November 21st, 2011
Just back from Creativity and Cognition 2011, which was truly ace. I gave the paper I wrote with my co-supervisor, Prof. Ernest Edmonds, which people seemed to like. Saw some thought-provoking presentations and met a number of inspiring and wonderful people. Everything one could wish for in a conference, really.
Guy Claxton gave a truly thoughtful keynote. Creative-Mindedness: When Technology Helps and When It Hinders. He pointed out that formal education as it’s currently instituted systematically destroys the creative habits of mind. In response to a question on how precisely it does this, he referred to his chart of those habits. For example, one creative habit is inquisitiveness, which is damaged by the focus in structured curricula on requiring students to study questions they have not asked. Another is creative stamina & resilience (exemplified by Einstein, who said that it was not so much that he was especially clever, but more that he stayed with problems for longer). This is damaged by the scheduling of classes that require every problem to be solved in an hour.
The papers continued through the next few days – but there were also a lot of excellent posters. Apparently as there was only a single track for papers, the organisers could not accept some submissions that were actually very good, so those people were encouraged to resubmit as posters. Which meant that the quality of work in the posters was pretty impressive.
Of course, it’s Creativity and Cognition so there was also room for art – my favourite works were Matt Ruby’s Sympathy for Pacman and Jack Stenner & Patrick LeMieux’s Open House: Interaction as Critical Reflection. To top it off, the conference was held at Atlanta’s High Museum of Art, and we were permitted an after-hours tour. As well as some tragically unmoving Calder mobiles (which really don’t belong in temperature controlled rooms), there on a wall was perhaps my favourite artwork of all time: Duchamp’s L.H.O.O.Q. Shaved. Yes, you have to know the story for this one to work properly.
So finally: a few people asked for my slides, so after the break I’ll embed a Quicktime movie of them. Thank you everyone at C&C 2011, and especially the erstwhile organisers for providing such a great atmosphere for collaboration and creativity.
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Posted in Interaction Design, art, collaboration, conferences, creativity, interactive art, mixed reality, place | No Comments »
August 8th, 2011
Participants:
- Tim McLaughlin – Texas A&M University
- Tommy Burnette – Lucasfilm Singapore
- Tim Fields – Certain Affinity
- Jonathan Gibbs – DreamWorks Animation
- David Parrish – Reel FX Creative Studios
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Posted in collaboration, conferences, creativity | No Comments »
January 6th, 2011
Some posts tracking my research over the last four years (newest first):
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September 14th, 2010
Whenever I sign up to an online service, I use a unique email address. That way when spam starts coming in I can see whose fault it is. I’m suddenly getting rather a lot of spam, sent from disposable email accounts (e.g. Yahoo) and directing me to various scam websites registered in Russia. All at once, from multiple vectors. That’s the part that worries me; here’s why.
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Posted in social | 1 Comment »
August 3rd, 2010
DMT is on again for Spring 2010 – I’m lecturing with Oanh. Hello everyone.
Tags: 95564
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June 10th, 2010
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Translation: You should not trust this message.
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June 3rd, 2010
To our great delight Professor Gerhard Fischer is visiting my research group, the Creativity and Cognition Studios this afternoon, at the invitation of our own Professor Ernest Edmonds.
Earlier this morning Prof. Fischer delivered this HAIL lecture on Meta-Design and Social Creativity at the CSIRO. And as social creativity is a central research concern for many of us here, we’re quite excited to have him here.
Personally I’m hoping to talk about mixed reality and tabletop systems as opposed to immersive virtual environments for collaborative creativity at a distance. Or the role of Collaborative Place. Or whatever comes up ^_^
Posted in collaboration, creativity, mixed reality, place, research log, uts | No Comments »
April 13th, 2010
processing sketch with webcam, 3d, drawing
Posted in mixed reality, prototypes | 1 Comment »
April 7th, 2010
Location is not Place, but the two concepts do intervolve. Or perhaps (when I’m feeling well-disposed to the world) they intertwingle.
So I’m interested in location, and for this reason will be buying the wifi+3G iPad, which has a comprehensive suite of location-awareness technologies, rather than the wifi iPad, which is also location-aware but less comprehensively so.
I keep seeing absurd fallacies being promulgated about the iPad and Assisted GPS. I think “promulgated” is a word that is now entirely reserved for absurd fallacies. Do you think anyone is out there promulgating enlightenment? If they are, they’re not posting to the Wired Gadget Lab weblog comment threads, anyway.
So here for your edification is the truth about A-GPS vs. GPS vs. wi-fi triangulation.
Note: this is dull, don’t bother reading it. I just had to get this rant down to stop me boring people with it in person.
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Posted in place, space | 6 Comments »
February 26th, 2010
Not from me this time, from the excellent folks at Omnigroup. Beautiful.
Posted in Interaction Design, prototypes | No Comments »
