Andrew Quitmeyer

I'm in the game: embodied puppet interface improves avatar control

We have developed an embodied puppet interface that translates a players body movements to a virtual character, thus enabling the player to have a fine grained and personalized control of the avatar. To test the efficacy and short-term effects of this control interface, we developed a two-part experiment, where the performance of users controlling an avatar using the puppet interface was compared with users controlling the avatar using two other interfaces (Xbox controller, keyboard). Part 1 examined aiming movement accuracy in a virtual contact game. Part 2 examined changes of mental rotation abilities in users after playing the virtual contact game. Results from Part 1 revealed that the puppet interface group performed significantly better in aiming accuracy and response time, compared to the Xbox and keyboard groups. Data from Part 2 revealed that the puppet group tended to have greater improvement in mental rotation accuracy as well. Overall, these results suggest that the embodied mapping between a player and avatar, provided by the puppet interface, leads to important performance advantages.

Teaching digital craft

At the overlap of maker culture, ubiquitous computing, critical making, and novel interfaces, digital craft emerges as a new research and teaching domain. It offers new opportunities in interaction design but it also poses particular challenges to academic curricula. This paper first discusses the value and challenges connected to digital craft. Then, based on our experience with exploring digital craft in a research universitys teaching environment, we highlight viable approaches and teaching practices in this new field. It closes with a discussion of the prototype results achieved in those classes.

Digital naturalism: designing holistic ethological interaction

Digital Media can empower the traditionally technologically neglected exploration and outreach components of an ethologists process. A digitally holistic scientific process holds implications for empowering both fields of ethology and digital media.

Digital naturalism: interspecies performative tool making for embodied science

Digital Naturalism investigates the role that digital media can play in field Ethology. While digital technology plays an increasingly larger role in the Ethologists process, its use tends to be limited to the experimentation and analysis stages. My goal is to work with scientists to develop context-dependent, behavioral tools promoting novel interactions between animal, man, and environment. The aim is to empower the early exploratory phases of their research as well as the later representation of their work. I will test a methodology combining analytical tool making and interaction studies with modern ethology.

Ruggedization of vibration stimuli in silicone-electronic devices

Silicone prototyping is becoming more accessible to rapid-prototypers and maker communities, but techniques combining electronics and silicone at small scale production levels are still lacking. At the workshop, our group will discuss how to utilize silicone to make more robust technology, while preparing delicate circuit parts for durable use within the rubber. We will focus on one of the trickiest and also most ubiquitous digital components used in silicone devices, vibration motors. Tips are provided for isolating and destressing sensitive electronics components as well as ensuring proper transfer of tactile stimulation through techniques such as compressive-stress molding.

Media in performance – the Subway project

The collaborative media-art project Subway combines the mediation of a dance performance with interactive digital technology toward a new performative feedback loop. In a response to the restrictive practices regarding dancing in public in Iran, Subway applies digital technology to connect performers in the USA with those in Iran. Together, they create a new mediatised performance. The piece uses digital technology to break a dance video documentation into individual frames, which become the basis for a cell phone application that allows performers in Iran to re-enact individual poses. Finally, each pose is sent back and re-assembled in the documentation of the shared event. The text outlines the background of this work, its implementation, as well as the particular condition for the socio-technological context, and ongoing and future work. Subway is presented as a piece of experimental media performance art that integrates technology in a transformative way as it answers given cultural challenges.

Subway: Activist Performance through Mediation

Subway is a participatory multi-located activist art project. It builds on the mediation of a dance performance by breaking a video apart into its image frames; creating a photo app in Android to re-use these frames as guides for a frame-by-frame reenactment; and finally reassembling the collected images into a new video. Through the affordances of digital and mobile media, it allowed participants in New York and Teheran to create a shared dance performance as digital activist art.