Ambient devices like the Beacon to the left deliver information in a soft, subtle way. Think about a wall clock or speedometer – you don’t concentrate on it, but merely glance at it occasionally. Ambient Orbs do the same thing: relay information from your periphereal vision. They were originally designed to follow your stock portfolio (red = bad, green = good), but as Clive Thompson points out in Wired, they can be programmed to follow the weather, pollen count, sailing conditions in your area, or more interestingly, monitor your energy consumption.

Or you could just rock out to the Eagles:

I just saw Joelle Bitton’s “Abstract” installation at Gallery Ef in Asakusa. Pretty cool stuff. The gallery itself is in a 140-year old warehouse that’s been converted into a cafe/bar up front with a small gallery in back. You walk through the cafe and then down a step, then crouch through an Edo-era doorway (maybe comes up to my waist. There in this old, darkened room is a white carpet on the floor and a digital recorder directed at…you.

I don’t know the details, but somehow it films you and then projects your form onto the carpet, with a constantly-changing palette of nature scenes, squiggly lines, and the like. I forgot my camera, so these pics come from Gallery Ef’s site. It’s quite cool, and I LOVE the building itself, but it’s hard for me to say “Drop everything and go” because this is it: one very cool interactive piece int the back of a cool cafe. If you are in Asakusa, tho, this is a must.