I think I forgot to do the last looking outwards so I found 6 projects for this time.

1) Niklas Roy’s “My Little Piece of Privacy”

Niklas Roy\'s \"My Little Piece of Privacy\"

This project involves using a surveillance to detect motion outside of a window and have a shade respond to that movement to prevent the passerby from looking in. I think the idea behind this is clever; it allows the person inside to have natural sunlight and scenery of the outside while maintaining some privacy. The practical implementation does not work so well in that the shade lags when responding to faster motion and has to overcome the obstacle of having two separately moving body at different sides of the window. However, I think the shade is successful in creating in unexpected interactive, entertaining experience in the midst of everyday life. As the video shows, those who are engaging with the shade appear to be highly amused by it. Further, as the shade grabs the attention of the passerby, even with the above mentioned problems, the person inside does experience a sense of privacy because they seem to “disappear” in the background of the interactive installation.

2) “A Goofy Movie – After Today LIVE”

\"A Goofy Moive – After Today LIVE\"

This is a live version of the song “After Today” from “A Goofy Movie”. I really enjoyed it one, because “A Goofy Movie” is awesome and two, because I thought the progress of how the video came to be made is really interested. It is based off of an animated movie, which, being animated, is based off of physical human interaction on the world. So in a sense, the makers of the video are translating information from a physical world to a virutal one and back into the physical one. Being the video aimed as being a close replica of the original with physical interaction, it still involved a lot of digital touching to get some of the scenes to look like. This is then almost a turn of the tables because the makers used digital technology to make the something human appear more animated when animation is usually attempting to use digital technology to make things appear more human.

3) Christopher Paretti’s Speed Dial

This project is an attempt to “use the phone as a gateway into something different, yet still very social, and enjoyable.” The artist created a miniature racetrack for slot cars that move based on noise and spit of a user into a phone. The idea is engaging for a user because it creates immediate feedback in a game setting in a new way; it is essentially using the phone like you would a joystick or any other type of controller. The difference is that you interface with the controller with your mouth instead of your fingers. I think this is project in that sense is fun for the user as a new, first-time experience, but I don’t think it necessarily will have the ability to entice people to use it again.

4) Noriaki Okada and Soyoung Park’s “Interactive Dolls”

\"Interactive Dolls\"

I like the concept of this project because it aims to use technology in a meaningful, educational way by creating interactive dolls to help children develop language and social skills. I think that this is a good application of physical computing because such dolls capture the imagination of the child by creating pseudo-human interactions in a fun, silly way. The main criticism I have of this project is that I think some work could be done to make the interactions and the phrases more realistic/applicable.

5/6) Nortd Lab’s “Cubit” and Daniel Hirschmann’s “Glowbits”

Both of these projects explore the idea of the visual image through pixel manipulation. “Cubit” does so by creating an interface that allows the user to physically manipulate pixels by eliminating the use of a mouse. This is an interesting approach because it makes the idea of the pixel seem more tangible and begins to give it life outside of the 2d virtual environment. However, I think this is somewhat hinders by the design of the object itself; it’s shape and screen interface still too clearly mimic that of a regular, everyday computer. I think it would be more interesting to find a way to creating such an experience a more “out of the box” setting.

“Glowbits” is an attempt to draw with pixels in 3d space. I think this concept is a really cool one to explore, as it also is a defiance of the typical 2d virtual environment, and further begins to give pixels physical attributes, in a sense. I think that the movement of the 3d “pixels” begins to speak to this idea of physicality and to a certain extent, gives you the ability to experience it from different views besides the frontal one (though the frontal one is obvious the point of most interest). However, I wish the 3d “pixels” themselves could be better experienced from multiple viewpoints (instead of just the rods holding them), as it still seems to have a sense of linearity that suggests more of a 2d surface.