ART && Code 3d just finished wrapping up at Carnegie Mellon University. The theme of DIY 3d sensing brought in lots of interesting workshops and ideas including, but not limited to: 3d printing, hassle-free projection calibration, Teledildonics ( controllng dildos with arduinos ) , training athletes and dancers, and monitoring hospital patients. All of this was inspired by the kinect although the Asus XTION did make several appearances but mostly from the Primesense folks. The overall atmosphere was one of collaboration and sharing, as my first “unconference” , ( where attendees pick and run some of the sessions ) it was inspiring to see people from all different backgrounds come together to share demoes, discuss ideas, and network. For me it was also a chance to meet lots of the Open Frameworks community who I have been stalking following on twitter and the OF forums and to finally see them discuss, speak, teach was more than I could have asked for. There were some thoughts or ideas that really reverberated with me that I would like to share :
“Standing on The Shoulders of Giants” was a term I had not heard before and refers to the groundwork laid for us by various open source platforms, and how we are not alone in achieving ideas or solutions.
Look outward and use the tools that already exist, and if possible write bridges or send messages between them.
If you can’t predict something it’s interesting.
Humor in your projects will always evoke a good sense from your user and win the crowd over.
Get paid for your creative ideas, not for reselling 1’s and 0’s or open-source.
Contribute to open-source as a means to learn and engage with other developers.
Perfection or achievement can be in the failure of something.
For new interactions: user feedback, especially sound, will make or break your product.
Art && Code was inspirational in so many ways and I know that it will influence my personal work and my projects at Helios for a long time to come. Thank you CMU, Golan Levin, and Microsoft for sponsoring such a great , rare event.
