IxD and Assistive Technology
As a part of the observational studies during my PhD, I will be filming participants interacting with the immersive space that I am now in the process of constructing. It is important that the children are able to feel comfortable to behave as they choose. …
Bret Victor has become a little bit of a hero for me. Previously an interface designer at Apple, it seems that Victor was successful at the tech giant, but realised that his vision and theirs didn’t quite fit together and he left in 2010. He’s …
I have a sign placed prominently above my mailbox: “NO ADVERTISING MATERIAL PLEASE”. It’s regularly ignored, particularly by real estate agents and pizza shops. I decided that a public shaming would be the most effective means of ending the tyranny of wasteful advertising and obviously …
There is a potential exhibition in the works, for which I’ve been doing some simple line drawing studies. These are all fairly self-explanatory; I just thought I’d put them up along with their Max patches for others to use. The first video of each ‘lineDrawer’ …
It’s been a while since I created anything tangible, so I was chuffed that the HAHA Industries guys asked me to come up with some visuals for their D&D’s Beat Ballroom night at the Sydney Fringe Festival this month. Given creative freedom, I thought it …
I’ve been playing with a few different methods of tracking over the past weeks. For now, this has mostly been using the screen coordinates of a mouse to indicate movement, but in time it will be camera tracking which is driving the system (probably via …
I had a chat with a friend recently about coming up with a system that drives a lighting rig (more on that another time, hopefully). This system would compliment a music performance, but not in an in-your-face VJ kind of way. It would have more …
I bought myself a Kinect sensor this week; I haven’t had much chance to really experiment thus far in 2012, and thought this might be a good place to start. That, and the Kinect is one of the less invasive interactive tracking instruments I can …
Today I attempted an update to the twitterSpeak patch I created for MaxForLive a while back. Not entirely sure why I picked it up again, but Max is quite excellent at being a vortex that sucks in a good part of your day until you …
I had an informal meeting today with a neuroscientist who looks at (amongst other things) brain development in people with autism. This is the second of these types of meetings I’ve had thus far; trying to find out where my PhD research will sit in …
By most reports, 2011 was madness: there were more violent revolutions and celebrity terrorist deaths than ever before; the Earth made many attempts to rid itself of us through fire, flood and famine (usually in successive weeks); the US realised that Apple was making more …
I’m starting my PhD at COFA in 2012. For the last couple of years of my undergraduate degree (Digital Media), coding has been a building block of just about everything I do. Having said that, I don’t see myself as a programmer, not even as …
Our street takes Christmas pretty seriously. At least in Australian terms. Most people in the street take the time to decorate their house (for which there are prizes given, and an Oscar-esque bribery/scandal sideshow), before we close the street for a communal Christmas lunch. Santa arrives …
So I have this friend who is insane: he’s just bought a video hire store in Sydney. On the upside, he’s moved into lovely new premises which have kept their 1930/40s deep-set window bays. In exchange for lugging DVDs from the old store to the …
This will be the last uni-related post of the year (for my undergraduate degree anyway), but not the last update for this project. The interactive table will be exhibited as part of the COFA exhibition, The Annual, at CarriageWorks next month and needs a few …
Can’t talk: busy making final project work properly. Take a look at some pictures after the jump instead – I promise I’ll pay more attention to you in the weeks ahead.
And so what has been inside my computer for the past 9 months, finally begins its translation into reality. It may not be as painful as birth, but it might be almost as messy. This week, a friend who works as a signwriter was good …
The past couple of weeks have been a bit of a blur of trial and error. Testing lights, interactive materials, table designs and of course a heap of Max/MSP/Jitter code. Although I’ve just had a 2 week break from classes, there certainly hasn’t been a …
It’s been painfully clear over the past couple of weeks that I need to start testing the physical side of my project. Although I’ve been spending quite a lot of time banging my head against the wall with Max/MSP/Jitter coding, it will all be for …
