I worked on a new TV show with Dragons Den star Duncan Bannatyne for a new series on Virgin 1 that airs in April 2010. Under the working title The Great British Holiday Show – the series focussed on six UK tourist attractions, and Tunnels Through Time were lucky enough to be included.

This was once a dusty, rainy day attraction with a range of life sized models of kings, pirates, giants and similar characters from Cornish legends. A large number of its special effects and sound recordings had stopped working long ago. It unfortunately looked old and tatty and in need of a big fix up.

All that changed in 2009 when I helped consult on the complete makeover and modernisation of the ageing tourist attraction. Millionaire businessman Duncan Bannatyne from Dragons Den spent several weeks earlier in the year working closely with the owners and the Twofour production team to give it a complete revamp and bring it into the 21st century and making it a sea-side attraction worth visiting.

New stories for new experiences

I worked with the production company, Twofour Broadcast, to go through every inch of the old attraction and create recommendations for improvements. The team had a tight budget, and an even tighter time frame to get Duncan and his team to re-vamp the old attraction.

I recommended that live actors would be brought in to replace some of the static waxworks, and that a new story, with popular characters, Princesses, Pirates and Prisoners could bring the place to life. I also designed and recommended new special effects, including an amazing 3D fairy, that would fly throughout the attraction, guiding visitors in a high tech and interactive way.

In the end, not all of the incredible ideas I came up with were implemented, as we had to pick the most effective and exciting ones! The twofour production team worked with AtmosFEAR to create a totally new, interactive scare attraction!

The revamp

The revamp has cost over £30,000 and saw Tunnels Through Time  renamed as a pirate themed experience: Buccaneer Bay. One of the biggest things that changed was the time that people spent at buccaneer bay. By giving visitors more to do once they entered the building, the time a visitor needs to spend in the attraction has increased from around 30 minutes to an hour and a half.

For those visitors who are not afraid to enter, The Sunken Village of the Damned - Cornwall’s first SCARE attraction awaits its newest victims! In this dank, dark and foreboding place, scary tales are told of the ghost of Davy Jones and the lost souls trapped forever in Davy Jones’ Locker deep beneath the surface of the ocean. This dark, scary and exhilarating experience is most definitely not for the faint of heart!

Talking Statues was an amazing interactive digital outdoor artwork to celebrate the launch of Night at the Museum 2 on Blu-ray and DVD.

Working with Fox home entertainment and Taylor Herring, I developed interactive concepts and directed the special effects filming session for this amazing spectacle.

Sitting side by side in Bond Street, London, Churchill and Roosevelt statues were brought to life, using live digital video effects, and custom designed projection techniques.

The process

First we filmed two actors, one playing Churchill, the other Roosevelt. They filmed a number of lines, as if having a conversation between the two of them. The script was very funny, with lots of jokes about the problems of life as a statue. The filming took place on a special rig that allowed us to keep the heads of the actors very straight. Because, of course, statues cant move! I had to make sure that the actors put all of their expression and emphasis on their eyes, their mouths, and of course, their voices. At the end of the process we had some great comedy moments between the two actors.

Next, the videos are cut and edited together to make seamless conversations between the two actors. The videos were then colour treated and specially stabilised, to make sure that the features on the actors faces matched perfectly with the contours of the statues. Anything unnecessary like hair, cheeks and chins were digitally removed.

After that, the eyes and mouth of each statue were digitally “layered” so that they could be dynamically projected. Each layer was loaded onto two laptops, one for each statue. The video layers were synced with the audio for seamless playback.

Because the event was for one night only, and was completely outdoors, with no power supplys, we were able to design a custom system that used portable batteries to run all of the technology. This avoided any wires, and there was no need for high voltage to be in a public place. So it really was a 100% self contained projection system.

When the projector systems were moved into place, the software was then able to instantly match up the eyes and mouths of the statue with the eyes and mouths of the actors. The video layers could be triggered at any point, allowing TV presenters to literally interview the statues about their experiences. It was a lot of fun, and a great event that attracted a lot of media attention.

The end result

The end result was spookily effective. It was very eerie to see these two classic politicians come to life late at night in London’s Bond Street. It really brought some of the wonder of Night at the Museum to life. During the project we went through a lot of R&D, and we were very pleased with our research into long-life batteries for use in outdoor projections like this. To run this system for over 3 hours without having to plug anything in was a big achievement. The project was put together in just a few weeks, and that gave us just enough time to develop and test prototypes to create a fun and unusual final project.

Credits: Fox Home Entertainment, Taylor Herring, HMC Interactive

In 2004 I created this completely magical interactive experience called The Butterfly Garden for the Submerge exhibition. Its a memorable interactive illusion that puts digital butterflies all around you. Born in the palm of your hand, the interactive creatures flutter from flower to flower, until they eventually fly off into the ether.

People of all ages can interact with the artificially intelligent 3D butterflies by placing their hands above one of sixteen flowers, growing new and different butterflies in their palms. Entire groups of people can interact with the garden at any time. Just make sure you are gentle and calm though. Just like real butterflies, if you make sudden movements you may scare them away.

I have worked on several different versions of the beautiful butterfly garden.The very first was for the Submerge exhibition in Bristol, surrounding the main entrance with two sets of flowers planted on real grass turf. More recently the piece has been recreated for a Bridal show in Plymouth and a Literary festival in Cornwall.

How does it work?

Hidden into every sunflower is a tiny sensor that can detect the movement of your hand, and the distance and position of your hand. As you hold your hand out gently, the intelligent butterflies sense your position, and fly towards you. If you spend enough time playing, you can be surrounded by beautiful creatures.

How was this made?

I had been working with sensors and a computer control system that I wired and designed myself during my time on my degree. The sensors were really delicate and super-sensitive, so I had to find the perfect use for them. I wanted to create an interaction that was light and delicate and delightful. Luckily, Submerge approached me and asked me to create something along the theme of ‘organic/synthetic’ and the ideas just went together beautifully.

Thanks to Submerge

Hardcore Monkey Crash was the unusual name for an amazing mixed media online/offline game experience.

What is Hardcore Monkey Crash?

Hardcore Monkey Crash was a suite of different games that all worked together, featuring a purple monkey (called Hardcore Monkey). We produced various games like a racing game and a shooting game. But the games worked together. Bananas collected in the racing game could be used as ammo in the shooting game. Powerups could be obtained in one game and used in another.

An extra special feature was that we hid secret codes for the Hardcore Monkey Crash games on T-shirts, stickers, posters, books and other merchandise. Players who found the secret codes could upgrade their hardcore monkey with turbo speed or rapid firepower.

The games were available on a wide variety of platforms, including web based games, PDA’s and mobile phone games via SMS.

Hardcore Monkey Crash was ground-breaking at the time, because multi-platform deployment for entertainment had not really happened before in the UK, so it gave players a new, well rounded play experience.

Who made It?

Adam Montandon was the main game programmer. Mike Cobb did all the graphics, design and various interface elements. Andy Early worked on the database and backend to the games. Korash Sanjideh worked on all the audio for the games.

What happened to Hardcore Monkey Crash?

In 2003 Hardcore Monkey Crash was awarded 1st prize for Commercial Value at the Submerge awards. The prize was to work with top lawyers Wiggin and Co to develop the idea into a fully fledged company.

After a lot of time and development, Hardcore Monkey Crash became the digital production agency HMC Interactive, and the rest, as they say, is history.

The games and the website are no longer available, as the team moved away from online gaming to create more real world projects. But Hardcore Monkey Crash is still held in high regard as a great example of gameplay across established and emerging platforms.

The Question Table was a prototype design that I created, along with Mike Cobb, as a test to see how information could be saved to your skin.

Based on similar technology that I developed in the Butterfly Garden project, the Question Table was an entirely new concept.

The big idea

The ultimate aim is to allow people of different ages and with different interests experience a museum exhibit in a totally new and interesting way. At the start of your museum visit, you would be given a small personal armband. Each armband containing its own unique RFID chip. The RFID chip would save all your personal preferences on it, so as you approached another interactive experience throughout the museum the information presented to you would be able to change and adapt, based on your chosen options.

Choose your own path

At the start of any museum experience could be 3 different question tables, set at different heights, so that children could select a lower table, with child friendly topics, and adults could try a larger table with more advanced, challenging topics.

The table used special infra-red motion sensors that allow you to physically “scoop up” a question, and drag it off the table. Each circular table had an overspill projection, so that the data you selected would be projected onto your skin.

Around the edge of the table would be a wide range of RFID readers, that would then save the data to your bracelet.

If you were to approach another table, or another side of the table, your data would be loaded off of your bracelet onto your skin, and you could throw it around and manipulate it on the question table.

Cost

This cutting edge and unusual technology is actually very cost effective to implement. The RFID bracelets are cheap enough to be able to be used as a replacement to traditional printed tickets. The benefits are huge too. Each visitor gets their own personalised learning experience, so no two visits are the same, encouraging repeat visits. Also, custom settings can be saved onto the bracelet, so that, for example, teachers could check just how long their students were using each exhibit in a museum, allowing them to review any areas that may have been missed on a school trip.

From dream to reality

The question table is a great example of some of the prototype technology I helped to deign, that went from a dreamsheet concept to full scale mockup. Hopefully you will see this in a museum of the future!

I created a new software program called Visual Voice Pro that turns any kind of sound from a microphone into beautiful colours and light. Famous musician and broadcaster Jools Holland got in touch about developing this software for his live shows, and of course I said “yes”!

Software that can improvise?

Because of the nature of a live music show, anything can happen, especially with Jools Holland’s big band, that love to improvise and have fun with the audience. Its never the same show twice, so using pre-prepared visuals just wouldn’t be enough.

I was able to design and modify my software so that it would be responsive enough to project huge vibrant visual effects across the stage, and have the different instruments mapped via an audio mixer to different visual effects.

Going on the road

I worked with Jools Holland’s live events team and they were really great fun to work with. They were so positive and helpful, they really liked Visual Voice Pro. I collaborated with them to make sure that the software could withstand the heavy demands of an “on-the-road” schedule.

I was very pleased to see my dynamic and interactive graphics used on the UK live tours. Jools Holland and his team are now looking at new ways to incorporate dynamic visuals into live music.

I programmed the software from start to finish, and came up with the initial concept and design. The wonderful Izaskun Arandia-Richards helped get the ball rolling with the project management, and Jools Holland’s visual effects and tour team also had a huge impact in getting it all to work smoothly with the live shows. Darren Perry provided hands on technical support once the show started its tour.

Chew TV is a great online video website for young people. Schools, youth groups and young budding creative stars can upload their videos to a website, where other people can comment, rate, review and share their thoughts about the topics of the videos. It’s a safe, online environment where young people can communicate creatively through video.

So, what’s a Chew Table?

Chew TV wanted a new and interesting way to reach more people. The concept is based around a “talkaoke” table…. much like karaoke, but for talking! It sounds crazy, but its lots of fun!

A presenter sits inside the middle of a round table, and simply talks! Other guests can join in around the table, creating their own mini talk-show.

I designed special software that was embedded into the table that allowed videos to be player and sound-synced, so that everyone could watch and share videos together. People could also use the touch surface to tag thought, ideas and comments for discussion.

The entire table could easily fit into a vehicle, and be transported around schools, workshops, classes and youth groups around the UK.

How was it used?

The Chew Table allows presenters and teachers to openly discuss difficult topics, such as bullying, by allowing students to select different videos on the subject, and anonymously discuss them. This creates an interesting and unusual dynamic in the classroom, with lots of buzz and activity. The presenter in the centre of the table keeps the discussion flowing, and people can join in or opt-out however they please.

Its an unusual and fun way to share and talk about video, and a sensitive way to bring difficult issues up in the classroom.

I programmed all the software for the touch screen systems, including a network synchronisation routine that allowed videos to be played seamlessly over multiple screens, as well as an on screen keyboard for commenting, and other col little features, like a secret menu system for the presenter to quickly flip from one video to the next, and various interface design and screen design work. Chew TV provided the videos that were dynamically uploaded to the table, and the physical table itself was designed by the team at Talkaoke.

I had such a great time working with Cadbury World on projects like Chocolate Rain that I was thrilled when they, along with Newangle, asked me to work on a new interactive project for the historic Cadbury Collection.

The Story

Cadbury doesn’t just make great chocolate, Mr Cadbury also designed and built most of area surrounding his factory. He provided houses for the workers, schools, playing fields, sports clubs, and all sorts of other things to make life in Bournville a happy and healthy place to be. Cadbury world wanted to share the idea of building your own, virtual town, and see what it would be like in the future.

The Idea

I was tasked with programming a new interactive game that would take place on a giant interactive table. The game would be a lot like Sim City, where players would create housing, roads, schools, pubs, power plants, and pretty much everything else that you need to build a thriving city. But this game had a twist. Not only did you have to work against time and budget constraints, but you had to work with 3 other friends to help build the city. That means its a 4 player sim city! A very challenging thing to program indeed! But it was a lot of fun.

Each player takes a different side of the table, and must place different buildings down before the time, and the budget run out! Players must work together to make sure that everything is in the right place, as different players will be given different options, keeping the game fast paced and exciting.

Hidden Sensors

Underneath the table were hidden tiny electrostatic sensors that could detect players hands as they waved them over the table. This allowed for fast, large-scale gameplay. Simply by placing your hand on the giant map, a building would be placed under your fingertips.

The average game time lasts around 3 to 4 minutes, and once the buildings are placed in literately thousands of different configurations the camera “zooms out” and shows a realistic view of what that city would look like in 25 years time.

Will it be a thriving metropolis, or a dead end, crime ridden town? Only by working together will you get to find out.

I programmed all the software and the game mechanics, and Electrosonic provided the hardware. The concept was brought to life by Newangle, and Mark Dowsett created the various graphics and hundreds of icons that were used in the game.

I had the wonderful privelidge of being involved with an amazing art show at top London Gallery Tate Briatin, in a collaboartion with the amazing Martin Sextin. In March 2006 Martin Sexton presented New Gothic which combines music, digital art and performance. Featuring  ‘Heraldic Unicorn Lion Grace System’ by Truth Machine, described variously as ‘the high-concept band to end all high-concept bands’ and as a cult religious group by others.

The varying members of this arts collective reportedly all work to a set of instructions cut from the text of books that vary from hermetic works, theological mediations to pulp fiction, erotica and maps. Steve Severin conducts and provides the sonic soundscape.

Ride up with the Magical Lock-down Dark Pegasus: a Harley-Davidson XL53 custom motorcycle resplendent with blue-black Scottish crow wings and ‘pimped’ with a DVD monitor as tail-plate, that echoes TE Lawrence’s quote that “A motorcycle with a touch of blood in it is better than all the riding animals on earth, because of its logical extension of our faculties, and the hint, the provocations, to excess.”

Rattus Norvegicus

Meanwhile, I was working with Korash Sanjideh, Andy Early and Mike Cobb to create new visual experiences. We unleashed  chthonic forces with atechnological multimedia film noir Rattus Norvegicus as part of New Gothic at Tate Britain.

Rattus Norvegicus is a dark digital artwork shown for the first time at “Late at Tate Britain” as part of the “Gothic Nightmares” exhibition.

Hyperfabric is one of my all time favourite inventions. I created it as a beautiful art installation that would allow people to go beyond the screen, with a new tactile interface. I came up with the name “Hyperfabric” because I wanted to suggest that new things could be combined in interesting ways. Hyperfabric  is a touchable, pushable, movable, malleable interface that uses a very thin film to simulate an immersive user interface.

You can press, grab, twist, punch and play with the screen. It can even support your full bodyweight. The Hyperfabric screen is specially designed to communicate with a computer to generate interactive computer graphics, in realtime.

Pushing through the image

I created digital images that are projected onto the film that react to touch and pushing, so it feels like you’re actually pushing through the image.

I created a 7 foot high Hyperfabric installation for the Artytechs parlour this summer at the Port Eliot literature festival. Taking place in a hidden dungeon underneath the stately home, where visitors had the chance to come face to face with the magical and mysterious interactions.

How does Hyperfabric work?

The design of hyperfabric is actually very clever. The strong rubbery surface is stretched over a doorway that leads to a hidden room, in fact an underground dungeon of sorts. Hidden in the room is a projector, for the images, and a specially modified camera. Infra-red light is shone across the surface of the hyperfabric, so that the camera can see exactly what parts of the hyperfabric are being touched, and how hard they are being pressed. By measuring how the light is reflected, special computer software that I wrote can instantly detect peoples presence.

This hyperfabric of course has “multi touch” capability, but it also has a magic power to it as well.

Hyperfabric works with aura?

During the installation, guests would be invited down to the underground dungeon, and would place their hands on the hyperfabric surface. One girl touched it, and yellow sparks shot out from her fingers. She then told me that she “charged up her aura” and the next time she touched it, red and blue sparkles dripped from her fingers instead.

I love it that Hyperfabric is able to create a totally new way of interacting. There is no keyboard and no mouse, no instructions, just emotions. Currently we change graphics by clicking a mouse, but here, guests were able to change graphics by charging their aura!

In February 2010 I had the amazing oppertunity to introduce 250 different children into the exciting world of multimedia, and gave them a glipse of what a career in interactivity really menas.

I helped run open day sessions for students from six city schools, and they got to experience the excitement of the media industry for 2 days during a trip to Twofour studios in Plymouth.

The students were from Mary Dean, Woodfield, Oakwood, Beechwood, Whitleigh and St Peter’s RC primary schools.

The open day was a collaboration with the Tamar Education Business Partnership, and it was designed to study the impact of early career-related learning in increasing young people’s aspirations.

Screaming for more

I had worked with the Tamar Eductaion Business Partnership before, on some sound reactive software for some of their students, so I was pleased to show them the latest updates to my software, called Visual Voice Pro.

The students were able to scream at the top of their lungs, to test out the pre-release Beta. They loved getting the chance to play with the latest software before it had been released.

I was also able to give them a “behind the scenes tour” into the makings of some of my most famous and well know projects, like the work at Cadbury World.

Raising the aspirations

Richard Wallis, director of strategy for Twofour Knowledge, said: “We want to help raise the children’s aspirations, and make them aware of future opportunities that they may otherwise never know about, and a lot of the qualities we as an employer are looking for are transferable skills – energy, initiative, creativity, conscientiousness and resourcefulness.

“As a media company that works across television, design and the web, as well as in education, we’re hoping to give them a taste of the range of career possibilities.”

Jo McCaren from the Tamar Education Business partnership said: “We know from consultations with young people and their parents and carers that there’s a strong interest in media-related careers.

“The Year 5 teachers from each of the six schools visited Twofour last year. They were very impressed by the company, and were keen for their pupils to visit this year and participate in a series of short, career-related – but fun – activity sessions, led by Twofour staff.”

I worked on a great multimedia exhibit that is on display at this national museum with a primary focus on accessibility for all. The result enables the museum to show artefacts in a dramatic and invigorating way.

I programmed the software for 4 centrepiece exhibitions that tell of Wales’s industrial and commercial history. The museum is the first fully Disability Discrimination Act compliant museum to open in Britain so central to the challenge was making the software and its interface accessible to as many people as possible. The interface had to be easy to use for people with a variety of disabilities and had to function in both English and Welsh Language. It also had to incorporate an interface for video material containing sign language.

Gesture tracking

This interactive showcase allows visitors to pull items from a virtual display cabinet and manipulate them for a thorough look. The system gives access to films and information covering a range of Wales-wide communities and ideas.

Working alongside London agency Newangle, I coded a completely virtual interface that was based on the movie Minority Report. Users simply point at the screen and the computer and a clever bit of gesture recognition software does the rest. It senses movements as people use their hands to navigate their way through the depths of the exhibit touching everything in virtual reality. The system ingeniously allows the museum to display artefacts that are too delicate, valuable or obscure to be on open display.

I programmed the software for 4 exhibits that sat side-by-side. Each exhibit had different content provided by the museum. Newangle digitised the artefacts in 3d, designed the final look-and-feel of the content, audio and graphics, and gave me all the raw files to put together. Hardware was provided by Gesturetek and Sysco AV.

Following the success of projects like Chocolate Infinity and Chocolate Rain for Cadbury World, I was asked to create new software for an amazing new globe projection technology called Magic Planet.

Rather than projecting onto a flat surface like a screen or a wall, the Magic Planet projects onto a 3D physical sphere. Special software warps the image to avoid any distortion, and special lenses cover all 360 degrees of the 3D globe projection.

Cadbury is a global brand

I wrote special software that would link together 3 different touch screens to the globe. Visitors could touch anywhere on the touch screens to select different locations around the world that are important to Cadbury. They could find out exactly where cocoa comes from, what brands are popular in different countries, and how products are manufactured on a global scale.

It was exciting to work with different videos of adverts for different products around the world, and I also got to see what different products from other countries looked like.

A huge 3 Dimensional experience

The3D globe projection surface was really big, and that allowed 3 different visitors to interact at the same time. By changing options on their own personal touch screens, the globe would play videos, sound effects and show images of all kinds of global information.

I also programmed in special events that would take over the whole globe. So, after a few minutes, the globe wraps up in purple foil, and unwraps to reveal a chocolate planet. As the chocolate drips off, it reveals realistic satellite images of the earth.

I was also able to put in lots of hidden surprises, such as aeroplanes that fly from point to point, hidden whales jumping in the sea, and even huge, spherical 3D videos of Bertie Basset running across the planet, or hundreds of thousands of Cadbury Creme Eggs being made around the world.

Thanks to Sam Willis and Global Imagination

Chocolate Touch uses augmented reality technology to create an interactive exhibit at Cadbury World’s Purple Planet exhibition where you not only turn objects to chocolate in front of your eyes, you can also play with them.

As you face a projected image of yourself on a large display, a series of six cards set out in front of you appear on-screen as intriguing objects. Be prepared for amazement when you pick up the simple card bearing a symbol, then see it transformed on the display using a beautiful 3D chocolate effect.

Fun objects in 3D

You can play with a virtual top hat, a pair of Groucho Marx-style glasses, not to mention the chocolate teapot. The Groucho glasses are complete with nose and moustache which not only turn to chocolate, but also give the appearance of being worn when held up to the face. Lifting an object higher makes it grow to comic proportions.

The simplicity of the human interface of Chocolate Touch is central to its success. A wide-angle camera mounted in the top of the screen streams live video to the central processor but the camera is discreetly hidden as you play the game.

Three robust metal posts hold the marker cards making the interface not only accessible to young, old and disabled — it is also able to cope with large groups of eager children wanting to play with the exhibit at any one time.

How was it developed?

I used software called DART – The Director Augmented Reality Toolkit  to create the tactile experience and adjusted it to create the “feel” of lifting the objects. I also created the amazing 3D chocolate effect that is paramount to the success of the experience. I also had to do a lot of research and development into the type of cameras and lenses that would work best. When this project began, very few people were using augmented reality, in fact, this is one of the first public uses of AR technology in the UK, so a lot of hard work went in to figuring out all the technology. Designers from Newangle created the 3D models of the objects. Newangle were the creative lead on the projects.

A floor of interactive chocolate

This is one of my most favourite projects that gets a lot of attention. A fully interactive chocolate floor that I programmed for Cadbury World in Birmingham. The Installation is called “Chocolate Infinity” and it lets you play 4 different chocolate based games on an interactive floor.

What happens?

As visitors enter the interactive floor space, they see a giant projected chocolate bar that melts into puddles beneath your feet and, when you jump in the puddles, liquid chocolate splashes all over the floor! Next the floor fills with hundreds of huge “roses” chocolates. As you step on each one they unwrap, and when you step away they wrap up again.

Every minute or so, the interactive floor wraps itself up with bright shiny purple foil, the hallmark of the Cadbury brand. The floor then unwraps to reveal a new interactive activity.

Huge squares of chocolate then fill the interactive floor. When you jump on them like stepping stones they break open to reveal yummy caramel, squidgy Turkish Delight, chunks of orange, mint or Cadbury’s Crunchie inside. Next you can chase three huge Creme Eggs across the floor. The eggs are pretty much impossible to catch, you have to be fast and work as a team to catch them.

The technology behind this interactive floor

Hidden underneath the floor are 8 individual “shockwave” sensors that can work out just how hard you are jumping up and down on the interactive floor. A little jump gives a small splash, a big heavy jump gives a massive splash! The 8 individual floor sensors send data over a serial connection, and I was able to program software to triangulate the force over the surface, by “listening” to the pressure sensor data.

To get very precise movement data, in the roof is hidden 2 infra red sensing cameras, and 4 infra fed lights. These cameras look down onto the floor and can detect peoples movement very accurately. I wrote software that could detect peoples feet, as they stomped around on the interactive floor. I also wrote blob-tracking code that could see if there are lots of visitors, or just one or two. The computer sees people as different blobs, and the games can change depending on what’s happening on the interactive floor. Also, I was able to detect the motion of all the people playing on the interactive floor. By working out the direction that they are facing, and the speed that they are travelling, I was able to code an artificially intelligent Cadbury Creme egg, that tries to avoid you wherever you go. No matter how hard you try, you just cant catch it, and believe me, people try really hard!

Thanks to Sam Willis and the team at Newangle

Its been everybody’s dream at one point or other to be caught outside in the rain, and have it turn into raining chocolate! Well, I was lucky enough to program an interactive wall effect that did just that, it made virtual chocolate pour out of the sky, and you don’t even have to get your feet wet!

Chocolate Rain is an interactive experience where you can wander into a shower of Chocolate Buttons that bounce off your head and roll along your arms – if you put up an umbrella then the buttons bounce off you onto the floor. Cup your hands and you can try to catch them!

Its great to play

Its so much fun to play with this huge interactive wall that tracks your shadows in real-time and allows a special physics engine that I coded calculate hundreds and thousands of chocolate button effects live! Before your eyes! It starts off with a little drip-drop-drip of a few chocolate buttons, then the rain gets faster and faster, into a storm! After a while, it all builds up into one HUGE chocolate button that you can kick and punch and bounce around just like a basketball!

Feedback

I had a huge amount of very positive feedback from the Chocolate rain interactive experience at Cadbury World. One of the best things about this is that it requires no keyboard, mouse or other controller to interact. you just use your body! Anyone can play, by yourself or in huge groups. And because its based around my own physics engine, everything works how you would expect it to work in the real world, creating an amazing and fun experience that is just like being covered from head to toe in liquid chocolate!

Thanks to Sam Willis and the team at Newangle

I designed and built three sound-reactive software programs for the Montano Assistive Technology Center in Connecticut, USA. The state-of-the-art multi-sensory environment provides sensory experiences to help children and adults with physical and cognitive disabilities.

The voice reactive technology creates beautiful abstract patterns of light – from vibrant blocks of colour to fireflies dancing in a forest. By creating sounds with different volume and pitch, participants can see the relationship between the visual effects and the sounds they produce.

Each software system empowers participants and encourages expression, stimulating vision, hearing, cognition and communication. The interactive enables the Montano Assistive Technology Center to offer many complimentary therapies to aid learning in many individuals, such as those with cerebral palsy and autism.

I worked closely with music therapist Phoebe Tucker to design a multi-purpose interactive that could be used as a part of many different complimentary therapies. The new sensory room is a fantastic resource for delivering music therapy to the local community.

What happened next?

The software I designed was so popular that after a lot more research and development, I took all the ideas and things that I had learnt and piled it into a product called Visual Voice Pro. The software I developed for the Montano Assistive Technology centre became the starting point for a much larger suit of sound and voice reactive software!

Battle Abbey Visitor Centre stands next to the site of one of the most famous invasions in British history. In 1066, William the Conqueror defeated King Harold II and his Saxon army in an epic battle 6 miles north of the city of Hastings. In 2006, I worked with Newangle to create an amazing software program for the new Battle Abbey Visitor Centre that brings to life the history and importance of the battle for England.

A software centrepiece

The centrepiece of the exhibit is an interactive round table that shows you just how far each army had to march before the battle began. Using a joystick to navigate around a scale map of England, you can follow the journey made by each army to get to Hastings. I programmed the software that takes visitors on a journey, following in the footsteps of where both army’s marched in to battle. The graphics were designed by Newangle.

Client: English Heritage
Exhibition concept and design: Potland Design
AV and interactive production: Newangle
Software developers: Adam Montandon and Luke Angell

Ever tried plotting the orbit of planets using dice? That was the unusual challenge I faced when I programmed the Computer Modelling exhibit at The Royal Observatory.

The idea is a deceptively simple one. You take a selection of dice with different symbols on them, arrange them under a video camera, then watch as the dice turn into planets and begin to orbit one another. The size of the die dictates the mass of the planet, while the number of arrows in each symbol controls the speed.

To correctly interpret the dice I used specialist ‘machine vision’ cameras to read the faces of the dice. The camera had on-board microchips that I was able to programme  to recognise the different symbols and feed this information into the exhibit.

Now make it real

The challenge didn’t stop there! Working with top astronomers, I then had to program a real time gravitational simulation using millions of calculations per second. It really was rocket science. It took me several weeks just to get the HUGE algorithms to work in real-time.

The finished interactive makes a complex process simple and understandable. The exhibit lets you to create your own gravity simulation in seconds using a unique tangible interface that doesn’t require a PhD to use.

Want to know the secrets of the Universe? I coded an amazing project that quizzes the brains of the smartest astronomers to create a mind bending multiuser encyclopaedia of astronomy.

The Astronomers Table is over four metres long with eight user stations spread down its sides. A central fin divides the table in two halves, providing a huge projection surface for the high resolution images and video displays.

Beyond the stars

Stars and galaxies flow across the table, turning into pixels as they glide up the vertical face. You control the experience by moving a futuristic looking puck underneath a motion sensor. By sliding the puck over glowing star hotspots, you can trigger videos on the screen in front of you.

Over 70 videos answer astronomical questions about black holes and solar flares. Combined with the sci-fi’esque interface, the Astronomers Table makes a worthy centrepiece for the new Astronomy Questions gallery.

“The galleries have a far more cerebral feel than the twiddling knobs and buttons of the Science Museum, and there is no hint of dumbing down anywhere.” The Times — Wednesday May 3rd

I used the same state of the art camera hardware to create the engaging experience of navigating the stars that I used in the Computer Modelling exhibit. Production agency Newangle took the creative lead, and I developed all the software for the table in this showcase exhibit.