Council Interview with Tag4M's Marius Ghercioiu

What does Tag4M do? Does it have a history in electronics?

Marius Ghercioiu : "Tag4M converts sensor data to web pages using cloud instruments. We also offer the art avatar which is a cloud instrument digital frame made for illustrators, photographers, graphic designers so they can create art without having to program. Yes, our background is in electronics, virtual instrumentation, which started as  PC-based in the 90's. We build technology - hardware and software - that moves test, measurement and control from PC based to cloud based."

What is a Cloud Instrument?

Marius Ghercioiu : "Any sensor or transducer becomes a Cloud Instrument when it is connected to a WiFi tag. The tag digitizes the data to send it on to Access Points, where the data is routed to the Internet and a Server IP. Here a customized Database is collecting the data for feed into applications like metering, charting, control, analysis, modeling, data mining, etc. with display on Web Page Instruments."

You are also working with Pachube? What are the advantages for you to do so?

Marius Ghercioiu : "We defined the space of Cloud Instrumentation which is a bazaar of services offered in the Cloud by segment experts like Pachube. If you decide to bring your measurements to a PC using a data acquisition board and associated software package, you will depend entirely on that PC based Instrument vendor. We want sensor data to be digitized and brought to the Internet where a multitude of experts have their store and you can use their specialized web page instrument to solve your current problem. And you can choose your instrument based on current needs and not because you have been trapped into a platform investment on the PC. Pachube has a very good data-brokerage platform. The advantage at this point with Pachube is that I can offer them as a very good example of a Cloud based segment expert to our WiFi tag customers."

The Temperature Avatar, what is it? Can we think of it as some kind of total Ambilight (Philips) environment?

Marius Ghercioiu : "Static images are beautiful and masters for centuries have perfected this 'technology' to unbelievable levels of beauty. Prints and drawings showing the spectacular expansion of 17th-century Dutch Golden Age master pieces will always be on display at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. This is the Dutch national pride after all!  The avatar art is adding a new dimension to the art of illustrations and drawings with the concept of a moving illustration or live painting that tells a story about an entity's natural changes correlated to sensor readings. The Temperature Avatar introduces a frame that allows digital painters to host as many illustrations they want and need in order to tell the story of a live developing entity. The combination of this digital frame and its original illustrations defines an avatar of the live entity as seen and expressed by the illustrator. The Temperature Avatar art has been created by Pablo Lara Henriquez of Santiago de Chile. The frame is virtually connected to the live entity in the Internet of Things space, senses it in real time, gets digitized values representing its live variations and chooses from the set of hosted illustrations the one that represents the current state according to the artist's story telling. The combination of this digital frame and its original illustrations defines an avatar of the live entity as seen and expressed by the illustrator.

For a live demo of an art avatar please go here.

Philips is generating light effects around the TV that correspond to the video content. Tag4M is reading live sensor data to drive a story telling by an illustrator artist. Interesting parallel, Philips is using output to enhance art, Tag4M is using input to present art. It sounds complementary."

You want to ask artists to participate, what do they have to do?

Marius Ghercioiu : "We invite artists doing illustration, photography or drawing to put their work in images that carry a story telling. Imagine that this story is driven by variations of some real live phenomenon like temperature, or light, or a door opening and closing, fish moving in an aquarium, etc. as measured with sensor(s) in a known (by the artist) location. Then please send us your work (jpg files) and we will connect it to an avatar frame (with tag, sensor and cloud instrument), and by that create an Art Avatar that is yours. We will post and market this work in the Tag4M gallery. A secondary outcome of this event is that in the process we make the Internet of Things a real thing."