Calling Sydney

For those, who are interested in my research work at the KCDC lab at the uni here in Sydney, I’ll talk a bit about the project in detail today. It’s still in its conceptual design phase, but I’ll post more here as the project evolves.

My colleagues at the lab work on aesthetic and ambient visualizations, often with the focus on making information better visible for users, in an aesthetically pleasing and sometimes persuading way. Since the focus of my dissertation is (broadly) on the integration of large-scale visualizations into architectural environments and the KCDC lab just recently acquired a large-scale SmartSlab display, it was apparent for me to work with these displays.

This is really cool, since it allows me to explore cutting-edge technology first hand! During my PhD work I was only able to use standard projectors for large-scale visualizations (though I’m currently working on a low-resolution LED display together with my brother), which has some obvious disadvantages. (such as shadows, limited projection area, works only well in dark rooms, etc)

The only disadvantage of the SmartSlab display is that it has a very low resolution. You can watch movies on that display if you’re about 5-10 meters away from it, but once you’re up really close, you will more or less only see pixels (or hexals, as they call it). However, this feature can also be exploited in exciting ways, which I’m actually trying to do. (ie you can see a picture/movie from far away and interact with pixels once you’re close)

We’ll probably use some eye tracking hardware or other sensors (attached to an arduino board) to allow some basic user interactions.

Concerning the data, I hope that we’ll get access to the building’s electricity and water usage data. If we will, the idea would be to create a public persuasive ambient display that makes the stuff and students working in the building aware about their use of energy.

Energy awareness is actually an important matter in Australia. The government and public institutions are really trying hard to convince people to use less energy wherever it’s possible. The following pictures also show the public awareness about this issue. I took the first picture at the toilets in my uni building and the second one is from Bondi beach.

Like I said in the beginning, this is still very early work in progress and I’ll keep you posted on that matter. Any comments are very welcome!