The miniaturization of computer technology has been shaping our world for nearly 2 decades now. The continued miniaturization of the microchip, display devices, and wireless connectivity has allowed for unprecedented access to portable and potable information. The success of the iPhone, the Google Nexus One, netbooks, and the movement towards tablet computing, all point to a future where our technology, our access point to information is with us at every step.

Though all these small devices represent an important step in the movement towards ubiquitous computing, they are still chained to their fundamental physical parameters; they are devices. No different from the personal computers, television and radios that came before, they are objects.

It is the purpose of this design study to elaborate on a concept for truly ubiquitous computing, where instead of following the current trend toward small portable and personal device based computing, we embrace large, immersive, environment driven computing. Here I will layout An operating system where the device becomes secondary to the task, where the technology is secondary to the information.

The concept begins with a theoretical set of technological developments, which would allow new innovation in human/information interface:

• Paint or fabric based, ultra thin and flexible computer display technology, which would allow for electronic wall coverings of customizable size and shape. Imagine painting or wallpapering four walls within a room to act as a giant immersive computer display.
• Motion capture and surface touch capture technology allowing for super accurate multi touch capabilities, and motion interpretation across large surfaces. Imagine interacting within a room based computer system, using your hands and body movements to move virtual objects, and windows around the room.
• The development of a Room based operating system, or Room OS, which would bridge the current culture of personal computing with the conceptual potential of working within an immersive, and shared computing experience. Imagine multiple user input, interacting with the same data on the same system, imagine large scale collaborative computing.

Though not essential to the initial implementation, the following technological developments, would seriously advance the long term potential of this Room OS, and will be considered in some aspects of this conceptualization:

• Glasses free or perhaps even contact lens based 3D technology, or contact lens based enhanced reality technology, allowing for 3D interaction with the Room OS. Imagine building 3D architectural drawings, as a group, or collaborative industrial design, without the need for pre-fabrication models.
  Accurate voice recognition technology, allowing for both physical and voice control over immersive environment. Imagine natural command based computing, coupled with the Room OS environment. Truly ubiquitous computing is achieved.
• To illustrate this vision for a future free of personal computing devices, I have taken three common scenarios where this technology could weave seamlessly into tasks currently confined to our paradigm of device based computing.
  The first proposed concept, (we'll call this Room OS Home Media Edition), would be designed for seamless integration into the average users living experience. In place of a traditional television and PC, the user would experience media and web, without the need for designing their living environment around their media and web devices.

Using wall covering display technology, the wall becomes an invisible component until activated. Able to display wall sized images and video, the display could act as a aesthetic wall feature when not in use, or provide the user with atmospheric imagery, such as calming forest scenes, or art. Coupled with a high resolution camera placed outside the users home or apartment the wall display could become a giant floor to ceiling window.

In common day to day use, apps and widgets might be added, to allow the time, weather, and social media updates to stream, without the need for checking any device, simply by looking across the room as we might check a wall clock today.

In web and multimedia application, a true web 3.0 experience could emerge, allowing the visual dissemination of information across a massive and interactive surface. Sports and movies could be delivered in an interactive touch based information platform, allowing web content to be viewed along side traditional video. Imagine a fan reading stats about his favorite players, while watching the game. Although steps have been made to merge these platforms in many technological device, it is only by removing these devices, and allowing the content to be ubiquitously sewn into our living environments that the content we already enjoy can be set free.

  Experimenting in High dynamic range photography.

Waiting at a stop light, sun in your eyes, waiting for the light to turn green, for a moment you zone out. Suddenly you become aware of the view through the windshield, 180 degrees of trees and road, buildings and sky. In that moment eternity unfolds; time stretches in all direction and the many paths before you become so obvious.

At the center of your own sphere you ponder the wavering symmetry of it all. As you become aware of your own breathing you feel the horizon pulsing alongside you, with your heart beat, with the sounds of the city.

Warmth rises in your spine, and you feel liberated, as if you could float away from your car, and the earth below. There you find yourself immersed in the sea of sky above you, and as wave after wave of existence washes across your body you feel so at peace, pure equanimity.

Suddenly in a flash you’re struck with the awareness that the light has changed green. It’s safe to move on. So you do, heading onwards down the path you’ve chosen. The wave crests, and washes away the moment just past, and again you’re on the road. Only to find yourself again waiting at a stop light, with the sun in your eyes.

 Moving on from playing around with still image geometric translation (also know as a Kaleidoscopes) I'm working on a series of audio/video productions using mirrored 720 HD footage shot with my movie[pix] HD video camera mounted on the dash of my car. (first study of series below)

I am hoping to move these kaleidoscope pieces towards some sort of interactive audio visual installation piece, but for now the ideas are confined to the digital realm. I picture a series of giant tubes, or interactive devices, that fully immerse the participant in a VR kaleidoscopic experience, a little acid trip without the flash backs.  I'll need to think big, probably some sort of digital projector, combined with some custom coded web cam motion capture software. 

The audio track was also recorded by me, using my Roland R5, my MicroKorg and my new Squire Jagmaster guitar.

 Some of the best visual effects don't happen in Photoshop. A decent digital SLR is like pure enlightenment for anyone who grew up using 35MM film (like myself). Yes taking technically solid professional grade pictures often means capturing your subject matter with the right ISO for the lighting, using the right lens, and understanding white balance. But photography is an art form like any other, in that without expression, and creativity, dry technique does little to delight and the post-modern eye. 

Play around with the extremes, super long exposures, short exposers. Take photos  out of focus, with the wrong white balance, out of context. Even with a point and shoot camera, reality is your to capture as uncanny or as representational as your perspective will allow. 

Photography is quickly becoming the most available art form, and still as legit as it ever. Which means that mega-pixel impoverished camera in your consumer level smart phone, is your gateway to the world of creativity and art. Whip that sucker around, taking snapshots of everything you can see, and don't worry, there are rules but even those who know them, love to break them. The photos below are long exposure photographs taken with my Rebel Xti while zooming. Simple technique, wicked unique results.

NOTE TO AUTO MAKERS! General Motors and Ford; can you smell the crude taste of peak oil? Its coming, and we the consumer want options.  Invigorate your research and development, give us long term affordable solutions, or off with your heads (READ: Fire CEO after CEO after CEO). The free market should reflect the needs of the most general majority, we the bread and butter consumer. Do not pander to me with half cocked solutions, 40,000 dollar debt on wheels. If you fail, no more bailouts, lets see what the competition can offer. 

NOTE TO OIL MONGERS! Oil mongers, Shell, EXXON, invest in new infrastructure, deliver renewable abundant energy, and break the cycle of dependence on crude fossil fuels. Wait for consumers to invest in options they don't have? Bullocks, its on you now. You've built a promise for us, of a future of continued prosperity and growth, and while we do our best to pay our bills, and keep the gas flowing, you have ignored your responsibility to us. Your oil tanker paradigm is sinking and poisoning we the fishes, shift or go down with the ship. 

NOTE TO BANKS AND FINANCIERS! You want power? You want market share? Start with addressing those of us who are so willing to hand it over to you. Deregulation is no license to ignore your bottom line. As consumers, at every turn debt is offered to us; student loans, credit increases, mortgages, all for products beyond our means, and above our basic needs. This needs to end now. 

NOTE TO GOVERMENT! Regulate, regulate, regulate. Who need a free market if all its consumers are slaves?

NOTE TO THE CONSUMER! Buy with responsible intention, inform yourself. Know what you need to survive, live within your means and TAKE BACK THE BUYING POWER. This is our economy, we have the power to shape it so CONSUME! your economy needs you. (but please do so responsibly)

 Are you doing your part? Are those modern solutions for home living worth the true cost? Spend, spend, spend; money you don't have or money you do. It’s what you are supposed to do. Your economy needs you. Branding, viral marketing, synergy, billions of dollars spent to ensure you buy things you’ll barely use while you’re too busy desperately making money. You earned that cash (or maybe you didn't) so don't you have the right to spend it the way you chose? Of course, that’s the beauty of the free market. What do you want? What do you desire? It can be yours, anything.

More legitimately what do you need to survive? Can it be purchased at a big box store? Let’s hope so because as you read this a Wal-mart, a McDonalds, a Rona, and an IKEA are probably being built. Trees and grass lands are being plowed over, and paved so that you can work your way across a thousand kilometers of consumer excess.

We have commoditized our options and solutions for everything we need to live and bought our survival on credit. Now the system is failing. As people default on their loans, mortgages, PC’s and big screen TV’s bought on credit, the financed lifestyles hollows out. No longer can we sustain a monetary system which relies on economic grey area.

As consumers we must chose wisely, we must take a stand against giving these corporations the power, before one day you may rush to a sale at IKEA only to find the military protecting Scandinavian design solutions from hoards of angry consumers who have caught on to the superficial world of retail product manufacture and sales. We are the consumer, and the power is our hands, buy local, recycled, sustainable, or frankly buy, steal, burn, rip, whatever the fuck you want, after all the choice is yours?

 Have movies and video games desensitized us to the apocalypse? Let’s hope, since if there’s anything surer then death and taxes, it’s that one day the earth will be smashed to bits in an intergalactic game of billiards. The universe is a dangerous place, asteroids, solar flares, the heat death of the universe, and that’s thinking big. Frankly even here on earth, floods, hurricanes, plagues, mass extinctions, nuclear war; respectfully, eventually we’re all quite fucked.

Luckily there is a plus side to this fact, disaster makes for wicked action, and we here on earth do love good action. In movies and games, in the news, our fiction and our drama, it’s all about explosions and disasters, global warming, war, and life on the brink of extinction. Is it psychologically healthy? As we become desensitized to the death toll, as it becomes no more real to us than a kill counter in our modern warfare video games; are we becoming less empathetic? Are we meant to feel empathy on a global scale? Perhaps, but It’s difficult to judge. In all honesty I have too much life to live to worry about such things.

One thing is for sure, there is nothing wrong with being prepared for the inevitable. Because sure as shootin’, one day you will find yourself at the tail end of a massive space rock breathing down your neck. Desensitized to our impending doom, there is no reason to panic, we’ve seen it all before in the movies. So what can you do? I suppose, faced with apocalypse we just ought to sit back, relax and enjoy the special effects.

 Driving through the suburbs, houses row by row. Trees pre-packaged and sterilized, planted inorganically, tricking the eye into thinking nature can still thrive here. These trees and their stunted roots surrounded by grass without grazers. These houses with their occupants, home only to rest, from their commuting to and fro. Working, shopping, stuck in traffic; are their homes but empty vessels, waiting to be filled with the warm breath of life?

If we could peer behind those walls, would we be surprised to find people dancing, and singing, and sharing love? Is it that we expect these facades cover nothing more than LCD televisions, and reclining sofas? Décor and the objects of status and desire, the coveted motifs of the middle class; is this all we find beyond these walls?

In glass houses, exposed to the peering eyes of our neighbors, and all those who pass by in cars, the function of these edifices becomes all too clear. Shelter from the elements, a place to rest, we unwind and find solace among our loved ones. Homes everywhere, in the suburbs, in the city, in the slums of the third world; It is here we cook our meals and prepare for the day. We are covered from the rain, and warm in the cold of night. Our homes, suburban or otherwise, secure our survival.

I often wonder what the long term ecological impact of these sprawling parking lots might be. Standing un-protected from the wind, with no trees or tall grass to resist the breeze, gusts blow through between the cars as if across the dunes of a great desert. 

Imagine if all the commuters and consumers just floated away one day, gravity no longer drew them close to the paved earth, and we all took to the sky. How long would it take before nature took back these man made deserts where nothing grows but all is sold?

As we look to the ground on that were so firmly placed, we see sprouts of grass pushing through the concrete, waiting in slow disparity for that day when cars no longer park there. Can the desert spread so far and wide that nothing stops the blowing wind?

Image below the map was created from photograph taken with Canon Rebel Xti, and 3D elements from the Google 3D warehouse.  Image was shot at a Wal-mart location in Orleans Ontario seen in this Google map.

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This is a digital composite image I created using a photograph taken on the 417 driving East bound into Ottawa, and Google 3D Warehouse objects imported into Photoshop. I just discovered the Google 3D warehouse and its a really amazing tool. There are 1000's of free 3D objects just waiting to be manipulated and incorporated into creative composites.

If you haven't played around with it yet, Google has created a very cool free piece of software called Google Sketch-up. Basically a trimmed down 3D modeling package, it allows you to build quick 3D models, from simple geometric tools. With texture mapping, and integration with Google Earth, not to mention a file format recognized by Photoshop, this tool is a blast for wannabe 3D artists and modelers. Not to mention the potential for rapid prototyping as the next generation of consumer level CNC's become viable.

Now we find a growing community of amateur 3D modelers sharing their designs and creations on the 3D warehouse. Check out the image below, can you tell what objects and elements in this image are real and which are simulated?

This is an image I took of street lights at night, at the intersection of Duford Dr. and Chartrand in Orleans. I used my Canon Rebel XTi on a prolonged exposure.

 The image was then processed using Photoshop CS3 and the Medhi Kaleidoscope filter available for free download here.  I ran the process 8 times from the original image, tweaking the parameters of the filter slightly. Represented here are those 8 images plus the original.

I love playing with iteration like this. Apply simple rules of translation, rotate, mirror, repeat, and like cells dividing, complex fractal geometric forms emerge. Here we see structural elements collide and multiply, form begets form. Complexity emerges, and there is no going back, the information of the original structure can no longer be retrieved, thrown away, amidst the chaos and creation of the iterative process. 

I thought I would try my hand at some classic looking photographic composition pieces.

set design and photography by Sean Rioux.

Model Gilda Furgiuele.

 These images, from my Life series, were captured from family slides, and printed with Inkjet on Fabriano paper, then modified with water and brush.

Each 8.5" by 11" print sells for 20$. Each print is 1 of 2.

Bicycle spoke card.

Inkjet on Fabriano paper, water and brush technique. 

Print is 7"-5".

1 of 3 available orignals. 20$ each.  

 Old clock photographed at a value village. 

 This is a vintage chair found at value village.

This is a mixed media series I did in acrylic using old Life magazines and a acrylic transfer medium.

It examines the aging aesthetic of the idealized western lifestyle. Gas guzzling cars, stay at home moms and white picket fences.

The paintings in this series are available to purchase at a cost of 80$ each.

Canvases range 24"-30"- 24" x 36"

This image is a photo composite created in Photoshop CS4, from images shot with a Canon Rebel Xt.