I attended this lecture yesterday at the Waverley Building. It was a lecture by an interactive designer from AllofUs; a leading, award-winning interaction design and user experience company with a clientele of some of the biggest international companies.
This was a project they did with Carte Noire:
The software for the piece was developed using openFrameworks. It was explained in the lecture that the video was captured from a security camera at a full-HD resolution of 1080p at 30fps using a Blackmagic Intensity Pro PCIe card. Motion in the scene was detected and analysed using openCV, specifically blob tracking and optical flow algorithms. This input, along with colour analysis and proximity was used to allow users to interact with the effects.
The lecture also highlighted another project which used the Xbox Kinect, as building a touchscreen in these shapes would have complicated things a lot more:
Mishkat Centre was commissioned by the King of Saudi Arabia to encourage and educate today's Saudi youth about the advances and benefits of atomic and renewable energies. So, they approached AllofUs about a concept and design to bring the exhibition together. The agency came up with these "wave tables" that were calibrated in real-time using Xbox controllers, which seemed to be very tricky in terms of meeting that specific physical space. Still bloody impressive, though.
Current Reflection
I've been hearing sketchy details about placements by the end of this course, and AllofUs seems to have my attention in this area. The agency strikes me as an ideal avenue to pursue work experience within interaction design... assuming I can get over the fact they're based in London and work around it by September.
At this point in time, I'm set up for training as a healthcare worker in February, which is going to take a chunk of academic time from my schedule (two weeks, approximately). I'm also hoping to regain a foot back into the NHS, mainly because it largely entails secure work of a venerable nature with decent, progressive pay (although the quality of pensions has been politically savaged as of late), and huge benefits of personal development which I intend to continue in order to eliminate this horrible, existential limbo of impoverished studenting.
This is not to say that I want out of the creative industry. Far from it! That's why I went into this course in the first place, because I felt like I was no longer a part of that (plus, job prospects are utterly shite)... but I certainly did not want to approach it through the avenue of Fine Art. I'm no longer interested in making something purely for expression and aesthetics. I'm largely done with that and would prefer to make it in my own time. Nowadays, I want people to like and engage with the work I make. I want to create things like AllofUs have.
Current Reflection
I've been hearing sketchy details about placements by the end of this course, and AllofUs seems to have my attention in this area. The agency strikes me as an ideal avenue to pursue work experience within interaction design... assuming I can get over the fact they're based in London and work around it by September.
At this point in time, I'm set up for training as a healthcare worker in February, which is going to take a chunk of academic time from my schedule (two weeks, approximately). I'm also hoping to regain a foot back into the NHS, mainly because it largely entails secure work of a venerable nature with decent, progressive pay (although the quality of pensions has been politically savaged as of late), and huge benefits of personal development which I intend to continue in order to eliminate this horrible, existential limbo of impoverished studenting.
This is not to say that I want out of the creative industry. Far from it! That's why I went into this course in the first place, because I felt like I was no longer a part of that (plus, job prospects are utterly shite)... but I certainly did not want to approach it through the avenue of Fine Art. I'm no longer interested in making something purely for expression and aesthetics. I'm largely done with that and would prefer to make it in my own time. Nowadays, I want people to like and engage with the work I make. I want to create things like AllofUs have.
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