All superheroes and superheroines have to find a place to hone their fighting skills. Many times these places are high tech installations full of traps and tests to push the hero or heroine to the edge of their ability. A true superperson will be able to confront their fears and weaknesses and conquer them. Unfortunately, most offices aren’t set up for superhero fight training. Until you break out the Mazu Kan, that is.

What happens when you mix those sumo wrestling fat suits with arty digital media? The answer is Ho Fatso, a new interactive installation by artist Rania Ho.

With the tap of a single finger, computer users soon may be drawn deeper into the virtual world using a new device developed in the University at Buffalo’s Virtual Reality Lab.

At 0.5mm thick, the sensor layer can recognize touch and gestures through up to 1.6mm of plastic, making it far more durable and optically clear than traditional multi-layer touchscreens. And above and beyond those touchscreens it can recognize one or two finger contact, a finger used on its side, or even different body parts; a phone call to Onyx can be answered by simply holding it to your cheek, messages sent by swiping them off the screen with the whole finger.

Digital Information Development (DID) has developed a highly portable virtual piano that is played with a keyboard consisting of projected laser beams.

More gentle than the jarring noise of traditional alarms, this clock uses a gradual increase in ambient light, stimulating aromas, and peaceful sounds from nature to awaken sleepers.

Participants suck on lollipops embedded with sensors to control robotic babies in a race during a Design Expo at Yahoo in Sunnyvale on Monday.

The subject in TAMPOPO is a giant looming dandelion, an interactive digital work that lets you blow on the head of the dandelion and watch its spores gently drift away. Yamada is interested in creativity in computer programming, and how creative code has opened up new possibilities for new worlds. He creates environments using computer-programming techniques, and generates a simulation of the natural environment in a digital realm. Yamada sees programming as a structure that is not the antithesis of nature, but also as a responsive environment in itself. Both the programming environment and the natural environment are full of conditions and variables, of predictable and non predictable patterns.

The clock and its designer Andy Plant WORK to erect a £200,000 stainless steel clock in the heart of Workington has nearly finished. The switch-on will take place during a day of celebration and free entertainment from 11am to 4pm. The mechanical clock is an interactive installation, with a moving 15 foot arm on granite paving.

The Khronos Projector is an interactive-art installation allowing people to explore pre-recorded movie content in an entirely new way. A classic video-tape allows a simple control of the reproducing process (stop, backward, forward, and elementary control on the reproduction speed). Modern digital players add little more than the possibility to perform random temporal jumps between image frames.