We’re both pleased and slightly embarrassed to note that the Titanium Chef game has become so popular that the server crashed several times this past week thanks to the unexpected surge in visitor traffic. But we adapted quickly and upgraded the site to a more robust system today. If you visited this week and were unable to play, we hope you have time to go back and try again!

In the meantime, check out this very positive casual gamer review for Titanium Chef.

Optical Tone-Dynamic Color Composition

(Tsutomu Mutoh, Researcher at the International Media Research Foundation)

In his collective work, “Cathedrale de Rouen”, Monet captures the effect of changing light conditions on the same scene. Citing this work as the main influence for this project, Mutoh purposefully takes the concept one step further to manipulate our perception of colour in a controlled environment. The result is a visually compelling interactive piece that appeals to all.

Imagine four opaque, freestanding, barbell-like instruments arranged equidistantly from each other and partially enclosed in a three-sided room. Each are weighted such that the instruments return to their original, upright positions in an inverted, pendulous manner.

When interacted with, the instruments are meant to look like “…globes emitting color…floating and flying in the dark.” A three-axes acceleration sensor embedded in each bottom-weighted globe detects the motion of the top globes. The data generated is input into an “Optical Tone Algorithm” which determines the LED colour output of the top globes. Rotation adjusts hue, whereas swing adjusts brightness.

Each wall has a different pattern in a colour composition determined by the algorithm. The wall colour changes wherever light hits it and is determined by the colour of the light emitted by the globe and the wall’s pattern.

Slightly confusing? Just look at the pictures here.

SIGGRAPH Asia 2008 described its Emerging Technologies showcase as “…interactive, mind-expanding explorations in virtual and mixed reality, haptic interfaces, ubiquitous systems, digital tools, HD displays, robotics, and more.”

Two installations translated from interesting program summaries to downright mind-blowing physical manifestations. I describe the first here. For more details, check out their website.
“An Augmented Tabletop Video Game with Pinching Gesture Recognition”
(Contributors: Kentaro Fukuchi - Japan Science and Technology Agency; Toshiki Sato, Haruko Mamiya, Hideki Koike - The University of Electro-Communications)

On approach, it looks like an average air hockey table, but this is where the similarities end. The table surface functions as an interactive video game display, wherein the game objective is to shoot little solid circles before advancing to the “big boss” circle. A high-speed camera positioned above the table registers the circle created when a user touches thumb and forefinger together over the table surface. The system then generates a hollow circle for the user to shoot with. The motions are intuitive and simply brilliant - after creating the “weapon”, the user shoots by tapping (”pinching”) thumb and forefinger together and is easily able to control the speed and direction of shooting. The best part? Any number of people can join in. Each person can create two weapons (or four, if you have amazing toe control). How cool is that?

I’m out on the East Coast, and I’m attending Flash Forward 2007 in Boston. It’s been a great trip so far, meeting new people and seeing new places (my first time in Boston, can you believe it?). The conference is good, but, as usual, the most rewarding parts of any conference are the in-between and afterwards where you get to geek-out face-to-face over lunch, dinner and drinks. Some personal highlights to date:

Finding a Starbucks before the opening keynote
Though I’m quite sick of Starbucks coffee lately, it sure was critical to information retention that I get that morning injection of coffee after a late night and jet-lag. Also, there was entirely too much applause going on at this keynote. Ok, some AIR apps are cool, but c’mon…

OOP for N00bs
Peter Elst is a pleasant chap from Belgium who finally straightened out some ActionScript 3 OOP concepts. Well, at least for me anyway, judging by some of the blank stares around me.

Grabbing some quick snaps of Boston during lunch
Boston is a beautiful–and pretty clean–city. I was impressed by how small it is, relatively. And the fact that most of the major traffic arteries seem to go underneath the city.

Reconnecting with mod7 Alumnus, Jeff Weir
Jeff came out to FF2007 because his amazing Viscosity project was a finalist in the Festival. We eat fresh lobsters afterward the awards show. Sweet.

“Receiving” an award
My friend, Loc Dao, couldn’t make it to the festival so he asked me to collect the award for him, should his project win. It won. I collected. I acceptance-speeched. The award and I celebrated on the town. I just hope it isn’t too sticky… congrats to all the other winners for Flashforward Film Festival 2007.

Craig Swann’s Session
Craig Swann dazzled the audience at FF2007 with creative experiments using webcams, onboard mics, time, and alternative interfaces like the Wii remote. Neat.

Mario Klingeman
Mario presented his project to quantify the essence of Art into n-dimensional space using genetic algorithms and Flash, thus allowing a program to generate “art”. Very cool. Very German. Very Berlin. Oh, and he gave out pins! Awesome touch.

It’s strange being in place where you can talk to a group of strangers about properties, event handlers, and document classes, and they know exactly what you are talking about. 

More to come…

This is one of the neatest things I’ve seen in a while (if you have a webcam). Try letting the snow pile up on your head and shoulders and then brushing it off. Pretty cool, eh? Thanks to Darren for sending this one over.