This was my first time at FITC; last year I only attended the Get a Job Event. I attended all three days (day three’s post will come later), and had a great time. I will do my best to attend next year.

I didn’t know what to expect going in to this, part of me expected it a bit to be more like a trade show with booths, but as Sunil pointed out, “what kind of things would actually be in booths?” Not to worry, as there was always something to do.

Day 1

My first session was Dr. Woohoo’s Glue69: Connecting the Dots Between the Toolkits. He was prototyping some interesting ideas using OpenFrameworks to have SWFs communicate to desktop applications such as Illustrator, Photoshop & Maya. This is a concept I have always been fascinated by – coming up with ways to link two applications together, even if its just by something basic like batch scripts. Experiments in using Webcams as alternate inputs to audio visualization in Maya was demonstrated. As he put it “the possibilities are endless.” The strong selling point was that OpenFrameworks can sit on a cloud machine, and allow someone to use flash to create something on another computer’s version of Photoshop. This session was covered in the fitc blog, here.

Mario Klingemann’s The Tinkerer’s Box was next – a session I was very excited to see. I really enjoyed how he walked through the initial building blocks of what he was using – triangles and circles, and how he went about creating some custom Class representations, and then jumped from basic examples to the end result:

Some crazy illustrations! These were created as Photoshop-style filters, where an underlying image is analized and a new layer is placed on top. It really was successful at inspiring me – his whole talk (and many of technical talks of the weekend) had the attitude of “here’s how I did it, let’s see what you can come up with!”

The first thing he did was define “web 2.0″ for he class as nothing more than a marketing term. Its about time an “industry insider” actually admitted this point. I’ve heard countless “professionals” toss this term around and lost of people I know who are less-computer savvy think of it as a new technology. Wayne defined web 2.0 as follows:

• encourage community & collabaration
• shared content creation
• focus on a single task
• clean, clear interface,
• supports tagging / bookmarking
• moves data and apps from desktop to web

The last point is one I found interesting; for years people were using desktop applications, and around 2002-2004 there began a shift to move desktop apps to web interfaces (currently I am writing this blog post in google docs, and once all my thoughts are organized I will paste the contents into wordpress). In the last year or so however there have been numerous attempts to bring web-based applications back to the desktop. In particular, Wayne seems very hyped about Adobe AIR, a technology that I like, but at the same time have noticed one or two pitfalls with (the lack of threading support that a language such as c++ or Java can utilize proved to be a major problem for my client project last semester). When I asked him his thoughts on this trend, he stated that “different tools can get used for different reasons” and that both technologies can co-exist. While I agree with this sentiment (I am currently not using my personal computer, hence the use of google docs and not Microsoft Word), I find this contradictory with Dan the Man’s “Mutlimedia Pioneering is more than just taking something that already exists and modifying it” stance.

Wayne then gave us a quick rundown of web 2.0 technologies such as tagging (he cited an example of how social norms dictate how things are labeled: Photos from the New Orleans Hurricane are easier to find when tagged as “Katrina”), del.icio.us, rss, and “embed code” (which allow less-savvy computer users easily update their websites with muliimedia. He also broke down some “social rules”:

you dont use a social network, you become a part of it

If you are a company trying to “cash in” on a social network, you will fail if you are not actually a part of the community and instead just try to force your product down people’s throats.

contribution is participation

This goes back to the first point; If you don’t contribute to the community, then you really aren’t a part of the community, regardless of you membership.

social media encourages engagement & evangelism

Wayne cited an example of a group of sheep eating grass; if one farmer is a douchebag then he can let his sheep destroy the entire field, whereas if everyone does their part for the “common good” then the community lives on.

social media:

• is local first
• is viral
• is granular
• is a conversation, not a broadcast
• is mobile
• wants to be free

He also discussed many 2.0 technologies. One that Wayne was very passionate about and kept returning to was Twitter, and kept telling us how wonderful and fascinating the twitter experience is for anyone not involved (for those not aware, the idea is that anyone can know what you are thinking at any time). Well, a quick search through Wayne’s archives found some gems from before and after he spoke to us. I would never want to get involved with something that ARCHIVES your thoughts for all to see. I also would think there would be a problem of professionalism when you rant and rave about this that and the other thing on a public forum. Additionally, didn’t we have a speaker last week in Andrew’s Project Management class who spent a good deal of time slamming the maturity level of most Twitter users?

Finaly, Wayne briefly touched upon some of the following technologies:

• iPhone SDK
• Flash on iPhone
• Android
• Sprout – WYSIWYG editor for flash
• ning, toolkit for “creating facebook”
• jaiku – “social life feed”
• Mogulus – a real time web based tv studio for creating live web tv shows.

He also touched upon the current Facebook Beacon controversy, something I have been following since about December. Its good to see that someone other than myself is concerned about Facebook’s pitfalls.

Wayne was a very engaging speaker, but I felt he left me very confused in the end. Wayne does not appear to even have his own website, and instead jumps on every social media bandwagon out there (a quick google only came up with his name attached to social media sites). While his argument is that in this day and age community is everything, personally and professionally I do not seen any forseeable future where an IT professional would not have a web site, if not even to just store links to all of his social media communities. We also mentioned “not becoming a slut to social media” which, to me, he very clearly is.

Additionally, I am curious when and if there will ever be any form of “social network convergence” where you can keep everything together in one place; right now I find alot of these social media places redundant, and full of redundant information. I assumed the world wide web and in particular “web 2.0″ was supposed to be about ease of use. Right now everyone puts all their photos on flickr, bookmarks on del.ico.us, video on youtube, and status on twitter, and then puts all that information AGAIN on their facebook or myspace anyways.

That’s one of the reasons I have never got much into the whole “social community” trend. I post on applicable message boards, I have a facebook account, and I rate films on IMDB. That’s about it. Perhaps its because I have always had a programming background; if I ever required somewhere to store my photos, I could just write a photo album script and place it on my server and tweak it to my own needs. If i needed a blog, I could install wordpress on to my own server, and not have to worry about Facebook or myspace slowing down to a crawl during peak hours.

Finally, here is a video of Wayne’s more or less talking about the same sorts of things to another group of people I am sure he talked about on Twitter afterwards.

Of course, it turns out we didn’t miss them, and once again were super-early. So we waited with some of the class, until the big group all arrived.

We were lead into the ROM Digital Gallery by Brian Porter, the sr. Director of New Media. He oversees everything from catalog publishing to 2D/3D imaging. The digital gallery is a classroom-sized room with touch screen kiosks at every desk and a giant projector unit at the front. The idea is that for a premium fee, class trips to the ROM can include a multimedia experience. Currently they have two programs: Ancient Egypt & Canadian Heritage, but they plan to add more over time. The kiosks allow visitors to get a “virtual hands on experience” by manipulation 3D representations of Museum artifacts that users would never be allowed to touch in real life. Meanwhile, a video experience plays on the projector, developed in Final Cut Pro and Watchout.

The ROM is also working with the Virtual Museum of Canada to allow groups from far away destinations who cannot afford or make it to the ROM to connect to the Digital Gallery. Over the internet, groups can watch and experience the presentations and virtual kiosks.

Part of Brian’s job is to find funding for all of these projecs, as the Royal Ontario Museum is a non-profit group. Due to this, alot of the new media utilized by the ROM are proven technologies such as touch-screens. While not quite the coolest and advanced touch screens ever, they get the job done. Apparently they are nothing more than a touch screen laptop running Internet Explorer Web plugins. Somewhere down the line, they intend to expand by utilizing broadcast media of current events to allow speakers to link Museum exhibits with stories ripped from the headlines. I find this goal exciting, because it is the convergence of new media, current events, and museum history.

Brian then told us about their newest goal: to digitally archive all 6 million specimens in the ROM. This includes 3D photographing every article, and linking it to their database of information. They plan to eventually put all these high resolution photographs online. Their business model is to allow licensing of these photographs and videos, similar to a Stock Photography company.

A brief tour was involved, where we witnessed a ROM touch screen from Gesturetek, and a practical application of touch screen kiosks at the Dinosaur exhibit. The kiosks appeared to be built in flash, and worked similarly to youtube. We were then given some time to “view the kiosks” ie look at the Dinosaurs.

When the tour was over, we were given some time for lunch. Originally, we were to disperse to find somewhere to eat, and then meet up across the street to visit Steve Mann at U of T. Turns out, it was a good half-hour walk through downtown Slush and Snow. Luckily, Heather had brought along a GPS device. Barbara and Dwight chose to drive. They were smarter than us.

When we arrived, we discovered there was a Subway station just down the street. It would have been a 2 minute hop on the train. Oh well, it was good to get some air.

We were hoping to get some insight on Steve’s cyborgism, however it appears that for the most part he is no longer as interested in it. He wishes to “return to the womb” and visit more primordial concepts such as water and the inner child. Thus, he created Nesse. Nesse is what he calls his hydraulophone, which is a flute-like instrument that blows water out of a pump instead of air through your lungs. It is played like a piano. Currently the largest one is outside of the Ontario Science Centre. One thing I found interesting was his creation of a new form of MIDI, to allow hydraulophones to communicate to one another. He cited the example of having a water fight between two people over the internet; where you would push down on one key and water would shoot out of the same key on the other side of the planet. That blows my mind.

Dwight then drove Heather, Kaleena and I to union station, after a quick visit to the comic book store so Heather could stock up on some new toys for her collection. We then heard about the Sheridan lockdown, and were relieved that Dan the Man had “rescued” us due to his well planned field trip that day. Eventually we met up with Dan the Man and headed home on the busy Go Train, where Kaleena bumped into the father of some children that she baby-sits for. Small talk ensued.

He then ran down different types of mobile applications: SMS, MMS, GPS, etc. James demonstrated a basic Flash Lite app which would create a text message to be sent to the weather network to find out the weather in a Canadian city, all through a GUI. That way you would not have to know the code of the city you are looking for. These types of apps are actually very handy, and I could see them not taking up much space and therefore very cheap and easy to download.

James demonstrated how easy it was to create a flash lite application using Device Central. Of course the problem is that in Canada the average cost is $1/mb $20/1mb which means anything involving video is completely out of the question for the average user. I had to laugh when he went through a series of icebreakers asking how many people do things such as texting or taking photos on their phone; and that nobody put up their hands for over half the questions (surfing the net, downloading video etc).

Another example was a photo uploader that would allow a user to place a photo taken on their phone immediately onto their flickr site. James also ran down the steps and technology needed to set up a SMS/MMS server. Apparently currently in Canada Rogers is the only way to do this (I find that hard to believe). But you can set up your own PC to be a server which would be great for testing.

The world of QR codes was revealed, a technology I had never heard of or see before. You take a photo of the code with your phone, and use an interpreter to decode it. Now this is neat. I would not be surprised if this takes off as a new trend. Compared to a modern day UPC code, this technology is a standard in Japan, where things such as newsprint ads, wine bottles, and train schedule information can all be accessed on your phone. There is also semapedia which allows anyone to create a code, print it off, and place it at a real world location. When a user loads the code on their mobile device, they are taken to the appropriate Wikipedia page. This is a great application of the technology: If you know what it is, you can use it. If not, it’s not intrusive and you can ignore it.

Overall I found the entire presentation confusing. James is obviously passionate about his work, as he has won awards, but he admitted repeatedly about being Jaded within the industry, and seemed to stress the point that the technology isn’t perfect and doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. I suppose the goal was to inspire us to come up with new ways to utilize the technology, but when half your presentation discusses the limitations and cost factors, it doesn’t seem to inspire an unemployed college student to spend countless amounts of money “exploring.”

Kudos to James for almost completely ignoring the iPhone and iTouch, two devices I am tired of hearing about.

“Hey”

“Hi,” I responded.

“There’s a guest speaker coming at 1pm”

“Really? Who and why?” I inquired.

“Simon someone. To give us our last blog post”

And with that, I changed into a pair of pants, ran down the stairs still chewing on my soon to be cold spaghetti, and got in the car to drive to school.

I made it there for 1pm. I am amazing.

Simon someone turned out to be none other than Simon Conlin. I know, THE Simon Conlin, from Flash in the Can. I know, THE Flash in the Can. He showed us examples of Algorithmic Synthetic Interactive Applications (or I think that’s what the ASIA acronym stands for; he talked kind of fast for that part. That was soon rectified as he stopped talking and began to show us YouTube videos of practical applications of Physical Interactivity:

One that was interesting (and quite long; both Simon and Dan the Man left the room at one point, perhaps thinking that no one would notice) was of Zack Booth Simpson discussing his Interactive Art. I know, THE Zack Booth Simpson. What was interesting was that most of the video was of Talking Heads, and not of the actual art. There were a few examples that I totally missed the visuals for as I was busy taking notes of what he said.

The virtual Calder Mobiles however were neat. Simon also showed us a video of a camouflaged octopus. I am not sure why.

Simon also directed us to webcamtastic, a site which is a very simple demonstration of cameras entering the public’s use for art and for creating an interactive experience.

One amazing application was of a George Michael concert where giant interactive screens and floors were manipulated using movement as well as sound. It makes for a very interesting floor show and I wonder if more artists are going to design stage shows using this technology.

Simon showed us an interactive music wall which appears to be an amazing version of my inferior “Air Guitar Hero” project for MP/AV class. Well at least I can argue great minds think alike. Also, there was a great video of Adobe’s Interactive Wall. That would be something I would like to try and build on a smaller scale. Perhaps next semester.

While there were some interesting videos displayed, overall I was quite disappointed by the speaker; Simon came out all this way to essentially send us links to YouTube. Schoolwork-wise I did not get a chance to accomplish as much as I was hoping to today, and Most of the videos shown were just using similar technology to GestureTek. I understand it was an attempt to inspire us (and for me, mission accomplished) but I felt like Simon came all this way for really no reason whatsoever.

Once we make our way to Adelaide Street (for 10:45, the tour starts at 11), we quickly realize that this is going to require some work to pull off. We circle downtown Toronto for about 10 minutes searching for #317 before deciding to park in a lot and continue our Journey on foot. We find a spot and high five each other in celebration, only to discover that Kilian & her merry band of travelers have decided to pounce on that spot before we can. At least we’re not alone any more.

While finding a spot elsewhere in the lot, “Team (an)Drew” says Hello as they appear, and instantly disappear. We pay the happy man in the booth (I assume he’s happy because he’s making a living charging people $3 per half-hour for parking) and the five of us (Heather, Brook, Karen, Kilian & myself) begin our eastbound trek to GestureTek.

After 5-10 minutes of hiking, we realize that due to the building numbers becoming further and further from 317 we are most likely heading the wrong way. We encounter an unknown passerby who as we pass him says “You appear to be lost!” Not only is he willing to help us out, but he knows exactly where GestureTek is. Indeed, we were traveling in the wrong direction.

It turns out that GestureTek’s offices were literally on the west side of the parking lot. Our bad. As we enter the building (which appears to be under renovation; similar to the hotel in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York) I expected to be hit by swinging paint cans or trip over strategically placed micro machines. My worries were soon gone once the elevator opened and we journeyed to the ninth floor.

We arrive and are quickly ushered into the back room of the GestureTek offices. It appears that we have arrived late, as Vincent John Vincent (President/Founder) is busy showing off his company’s neat toys.

We start with a videogame, which utilizes green screen technology. As we arrived late, I did not manage to catch all the details, but the camera seems to recognize your image from the green screen and put you right into the game. As you move around (either walking, or by using gestures such as waving your arms) the camera picks up your movements and changes the output of the game. Interestingly, this is similar to technology used by Weather Services International, or more specifically, TV Weather Men/Women.

Vincent also cited some examples of television shows using primitive versions of this technology: One game show for Nickelodeon involved players running through a virtual obstacle course which was nothing more than a 30′x30′ wall, with some platforms, staircases, and ladders (all covered in green), and the difficulties would appear on screen. While he could not remember the name, some quick searching revealed it was Nick Arcade, a 1992 videogame-themed children’s game show. What is interesting about this is that while the technology has been around for that long (and obviously longer in the case of TV weather persons), it is still not readily available to the public, nor has anyone found a popular “personal use” application for this stuff yet.

We got a chance to play with their GestureFX technology, which are different renditions of the same hardware: GroundFX, TableFX & WallFX all work similarly, it just depends on where the cameras are positioned (on the ceiling looking down, on a projector looking at a wall, etc) and what the output device is (a screen facing up, a projected image, etc). The Interactive floor uses IR, and is designed to ignore the projected image and only pick up the differences (such as hand movement, or foot movement). What’s neat is that most of the applications written were used in Flash (see video).

I find it interesting that the main example used for the interactive table is Pong. It appears that civilization peaked in 1972.

GestureTek’s Newest venture is GestureTek Mobile, which incorporates movement detection into cellphone cameras. It allows the movement of the phone to be used similarly to a wii controller. I think this has some great potential for innovation in cell phone applications & games. You could use the phone as a controller instead of a straightforward input device.

We then ended our journey with a trip back to Oakville, where a lunch at Kelseys (where a hero did not have to wait an hour for his food for the first time ever) and Flash ActionScript review and learning was in abundance.

Finally, here are a few more links associated with Gesture Technology:

• Handy future for gesture sensor
• Gesture Glove Not Science Fiction

Song then demonstrated one of his newer projects, Facial Animation Communication Engine (or F.A.C.E.). This technology can analyze movement of the human face in real time; specifically movement and rotation. Currently he is still working on eye movement and facial inflections, but the general shape of the eyes, mouth and head can become quite similar to the users just by using a webcam. This was developed in C++.

Finally, we went to the 2nd floor and used the Immersion Studios room. Our current setup involves a 3 projector system, and each projects onto a large screen, to make you feel like you are closer to the action. This has practical applications in current day using things like IMAX presentations. Additionally, we watched a branching video which made use of audience members via tablet pcs. During the demonstration video (which looked like a bad episode of Babylon 5 by the way), audience members would play games (some as simple as polling audience members, others as advanced as space invaders), where the results of those games would be reflected on screen – either the video would change based on decisions, or the screen itself would illustrate what was happening during the “mini games.”

Overall I found this experience quite interesting. It will especially be interesting to see how much further the Immersion Studios technology can be taken to create interactive experiences. With new devices such as the Wii motion sensor, or touch screen walls, I could see quite a potential for “Interactive Movie Theatres” in the future.