This past June, Owen and I prepared our bodies for our upcoming travel to New Zealand by first flying to Europe. There were three destinations, Berlin, Paris and the Netherlands. While the latter two were more in the vain of seeing old friends and catching up over a couple beers, Berlin (though there was time for play too!) included the Berlin Open 2009 conference as well as a presentation at the Technical University of Berlin.
So, folks! Here it is, our long overdue thanks to everyone we met in Berlin. Firstly, we’d like to thank Bernd, Nikita, Ben, Ani and the rest of the Berlin-Open organizers, for inviting us to present our work. We’d also like to thank Wilm and friends at TU Berlin, we hope you have a touchable up and running and are excited to see where you might take it in regards to wavefield synthesis. Last but certainly not least, Jasmine, Mike and Erin, THANK YOU for giving us beds to sleep on, food to eat, and amazing memories to hold onto.
Berlin Open – Knowledge, Networking, Innovation
“The primary target is to convey the innovation potential of open policies and strategies – totally independent of the areas of expertise. To communicate examples where Openness is a fundamental alternative to traditional approaches…” (Berlin-open.org)
We presented on the open nature of much our work, and discussed exciting open technologies, philosophies and techniques being harnessed by music and multimedia engineering communities worldwide– many of which drive and inspire the work we do here at FlipMu. It was wonderful to hear conversation on the idea of “openness” from leading practitioners across multiple disciplines.
Main Berlin-Open Hall
As you can see from the photo above, Berlin-open took place in a great location (Berlin fairgrounds, Messe Berlin), and the entire building was day-lit by open windows. While this made the conference a treat, the flood of ambient infrared light made it very hard to have stable finger-tracking while setting up for our installation, being that Bricktable is a Rear DI (diffuse illumination) multitouch table. Rear DI, as most common vision-based multitouch setups are extremely susceptible to IR from ambient lighting conditions.
We got around this by simply turning off our LED’s from underneath, and running Bricktable as a Front DI table! While not as stable as a controlled rear DI setup, because we were able to place Brick out of any direct sunlight, we were able to have the table up and running in a completely lit room with very minimal issues.
This has led Owen and I to discuss possible future modifications such as ambient light sensors which control the brightness of our LED’s based on the ambient lighting conditions, essentially automating and self-calibrating the table between front and rear DI, as the lighting conditions of the environment changes.
More photos from Berlin coming soon to our flickr….
