CHI'2013 in Paris
Tue, 07 May 2013
I'm just back from the CHI'2013 conference in Paris where I was demonstrating the Transformations/ColourNet artworks as part of the Interactivity exhibition. The international conference presents the latest thinking and research in Human Computer Interaction and is the place to find out about the latest trends in computing.
The conference is so big that it is impossible to go to every session, so I selected the topics of most interest to me - typically digital arts, new forms of screens and input devices and personal manufacturing.
I saw some fascinating work on interacting with large screens using personal mobile devices and eye, or 'gaze', tracking. At the opposite end of the scale a Japanese research group presented a fingernail mounted display that could effectively turn any surface in to a touchscreen! A number of new personal manufacturing techniques were also on show. One of these used plastics and lasers to generate 3D models much faster than a typical 3D printer. I was also interested to see that 'form' displays are now being developed. These allow shapes to be literally moulded in a solid 3D way, or data to be 'felt' and not just seen.
There were also plenty of live demonstrations of work-in-progress and examples of novel ways to control a computer - such as a platform game that could be controlled by squeezing a teddy bear!
If you visit the chi2013.acm.org web site you will be able to find videos and text from the presentations. The iPhone App is also very useful, containing details of all the sessions that ran during the conference. See my pictures from the event here.
