceived as chaotic. For the perception of ornaments as pleasant and harmonious, complexity, symmetry and contingency play important roles. Different configurations of contingent compositions and colors tend to evoke different historical and cultural connotations. Try out a version of the pattern generator for symmetric and contingent patterns online. A new pattern is generated every few seconds. Click the pattern to start, click again stop:CONTINGENCY COMPLEXITY SYMMETRY
Neverending Graphics
Graphics and animations are generated on the fly, resulting in perpetual variations. Move your mouse to influence the animations:NEVERENDING GRAPHICS
Emoji Superhighway
With AR technology, virtual information can be projected on car windshields. What would happen if emojis and icons appear on roads as often as they do in text messages? Try it out and drive on a highway heavily populated with emojis. Go to EMOJI SUPERHIGHWAY (move mouse to drive, click anywhere for a new environment)
Trigger
News tend to operate with emotional trigger words to attract attention. This simple algorithm produces trigger news which are put together with a randomizing algorithm and thus are meaningless, yet we tend to interpret meaning and intent. TRIGGER
Semantic Space Invaders
Semantic Space Invaders is a computer game in which the gameplay is happening entirely in your perception. Inspired by the classic console game "Space Invaders" from 1978, it plays with the genre stereotype of alien invasion movies and offers a semantic plot twist. To play, touch-drag or move your mouse to view around, click-drag to move around. (There is no shooting button.) The game is a flythrough of a nightly cityscape. An army of unidentified flying objects floats over the city. As you explore the city and enter buildings, it gets more difficult to distinguish invaders and city.Once a semantic space is opened up to a different one, it can collapse. Play at SPACE INVADERS
Sketched environment
Travel through an animated architectural sketch (move mouse to look around): SKETCHED ENVIRONMENT
Art Driver
A obstacle driving computer game with visual art. Use the arrow keys on your keyboard to push obstacles and drive your pink car: ↑ up: accelerate ↓ down: brake ← left and right → : steer Click the window to go to a new Artscape. Play it at ART DRIVER
Universes
Watch intricate fractal spaces being created every 4 seconds: UNIVERSES
Spatial Investigations
The Painted House
A series of experimental structures, created by combining design processes of architecture and graphic design. (C) Mario Gagliardi 2021 THE PAINTED HOUSE
String theory
This project started with the idea that space is not defined by volume, but by connections. Architectural thinking is usually predicated on - and constricted by - the creation of volumes in space. Here, the architectural creation process starts with connections. These connections, expressed through strings, then form spaces which create, but are not defined by volumes and distances. STRING THEORY (C) Mario Gagliardi Design 2020
Towers
A series on architectural lattice forms, generated by a an algorithm in 2005.
Idea Space
Results of a collaborative city planning project. The community was envisioned car-free and fully energy-independent. Through a system including biodigesters, saltwater greenhouses and underground cooling, it creates its own air-conditioning, drinking water and vegetables while emitting zero carbon. The main access road leads to a semi-underground car park overgrown with edible greens. Transportation within the community happens with e-vehicles. Green corridors and public areas with greywater channels and pools structure the site and connect the greenhouses with the ocean. The site is envisioned to grow to an increasing density with individually designed houses inspired by the traditions of the region. The project was led by Mario Gagliardi with international experts from across the fields of architecture, civil engineering, resource management and design. IDEA SPACE
The Venice Pavillion
The Venice Pavillon interprets the history of Venice as a point of contact between West and East. Showcasing Venetian Murano glass, it creates a caleidoscopic viewing space for observers, patterning and coloring its environment and providing new viewpoints. THE VENICE PAVILLON (C) MGD Mario Gagliardi Design 2019
Organic Public Services
This proposal is based on modular design elements which together create an ecosystem for public spaces. Attempting to bring nature and the community back together in the city, these elements are designed to be easily installed in existing public squares.
Cladding
57 parametric design variations for a highly detailed concrete facade cladding system. The cladding tiles are meant to be manufactured by way of concrete 3D printing. CLADDING (C) Mario Gagliardi 2015.
Fractal facades
Architectural detail studies generated by fractal algorithms. FRACTAL FACADES
Collaborations and Cocreations
Social storage
A project combining AI creations while testing the dynamics of social media: An Instagram account was conceived as a museum storage room, with a gallery of 24 AI-generated fashion and architecture studies by Studio Mario Gagliardi. By negating the build-in algorithm whereby an Instagram account is only promoted when it more content is added on a continuous basis, this gallery is a storage room in a vast virtual museum. SOCIAL STORAGE
Desert Communities
A selection of results from a collaboration of Mario Gagliardi with international experts from across the fields of architecture, civil engineering, resource management and design to inspire new building strategies for Qatar and countries in desert climates. Topics in the workshop included new approaches to community planning and ecologically sound power, water and food systems, climate control, shading and cooling. DESERT COMMUNITIES
Fashion Food Transport
FUTURE CITY premiered at Vienna Art Week 2018 at MAK Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna. Curated by Mario Gagliardi and created in collaboration with legendary UK fashion artist NOKI, architect Sachin Anshuman of ARUP and German food artist Kristiane Kegelmann. FASHION FOOD TRANSPORT
Persona
As part of the DNA Paris Design Congress 2019, Mario Gagliardi conducted a workshop to create a different kind of social media persona. These personae are alter egos, identities with particular traits and interests, designed by their users. They do not represent real persons and do not exist outside the space of the social medium (in this case Instagram). They are agents of interaction who can play with the constraints of the social medium without being taken personal, and they can be used to navigate the social medium without revealing the actual identity of their creators. This group of personae also constitutes a micro-ecosystem within the socal medium. Depending on their intensity of interaction, they receive more or less relational feedback - "likes" and "followers" - from other electronic identities. PERSONA
The future of traveling: Process
Creative immersion during the workshop on the future of hospitality, tourism and traveling led by Mario Gagliardi at Aalborg University, Denmark. THE FUTURE OF TRAVELING: PROCESS
The future of traveling: Projects
Project results of the workshop on the future of hospitality, tourism and traveling led by Mario Gagliardi at Aalborg University, Denmark. THE FUTURE OF TRAVELING: PROJECTS
Future City Noki
As part of FUTURE CITY at MAK Vienna, curated by Mario Gagliardi, we made a photoshoot at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna to illustrate the fashion of iconic British fashion designer NOKI. FUTURE CITY NOKI
Dress Rehearsal
Dress rehearsal with fashion designer Noki and sculpture workshop with Kristiane Kegelmann for FUTURE CITY at the Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna, Austria. Curated by Mario Gagliardi. DRESS REHEARSAL
Silk and Rattan
In Thailand, Mario Gagliardi directed a collaboration with silk weavers from Buri Ram and rattan furniture makers in Surat Thani to explore techniques and work with them on new prototypes. The intention was not to use design as a top-down process, but to offer initial design concepts as an inspiration for a collaborative design effort between the craftsmen. The rattan chairs are made in a traditional craft process without using any metal or plastic parts. The weaving of silk in Thailand reaches back over 3000 years. The region of Buri Ram, on the Thai-Cambodian border, specializes in the traditional art of entirely hand woven silk. Each thread comes from the cocoons of caterpillars who are fed only mulberry leaves. Surat Thani, the former capital of the ancient Srivijaya kingdom, is a city in the South of Thailand. Rattan, a vine growing in South East Asia, is related to the palm tree, and its wood is highly durable. Mario Gagliardi 2015-2016 SILK AND RATTAN
murmur—207
Beneath the soft static of this lies a fragmented recollection of motion—faded pulses echoing through time-warped layers of light and silence. A stillness wrapped in artifact.