MobiSpray.com

Ever want to repaint your neighbor’s house? Or pet polar bear? MobiSpray allows light-based painting by using a mobile phone as spray can. With only a phone and a surface you can paint anywhere, anytime on anything. The spray-painting follows your hand gestures in real-time, while spraying intensity and color change via keypad. Whether you are in the woods or the city MobiSpary lets you paint BIG. And, the freedom to intentionally change your surroundings at the scale of your choosing opens doors of creativity and imagination. Turn your reality into something new, unexpected, surprising and unpredictable.

Check this video to see how MobiSpray works:

Find many other videos and photos of SprayingSessions from this blog via the side bar on the right.

When I was in Taiwan in August to teach there, I had to visit the world famaous UFO houses at Sanjhih, north of Taipei - since it was closeby where we stayed - in ‘uncle Lee’s house’. My greatest wish was to MobiSpray on the UFO houses, and so I did or lets say we did. I invited a few friends from the MIT Media Lab with whom I stayed with in Taiwan to come with me.

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And we had an extraordinary experience. When we entered the site the wind was blowing strangely and strong, but also the grass made loud noises caused by the wind. And of course it was dark, since it was night as we wanted to use MobiSpray to make some UFO houses look as we wanted them to be. For one of our Taiwanese fellow girl it become too eerie after a short time, so she left. The rest of us set up the gear and we started spraying - and it was totally exiting to mobispray on this weirdly, but nicely designed UFO houses.

I learned originally about the UFO houses a few days before leaving to Taiwan through an article in the German online magazin Spiegel: http://einestages.spiegel.de. Title of the article was ‘Die Geisterstadt der Außerirdischen’ meaning the ghost city of the aliens. And of course the shape of the UFO-houses was something I had to try out as canvas for MobiSpray.

Find more photos at Flickr here.

MobiSpraying location:

When I was teaching at the nightmarket workshop 2008 in Tainan, Taiwan during August 2008, which was organized by my friend Jackie Lee, I mobisprayed together with my Taiwanese students. And this occasion has opened my eyes for new uses of MobiSpray: You can make something to look beautiful that is normally perceived as ugly or not worth looking at.

We were spraying on trash that was lying in the hallway of the workshop building. After we went through a fantastic spraying session in shich my students were spraying, too some of them said: ‘For me, the trash has become my treasure!’. A comment that hits a point of what Mobispray can do.

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If I would find a sponsor, I would be interested to organise a huge spraying session with a group of people in some neighborhood somewhere the world that is perceived as ugly and then turn it into something beautiful using Mobispray, at least for a short while - imagine an entire district of a slum could become a pearl! If anyone would have sponsorhip interest for such an activity,

please contact Jurgen at:

Find more photos on flickr here.

MobiSpraying location:

The last Spraying session during our MobiSpray Summer tour 2008 took place in Kuopio. From a previous visit to Kuopio, I remembered seeing a MIG 19 on display close to the Rissilä airbase. This object should be the final highlight of having sprayed on over 15 objects during the previous few weeks.

Find more photos on Flickr here.

It has been a fantastic experience to develop, test and deploy Mobipsray during this MobiSpray summer 2008 tour. It gave me lots of insights what MobiSpray is about and what it can become. I would like to thank at this point the UBILife research project and especially Prof. Timo Ojala for his support.
Watch the video:

You can find all photos of the entire MobiSpray tour 2008 on Flickr here.

MobiSpraying location:

During our Mobispray summer tour 2008 we had the chance to get a true Lapland experience of fishing, picking cloud berries and going for a barbecue by boat when we got invited by Prof. Timo Ojala to a small village near Kemijärvi.

In the evening we decided that we want to mobispray on a rapid in a remote location that was about 1 hour away by rowing boat. We packed all MobiSpray gear inside the boat - including the power generator, the Lpatop, projector, wifi router, cables and my mobile phone - and then we listened to ducks, birds and the ‘entire quietness’ of Lapland while rowing towards the Rapid.

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At the location there was a suspension bridge over the Rapid, which allowed me to install the projector in such a way that its light went straight down into the moving water. I was exited to see how it looks to mobispray on water. Since it was a Rapid, many parts of the water were white, which revealed great textures. While the water was continuously moving the sprayed colour always remained on the same spot. It appeared on one hand like a film that plays, on the other hand it was also a static image.

Having painted in the water for a while we tried to MobiSpray on trees which gave an interesting appreance, too

After a great barbecue prepared by Prof. Timo Ojala near the rapid, we rowed back and did some line fishing, unfortunately being unlucky of getting any fish.

More photos at Flickr here.

MobiSpraying location:

In Kajaani, north of Finland I spotted a huge grain storage building with a grey-brown surface. So far, I hadn’t spray-painted on huge buildings yet and this was a good opportunity to do it. I thought it is best to leave my video projector inside the car and when I had to park the car quite far from the building in order to cover the entire building surface with the projector light, I only then realized how big the building really is .

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After I spray-painted the first few lines, I suddenly felt how powerful it is to spray on such a huge building with MobiSpray. Just within minutes you can change the appearance of the entire building. This was an experience I never had before. It feels, one has the power over this building.  Even if you don’t have keys for it, and are not the owner of the building, still one can decide how this whole thing should look like. This means with Mobispray one can change one’s surroundings and turn them into something surprising, exiting and unexpected - at least temporarily.

This triggered also the thought in my head, that with MobiSpray one can gain access to objects for turning them into something new. One can go beyond a fence or a closed yard, even overcoming height is not a problem, meaning you can enter with MobiSpray where you normally wouldn’t be able to enter at all. This made me think that wouldn’t it be interesting to mobispray on an entire neighborhood one day, and turn it into something completely new?

More photos on Flickr here.

MobiSpraying location:

On our way from Rovaniemi towards a city called Kajaani we accidentally saw a sign beside the road saying in finnish ‘aviation center’. Well I never heard that Finland had an aviation center in the middle of nowhere, so I stopped and drove back and entered the side road leading to the finnish aviation center at Pudasjärvi. And then - I couldn’t trust my eyes - from far I saw a military aircraft on a huge stand on display - a Saab 35 Draken. What a surprise, finding another beloved object to mobispray on, just like that. After a short google search, I found out that we had arrived on a former airbase of the finnish airforce which was closed many years ago. No military buildings left, just a huge runway which is nowadays used by hobby pilots and glider sport people. Ok, for the next few hours I could live out my passion - mobispraying on a fighter jet.

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What really striked me was that I was able to spray on the entire plane surface underneath due to the orientation how the Saab 35 Draken was put on its stand. It was totally exiting to see the spraying results - the real plane looks as I want it to look and it is right in front of me. I remember, I was lying under the plane for at least half an hour inhaling this fantastic view, seeing the colours, the huge shape with its curves and forms. I have to say it was a strong aesthetic experience that really gave me an energy spark. Wow, that’s what Mobispray can do. Also, I felt, that somehow the plane belongs now to me. I believe that is the result of a highly cognitive experience that happened here. By adding my own creation onto the plane, the newly created whole has become part of my own, too. Well, I guess I will follow this thread later when I will report on the findings on design impacts and design aspects that come along with Mobispray as a tool.

Find more photos on Flickr here.

MobiSpraying location: