Tangible Computing - Maegan Harty

Nintendo for nearly a decade has made use of tangible computing components through the toy-to-life trend which swooped over the video game industry in recent years. The only difference to competitors is that Nintendo has maintained that focus to this date.  'Now moving forward with projects that make use of NFC in a variety of unique ways. Nintendo is known as a video game company, but in fact, it is also a toy company.' - Shigeru Miyamoto Looking at Amiibo's , more specifically the use of Amiibo trading card-esque cards which add additional content to multiple entries in the Animal Crossing  series.  Prolonging the user experience whilst balancing the hobby of collecting cards to showcase to other players within the game ecosystem/community online.  There are over 500 cards which can be collected in this series that all contain an NFC chip with the corresponding villagers' data within. These communicate with the game itself to add new features and gameplay experien...

 Plane White Source 'Plane White' is a digital interactive experience which utilises the trend of interactive art pieces in recent years. This was created by Kardinksys painting who himself, was a synesthete (associates sounds with colours). Each painting was a song for the artist.  This interactive piece lets the user mimic the array of senses Kadrinksy experiences whilst creating his pieces by recreating his paintings through touching the 'canvas'. Giving a sense of accomplishment as they finish with a tangible piece of artwork in front of them.  Gestures associated with painting are used to make the interaction between technology and humans 'natural' letting the user get straight into it without any complicated instructions or learning steps to impede the experience.  It's extremely interesting to see the thought process behind the user experience for this multi-media project. Each material was chosen for a reason to help the fluidness of movement to crea...

Augmented Reality Sandbox I’ve become increasingly interested in the incentive given in a lot of the previous blog entries for the user to interact with technology. In line with assignment two, how do we encourage these primary-school students to interact with our project in a meaningful way? Ironically when speaking about encouraging children to interact I came across this project the 'Augmented Reality Sandbox'. Developed by researchers at UC Davis W.M. Keck Center for Active Visualisation in the Earth Sciences, it provides real-time, vibrant visual topographic data on a sandy play area. When the user interacts with the sandbox by moving around the sand or building mounds the information is recorded by the Microsoft Kinect Camera which is sent to the overlay which adapts to the changes the user has made. Creating various dynamic environments such as valleys, mountains and riverbeds. The purpose of this project was to educational purposes which educate on geographical concepts...

Physical Tetris Architecture Upon research, for Assignment Two I came across a very objective view of the iconic game of 'Tetris'. I wanted to see how this could be applied to a physical data representation along the lines of our desired project. I found this to be highly insightful in how data and possibly computing can go hand in hand even in rudimentary games like this.  Whilst this paper was focused on how the game progresses itself I feel like it could be applied to this module's end goal as well. Effectively representing the performance of the user whilst utilising various aspects of their brain constantly evaluating the data being represented via block-form.  The takeaways the player/user can gather from this information when categorising data are: Height is negative Holes in the data representatives are negative Stacking more blocks on top of prior blocks can either add or negate the information being represented Blocks on top of the data space have to be concentra...

 Returning The Gaze  This piece was created by Behnaz Farahi for Milan Fashion Week to turn the mirror back on the industry itself and its treatment of women.  How It Works: Four robotic arms circulate the participant with monitors mounted displaying a live view captured by cameras of the participant staring back at the viewer. The cameras are trained on the participant's eyes tracking the movements, zooming in and out to emphasise the uncomfortable nature.  I believe this project best represents Embodied Interaction , using the brain (audience), and body (participant) to influence the overall interaction with the technology present (cameras, robotic arms, VR headset). Adding much-needed depth to the critique of power dynamics evoking feelings of discomfort and prodding at possible solutions in the viewer's mind. Questioning whether technology can be utilised to amplify the uncomfortable nature of being looked at as just an object of desire or used to combat objecti...

 Amelia and the Machine - Tangible Interaction When trying to gather a further understanding of ‘Tangible Interaction’ I came across this investigation held in collaboration with a creative-engineering team. I found rationalising the concept of tangible interaction to be overwhelming in my first week of the module but in actually seeing how a person can without hesitation work with a robot arm to choreograph it really helped. Effectively dancing with a robot, furthering the possibilities of what could be created by the dancer.  I feel like this fits the criteria of acting as a physical embodiment of data, this robotic arm interacts with the user by using timing and spatial patterns to explore the movement that improvisation in dance allows. I found the overall design of this arm to be endearing in the showcase of this project linked below. Mimicking the dancer's input in a way that was both fluids but putting a real-world context to the input itself. An inherent relationship b...