If you’ve ever wanted to contribute to one of Philadelphia’s many famous pieces of public art, you may be about to get your chance — via smartphone.

The Association for Public Art (aPA) formerly known as the Fairmount Park Art Association has announced that it will be releasing “Open Air,” a commissioned piece of real-time public art that will use a mobile application to collect GPS location data and people’s voices and translate them into light-saber like beams of white light above the Ben Franklin Parkway, according to the press release.

Take a look at the simulation above to get an idea of what to expect.

Participants will be able to download the free mobile application to their phone then control the brightness and orientation of the lights with the volume, frequency, and intonation of their voices. The lights will be visible in the night sky to spectators up to ten miles away and a tent will be set up to help people use the app, according to the press release.

The piece — such as you can call something made entirely of lights and voices a ‘piece’ — is the work of Rafael Lozano-Hemmer.

From the press release:

Lozano-Hemmer’s interest “is to create intimacy and not intimidation. While the project will be spectacular in scale, what matters to me is that individual participants can personalize their city with their contributions.”

aPA has teamed up with the 2012 Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and 2012 DesignPhiladelphia Festival to bring this unusual public artwork to the city. “Open Air” will be on display starting September 20, 2012 and run through October 14, 2012.

Mark your calendar and get your smartphone ready. Your dream of making your own Philly public art is about to become a reality.

This is a tale of two Philadelphia-based game developers who are experimenting with Kickstarter to fund the video games of their dreams.

Cipher Prime, the Old City-based game development shop of Auditorium and Fractal fame, crushed its funding goal for Auditorium Duet late in the month, closing out with $71,061. The money, Cipher Prime told Technically Philly when we covered the Kickstarter, signifies the necessary validation the company needs to build a complex sequel to its original hit, Auditorium.

The effort caught attention from Joystiq and saw a last minute surge in support.

Seth Perkin’s iH8Zombies Kickstarter is just under two weeks into its 45-day funding window, so there is still time for a comeback. Still, that effort is struggling to reach even 10 percent of it’s $35,000 funding goal, lingering below $1,400 as of time of publishing. Perkins has been developing the game for nearly three years and is trying to raise money to hire some help and finish the game, as Technically Philly reported.

The comparison is not really fair, since Cipher Prime is a far more established brand with an impressive arsenal of titles that have fared well in the online and mobile gaming world, not to mention Philadelphia. Perkins, on the other hand, is trying to bring to fruition a passion of his.

In an interview with CraveOnline, the company said its experience in this city has been “really awesome.”

From the interview, Cipher Prime’s Andrei Marks expands on what Cipher Prime likes about Philadelphia:

“Considering the small market size, we can be big fish in a little pond. But then we also miss out on networking and connections to the industry. But, otherwise, we really enjoy the people who do work on games here. We do like having our names associated with Philadelphia.”

Revolutionary War-era film Assasin's Creed III will have gameplay in Boston and New York, yet, somehow, not Philadelphia: because of its grid system, the developers said.

The buzzy videogame Assassin’s Creed III, will take place during the Revolutionary War, and while reports confirm that Philadelphia will take its rightful place in the video game’s historical narrative, the actual City of Philadelphia won’t be making a bonafide appearance.

Developers say Philadelphia’s grid system makes it too difficult to recereate as a fully explorable space, according to coverage at Joystiq. The wide avenues, straight streets and relatively flat land would make the game less desirable. Remarkably, Boston and New York will be included.

“Free-running across a gridded city is an issue because of the sheer space between the buildings,” reported the Verge. “And, on the technological side, being able to see three miles in each direction when looking down an avenue can cause some problems with the graphical engine, ruining much of the illusion of a bustling city.”

So, a videogame about the American Revolution won’t include Philly because of the city’s grid system? Uh, that doesn’t seem excusable.

The beauty of iPhoneography is that anyone can do it. But Dan Marcolina’s iPhoneography exhibit, “Revealing the Obvious,” shows that not everyone can do it quite so painstakingly well.

The exhibit, which is showing at the Hamilton Hall building at the University of the Arts in Center City now through March 26, is an homage to all the possibilities of iPhone photography, if only one had the patience and the persistence to manipulate your photos using the plethora of photo apps available for smartphones.

Marcolina, 52, hass just that sort of patience and persistence. He says he’s always been into alternative imaging methods.

“Over the years I have used many types of toy plastic cameras and tried things like cyanotype’s and Polaroid transfer methods, but did not have the time to pursue those ways anymore,” said Marcolina. “So two years ago I was happy to find that my iPhone has become my favorite alternative imaging tool.”

In fact, Marcolina likes his iPhone as a medium so much that he wrote a book on iPhoneography called “iPhone Obsessed,” which reviews the scores of photo and photo editing apps available for the iPhone. Marcolina says there is a growing iPhonography movement, but he couldn’t find a place where anyone really explained all the tools you could use to do your own.

“As I explored what was possible by combining apps, I could not find info that really assembled all the options in a good way,” said Marcolina. “In addition, when my daughter, who does modeling in New York, called me one day to tell me that a well known photographer was using an iPhone for the shoot, I knew the iPhone movement had turned the corner.”

On Tuesday, Marcolina gave a free hour-long lecture on “iPhone Obsessed,” demonstrating to a crowd of about 80 people how to take an iPhone image from average to awesome using various apps to edit and enhance it.

“The real message is not so much about my work, but what is possible when you have a great small camera that is always with you, along with over 5,000 iPhone photo apps that are cheap and simple to use,” said Marcolina. “It allows everyone to discover and combine image techniques like never before. And then share those visual ideas across the globe.”

The lecture was sponsored by the Corzo Center for the Creative Economy and DesignPhiladelphia at University of the Arts, as part of a series titled “Visibly Invisible.”

If you’re planning to check out Marcolina’s exhibit, his favorite piece on display is a 36″ by 42″ work called “Garage Men,” he told Technically Philly.

The artist's favorite iPhone image on display at Hamilton Hall

“It’s underlying image and the processing technique work well together,” said Marcolina.

Marolina lives in Oreland, PA, but he says he’s originally from Lafayette Hill. He’s worked as a graphic designer for 30 years, but he told Technically Philly that he thinks the iPhone is creating some of the most amazing photography he’s ever seen.

“I believe we are truly at the beginning of a historical moment in photography,” said Marcolina.

The iPhoneography exhibit is up for another four days, but after that you can see more of Marcolina’s work here or by checking out the iPad companion to his book, “iObsessed Companion.”

If you’re interested in seeing more iPhoneography, Marcolina recommends, iPhoneart.com and Pixels: the Art of the iPhone.

An animation created by a student in Moore's senior graphic design studio.

The Moore College of Art and Design has always been dedicated to preparing women for careers, but it hasn’t always required quite so many Macs.

As technology has rapidly advanced over the last couple of decades, Moore has had to quickly revamp its equipment and its curriculum to reconcile it’s old mission with the new creative economy.

“Mayor Nutter actually singled out Moore as one of the schools that is doing a really good job of preparing students for modern job searching and being qualified to start a business,” said Veronica Scarpellino, assistant director at the Moore Locks Career Center. “He thanked Moore for that.”

Since its inception in 1848, Moore has carried a heavy mantle as the first women’s art college in the country. Over the years, though, Moore hasn’t always been successful at equipping its students with the cutting edge technological education they would need to compete for jobs. But academic dean Dona Lantz said that under her 11-year tenure the school’s approach to technology shifted dramatically.

“When I got here there weren’t as many people in technology-based classes,” Lantz said. “We really wanted every major to be sure that it has at least one course that was pertinent to their industry.”

Some of that advancement has meant more of the school’s real estate is dedicated to computers — computer labs, classrooms, and studios. Alongside this shift, the overhaul has also centered on curricula, which are now constantly being reformulated to keep up with the times. In 2006, Moore launched a laptop initiative that required all incoming students to possess a laptop. Earlier this year, the school announced a partnership with Apple that that will put iPad 2 devices in the hands of all incoming students enrolled in Moore’s introductory Foundation curriculum, as Technically Philly reported.

Change is being felt more broadly at the Ben Franklin Parkway staple too.

In summer 2010, Moore welcomed its first male graduate students — Moore has fewer than 500 undergraduate students and roughly 50 in post-secondary.  In February, the school announced that Cecelia Fitzgibbon, the former Drexel graduate arts administration program director, will take over as the new Moore president beginning in July, taking over for Happy Fernandez, who had the role since 1999. The role of innovation seems to be an obvious for Fitzgibbon.

“That comes easy for me because I come from Drexel and we’re a technology university,” she told the Inquirer.

Before she starts, changes in the academic structure continue to evolve.

The photography major underwent a massive shift as it transitioned from purely film-based training to include the digital arts, Lantz told Technically Philly. Photography and Digital Arts Assistant Professor James Johnson looks young enough to be a student, but told Technically Philly that his more traditional training hardly resembles his students’ college experience.

“I think it was right when I started at Moore that students started having their primary experience with digital cameras as opposed to fiddling with chemicals. They just experience it very differently because it used to be that you had to think a lot because you knew you were going to be spending a certain number of dollars on each frame,” Johnson, 36, said. “That changed a lot about how much is created and it also shifts the focus of the work from pre-production to post-production. Now, a lot of that work happens editing with a content management software.”

Johnson says despite the expansion of the photography curriculum, students are still trained in traditional film-based photography. Still, he says he’s even noticed the creep of newer technology — like using an iPhone as a light source — in the murky enclosure of the dark room.

And, he noted, the culture of technology is having a noticeable impact on the type of art his students produce.

“I have a painting in my office that Sandy Frank  made. It’s an oil painting, but it’s based on a meme,” Johnson said of the student artist whose real name is Megan Price. “She’s taking this artifact from the digital culture that she exists in and she’s trying to make it concrete, which is a really interesting inversion.”

Oil painting by a Moore student who goes by the alias Sandy Frank.

This reporter’s mother is a Moore alumnae who majored in graphic design a little over twenty years ago. At Moore, she learned to design by hand and taught herself the range of graphic design software the field relies on now after she matriculated. Today, though, the major is quite a bit different. Each grade has its own dedicated computer studio and the students go beyond static logos and layouts, to create flash animations and other types of interactive images. For seniors facing the job market, the facilities help them re-imagine what possibilities are in their field.

Jessica Massabrook, a senior graphic design major, told Technically Philly that the location, not the technology, had attracted her to Moore. But in the last six months of her training she discovered she wants to apply her degree to a career in animation.

“I would like to do a motion job,” Massabrook said, referring to animation. “There are so many studios that do mostly motion stuff in Philly.”

Students find other preparation for the a more technical job market through their required internship experience. The internship must be relevant to their industry, although Lantz said the criteria for an appropriate company are flexible.

“They go in many directions. Even in graphic design they don’t always go to straight graphic design firms,” said Lantz. “We support students who may have a quirky idea and it can be in a startup firm that is tangentially related to graphic design.”

Lantz told Technically Philly that the school learns a lot about how its technological competence stacks up through these internships.

“The faculty and the college pays attention when the students come back from their internships. When they say, ‘gosh, everyone knew how to do this and I didn’t,’ we pay attention to that,” said Lantz. “Especially when things are on the front edge of changing — that’s when we find out that we really need to be doing something else.”

Oddly, though, neither the professors nor the students this reporter talked to mentioned a strong connection to the Philadelphia technology community. Moore’s career office did not have data to illuminate how many Moore students have gone on to jobs in the Philly tech scene, but the relationship seems like a natural one to cultivate.

To be fair, though, Moore Director of Locks Career Center Belena Chapp told Technically Philly that 2011 survey results suggest that 14 percent of the alumni who responded are working in web/internet based companies, but that a significant number of Moore alum go into business for themselves. Chapp says these vagaries in the data may be part of the reason why Moore has a hard time tracking the connection between their students and local tech firms.

“When we try to identify how we’re connecting to the tech community, we often ask a different question: how is the tech community communicating to the artists?” said Chapp.

As the local technology community evolves, we may soon notice even more ways that Moore students have taken root throughout the city.

“As the students engage more with technology there is more opportunity for them to have a more intentional conversation, because you need a computer programmer for something like gaming, but you also need an artist,” Scarpellino said.

In the meantime, Lantz says Moore will stay committed to continually updating its facilities and its curriculum to keep its students at the cutting edge of the creative job market.

Photo courtesy of The Hacktory.

The Hacktory has received a $10,000 grant from the Philadelphia branch of national financial and advisory service Nonprofit Finance Fund.

The money will be used to hire a consultant to help define a long-term sustainability plan to further the Fairmount-based group’s mission of promoting the use of technology in arts, Hacktory organizer Vanja Buvac told Technically Philly.

Since the grant was signed three weeks ago, Philly’s techno-hackers have been communicating with core community members and performing outreach for input on how the organization should grow, he says.

“What we’re hearing overwhelmingly is that the Hacktory empowers artists to embrace technology. Also, it empowers technologists to cross that boundary into art,” Buvac says.

“That’s what the people involved in the Hacktory are really passionate about.”

The organization held an open planning session Wednesday evening at Nonprofit Technology Resources on the 1500-block of Brandywine Street to discuss its future. Members envisioned expanding the organization as an artist and engineer incubator and as a more regularly scheduled education center, Hacktory planning coordinator and volunteer Georgia Guthrie says.

“They want to see more of what the Hacktory is doing already,” she says. “People mentioned that sometimes there’s no regular classes or there’s a lack of content on our Web site. It makes the Hacktory look like we’re not there, and people expect us to be.”

Guthrie, who has worked for nonprofit organizations Pennsylvania Humanities Council and Philadelphia Education Fund, is helping coordinate the grant planning.

When NFF first expressed interest in providing a grant, Hacktory organizers contacted like-minded groups like NEXUS/foundation for today’s art, Pig Iron Theatre Company and Fleisher Ollman Gallery for advice.

The Hacktory partnered with NEXUS to showcase more than a dozen art/tech mash-ups in Unintended Uses, a month-long exhibit that we covered in February.

After Hacktory organizers attend planning sessions on June 19 and June 20, they will solicit community members with a survey of their “hopes and dreams” of the organization’s future.

“Our pie in the sky is to have an actual location where you can go and either bring your project and ask someone for help, take a class and work on your project, or see something cool in terms of an art exhibit,” Guthrie says.

Jake Stein at left and Robert Moore at right of business dashboard firm RJ Metrics performing in their "Business Intelligence" rap video.

And now for something totally different.

You may be tired of the ironic rap video — we know we are — but sometimes an old idea can pass. Does this?

Jake Stein and Robert Moore, the two Ivy League-educated entrepreneurs behind the business intelligence dashboard RJ Metrics that opened up shop earlier this month, have broken from their cipher and put business on wax.

Stein, who lives in Center City, sings the hook and plays straight man to Moore in their single “Straight Outta Camden,” noting their recent move to the Rutgers University-Camden tech incubator.

Peep the video and score an exclusive download after the jump.

The track features lyrics about VCs and balance sheets on a beat from Adamack of New Jersey-based Open Minds Entertainment. Listen below, or download the track here.

Look out for all the killer lines, including: “You got a social app? Well, it’s a disgrace, look. ‘Cause even Facebook can’t even make money on Facebook.”

See their complete lyrics — with links, of course — on their company blog, The Metric System.

Digg it here, and get someone from our community some love — if they really want it.

Of the future, Stein, who seemed at least a little hesitant on whether this was a good idea, says, “Yes, unfortunately there may be something in the works, and, depending on the response from this, the group could come back for a reunion tour.”

RJ Metrics plans to help small and medium-sized businesses that collect data about their customers better use that information to chart user behavior.

So, is it funny or not? Is it two young, successful entrepreneurs having fun or an attack on professionalism? It’s bold, to be sure, think the risk will work out?

More importantly, what’s your favorite line?

Earlier this week, we covered Northeast Philadelphia’s favorite graphic novelist Duane Swierczynski.

We talked about social media – his blogging and tweeting – and other junk.

But dude’s dry humor is too good to not enjoy twice. After a ride through YouTube, watch our favorite posted interview experience of Duane’s from years passed.

In 2006, Duane was in Houston for some reason. (We didn’t realize people lived in Houston who didn’t work on or own oil rigs).

Interviewer: “Swierzer.. Swiz… How do you pronounce that?”

Duane: “Smith.”

So, Duane, here is your much belated and deserved laugh.

We reported on the University of Delaware professor’s installation with near-excruciating detail earlier this month in our Shop Talk series last week.

Pigford’s installation is a trippy experiment that documents, translates and transmits activity in the street outside P’unk Avenue’s office near 9th and Federal streets as sound.

A camera records sound and video of happenings in the intersection. A computer extracts information from the recorded data and outputs it into a droning, fluctuating melody. Then, the re-processed sound then gets synced to a projection of the video recording.

�It�s constantly changing, constantly flowing, which I think is a very positive human experience.� � Ashley John Pigford on his sound installation.

Be sure to check out the live stream�which is quite hypnotizing�and find out how it all works in our coverage.

Ashley John Pigford is currently showing his Active Intersection sound installation at the space, an electro-organic experience that translates a busy intersection into an audio/visual sense frenzy.

A camera records sound and video happening on the street. A computer extracts information from the recorded data and outputs it into a droning, fluctuating melody. All of the re-processed sound than gets synced to a projection of the video recording.

“Consider it taking real life as data, translating it, and putting it back out to real life,” Pigford said.

It’s trippy. We know.

An Assistant Professor at the University of Delaware, Pigford teaches about the creative process and advises students in areas of new media. He said he is inspired by translating common experiences into things more significant. Exposing the beauty of the every day, he says. “Turning the practical into the poetic.”

When Pigford was asked by P’unk Ave to use their front window along Passayunk Avenue as his canvas, he became interested in the activity that happens in the intersection in front of the Web development studio. He wondered how he could get passersby to experience the situation in a different way through his own translation.

Walk past P’unk Avenue’s home near 9th and Federal streets in the Passyunk Square neighborhood of South Philadelphia and find out how Pigford did just that.

A shot captured by the installation's web cam shows two police cars entering the intersection.

He said he’s always been interested in sound. It’s a medium and a phenomenon that doesn’t sacrifice itself for our eyes�it penetrates more deeply, he said. He decided to try to translate the sound constantly cycling in the intersection.

The installation is powered by Max/MSP, a graphical development environment for music and multimedia applications that allows for the manipulation of digital audio signals in real-time.

“It deals a lot with sensors and outputs [sound data] to motors and interactive installations, stuff like that.”

The software takes data fluctuations that exist in his video�the contrast, the movement, the color palate�and applies them to a base melody�the words “Passayunk Avenue” taken letter by letter, with each letter transposed to a musical note based on its position in the alphabet.

So, “P” transcribes to a “G” note. And as the G-note drones, activity being recorded by the video camera facing the intersection is converted into data that effects the modulation of that tone.

The more people and cars passing by the intersection, the higher the envelope fluctuation. If a pigeon walks slowly across the street, it sees less fluctuation.

Pigford's Max/MSP application shows frequency modulations caused by the police cars appearing on video.

“You’re going to hear the modulation of two frequencies, and your ear is going to make up what is happening to those waves, literally,” Pigford said.

Meanwhile, live audio samples being recorded by the camera play over top of the fluctuating melody.

The audio is discreet, something in the realm of Brian Eno, he said. Listening to it, it bears a resemblance to an orchestral soundtrack. Moody, frightening, and ethereal�when the tone fluctuates, it can cause chills.

And that’s only half of it. As the audio twists your brain, video of the intersection is projected on a thin sheet in front of the window.

“When you look at the storefront you will see an image of the intersection. If you walk up to it, you will see yourself actually projected into the window,” Pigford said.

He had trouble figuring out how to make the installation available to people. He knew he’d have to convince his potential audience to take the time to allow themselves to experience what he was trying to convey.

“This piece is not like a traditional painting where you say, ‘OK, I get it,’ and walk away. It’s not a two-second MTV news flash,” he said.

For now, he’s broadcasting the audio with a short-range FM transmitter. He hopes to have streaming audio and video of the installation online this week. The installation should run for another month.

“There’s these variances that come along that you don’t expect. Sometimes the frequency modulation awakens you, and then you’ll hear these layers of sonic experience that tell you what’s going on. It might make you turn and look at the intersection,” he said.

“It’s constantly changing, constantly flowing, which I think is a very positive human experience.”

Every Wednesday, Shop Talk shows you what goes into a tech product, organization or business in the Philadelphia region. See others here.