On April 25th 2008, Anne Burdick (MDP Department Chair), Nik Hafermaas (Dean of Communication Design @ Art Center) and I gave a talk at the USC Interactive Media Arts and Practice Program to discuss the MDP’s New Ecology of Things research initiative. This talk was webcast, and the web recording of it can be seen on Adobe’s education site.

The Acura Oracle project was initiated by MDP alumni Nikolai Cornell at George P. Johnson for the Acura stand at the international auto shows (including Detroit, Chicago, New York, and LA). I participated as a consultant in the initial creative brainstorming and technical definition. Bringing in Moto Development to create the multi-touch technology and optics, I coordinated Moto with the creative team, advised on interaction issues, and developed test projects to explore different interaction possibilities.

After the first year deployment at the auto shows, American Honda and GPJ lent the Oracle to the MDP for our summer term. I taught my Interactive Objects and Spaces class with the Oracle as one of our experimental design platforms. Several student and faculty projects came out of this, and IOS student Jonathan Jarvis then went on to intern at GPJ, implementing a version of his class project which became the Oracle application for the 2007/2008 auto show season. 

One of the Oracles has now been permanently donated to the MDP.

See also a page put up by Bill Buxton, one of the original people to implement multi-touch systems back in the ’80s.