My Blog

Shows and Exhibitions

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 15:19:39 +0100

Another long stretch since my last update but it’s been a busy period at the IvT Centre... I figured it may be in my last post. Three major events and another side project have consumed a lot of that time but all have proved to be well worth the time.
First of all we were approached by a team from the Royal Society. This team are part of the project to develop a European funded telescope. This is known as the ELT, we wondered what kind of scientific acronym that was until we found out it was the Extremely Large Telescope. This will be huge, around the size of the Royal Albert Hall! The team were taking part in the Royal Society’s Summer Science Festival held in the Royal Festival Hall at Southbank. A friend of ours, Chiara Bellow, had been hired to design the display for the Exhibition and she involved us to provide a stereoscopic 3D display of the telescope. The aim of this was to show just how large it would be, show what it will look like and generate interest in the science and the engineering. This gave us a few challenges in setting up the display. In some ways the technology was the least challenging element for us as we also needed to ensure we had exact measurements to be certain the display would work well once the stand was built. A pre site test held in the Warehouse used to develop the stand was invaluable. Even though we were able to do this the over all build was quite a challenge. Chiara’s design was complex and difficult to set up correctly but the two days spent building and ensuring it was right paid off. It was one of the most impressive stands at the exhibition. And for our part the display really worked, as Stuart Nathan reported in The Engineer “The EELT representatives, who were showing a 3D animation of the proposed telescope design, told me that theyʼd had as many questions about the engineering of the telescope as the astronomy, which usually grabs the headlines.”. Overall every one was very happy and I look forward to the next event we can support.
Honda Concept Design
While we were preparing for this we were also working on a series of concept vehicle visualisations created by the Vehicle Design students for a presentation to Honda. Honda had challenged the to make the motor bike more friendly and accessible to non-bike riders. The feedback from the students was fascinating with most of them suggesting that the look of bikes appealed to a specialist biker crowd. Much of the advertising and bike designs were perceived as male dominated, aggressive and engineering/function focused. While they generally agreed on the underlying issues the responses to the design challenge were really diverse. Covering practical, curvaceous designs aimed at the female commuter, fun almost toy like designs to give broad appeal to the weekend riders to bikes aimed at the third world to tackle water transport issues.
RCA SHOW 2010
Finally it was the RCA’s end of year show. I won’t dwell on this too much here but I have included a gallery of some of the sites from the show this year. For me some of the interesting concepts were a bicycle crash helmet made from cardboard, it’s stronger than conventional safety helmets! A neat oyster card that will help you plan bus journeys... anything to help keep me off the tube, especially this time of year. A beautiful morphing clock, a desk lamp/projector, a fun desk of hidden compartments and finally some leaves that produced a wonderful forest of birdsong, I really miss them being around.
So I also mentioned a side project I was involved with. This was a video and interview that I worked with Sarah Katzenmaier, from IBM, on. This formed an article about where I’m working that was placed on the IBM intranet, sorry internal only so no link :-(. This generated some really varied responses and I’m hoping will lead to some projects with teams in IBM. The video can be found on YouTube. While my journey to work may not be of the greatest interest to folk you really get a feel for the immersive 3D from around 0:55 onwards.
So this leads into the question, what’s next? Well we have launched a service design competition for folk in the RCA and Imperial. If you are connected with or know some one connected with either institute then have a go. If your interested in finding out more about what we do then it’s also worth taking a look. I had great fun putting this website together and used DreamWeaver to do it. I may well switch this blog to using this tool as I really like it. This competition has been sponsored by Fusion Experience and KEA. I have also met with a team from Fusion Experience which has led to some interesting discussions on the future of innovation technologies. This has really resonated with several other conversations I have had with different people and research teams. We may well be forming a network around this area so watch this space.
I’ve been chatting with the marketing team in IBM CHQ and several teams who are engaged with other design/technology institutes so I’m hoping we will find some ways to help out there.
We are also beginning to work with the University of Monterrey in Mexico so I’m documenting and codifying a great deal of what we do in preparation for consulting with them on how they an best create a similar centre for innovation technology over there. Finally I have just taken part in a workshop put together by CI-KTN. This workshop titled Exploiting Digital Tools was looking at the future of digital tool in the creative industry and considering what UK Plc can do to take advantage of the perceived trends. Overall this was a fascinating discussion and opportunity to network, again the discussions resonated with others that seem to be cropping up again and again.
So lots of potential opportunities, I hope to be able to report back on how some have progressed on my next post.

Trading Places

Fri, 21 May 2010 09:21:58 +0100

It's surprising how much time can go by if you're not watching, I say this as it's already a month and a half since the last post I made. Since then we have had several interesting visits to the IvT Centre, hopefully leading to some interesting projects. Following the break I had in March the IvT Centre was closed for some much needed maintenance, there have been several updates that we have been wanting to make and after a couple of weeks we have managed to improve the visual display and make some great improvements to the head tracking system. This is now much smother than the last configuration we had some of this came from a software update and some of it from a new configuration. We learned a lot on how to get the best possible coverage of the tracked volume from using a new 3 pronged 'wand' that we had made up in RapidformRCA. Following the maintenance shutdown we have been able to demo what we do to several groups.
One of the first people to see the centre was Pollyanna from Ravensbourne. She came along to see what we do with the innovation technologies we have and to discuss potential collaboration between Design London and themselves. Ravensbourne have are a media and design college and are in the process of moving from Kent to London, they are in the process of building a new site at Greenwich and the next step is to visit them and discuss possible training collaboration in the 3D visualisation space.
One of the next groups to visit were a team from Max Fordham Engineering Consulting, who engage in some of the most innovative and challenging engineering projects, for example the Hermatige museum in Vilnius by Zaza Hadid. We discussed how the visualisation capability we have can compliment the work they do in helping clients to understand the effects of different construction options; how we can help them explore the best viewing positions in stadia; the lighting effects at different times of day and how we can covey the acoustic properties of auditoriums.
Sadly one event we had planned became a victim of the ash cloud, we had hoped to host our friend Chiara's project ZeroGastronomy. Unfortunately the chef she will be collaborating with was unable to fly from Italy so we hope to reschedule this event at a later date. The chef she is working with is famous across Italy for his expertise in scientific gastronomy which is a perfect fit with Chiara's project around zero gravity food packaging.
The Chairman of DDB, Stephen Woodford, was able to pay a brief visit to see what we do and was very inspired by some of the vehicle designs we demonstrated. I'm looking forwards to hosting some of the DDB team at a later date and seeing what projects we can engage in there.
Finally a visit from the Bio-Surgery team at Imperial led some interesting discussions of how we could help them find more ways of exploiting 3D visualisation. This team already have deep expertise in this area but were interested by the scale of what we can do and the tracking capability we have. Some of the ideas we discussed were virtual surgery to asset with training surgeons in procedures and providing haptic feedback; helping clinicians comprehend 3D structures, such as the blood supply in the brain, by allowing them to wander through a large scale model. The next step will be to try out one of there models on the system which should prove interesting.
Cushion Design
Finally, today, I was able to join a Design London private preview of an exhibition being held in the Sackler Centre at the V&A. The exhibition called Trading Places showcases ten years of the Design Business Associations (DBA) Inclusive Design Challenge, a bi-Annual event run by the RCA's Helen Hamlyn Centre. We were guided round by Julia Cassim, who leads the DBA Challenge. Julia is a real champion for inclusive design as a means of improving the overall design process and the results. She has worked on a global basis taking teams of designers and challenging their approaches to solution design through collaboration with extreme users. For example how does some one without arms put on a sticking plaster? Does the same solution work for some one without site? It seemed to me that the final product was one that would be better for everyone. It was interesting to learn that the requirements for accessibility that are placed on the built environment, and to some degree the software environment, do not exist in the manufacturing space. Different approaches in product development and consumer purchasing are beginning drive some improvements in this space. It seems a shame that manufacturers have been reluctant to tackle some of these issues as the exhibition made it clear that we would all benefit from the approach, those with disability from through greater accessibility, the rest of us through richer environments and better products and the manufacturers from increased sales.
It's likely that things will go a bit quiet from me for the next few weeks we ramp up for the RCA's final degree show. Jair and the team are already putting in a lot of hours in helping the vehicle designers prepare for a show to Honda in a couple of weeks time the the final degree work will be hot on the heals of that. When the show kicks off I hope to be able to report on some fantastic innovations, I hope you'll be able to come along and see the work...

The Innovation Diamond

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:25:58 +0000

For many years a popular model for the management of the innovation process within an organisation has been the innovation funnel. The funnel represents the process as a series of stages starting with ideation through design and building finally to the launch of a product or service. The name funnel refers to how, at each stage, the ideas are thinned down until only the best idea remains. With a series of steps that arrive at one final product or service each step is a reduction in the order of ten. With hundreds of thousands of ideas entering the mouth of the funnel. Increasingly I have a problem with this model. For one thing it tends to be represented as a series of stages with gating in between each stage. This infers a linear process which the real world rarely obliges in providing. Having experienced the pain of the waterfall approach in the past I know how seductive yet unrealistic this approach can be.
However the main problem I have with this model is where do these hundreds of thousands of ideas come from in the first place. Rarely can you walk up to a ‘suggestion box’ and find it overflowing with fresh ideas. Not only that, what in the model provides the direction for the thinking? Having been exposed to the design led innovation ideas that we put forward in Design London and having seen the incubator process in action I have come to realise that what seems to happen is very different. Initially there are a few ideas and concepts which can explode into a vast range of new ideas, some sound, others crazy. It’s only when this initial explosion of ideas is allowed to flourish, can the business and engineering thinking step in to winnow out the less feasible or economically sound ideas. Applying this thinking to the stages outlined in core of the Innovation Architecture, we get a very new form, we get a diamond rather than a funnel. Not only that, we get a starting point for ideas as well.
The Innovation Diamond
I accept that as presented above that this appears to be another linear approach. That is something that I am NOT recommending. The layout illustrates the steps as they would happen in an idealised yet non-realistic world and are shown in this way to help show where the growth and reduction of ideas takes place. In a real project there will be a lot of shifting around the model as learning at each stage prompts leaping around the model to explore ideas and refine them as needed. Clear linkage to the initial inspiration and organisational strategy should inform how those leaps are made.
I will not dwell on the five stages that should be recognisable from the Innovation Architecture, those were explained in that entry.However there is a new stage proposed that could be added to the Innovation Architecture model. This is the Inspiration phase:
Inspiration
In this phase the initial goal is expressed. This can be based on a market insight, facing a persona, social or organisational problem, encountering a new technology or spotting a potential re-application of an existing technology. In this initial stage a wide range of technologies can provide an inspiration, web-surfing, access to databases, etc. In terms of recording the inspiration open technologies such as Wiki’s support this step. A small group of people, even an individual can describe the inspiration or problem and can quickly work with a wide group of multi-disciplinary people to explore, build and validate the initial concept.
Clearly this model is just an early thought and does need some refinement and a bit more analysis of my thinking. But I’d love to hear others thoughts on the proposed model.

LA and Snow in the Desert

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:09:57 +0000

This year did not get off to the most auspicious of starts with the snow hampering my ability to even get into the IvT Centre. Despite the weather I was able to get in to meet with a delegation from Finmeccanica who were visiting Imperial. Even they suffered the effects of the snow as they had colleagues stranded in the air unable to land at Heathrow and join us. Still those who did make it enjoyed the event and I hope they are inspired to use our facility in their ongoing executive training.
Following their visit a group from closer to home were the RCA’s research associates. This was a really diverse group with researchers from across the RCA. I gave them a presentation on Design London to provide some context then showed them a variety of the visualisations we have covering artefacts, architectural spaces, services and systems. Many of the researchers were really enthused by the possibilities. In the discussion afterwards there were a wide range of ideas, anyone of which would be a great challenge for ourselves and I’m sure would lead to more collaboration across the RCA.

3D Display Systems at EON
Having only just got back into the swing of things in the office Jair and I were on a plane over to see our business partners EON Reality in Ervine CA, an hour south of LA (without traffic, as the locals would say). Part of our installation had included a weeks training at the head offices, if we me the travel costs. While we were there the weather was the worst LA has had for some time with several hurricane systems rolling in off the Pacific. As we were in a darkened room looking at a range of 3D systems for the week the rain did not seem so bad. The training itself was very loosely planned which gave Jair and I plenty of leeway to look at areas that interested us. Jan, who hosted us, did show us some of the new elements of the new release EON Studio 7.0, but the greatest value came from just working with him and picking up a huge range of trouble shooting and configuration tips for a CAVE environment. We also had some great input from Josh who worked with us to test out various polarising filter systems so we could benchmark where our system is. Later in the week Francisco came in to give a master class on preparing models for use in EON and texture burning techniques. As someone who was able to produce amazing results in his models it was exciting to see just how he achieved this level of detail. We were also able to have a web conference with EON’s own scripting guru in Oz who outlined some of the key things to know about EON script. Information that will be invaluable in the months ahead... now to find an Active X version of an MQTT client. Last but certainly not least, it was a pleasure to meet up with Peter again who showed Jair and I some of the ‘cultural’ sites of LA, licence laws permitting.
Following this week I had a week vacation taken which was mostly spent in Palm Springs (apart form a quick trip back to Santa Monica). From here it was possible to visit the desert in the snow! I’ve posted some photos of this part of the trip here.
On returning to the office it was then an extremely busy week doing what I could to ensure the team were as unhampered as possible as they worked with four finalists in a competition sponsored by Bentley Motors and Exa. The competition was to design the Bentley of the future and, using Exa’s fluid dynamics software, to meet certain drag co-efficient criteria. The afternoons judging was held in the IvT centre where the students gave a regular presentation of their concepts behind the final models and presented the designs using the 3D stereoscopic system. The end result was fantastic, the team had pulled out all of the stops and were ensuring a polished finish right up to the wire. The effort they put in was well worth while. The feedback from the judging team and all of the other visitors was fantastic and they were impressed with what they saw. I hope that this will lead to future relationships we can build on.
So with that I’m happy to leave this update on a high, and I’ll do my level best not to leave it so long until next time.

An Innovation Architecture

Thu, 26 Nov 2009 20:32:25 +0000

The model displayed below provides a schematic of the overall architecture for innovation technology. The following description of the architecture begins with the process flow going through the middle of the diagram. Although depicted as a series of sequential steps this should be seen as iterative phases that allow for repetition and back-tracking as the development in hand requires. Unlike previous notions of narrowing the field of ideas, technology reduces the costs of development so that more avenues of exploration become possible to pursue in refining the outcome. In fact with the addition of social technologies the innovation can draw on sources from outside of the traditional organisational boundaries.
Innovation Architecture
Ideation
This involves the gathering of ideas and interaction between different stakeholders in the innovation cycle. Web based collaborative thinking tools can enable customers, consumers, partners, employees, suppliers, etc to collaborate on ideas. Innovators can take advantage of idea support systems in discussing notions from incremental steps to radical ideas.
Design
Over the last 40 years information technologies have been used to support design. Well understood technologies exist in the form of Computer Aided Design (CAD) systems. However, these have been predominantly applied to artefacts and manufactured goods. They are now increasingly being used for Business Process Modelling (BPM) and service development.
Simulation
Traditionally the technologies here are seen to be engineering simulation. These now include more general software and business process simulation and are beginning to include service simulation in virtual spaces. This is the stage that the Design London Innovation Technology Centre focuses on.
Prototyping
This was often a phase that, due to cost, required considerable narrowing of potential candidates. Now with the advent of rapid prototyping and 3D printing this is far more cost effective. This also encompasses looking at the hand off to digital manufacturing.
Creation
Here the idea becomes a reality and is launched. This places the item into the world, be it a service, structure or product. At this stage Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) technologies support the operations. Other technologies here can also be portal technologies which close the loop as they can help feed into the next iteration of ideation.
Following the core process involved in innovation the supporting layer of data and tools can be examined. These are the components that help to tie together the process and link the organisational innovation into the rest of the organisation.
Common Data
Underlying all of the activities above needs to be a common source of data shared between the stages. This reduces the possibilities of duplication of effort and ensures consistency in the activities. Metadata gives the innovation technology the flexibility to participate in existing processes and to forge the linkages with existing tools that need to be applied.
Supporting Tools
Linked to the common data store tools to manage the whole innovation process in the business context exist. The sorts of tools that exist are project management systems, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), business dashboards, etc. Those mentioned in diagram highlight some of the key supporting technologies.
Finally some of the processes and tools that run throughout the architecture are described. These help to bring together all of the stakeholders and ensure good management throughout.
Governance
In a corporate environment this is vitally important. This covers security and access control, audit capabilities. The items that need this level of monitoring are not just the users and what data they can access or change. But also covers what services are available and employed by people and systems, what business rules are used and when.
Collaboration
These are the communication tools employed to help individuals and teams operate and interact with the services and one another. These technologies can include e-mail and traditional groupware, Instant Messaging (IM), Wiki’s, portals. These are also increasingly including social networking tools such as twitter and social sites. Finally virtual worlds are playing a growing role here.
People
In the diagram the examples of the sorts of roles involved are indicated. The list of roles should not be taken as exclusive, nor should it be inferred that these would be from a single organisation. The advent of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Web 2.0 has defiantly blurred organisational boundaries and these technologies support a high degree of permeability.

Visits and glitches

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:39:54 +0000

So its been a couple of months since the last update and several events have taken place at the IvT Centre since the last post. In our small office Belinda and Reshni have settled in and seem at home. It’s certainly made the space more lively with more of us working there. I think as Tom Kelly suggested in the Art of Innovation having a compressed start-up space helps with the office buzz and sense of camaraderie.
Other than our own office events several others have taken place. Shortly after the last post Bradley, Jair and I went to the British Innovation Show held at Alexandra Palace. We got there as the doors opened and were surprised to find that many of the exhibitors had not turned up at the early hour of ten o’clock in the morning, guys come on where was the enthusiasm!! Still as people drifted in there was more to see and folk to talk to. It was very encouraging to see a good showing from our own incubator businesses and several of the RCA IDE graduates were there as well. What seemed odd was that around half of the shows exhibitors seemed to be from overseas. I hope this was not a reflection of a lack of British based innovators and/or inventors. Knowing about some of the ideas coming out of Imperial and the RCA I know that we could have easily filled the space with ideas from these institutes alone. Still it was a great event to attend and one that inspired through showing what is possible. I admire the initiative of all of those innovators who took part.

British Innovation Show
Back on home ground we were able to help Etienne of the Human Robotics team at Imperial and put them in touch with some of the people from the computing departments serious games experts. This generated a great discussion on how some of their ideas can be taken forwards. Unfortunately the timing was poor for the RCA design and human factors people, and we have struggled to fix up another meeting involving these guys. I’ll keep on asking as I’m sure this is the sort of thing that will come around again and it will be worth establishing who the best contacts are to speak to.
Another key event that happened in the IvT Centre was the meeting of Design London’s Advisory Board. The meeting preparation generated a lot of stress as we wanted to be at our best to show the Advisory Board what we have achieved. Disastrously the day before the board were due the display system decided to go out of alignment and the relationship between wall and floor image looked worse than ever, especially the when projecting across both screens. Jair, Pablo and I worked into the night on the system to make it as good as we could for the next days display. We then got in early in the morning to rehearse our planned demonstration to the board. In the end the demonstration passed of well and did impress everyone present. However we knew it was not as good as it could be and several items we would like to have shown could just not be used.
Despite the problems we have faced there have been several groups visiting the centre and it looks like there are a couple of potential projects which, while not technically challenging for us, present interesting design challenges. First an Imperial spin off company called Plastcell came to discuss generating a 3D model to help market their product. The next team who visited were e.Quinox, a NFP group who have some interesting technology that provides third world villages with a power source. Both of these groups need something that gives a clear message to the correct audience.
Imperials press officer Elliott came to see how the centre was doing and what stories we had. Given we have only just been in the drumming up business phase we did not have any complete stories to offer, ones with a beginning, middle and end. We have several beginnings some even moving into a potential middle, but, as yet, no happy endings! However we did have a great discussion on positioning the IvT Centre. While the 3D visualisation system is impressive it is a double edged sword in some ways. Innovation technology covers multiple phases of which simulation/visualisation is a part. The system we have is a great draw and really gets people through the door however it also gives the impression that this is all we are about. I’ll plan a post to elaborate on what I view IvT as shortly after this one, so watch this space. Thinking of how the centre brings people in we had a few visits that look like they are going to lead to wider projects,
First of these was a visit from Rashik Palmer of IBM, of course he came with a squad of accompanying IBMers... it’s true we do travel in packs! This meeting was very broad and covered innovation and entrepreneurship, innovation technologies, a look at our visualisation system, smart cities, smart government and touched on a host of related concepts. Hopefully this is an area that will lead to greater collaboration in the future and will help to add value to both organisations.
One evening I had the pleasure of meeting Perparim Rama of the 4M Group architects. Rama is a friend of Nick Leons and came over to discuss some ideas with Nick. Following this we showed him some of the things we have done with the visualisation system. He was very impressed with the immersive architectural models we had developed to show Imperials planned South East Quadrant spaces. He then produced some of his own models and asked if we could see them in 3D. Half an hour later and a bit of fiddling with Deep Exploration and EON Studio and we had a model to show. We then discussed generative buildings and how using a combination of A-Life and Genetic algorithms forms for buildings can be constructed. I’m very curious to see what sort of criteria form the fitness tests for the genetic algorithms applied to buildings. Are these factors based around proposed function, aesthetics, human factors, engineering/site constraints or a combination of all of these?
As well as external visitors several local folk (i.e. from Imperial over the road) have also been around to discuss ideas. Benny Lo from the Institute of Biomedical Engineering came over after a tip off from our new Business Development Manager, Simon Hepworth. Benny’s lab have come up with a device that tracks the movement of the wearer and we wondered if it could be used as an alternative head tracking system. While not immediately applicable it seems his team have some ideas in the pipeline that may help us here. In return they want to utilise the IvT Centre’s expertise in 3D simulation and related tracking systems. It turns out they have several components of a system like this but had never put them together. A return visit to Benny’s lab is planned!
Another team we have been following up with is John Darlington and Brian Fuchs group from the London e-Science Centre. We demoed the system and this has triggered several ideas. They have discussed how we could look at modelling pollution in cities, stress reactions in performers and streaming music content. We also discussed how several of these would be supported by having a messaging node within the EON environment... an MQTT Node may be in the offing and a follow up meeting on this subject is planned. I may well be in touch with the Really Small Message Broker (RSMB) group in Hursley at some point! We also discussed how they could help us update our 3D Second Life client, even modify it to allow for a more immersive experience. Currently, although almost life size and 3D, the Second Life client only displays on the main wall, not the floor. Now if we could also use the floor screen and perhaps Benny’s head tracker we would have a really immersive virtual world. I could imagine simply leaning as though on a Segway to move you avatar, perhaps just head turning to turn around. It will be something we can experiment with further! However as we need to use this as an MSc project we will have to wait a bit for this one!
An interesting visit from a local person was a visit from Jeramy Pitt, from the Electronics and Engineering group. Jeramy has teams looking at various research areas such as: safer car cockpits/dashboards, autonomous vehicles and the value of capturing data from transport sensor networks. The car cockpit design was interesting as it turns out our BDM Simon (q.v.) used to work on car interiors for Ford. The later project also sounded familiar as one of the example uses of WebSphere Business Events - Extreme Scale was gathering traffic sensor data and using patterns of behaviour to trigger actions in response to the patterns. The research teams are coming over in a follow-up visit, and I look forward to seeing what use they put the system to.
While all of these visits have been positive it has been disappointing that we are not running perfectly, several of the demo’s we ran have had to be carefully managed so as to minimise the use of the floor screen and several models have been unusable. While, fortunately, few of our visitors have noticed this; we have been painfully aware of the limitations. As a result the system has essentially been down for maintenance this week. Jair, Pablo and I have had a few late nights doing maintenance where we can (mostly in the software) over the past few weeks but now we need to physically change the system. As this is a painstaking process requiring us to hire in a scissor lift we had no option but to effectively shut down. Hopefully, with EON’s support, we can get the problems resolved and be up and running at full capacity at the end of the week. Then we can continue our work and EON can get paid.
This has highlighted to us how dependent we currently are on the knowledge that EON had and how fragile the system stability is in terms of software and hardware setup. We have been working with EON since to retrieve the situation and, as of this week, have been forced to effectively close for maintenance. Having the procurement process hold onto the final milestone payment has certainly focused attention on getting this fixed but looking ahead Jair and I need to get the training necessary to maintain the system. Speaking of training I am away in Brussels next week taking part in some consulting training run by IBM. Hopefully this will help us build on the visits and convert more of them into long term opportunities for us to work with them and add value to our clients.

Installation Completed

Fri, 4 Sep 2009 15:21:46 +0100

Looking back it has been over a two months since my last update to the blog, partly because I have taken a holiday in that time and partly because the academic world has been on holiday. This is my first year working in a academic environment, while I’m used to July and August being ‘quiet times’ in the business environment, I was not prepared for the emptiness of the RCA in August. Still it has given us the couple of weeks we needed to get our visualisation system corrected.
Over the last two weeks Peter and Chris from EON have been over here correcting the 3D visualisation system. This entailed taking the entire supporting structure down from the ceiling and reconfiguring it from scratch. Having gone through this process the entire system looks a great deal better than it did before on both screens. The floor screen has now lost it’s ‘underwater’ look and aligns with the wall screen far better than it did before. Not only that but we have been able to use the tracking system for the first time. This system uses an array of twelve cameras to track a set of reflective spheres. One set of these are affixed to a pair of polarised glasses. These glasses are then tracked and the position is used to drive the stereoscopic visualisation. The effect is that the wearer of the tracked glasses sees the projected image as a static object in space, as you walk round the object the tracking calculates what you should see from the perspective you have moved to. Using our existing models we could walk around a virtual cars and explore them from different perspectives and angles.
The week after Peter and Chris left us then Nils form EON paid us a visit. He gave us a couple of days introduction in setting up the new software. We spent a great deal of time using a virtual hall space, a teapot and a chair in order to create a configuration template for our system. For example with the virtual chair we knew things were good when we walked around the chair and it appeared to be static, upright and solid to the wearer of the head tracking system. Although with later testing we have found some ghosting when the image moves to high and low depths of field.
As people began to return to the RCA life has started up again in the Innovation Technology Centre. The focus over the last few weeks and the up-coming weeks is to bring people into the IvT Centre and to increase awareness of what we do and the capability we have across the RCA and Imperial. So far several heads of departments have been in to see what we can do and now that the students have returned we will be letting them get a flavour of what we can do. I’m looking forward to seeing what the visualisation system inspires.
One group who have already been in touch with us are the Human Robotics team from Imperial. They have a project that has developed a therapeutic robotic system that acts as a physiotherapist with patients suffering motor control problems. The system asks patients to play a 3D game in which they attempt to reach and grasp objects, this uses a haptic input system and part of the feedback is a robot applying force to move the patient off course. As they push against the robot they improve their motor control.

Haptic Controller Demo

Our involvement has been to see if we can connect them with various teams across the RCA and Imperial who can help them develop the existing system and take it to the next stage. In return they have loaned a haptic control to us so that we can experiment with using this as an input device and to see if we can generate feedback from models in our 3D environment. So far we have just installed this and tried the included demos. One of these allows you to use the controller to sense on screen spheres of various materials. It was incredible to use a controller to ‘feel’ a sphere of molasses. The haptic feedback really gives the sense of the resistance of pushing through a viscus material and even conveys the sensation of a tacky surface, again something to look forward to using on our system.
A team who has come back to us with a new project idea are David and guy from the animation department at the RCA. They have a proposal to film a set from the Oscar winning animation Peter and the Wolf. The proposal is to film it and allow people to access the material in an interactive way, this project offers quite a few technical challenges but could have a great result. Along side this work we are finishing up some investigations of what was/could be done for the 3D fashion shoot. We learned a huge amount from this experiment, a lot of it was what not to do! Now armed with this knowledge we can plan a much more achievable goal and approach for next year. I proposed we put together a presentation to the fashion department to explain the learning and show them what we have achieved.
Another contact who has returned to us with an interesting project is a Christian Kerrigan from the V&A. He has a proposal for an exhibition at the V&A with an immersive quality. From what he has suggested we will need to investigate some ideas around using a curved screen surface so that visitors really get the sensation of being within the display environment itself. This one will require some experimentation to create the sensation of immersion with a single screen.
Some other external contacts who have been through and visited have been Lord Stone, who has a proposal for visualising various spiritual systems in a series of spaces. Kent County Council’s innovation group who have a host of innovation projects that we could work with.
Finally two more Design London folk have moved over to join us in the RCA Innovation Centre outpost at the RCA, Belinda and Reshni have moved over to our office. Welcome to them both and I’m sure we will have fun in our small office. However as two people arrived we have also said goodbye to Neri who has left to focus on her fashion business Neri Karra. I wish the best to Neri with building her brand.

The RCA is Closed

Mon, 27 Jul 2009 17:48:29 +0100

... well that’s what it feels like! Since the chaos of the degree shows and convocation came to an end it seems most people have gone on holiday and the entire place has a somewhat desolate feel to it. Still it has been a great time to start taking stock of where we are and begin plans for the future. Unfortunately during the first week we discovered that the projectors used in the main galleries had been stolen during the after show clear up. What turned out to make this even more disappointing was the suggestion from the security team that it was probably ‘an inside job’, i.e someone knew they were there rather than an opportunist. Still good luck to them getting the expensive software needed to run the 3D display, they will not be much use for DVD watching unless you like your pictures with a green or pink hue, the colour filters are integral to the lenses.
Apart form that disappointment the overall response from most people looking back at the show has been very positive, the aim now is to capitalise on this and keep letting people know we are here and about our capabilities. Over the last couple of weeks and, for this week, a series of meetings have been set up to introduce the IvT Centre to a range of department heads and leaders in Imperial and the RCA. At the same time David Crombie has been doing a great job of finding bids we can be associated with and other routes to funding opportunities. Another interesting link that may come up is meeting the newly appointed resident artist for the Victoria and Albert museum, Christian Kerrigan. Christian was extremely interested and excited about the possibilities of working with the 3D display system and looking at some of his work it would be a great fit.
As well as building links within Imperial and the RCA I have been considering the business plan for the IvT Centre. Nick Leon led a full Design London group meeting last week, we’ve not had one for some time. During this he was able to give us all the feedback from the project executive review in which they had some external reviewers to give further input.
Overall the feedback was very positive, the reviewers consider Design London a leading edge example of multi-disciplinary design led innovation. They also considered that we had got a unique mix of capabilities and a balance that will be hard to match. A lot of the advice on what to do going forward was around tightening up our internal linkages and taking full advantage of what we already have as we take it out to internal groups and external customers. With all of this in mind I have put together a draft business plan that I will take to the team after my holiday next week... I’d hate to get all of that great feedback then forget it all while I’m relaxing in the sun!

Electronic Visual Arts Conference

Tue, 7 Jul 2009 17:29:05 +0100

This is going to be a week where I’ll have to author as I go as there is a lot to cover from the Electronic Visual Arts (EVA) conference held by the Computer Arts Society (CAS) a special interest group of the British Computer Society (BCS), with this alphabet soup you can tell it’s IT industry related. Back at the start of the week Monday was a quiet day of tidying up after the last two weeks and of planning the weeks ahead. Form the planning it looks like I won’t see the Design London space at the RCA until Friday, two days of conference, a day WAH and then I get back.
So onto Tuesday, my first day at the EVA conference, although it was day two of the conference the papers on day one all seemed to revolve around archeology so didn’t seem that relevant to our work. I managed to arrive very early for the conference and discovered the BCS does some of the worst visitor coffee, tomorrow I think I’ll find a cafe to inhabit for a while. Finally the conference got going, surprisingly there were very few plug points for laptop users... at the BCS!
I have written a full account of the papers presented at the conference which can be found here and have selected a few of the papers i most enjoyed and repeated them below.
A Computational Investigation into Sketching
This paper presented by Frederic Fol Leyarie seemed, to me, everything the painting fool (See main report) could have been or at least seemed to be approaching it. His work looked at creating sketches and finding the right line in a messy sketch. Frederic had studied business computing but then went back to art enjoying creating small sketches of faces however something happened and he lost the capability to draw with emotion so he sought to create a digital ‘prosthetic’ to allow him to do this again. His aim was to simulate the strategy of drawing not necessarily the drawing itself... here I think is the essence of what was different between this paper and the painting fool. His initial work during an MA at Goldsmiths used plotters and allowed him to look into the approach to drawing.
For version two and as part of his Phd his questions were why sketch? Why is it styles are unique? Why is a trained person better at finding the right line? He deduced sketching involves perception, memory (long and short) and control. From this he created a map of the process, this map formed a complex model which allowed the generation of a computational model, he also touched on his creation of ISLE a language for sketching. The model saw a sketch as a feedback loop using sight and the marks on paper as sensory feedback input into the computational model. This was explicitly an engineering feedback loop in terms of a control system loop with control, sensors and noise entering the equation.
Examples of the loop in action were demonstrated showing how the system refined the marks yet kept the older marks producing a work that really gave the feeling of a hand drawn sketch based on observation. In discussing noise in the feedback loop he discussed how this can be seen as coming form illusions and delusions. How the system works to remove the illusion but how delusion is about how good a just finished work seems to us until we step away from it, physically or in time. Apparently holding a drawn work to a mirror is a great way of the creator seeing their flaws. But he did comment that a bit of delusion is sometimes good for the artist. He also mentioned how he considered making a robotic arm to make the marks and a camera to act as the eye, he thought this would take to long but then went ahead and did it anyway. Very impressive!
Visual Arts and 2D - 3D Motion Typo.graphic Design
This paper looked at digital typography mentioning typography is typically concerned with text, navigation, expression and experimentation. Anastasios Maragiannis from the University of Greenwich was interested in experimentation, first he gave a brief synopsis of digital typographies history opening with the impact of Adobe’s postscript language. He also touched on how pixillation impacted font development. For example the Chicago font from early Mac OS is a late example. In the 80’s digital type with multiple discrete elements arrived and in the 90’s the Web began to have a serious impact on typographical thinking.
He then walked us through a website demonstrating his experiments, very entertaining, but not as entertaining as Victor Borger’s Phonetic Punctuation. Still it was very good, I think the best thing I can do is suggest you visit the site TYPEFACE and have a play.
The Interface Behind the Face
For today’s keynote Gordana, who discussed her human immune system display yesterday, retuned to discuss the effect of digital technology in our work, and the world on the human brain. She also introduced a new concept Neuroplastic art.
She started by looking at how people had interacted with her own works over the last twenty years. In 1994, her first installation that involved a fixed bicycle and a display, she noted that people spent a long time using this (up to 45 minutes) and that they seemed to enter a meditative state. In 1997 she created a piece called Infonoise that projected multiple images onto a large Möbius strip and that had multiple and confusing sounds. This installation effected some people very strongly causing confusion and they had to be led away. She cited a similar affect through her current work Fugue and showed a video of a young guy reacting in a very odd way to the work, I suspect his experience was chemically augmented.
From this she moved onto the outside world showing shots of Tokyo and Times Square, NYC. The city of today has a similar assault on our senses, it his a large scale high speed new media assault. She asked what affect does this have on our minds? Then suggests that neuroscience may have an answer through some of the ideas put forward by Norman Doige (2007) that the brain is plastic and modifies itself as it goes. She then showed some amazing work by Paul Bach-y-Rita who taught blind people using there sense of touch... this was so much more than braille. The work used a dense set of stimulators (at first vibrating pins, later electrodes) to form a pattern on the tongue based on input from a camera. Using this the brain re-wires itself to use this input to ‘see’ to the level where simple shapes can be perceived and space can be navigated. As the resolution of the input increases so it seems does the definition of what the person sees.
So this observation and the observations of people reacting to the stimulus her work provided begins to suggest that the world around us is continually modifying how our minds work. If this is true then some works of art have the capability of modifying the brain of the observer, perhaps permanently. Gordana has dubbed this Neuroplastic art and has proposed a manifesto for this form. This does raise questions of ethics in art, and in digital media in general. However it would be interesting to see if it is possible to modify the brain in a permanent way to increase capability or even add new abilities.
Aristotle's Office: Nine Objects and an Interface

Related to Uncle Rango of Arg I presume?
Last but not least was Tom Keene discussing the shaking plant, whirling bin, flashing light and patch-bay that we had seen in the EVA gallery. This work, called Aristotle’s Office, trys to make explicit the interconnections of the world by using cables that plug together the micro-controllers of familiar office items. This work involves several of Toms interests Arduinos, open frameworks, Open Source and social software. Amazingly the work was created for the Lighthouse in Brighton, there’s a name I’ve not heard in a long time. I studied multi-media there about 12 years ago. It seems they have moved yet again and the work was for their new space. The inspiration for the piece came from the Adventure Game another enjoyable blast from the past. All in all it was an excellent presentation to end on, nice one Tom.
After the conference I worked from home on Thursday and caught up on items I had been unable to attend to in the previous two days. Then onto Friday which was a very quiet day as I was in the office on my own for most of the day, that is until Anna came over to help take some high definition pictures of our space. A write up on the spaces opening is due to appear in Imperials alumni magazine. As not much happened on Friday I was able to get away earlier than I have done for what seems a very long time.

Convocation and the end of the show

Fri, 3 Jul 2009 20:47:25 +0100

So here I am on the Friday night train home somewhat worse for the odd Prosec in the Design London space at the RCA as we celebrated the honouring of our director, Nick Leon, as he became a fellow of the RCA and as we celebrated the graduation of this years students of the RCA at convocation. Not only did we celebrate the convocation but we also celebrated/mourned the end of Sir Christopher Fraylings tenure as Rector of the RCA. But we should wind the week back and start at the beginning not the end...
So Monday came round and not much happened in our space until the afternoon when the Imperial Press team came to visit. They made it clear that they would be looking for an engineering angle in any story we had to tell before they could take it up. As it happens the fantastic story that Loowat has to tell involves Design London and engineering and its an engaging story. I hope this works to our (three way mutual advantage). It was great to meet the Imperial press team and show them the 3D visualisation we have and it was fantastic fun to be able to show them some of the RCA design show. I can only hope they enjoy it as much as I have been lucky enough to do.
Tuesday was a fantastic day in so many ways I hardly know where to start... but the beginning of the day will probably do. In the morning Dave Locke of IBM came to visit and I was able to demonstrate the 3D capability of Design London to him, always a wow. Following this we I was able to show him the rest of design show which, I now, know he found very inspiring.
During this we discussed how I could help to influence a design led thinking in IBMs approach to software. As a result of this discussion I hope to have a chat with Andy Stanford-Clark (of recent twittering house fame) and discuss how Design London could help to increase the customer led design awareness of software designers in IBM.
This took me up towards lunch time, at this point Dave had to leave for his lecture and Chris Markes arrived to see me I was also able to show Chris the capabilities of the 3D simulator then I was able to take him up to the Senior Common room for a fantastic meal that only the RCA senior common room can provide. Here we got to chat with members of the Helen Hamlyn Centre and Microsoft research in a fabulously relaxed (if sweltering atmosphere). Following this I took Chris to the degree show and had great fun wandering round the vehicle design, interaction design, IED, communication, graphic arts, designed products and architecture displays.
After all of this I had to briefly abandon Chris and deal with one of the issues arising from the rendering of more fashion video output in animation. At one point I had to drag poor old Chris up to the animation space on the fourth floor. I’m sure visiting ‘behind the scenes’ of the RCA, like any behind the scenes view, blew a bit of the magic the show had cast. Never mind there was more spell binding to be done...

Sir Christopher opens the Helen Hamlyn Awards
After this we headed back to the senior common room were the Helen Hamlyn awards took place. This was a relaxed series of awards well presented by Lady Hamlyn, Sir Christopher and Jeramy Myers; enjoyable and followed by a great chance to network with a glass of wine. Here I got the meet a guy who had been given an award for generating 3D prints based on baby sonar scans... we have so much to talk to him about as one of the things I would like to do is integrate Design London’s visualisations more closely with RapidformRCA.
Following this we headed over to the Royal Geographical Society, the other side of the Royal Albert Hall to attend Innovation Night In which we got to hear Jonathan Ive in discussion with Sir Christopher Frayling, see my previous blog for the full report.
This was followed by a Champagne fuelled private reception in the galleries in the RCA. here I got to have a brief chat with Jonathan, however he did look a bit flustered and I suspect he had had zero opportunity to see the exhibits... the price of designer fame in the RCA I guess :-(
The next day was a generally quiet day until I was suddenly whisked over to the main galleries to meet the Duke of Gloucester and escort him and the associated crowd over to our space in the Stevens building. Here Nick took over and showed him the full 3D show. The Duke seemed happy with the show and cracked several jokes. I suspect that’s a good sign.
So this brings me on to Thursday... A ‘work at home day’ or in the initial case a work at Hursley day. I popped back to IBM to hand back my under utilised laptop. On one hand it was great to meet up with my old colleagues and it was wonderful to have lunch with a handful of them at the Husley Club... a beer and a burger in a sunny country setting cannot be bad. However the vibe I felt there and the atmosphere was not good at all. I really felt the credit crunch is biting these guys, sorry to say financial realities have finally burst the bubble that has been Hursley for some years... All I can hope is that a things recover soon for their sakes.

The Royal Albert Hall filling up
So finally I get back to Friday, for us the last day of the show, and a chance to celebrate two weeks of insanely hard work. I got in and rushed round to clear the Design London space up ready for after the convocation starting at 11:15. During my running round Keith, the security manager, let me know we would need security if we were planning to have drinks after the show. We were so I asked if anyone was free, fortunately there were already events planned to take place in the Stevens building so he said the same guy could cover both areas. Once this was sorted out I rushed over to the Royal Albert Hall to take a seat and watch the events take place. Fortunately the RCA convocation event is a rich mix of humour, moments of seriousness and moments of pathos. A great balance, especially with Sir Christopher Frayling leaving the position of Rector after 10 years, at this event he was honoured as a Senior Fellow, Doctor and Sheriff of the RCA... a reference to his past study of ‘spaghetti westerns’. Jeramy Myers pun filled introductions of the senior honourands certainly had us all laughing. When the convocation finally came to a close I made a rapid dash back to the Design London space to open up for the afternoons events. We had some Pret sandwiches delivered to feed folk and started the event with 24 bottles of Prosec and a box of beers in two huge ice buckets. We also set up a projector to watch the Wimbledon semi-final on the large 5x3 metre wall screen. The afternoon and evening passed very pleasurably indeed with various members and friends of Design London drifting through. In fact I was surprised when I realised it had got to eight o’clock and that I had managed to have yet one more final late night after these two weeks of effort. All in all a note on which to end this period of intense effort.