Kieran Nolan » Physical Computing

ISEA 2009 workshop slides

kieran — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 21:46:59 +0000

Here are the slides from the Hacking Toys Into Tangible Interfaces workshop that was held at DKIT last week for the ISEA 2009 conference. Thanks to everyone that participated :)

Hacking Toys Into Tangible Interfaces Workshop - ISEA 2009 - Kieran Nolan

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ISEA 2009 paper and workshop

kieran — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 15:23:12 +0000

I'm presenting a paper at the ISEA 2009 Conference (International Symposium on Electronic Arts) in Belfast this August. It's under the 'Posthumanism' category and called 'The Real Virtual Living'. Basically in it I'm examining what people thought the 'cyberfuture' would be, how it actually turned out and how that future vision has inspired creative work in different digital and electronic mediums, both in cyberspace and meatspace :)

Also as part of ISEA 2009 I'm running a workshop on 'Hacking Toys Into Tangible Interfaces' at Dundalk IT. We'll be building unique game control gizmos by adding usb connections to cheap electronic toys. The workshop is an introduction to physical computing, covering some basic interaction design theory along with practical hardware hacking techniques. There's more on the workshop and everything else that's happening as part of the conference at isea2009.org.

Tinker.it talk, This Happened #6, Doodle Earth

kieran — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 01:03:02 +0000

I was over in London recently to check out a couple of talks that were taking place as part of Onedotzero's Adventures in Motion festival. First up was a presentation about digital means of creating music, controlling music and creating musical controllers by Tinker.it. Afterwards a number of music related Arduino and Processing projects were shown, including a granular synth and the Brokenspiel, which plays a sequence of notes generated from a barcode or magnetic card's unique id number.

Then later on that evening was This Happened #6, where the audience learned all about the creative processes behind four unique tech art projects. These were Touched Echo by Markus Kison, Audience by rAndom International and Chris O'Shea, Troika's 'Cloud' and the responsive installation at Covent Garden by United Visual Artists. One thing that was striking about all these was the ammount of time put into planning and pre-visualisation, leaving little or no room for error when the final product was delivered. Also they were made in very tight timeframes, Cloud for instance was nine months from initial idea to the final installation.

In the lobby of the BFI there was a project I really liked called Doodle Earth, which basically encourages people to draw. An animated map dotted with buildings and moving vehicles is projected onto a blank wall and people are encouraged to fill in the blanks with coloured markers. I drew this dragon head thing burning the building in the projection (someone added the 'Cheese' speech bubble and 'JAFC rules...' messages later on). All the art meets technology stuff is great but this really suceeds at creating a fun, collaborative user experience in a fairly lo-tech way. It's good to draw!

Björk’s reacTABLE

kieran — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 20:30:42 +0000

Here's a great video from Björk's recent performance at Glastonbury showing the
reacTABLE, tangible multi-touch interface as an integral part of her live instrumentation... Björk always pushing the boundaries and embracing new music technology...

More info on reacTABLE here and here.

Rock, Scissors, (Research) Paper

kieran — Mon, 07 May 2007 16:04:09 +0000

DKIT's Department of Music & Creative Media recently held it's 4th Annual Research Colloquium. Nine papers were presented by students and staff, ranging from the effects of social networking sites on peoples lives to the middle east conflict. I made a presentation on 'Bionic Roshambo', my cyberglove controlled Rock, Scissors, Paper game. More about it at keyo.net/bionicroshambo.

Arduino Heat

kieran — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 17:37:17 +0000

I've been playing about with the Arduino the last few weeks. It hooks up through the computer's usb port and can be used to take in signals from buttons, sliders, dials, sensors or whatever and can also control devices connected to it from the pc.

It can also act as a standalone device and can be programmed... so for instance you could have a microphone as an input device, have a lamp connected to the output and then program the chip so that the lamp switches on when you clap your hands.

The pdf book from www.arduino.cc provides a great introduction to how it works, including how to build your own 'Virtual Etch-A-Sketch'. I've managed to make a heat sensor control an interactive piece built in macromedia director, so quite pleased with that!

PLAY.orchestra

kieran — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 16:26:46 +0000

Was back in London again last week and found 'PLAY.orchestra', a sound installation outside the Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank of the Thames. It's an interactive public space where you can take part in a collaborative music performance of sorts. The interface is made up of 56 perspex cube seats representing the musicians in an orchestra and 3 'hotspots'. When you take a seat, the instrument illustrated on it plays. More people = more instruments and layers of sound, resulting in up to 60 or so people collaborating on a preformance for the public (with some random inebriated bloke playing conducter, lol). It's also possible to upload your own sounds and arrangements via mobile phone to the project's server, thus shaping the orchestra's performance one step further. Great fun, has people smiling all round. Definatly worth a visit if you're near it. link