Kieran Nolan » Toy Hacking

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.

Hacking Toys into Tangible Controllers

kieran — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 16:08:55 +0000

Here are some recent projects from year 2 of the Creative Multimedia degree at DKIT. The student groups were each given a toy and assigned the task of hacking it together with a keyboard to create a controller for an original interactive experience made in flash and/or director.

'Tiny Tag' by team 'Play It!' is a graffiti simulator inspired by Tag Tool. 'Play It!' converted the steering wheel toy into their tag controller, allowing you to select a background, then pick your tags and move, rotate and scale them as you please.

Here's a look inside the controller:

'Music Maker' by 'Spanner in the works' hacked this sound board toy into a controller for an ambient music generator.

A closeup of the keyboard hack, safely encased in an Ikea lunchbox!

Here's a screenshot of Music Maker in action, when you hit a key on the board the corresponding shape lights up on screen and you hear a note, it plays the theme from 'Close Encounters' quite nicely!

Pixcube by the 'Banjoes' is an image browser, the 'My First Keyboard' was heavily modified to become the pixcube controller, with a new paintjob and several new buttons.

Here is the Pixcube itself, each side's colour corresponds to a button on the controller.

When you press a button on the controller, the cube unfolds and you can navigate through the pictures, this is the portfolio side.

Magical Star Guitar by the 'Three Amigos' uses a converted Barney Guitar to control an game for young children that teaches counting and shape recognition. The battery case was carved away to make room for the keyboard module.

Finally, 'Pass the Bomb' by 'Kawaii Productions' combines this kids globe and a wireless keyboard to create an elimination game for up to six players.

Evil frogs have taken over the world and it's only with the help of creatures from around the world that you can defeat them! After selecting the number of players the timer starts and you have to press the button corresponding to the continent shown onscreen, then pass it to the next person. If the timer goes to zero before you hit the button your eliminated!

Hacking Toys, Bending Circuits

kieran — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 23:39:08 +0000

Circuit bending is "the creative short-circuiting of devices such as low voltage, battery-powered guitar effects, children's toys and small synthesizers to create new musical instruments and sound generators." (Wikipedia). Here's a little video of some audio glitching that happened during the beginning stages of a project with DKIT's Creative Multimedia 2nd years, where we modified children's toys into tangible multimedia interfaces.