Archive for the ‘virtuality’ Category

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The longer it takes you to catch on, the more visionary I get

Monday, August 31st, 2009

[With apologies to Bruce Sterling]

Take a look at the wonderful Immersive Workspaces from Linden Lab and Rivers Run Red. Wonderful because it’s a great piece of work and a real breakthrough, but also because it’s not done yet. That is, if its goal is as stated “a complete collaboration solution”, and “the ultimate destination in real-time collaboration”.

Immersive Workspaces - viewing slides in a meeting room

Immersive Workspaces - avatars view slides in a virtual meeting room

You see, what they’ve built looks like a great solution for real-time communication and coordination – but that’s not the same thing as collaboration. Let’s take a look. I’ll wait here while you watch the the video.

The system provides the following task-oriented headings: News, Team, Meetings, Actions, Media, Journal, Stats, Admin, and Go 3D. This is looking like the next generation of groupware, with that last link promising a sprinkle of social avatar-chat sugar on top, courtesy of Second Life.

The use case shown is called a “collaboration session” – but let’s look at what the participants (Laura, Adam and Sakura) actually do.

(more…)

Posted in collaboration, creativity, design, virtuality | 1 Comment »

Ad-hoc workspace sharing prototype

Tuesday, April 28th, 2009

I’ve been IKEA-hacking. There’s a great community that does this for real – do you think mine counts? I’ll explain first.

I recently posted an idea for ad-hoc workspace sharing for under $US 500/person. The idea is simple: get one of the new LED-based micro projectors, tape it to a webcam and point them at a surface. Then everything the camera sees can be projected back onto the same surface, or more interestingly to a remote setup along the same lines. Now two people at different locations can share a workspace.

When figuring out how to prototype this, I then thought of the ubiquitous angle-poise task lamp. Apparently Anglepoise is actually a brand, which I did not know – it’s the true original, designed by George Carwardine in the UK in 1934. It’s this lamp that Jac Jacobsen found in a shipment of sewing machines, licensed and redesigned in 1937, resulting in the classic Luxo L-1 luminaire. Some version of this architects’ lamp then inspired John Lasseter to animate Luxo Jr., the short film that became the spirit of Pixar.

Now, I’m going for low-cost, ad-hoc and ubiquitous. I’m not going to use a $200 Luxo L-1 or Anglepoise Original 1227. Not unless I find a new source of funding, anyway ;) In any case, it’s more appropriate for me to use the most low-cost, ubiquitous version of this superbly functional modern design: IKEA’s TERTIAL. $18.95 from my local IKEA in Sydney, $8.99 in the US.

The height is perfect to throw a 30cm/12″ diagonal display from the 3M MPRO110 Micro Projector, and if you remove the lamp assembly the projector fits beautifully in its place, with room to spare for a webcam. Here’s my blueprint and a shot of the design in situ. If you make one too, we can try them out.
TERTIAL blueprint Tertial Augmented Workspace

Next is to design and implement some user interaction methods. One quite nice thing is that the field of view of the camera is wider than the lightfield of the projector. This means that we can use the projected area for direct manipulation of things in the mediaspace, and use the area around it as a gestural interaction zone for anything that effects the mediaspace as a whole. Some sketches:

rosegarden1.jpgRose garden interaction sketch 2

Posted in CCS-blog, Interaction Design, collaboration, creativity, design, mixed reality, research log, virtuality | 3 Comments »

Ad-hoc workspace sharing for under $US 500 per person

Monday, April 6th, 2009

BT-1 Wireless webcam: $US 149

and

3M MPRO110 Micro Projector: $US 300

= $USD 449 (= $AUD 626) plus something for shipping.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pt1_4Hr_-FA

Tape them together, point them at a surface in arm’s reach, set up a screen-sharing videoconference with someone else with the same setup, and you can share a projected workspace. Cheap, fast and adaptable.

Posted in collaboration, creativity, design, virtuality | 1 Comment »

The Hyper-Seal

Friday, October 3rd, 2008

The seal of the Vice President of the United States, like that of the President, is protected under 18 USC Sec. 713 – you CAN NOT HAZ, at least if you’re subject to US law. I suppose that this is why the seal was not in the backdrop behind the candidates at the Vice-Presidential debate held today.

To use or to simulate the seal is not permitted… but why merely simulate, when you can beat reality at its own game? Enter the hyperreal.
Hyperseal

Or indeed, the hyper-seal. Forget staid heraldry. This shield is a 3D object protruding into the space. Not a depiction, a virtualisation.  The eagle is… surfing on the shield? Surmounting it, anyway, and crushing the arrows and the olive branch beneath its talons. Instead of “E Puribus Unum” (Out of Many, One), we have THE UNION AND THE CONSTITUTION FOREVER, like a sailor’s tattoo.

This eagle says I MADED YOU A GOVERNMENT OF THE PEOPLE BY THE PEOPLE FOR THE PEOPLE BUT I EATED IT.

Posted in design, virtuality | 1 Comment »

Slide decks – Second Life in Context / Responsive Environments for INteractive Arts

Thursday, September 4th, 2008

A couple of slide decks for talks I gave recently: last Wednesday a guest lecture for the Interactive Arts class on Responsive Environments as an art form.
Then the previous Wednesday, a presentation to UTS staff on Second Life, in the context of other available metaverses and with some focus on its uses in education.
My slides tend to be all pictures – there’s enough text with me talking over them without writing it all out again so you can read what I’m saying. It does mean though that they don’t stand alone when I stick ‘em on the web. You’ll just have to look at the pretty examples :)

Posted in CCS-blog, Interaction Design, art, creativity, design, interactive art, place, uts, virtuality | No Comments »

Augment yerself

Tuesday, July 29th, 2008

I’m on the AIMIA Augmented Reality panel tonight. Will be chatting about ARToolkit and the AR work we do at CCS and UTS – Ian Gwilt’s work in particular, as well as my own mixed-reality research and Magic Hopscotch.

Posted in Interaction Design, interactive art, virtuality | No Comments »

Magic Hopscotch

Monday, July 7th, 2008

We’re live! Just in time for the start of the school holidays, Magic Hopscotch is up and running and open to the public at the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney. The timing is important because this is a prototype of an interactive artwork designed for children. Doreen Ee, my collaborating technologist, put in a magnificent effort to reconfigure the code for the floor pads that control the piece, after we were compelled to rewire them last week.Shan Weiley, my partner and constant collaborator, has started participant observations and we are already getting some wonderful insights. More later, because i’m writing on my phone and more than a few words is painful :) The launch is on thursday the 10th of July from 2-4 pm, email me if you’d like an invitation. Heartfelt thanks also to Deborah Turnbull our erstwhile beta space curator and Matthew Connell at the phm.

Update: now tracking this project at Sky Blue.

Posted in CCS-announcements, CCS-blog, Interaction Design, art, creativity, design, games, interactive art, place, uts, virtuality | No Comments »

Permeating the Magic Circle

Monday, June 23rd, 2008

The inimitable Doug Easterly addressed CCS today on Permeating the Magic Circle – exploring “the physical and conceptual boundaries that demarcate work and real-life from play and game activity”. He’s well known for his artistic practice with SWAMP addressing these very issues. Doug’s research looks into play, drawing on Huizinga’s Homo Ludens and Caillois‘ critiques of it, and of course Czikszentmihalyi on Flow. On that last Doug has formed a beautifully clear exposition of the standard critique of games: that they draw users into a state of Flow not for the high-minded goals of learning or self-actualisation, but instead for the baser purpose of merely keeping them in the game for its own sake, or for the sake of “coin drop” (in the parlance of the video game arcade industry). By drawing out a distinction between flow and device mesmerism, Doug shows that it’s not games, their holding power, or flow itself that is evil – but rather the purposes to which they are put.

The depth of his research is compelling him to dive down into evolutionary psychology, just to find a place to stand… bringing in references from Leda Cosmides [wp], Jared Diamond [wp] and Stephen Pinker [wp]. A PhD is certainly a great excuse to do some absorbing reading.

After the talk we got into an engrossing discussion of  hermetically sealed virtual realities (silly) vs. mixed reality (marvellous), mind/body dualism (outmoded) vs. holism (somewhat more sensible) and absolute transhumanism (fun but overblown) vs. whatever is actually going on (much more complicated, and even more fun). Doug saw an early sketch of the mixed-reality piece I’m currently installing down at the Powerhouse Museum, so I’m hoping to get the computer vision part of it working properly before he heads back to NZ at the end of the week. More about that in another blog post :)

Posted in CCS-blog, Interaction Design, art, creativity, design, games, interactive art, virtuality | No Comments »

Structures of Participation in Digital Culture – online for free

Friday, May 23rd, 2008

Or they’ll print and bind you one for twenty bucks, pretty good deal. lots of goodness here though including Game Engines as Open Networks and History, Memory, Place, and Technology: Plato’s Phaedrus Online.

Posted in collaboration, games, place, virtuality | No Comments »

Virtual Gardens for Prototyping

Wednesday, May 21st, 2008

While looking for images of Donkey Kong (historical research for the UTS Games Studio, dontcha know) I stumbled across this gem:

Prototyping for Game Feel (v.2)

Including the faboulous step 3:

• Be Shigeru Miyamoto

There’s a nice thoughtful post here (and the rest of the site looks worth a read as well). What caught my eye was the description of Miyamoto’s virtual garden:

“Before any of the levels had been created Mr. Miyamoto had Mario running around and picking up objects in a small ‘garden’ which he uses in all his games to test gameplay elements.”

Miyamoto is noted for finding inspiration for his game designs from his other interests: playing the guitar and gardening. The gamecube game “Pimkin” was based directly on Miyamoto’s actual garden. So for him, it seems that the virtual and real garden are his ba – his own place, a creative source.

Posted in CCS-blog, Interaction Design, creativity, design, games, place, virtuality | No Comments »

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