10/11/2007

http://subotron.com/556-sa-101107-subotron-electric-meeting-location-based-games/

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

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!

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!

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

The super hadron collider at CERN is amazing science, but how does it work? I developed several interactive exhibits to teach the secrets of the universe! These and many more fun and educational exhibits make up CERN’s brand new travelling exhibition. The aptly named ‘Accelerating Science’ exhibition was designed and produced by Shelton Fleming.

The project was the brainchild of CERN’s physicists and communication group in partnership with the University of Geneva. “The whole spirit behind the 450th anniversary celebrations is to show how our university could not survive without the links it has developed with the city and local partners such as CERN,” explains Didier Raboud, Head of Geneva University’s Communication team. “This exhibition in partnership with CERN is entirely in line with that philosophy.”

“We appreciate, acknowledge and admire the work you are doing at CERN. The people of Geneva can be proud to have you here, on their doorstep,” Jean Patry, President of the Wright Foundation.

Accelerating Science

The ‘Accelerating Science’ exhibition takes the form of a discovery trail along which visitors learn about particle physics, its fundamental questions and aims and the tools used for its investigation. The exhibition is laid out in five interconnecting zones, each of which plunges the visitor into a world of mystery and suspense. After passing through the entrance tunnel, visitors arrive in the first zone where a film and a mural recount the history of the Universe. The second zone is bursting with interactive exhibits revealing the world of elementary particles. The giant mushrooms in the third zone explain through sound and image the great issues of contemporary particle physics. In the next zone, visitors come face-to-face with those larger-than-life scientific tools that are the LHC machine and experiments. The last zone brings visitors back to the reality of day-to-day life, showing how fundamental physics has served and continues to serve the technological advances upon which mankind has come to depend.

Covering more than 400 square metres, the exhibition has been designed to travel through the CERN Member States. With this in mind, it has a modular design and is thus able to adapt to different venues.

From particles to software

I had a very tight turn around time to create 6 beautiful, dual language, ambient video monitors, that displayed amazing images of the universe. Each screen had different super-high resolution images that I mapped into 3D, to give a fully 3 dimensional effect to the screens on the walls. Floating through the universe were fascinating facts in both English and French, that served as a welcome to visitors and a “starting off” point for discussion.

I also created an interactive touch screen game, where children could flip over virtual cards to find video, images and text all about what goes on inside the super hadron collider. The touch screen game was also dual language and had sound effects and 3D animations, explaining the hidden wonders of the world of particles.

You can find more information on the website here.

Design & production: Shelton Fleming

The project I have created exists in outside the traditional domain of computer culture of physical installation. I have created a new sensation, a cyborgian extension of the human perception system residing in the brain of on student. Neil Harbisson.

I first met Neil at Dartington College of Arts whilst I was giving a talk on practical cyborg techniques and applications. Neil became very excited about the idea of using digital inputs to augment his senses.

He explained to me that he had a rare condition of achromatopsia (a hereditary vision disorder which affects 1 person in 33,000). One of the is monocharmatism, the inability to perceive colour. To him the world was black and white. He explained to me how, in his paintings he had only ever used black and white paints: “I never used colours to paint because I feel completely distant to them. Colours create a mysterious reaction to people that I still don’t quite understand.”

He described colours to me as “being an energy that I can’t see because it moves too quickly. I’ve imagined colours as fast moving energies.” Neil became curious as to the possibilities of a cyborg-like extension of his sensory system. A new input based prosthesis.

Artificial Senses

I decided that using Neil’s existing senses as a host for new artificial senses would be an effective approach. By using sound, I felt that it would give him a good approximation of colour as he has very good pitch perception as he is a keen musician. I was confident that shifting colour into sound would be an appropriate and effective way of re-mapping Neil’s brain, as the natural occurrence of synesthesia seems to suggest that the visual and auditory senses can in some case become overlapping.

Colours into sounds

The case of how to convert colours into sounds was a difficult one. After much consideration it became apparent that I would have to create an audio experience that, like the light spectrum, would transcend labels. I used a physical model of transposing light into sound. After all, both light and sound are waves. Although light waves are far too high to hear, it is possible to mathematically transpose them down until they sit within the audible wavelength, so the lowest colour in the spectrum (Dark red) becomes the lowest note in the scale. I created colour to sound conversion software that would dynamically scale the colours from a miniature wearable camera into audible frequencies. Instead of having one note per colour I wanted Neil to be able to hear subtle differences in colour, just as the human eye can distinguish between many different kinds of blue, Neil is able to do the same.

Neil can now perceive 360 different hues, one for each degree on the colour wheel. Each hue was assigned an audible frequency between 384 and 718. This approach allows him to disregard brighter and darker variations (due to lighting conditions) and also to disregard colour saturation (The camera may over or under saturate colours depending on the environment) and instead gives us pure Hue perception.

How it works

Neil was able to run the software on a small laptop that he mounted in a backpack. The laptop was modified to run the software even when the lid was closed, allowing him to comfortably wear it in “sleep” mode. This meant that the battery time lasted for long enough periods for him to go through the whole school day without a re-charge.

Surprisingly, within 15 minutes of Neil using the system he was able to instantly recognise similarities and differences between hues, something he had never previously been able to do. Conclusively, this project exists not in the software, or domain of so called “virtual” reality, but in the reality of Neil’s perception of the world, unveiling, quite literally, an invisible architecture of energy.

Neil now wears this “eyborg” 24 hours a day, and has doctor’s certification that he is a Cyborg. He continues to live each day as a colourful Cyborg in a colourful world.

Here is a really nice documentary on one of my projects for Discovery Channel Canada.

The MediaLab is open!

Ben Bradshaw, Minister For South West and Health Minister came to Twofour Studios (Monday 10 November 2008) for the official opening of the MediaLab – the experiential centre for digital innovation created by HMC Interactive. At the event, attended by over 40 VIP guests including Alison Seabeck MP for Plymouth Devonport, the Minister unveiled a plaque and went on to explore the groundbreaking work on display including the virtual chocolate rain shadow tracking technology designed for Cadbury World and the incision technology used in BBC 3′s Make My Body Younger which allows producers to perform living autopsies.

“The most exciting and innovative media company in the country”

“I have a number of motives for having accepted your invitation to come today,” said Ben Bradshaw. “I wanted to come here to celebrate your success in building one of the most exciting and innovative media companies in the country and certainly the most exciting and innovative and important in the South West. And as a minister for the South West I think it is really important in a time of economic uncertainty and economic downturn we don’t allow ourselves to be completely overwhelmed by doom and gloom and we do celebrate and recognise some of the real success stories that we have in this region. Twofour are leading the way here in Plymouth. It is a fantastic success story and it is going to be those companies like this one, that invest and innovate, that come through the current downturn and are well placed to benefit from the upturn when it comes.”

500 square meters of technology

MediaLab is an evolving space spanning over 500 square meters which will offer visitors an insight into how the company brings its inventions to life from idea to conception through to R&D and implementation. The centre will showcase some of HMC Interactive’s ground-breaking convergent technologies including augmented reality, incision technology and shadow tracking. HMC Interactive and Twofour will be able to replicate entire projects enabling clients to test-drive products before final installation.

Some of the exhibits include:

• Slide machine word art
• Interactive floors
• A bed of grass that responds to your movement
• Blobby things that sing
• Life sized Mario worlds
• Ripping your own guts out
• 35 screen touch video (this one is HUGE)
• Some lazer beams
• All sorts of things that go bleep blip and bloop.

30 touch screens networked together for a huge interactive experience.

The “Living Autopsy” Incision technology I developed with Ted Thorpe

Lazer Graffiti by Kane Andrews

An interactive floor I programmed for Cadburys

More from behind the scenes at the BBC Make My Body Younger TV show

Our huge wall of interactive digital grass

Close up of some touch screen software developed for the DSA

The MediaLab warehouse is huge, here you can see the huge multiple projection screens

Team effort

I was lucky enough to lead a lot of the development on the MediaLab, alongside Anais Van Delft, Mike Cobb, Gareth Williams, Kane Andrews, Luke Angel, Korash Sanjideh and Izzie Arandia. It was my pet project over several months.

I particularly enjoyed working with Anais who provided the concept artwork and I just can’t begin to tell you how huge this is. I hope you enjoy the photos and video

I just found this really nice video of Cyborg Neil Harbisson using the Eyeborg system I designed for him back in 2004. Its always fun when you make a surprise appearance on TV so take a peek at 2:56! There are some sections of the video in English so take a look.

I developed a new technology called “Incision” for the BBC 3 Show called Make My body Younger. Here’s the story behind what I worked on:

Stuart Murphy came in and was practically bouncing off the walls. He was so excited to see what we were up to, and very keen for us to get involved with a ton of projects. Stuart and I got on straight away, and our creativity just clicked.

He explained that he was working on a new show, the codename was “Doctor In The House”. He had a strong vision of really looking inside someone’s body. He wanted to find ways of putting cameras down peoples throats, up their backsides, and basically prodding and poking people live on TV!

He really wanted a way of ripping peoples guts right out from their stomachs and showing it to them, their friends, family and the audience! It was a big task, and since we couldn’t physically rip peoples guts out, we had to come up with a digital solution, but it had to have the “Oh My God” moment for each episode!

What’s the show all about?

Young boozers, bingers and party animals get a wake-up call in Twofour’s new series for BBC Three – Make My Body Younger, presented by George Lamb.

Each week, the over-the-top lifestyle of a contributor is examined: what damage are their excesses doing to their insides? Using state-of-the-art technology designed by Adam Montandon and Ted Thorpe , a “living autopsy” is performed, revealing the real impact that bad food, drink, drugs and cigarettes are having on their organs with shocking results – they are ageing much faster on the inside than they should be.

Over on the BBC Headroom website you can find health advice from the Doctors of the new Make My Body Younger show. Check it out!

After working on the show for a few days, and hearing Dr Andrew Curran describe all the gruesome things going wrong inside people’s bodies, a lot of the crew stopped smoking, or perhaps went for just a large plate of vegetables from the catering truck!

Living Autopsy

In this series, people who love to party and live to excess will be given their very own ‘living autopsy’. Using an exciting new graphic projection technique, they will be able to see their own body opening up as if they were undergoing an autopsy.

They will then find out how old their internal organs really are. Their birth certificate might show they’re only 22 but years of knocking back the booze might mean their liver has the biological age of 42.

But after the shock treatment, there’s help at hand. A team of hand picked doctors will swoop in and help our protagonists change their lifestyles for the better and, over a period of several weeks, help them curb their addiction to excess and life on the edge.

At the end each programme the contributor returns to the Live Autopsy to discover if they have truly slowed their physical decline. Will the medical prognosis be a better quality of life? And after the good news, can they go out and celebrate… in moderation?

“To pull in younger audiences you really need something that is going to be shocking, that is actually going to grab them,” said Joe Houlihan of U.K. production company TwoFour, which is presenting its new factual format “Make My Body Younger.”

The show features people who have subjected their bodies to physical excesses such as alcohol and drugs and uses virtual reality techniques to simulate an “autopsy” on their bodies to show the extent of the damage they have inflicted.

“You have to find ways of making them turn to the show, if feels like its some form of lecture they will simply turn off,” he added. “Health will always be a genre people want to know about. The challenge is about how to move it on and make it different.”

Ok, here is a clip from next weeks show, Make My Body Younger that I worked on the Living Autopsy effects for.

Here is another great clip from the Living Autopsy room in Make My Body younger. You can see the amazing blood vessel graphics by Ted Thorpe and it shows what happens when too much fat can clog up your body. It certainly is food for thought. You can see Make my Body Younger on BBC3 on Wednesdays at 8pm.

For 22-year-old single mother and lap dancer Cindy Cottrell, a typical night out starts with two bottles of wine before leaving her home in Tamworth. Cindy’s worried about what her hard-partying ways are doing to her body and says she wants to make some changes to her lifestyle, especially for the sake of her son. Undergoing her own living autopsy is a shock for Cindy, as she finds out that parts of her body are dramatically older than she is.

Although Cindy’s episode is the 3rd in the series, she was actually the first person to undergo the Living Autopsy section of the show. Her face is an absolute picture when we start the incision and open up her body!

The story of Stewart Burton

George Lamb meets 25-year-old Stewart this week, as the series that gives young boozers, bingers and party animals a wake-up call continues.

Every weekend, Stewart hits the pubs and clubs in his home town, drinking as much as he can stomach and partying hard, but what has he been doing to his insides? George asks Stewart if he’s prepared to find out, using the power of state-of-the-art technology to undergo a “living autopsy”. With his internal organs ageing at a worryingly accelerated rate, Stewart discovers he has the brain of a pensioner.

It looks as if his mad partying has pickled his brain, which comes out as 68 years old. His heart is also taking the strain of his lifestyle, but what really concerns Stewart is his sperm count, which is much lower than it should be for a man of his age. Dr Leanne Hayward moves in to help Stewart, but will he have the strength to reverse the damage already done? After several weeks of trying, he must return to the “living autopsy” theatre to find out.

Earlier this year a good night out for Stewart Burton might have started on a Saturday afternoon in his home town of Brighton and could easily have carried on for 18 hours, well into Sunday. Stewart, 25, would get through up to 60 cigarettes, down nine bottles of beer, followed by several shots and more beer. He would also dabble in drugs.

That was a good night out for Stewart – but he was starting to notice his lifestyle was having a detrimental impact on his body. He wasn’t as fit as he used to be and he often shunned the healthy food in his fridge for yet another take-away. Stewart was often drinking more than 100 units of booze a week – the government recommends men should drink no more than 21 units.

Bad drunk

And when Stewart got drunk, those around him felt he became a different person. His mother, April, said: “He is a demon. He becomes evil – and it all starts when he starts drinking.”

Stewart’s lifestyle was also starting to take its toll on his relationship with his live-in girlfriend Donella. She had given him an ultimatum: “Stu needs to clean up his act. He needs to cut back on his drinking.If he doesn’t do that, then I will have to seriously review the situation of our relationship, because he is going to lose everything if he doesn’t stop.”

With his relationship on a knife-edge, Stewart put himself forward for Make My Body Younger’s “living autopsy”.

Extensive tests

Every inch of Stewart’s body was examined and his vital organs were tested. He even had a fertility test, though he felt confident about the outcome.

“I know I’ve got no problems,” he said. “I’ve got a daughter already. I know everything is working properly.”

At his “living autopsy”, Stewart was laid out and the first “incision” was made in front of girlfriend Donella, Stewart’s mother and his brothers. It was a demanding and emotional time for all involved as presenter George Lamb and Dr Andrew Curran revealed Stewart’s results.

One of the most shocking moments for Stewart, Donella and his family was when his brain age was revealed, following a series of cognitive function tests. Stewart is only 25 but all his hardcore partying resulted in a brain age of 68. Donella’s shock at him “having the brain of a pensioner” was something his entire family shared.

Fertility under threat

But for Stewart the greatest surprise was the state of his sperm. Due to his excessive partying lifestyle, Stewart’s fertility test showed his sperm had 91% deformed heads. This left a serious question mark over his fertility as normal fertility allows for less than 70% deformed heads.

Stewart was left stunned by the news. “The sperm one was shocking, really bad,” he said. “I was close to tears.” Back at home in Brighton, the surprises didn’t end for Stewart. He got his very own live-in medic in the shape of Dr Leanne Hayward. She moved in with Donella and Stewart for three days and gave Stewart valuable information about how to live his life differently – but without having to become a party-free zone.

New start

Stewart initially wanted to stop drinking and smoking altogether but this concerned Dr Hayward.

“We need to be really careful with Stewart that he doesn’t totally stop everything because he could run into more problems,” she said. “He may be more likely to fall off the wagon if he tries to cut out absolutely everything.”

Stewart and Donella found the early days a struggle and had a few rows. But slowly Stewart started to feel the benefits of not drinking or smoking as much. After several weeks, he went back to London for tests to find out the new biological ages of his key organs and the state of his sperm.

Because of Stewart’s improved lifestyle his new brain age came in at 18 years, a massive drop and a testament to his hard work. But probably the best news for Stewart and Donella was that his fertility test results showed the level of deformity of his sperm was back within the normal range.

Stewart was relieved by the results: “All the hard work has definitely paid off.” Donella too was delighted. “I’ve got my dream guy,” she said. “Hopefully we will have a really long and happy future together.”

The story of Cindy Cottrell

Cindy Cottrell has managed to whizz forward in time and then travel back again – all thanks to a dramatic make-over. But forget those TV shows that concentrate on the right make up or a nice dress; Cindy’s make-over was entirely internal.

Just over a year ago the Tamworth 22-year-old was a binge drinker, downing bottles of wine, shots and whatever she could get her hands on four times a week – all in the name of a good time. She felt lethargic, weekends were a total write-off and she began to fear that she would start on the downward spiral to addiction. But after a TV show revealed that her body – and her liver – was more than a decade older than her real age, she decided to turn her life around.

“When I was drinking no one wanted to be around me – now I’ve had a boyfriend for eight months,” says Cindy, who has a four-year-old son, Cory. “My son’s dad would have him from Thursday to Sunday, and I’d be drinking. I’d have a bottle of wine before I went out, I’d have shot after shot when I was out. Then I’d sleep all morning because I was hung over – I just wasn’t with it. “I was putting myself in real danger by getting that drunk, and I was worried I’d start drinking in the week and get a real drink problem. I had to make a change for my son’s sake, and that’s when I saw they wanted people for the programme.”

Cindy began drinking in all too typical circumstances, sneaking cheeky sips from the drinks cabinet aged 13 and downing alcohol in the park with her teenage friends. “I was just like most people trying to impress people, and seem cool,” she says. “But now I want people to know it’s not – you don’t look cool when you’re in that state and no one’s impressed. Don’t get me wrong, I still go out and I still drink, but now I drink slowly and I don’t drink as much. I stop when I get to the happy, giggly stage. You don’t have to rush to get drunk and you don’t have to down shots to have a good time.”

It was the show – Make My Body Younger – which gave Cindy the wake-up call she needed. A computerised ‘living autopsy’ revealed the damage she was doing to her liver, and Cindy was given a lifestyle overhaul by medical experts. Now she’s fighting fit once more and her body is back to its ‘real’ age, thanks to a healthy diet, lifestyle and a bit of moderation.

“I was really good at sport before I started, so they got me playing hockey,” Cindy explains. “They also taught me that I don’t have to get completely wasted to have a good time. Now I go out to see my friends rather than purely to get drunk. And I enjoy the night a lot more because I can remember what happened.”

The story of Emma Sheldon

Presenter George Lamb and Dr Andrew Curran advise people with excessive lifestyles how to become healthier and avoid serious illness. 23-year-old holiday rep Emma Sheldon binge drinks six months a year, overeats and smokes three packs a day. After undergoing a battery of medical tests and a visit to the Living Autopsy Theatre, Emma resolves to change. Dr Radha Modgil moves in with Emma to help her cope with a new way of life and to teach her techniques in avoiding over indulgence and gluttony.

In the first part of this new series party girl Emma Sheldon faces the “living autopsy”. Emma is shocked to discover how fast her organs are aging but how much does she want to change?

For six months of the year, 23-year-old Emma indulges in the party lifestyle as a club rep in Ibiza. Hard partying has been tough on her body; she lives on a diet of junk food, has been known to put on three stone in just three months and enjoy twenty four hour drinking sessions. Emma also smokes up to two hundred fags a week.

Consultant neurologist Andrew Curran reveals what’s been going on inside her body at her “living autopsy”. Her heart, lungs and skin have taken a real battering! She’s only 23 years old but at 45 her lungs are almost double her birth age and she is diagnosed as clinically obese – how will her other organs fair?

Upset by the results of her autopsy, Emma wants to change her ways. Dr Radha Modgil moves in to help her cut down her harmful habits but ultimately it’ll be down to Emma to turn around her own future. Will she have enough determination to reverse the damage? All will be revealed when Emma returns to the “living autopsy” theatre once again.

Behind the scenes

I worked on Twofour’s Make My Body Younger with Ted Thorpe. I worked behind the scenes on the “Living Autopsy” section of the show, where we use state of the art digital technology to show people what’s really going on on the inside. The show uses Incision(TM) technology I designed just for the show, and also my own video-server software that could deliver different video streams to the plasma screens on he studio set.  I use realtime technology to rip open the contributors body! Its an awesome show with a real wow factor. I’ll be explaining more about the technology in upcoming posts.

Neil Harbisson, Eye-Borg wearer and student at Dartington College of Art: “I was in a lecture given by Adam Montandon in Dartington college and he was talking about cybernetics and cyborgs and how new technology can change the way we perceive the world and, when he finished and asked him if he thought it would be possible to create something so that I could perceive colour in some way and he said ‘Sure’, and we began a project.”

Guide Voice: What Adam created was the “Eye-Borg” – a means of transferring colours into a series of audible tones.

Adam Montandon, Director of Digital Futures, HMC Interactive and Guest Lecturer in Digital Arts, Dartington College of Art – “How the Eye-Borg system works is it uses a small, digital head mounted camera that takes in all the colout information directly in front of it and feeds it into a computer that you can wear in a backpack, it can be any normal laptop computer, and the laptop runs on special software that slows down the light waves and turns them into soundwaves. Those soundwaves then come out of the headphones here.”

Med. wide NH painting – audio tones from Eye-Borg can be heard
Over shoulder shot of painting – audio tones from Eye-Borg can be heard

Profile of NH painting – audio tones from Eye-Borg can be heard
c.u. paints held in hand – audio tones from Eye-Borg can be heard

Guide Voice: The Eye-Borg analyses the light waves it received and transposes these into sound waves. So red, which is a low colour frequency, is heard as a low tone; violet, at the other end of the spectrum, would sound as a high tone. This gives Neil his new found perception of colour and Adam is confident that he can adapt his invention to help others.

Adam Montandon – “The wider applications of the Eye-Borg are almost limitless. It’s not just for people with visual impairments; it could even be used for people with complete blindness. And also a lot of musicians, a lot of artists, a lot of engineers are really interested in a project that combines visual and audio experience as one new perception. Everybody uses their eyes or their ears in their day to day job, and this can really help to bring a closer connection between the two.”

I worked on this project, so here’s the video. More explanations to follow shortly!

HMC Interactive have completed work on the first of three major two-day conferences for the Driving Standards Agency. A touch-screen based interactive voting system was designed and built to allow nearly 300 conference attendees to ask questions, fill out surveys and leave feedback about the conference. This interactive allowed a live Q&A system where DSA employees were able to anonymously ask questions to the Board of Directors about the company and these were answered in situ.

As well as the touch screen system, HMC Interactive created an extra special centrepiece for the conference. A classic Mini Cooper painted in DSA’s brand colours was pimped out with a plasma screen TV and custom video diary software. The ‘Diary Wheels’, as it became known, used the well-known voice of Big Brother to ask conference delegates questions about the DSA. Their answers were automatically recorded and edited into a vox pops video to give everyone a taste of the conference.

This interactive was highly successful amongst the delegates as it was the perfect non-intrusive feedback system which was also fun to use and original.

For the past 3 days I have been working on a really nice project in Alton Towers for the DSA. Its been a lot of fun, but I’ve had no sleep whatsoever! I will be posting pictures as soon as I can, and you will see the amazing interactive Mini Cooper we produced. Its a beautiful old mini done up to the nines with an amazing bright orange paint job. The inside is modified with a huge plasma screen, video camera and interactive steering wheel. It features the voice over from the Big Brother guy, and records Diary Room style video from inside the blacked out mini. It has been so popular over the past few days.

We have also installed 32 interactive touch screens in the conference rooms for live voting and crowed interaction. Its really sweet.

This video talks about Visual Voice Pro, the software I designed for music therapy rooms. It was filmed at PMZ.

Here are two more high resolution photos of us behind the scenes at Living coasts. One is of myself testing out our interactive floor with its state of the art infa-red sensors in a system I designed and tested myself. The other picture is of Luke Angell testing out the 3 touch screens mounted into the walls.

If you cant get to living coasts, you can always add Ping the penguin to your facebook friends! He’s so cute… but he smells of fish!

I have been working really hard on an amazing new interactive floor for Living Coasts. It should all be ready by next Tuesday, and we are all really looking forward to it. Its been a really interesting job and i have learnt a lot about penguins.

I have been working on an “Eco-floor” that has life sized interactive ecology games where kids can clean up a virtual oil slick or rescue trapped animals. Its going to be interesting to see how people react to it. Rather than just being a simple use of interactivity for entertainment this floor has a real educational message.

Here is a short video interview following my keynote speech at the LegoLand innovation conference in Denmark.

After the keynote students asked me questions on innovation and creativity, and here is the result.

Arch-OS is an ‘Operating System’ that harnesses these new architectural, technological and social dimensions. Arch-OS, ‘software for buildings’, has been developed to manifest the social, technological and environmental life of a building and provide a living laboratory for cultivating transdisciplinary knowledge. Arch-OS buildings will be permanently in a state of flux. By feeding on the diverse forms of dynamic data that are generated by a building, its environment and its occupants, Arch-OS transforms the architects drawings, the brick, steel, glass and fiber-optic infrastructure into a living breathing environment. Arch-OS provides users of buildings with a spatial and temporal consciousness, essentially re-programming human activity through a heightened social, architectural awareness. Arch-OS combines a rich mix of the physical and virtual into a new dynamic architecture, an ‘intelligent’ entity, that interacts, responds and anticipates: Arch-OS is a nervous system for multidimensional buildings.