Philip van Allen

American Honda and George P. Johnson have donated one of their Oracle Multi-touch Tables to the Media Design Program. We now have it permanently in our graduate studio where it is available for faculty and students to develop new applications. In particular, we’re interested in exploring how large sets of text and image content can be explored in a collaborative way with multiple users.

Demo Video, More video on YouTube

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.

…Read more

One of the online outlets of Communication Arts, designinteract.com (site dead), just covered the Infiniti Interactive Mirror — a life-sized video and sound installation where people interact with three 8 foot high screens by simply reaching out to different areas of the display interface. This project grew out of one of our graduate’s thesis project and work he did in my Interactive Objects and Spaces class with fellow student Scott Nazarian (MDP, 2004). Nikolai Cornell (MDP, 2004) conceived of and managed the project which was built for carmaker Infiniti by George P. Johnson in collaboration with the Designory, Mindflood, and my company, Commotion. The installation is part of the traveling Infiniti auto show exhibit and was displayed at the Detroit and Chicago auto shows. It will soon be in New York City, and in December it will be in Los Angeles.

The designinteract.com article is especially interesting in that it covers the entire process of the project, from concept through completion: www.designinteract.com/features/mirrors/ (site dead – instead please view a PDF of site rescued from the wayback machine at archive.org) 

For an overview of the project and video of people using it, see the dedicated site for it here: www.interactivemirror.net

.

An installation for Infiniti at the International Auto Shows, the Infiniti Interactive Mirror is a 3 screen interface that uses mirrored glass and rear projection to create a seamless large screen touch interface. George P. Johnson created the project with Nikolai Cornell (MDP alum, basing the project on his thesis project) as creative director. Nikolai worked with The Designory, MindFlood, and my company Commotion. 

On this project, I designed and built the sensor system that detects a person’s hand position in front of a flat surface without any sensors on the sides of the display or behind the user. In addition, I provided interactive consulting on the project.

Read an article on how the project was produced (rescued with the wayback machine – was originally published online at designinteract.com, but communication arts killed it).

[View with PicLens]

www.interactivemirror.net

Corporate Delicti was a group exhibition at Nucleus Gallery around the topic of disillusionment with corporate life. Collaborating with student Colin Owen, we built a system of interactive objects from an office – a copier, file cabinet, and fax machine. Painted gray, each object was made interactive by removing the guts and putting sensors and speakers inside.

The copier groaned when someone approached it, and when the “copy” button was pushed, a loop of copying sound played. With each subsequent push, a music track was added to the mix, building up a complete musical loop.

The file cabinet played more music tracks that synchronized with the copier sound. This track faded up as the user opened the drawer, bringing in more tracks the further the drawer was opened (typing, drums, etc.), In addition, occasionally when the drawer was opened, the sound of crows seemed to jump out of the cabinet and fly across the gallery space as the sound moved from a speaker inside the cabinet to speakers above it, and the across the room to speakers in the back of the gallery.

The fax machine played a loud and ominous sound when the handset was picked up. When the flash-hook on the phone was clicked, the fax machine played a computer voice reading a random segment of a contract stating the company owned everything created, throughout the universe. These contract excerpts used different computer voices and came out of different speakers each time they played.

[View with PicLens]

More pictures

10 minute documentation video

1st section at gallery opening, 2nd section staged demo, 3rd section walkthrough of entire show