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After lots of hard work, I am proud to announce the open beta launch of a new social platform I’ve been developing for creative and emergent interactive technology called techsparked. If you like my blog, the MTmini, Audiotouch or any of my work – you’re going to love techsparked!

Beta invites are not needed anymore – the site is launched!!

http://sethsandler.com/technology-multitouch/proud-announce-launch-techsparkedcom/

Are you interested in innovative, emergent, and interactive technology (multitouch, gestures, eye tracking, augmented reality, creative tech, etc) or the interactions we will have with information in the future? Do you create emergent experiences, have interactive applications/software or code frameworks for building interactive installations, applications, or projects? If so, then this opportunity really is for you.

I have some beta invites for a new website that’ll be doing a rapid beta test within the next week. For the beta, we’re especially looking for people that already have or are in the process of creating projects, applications and software frameworks within the interactive, emergent, and creative technology domain.

To sign up, send an e-mail to: mail[at]sethsandler[dot]com (or leave a comment below) with your e-mail, your name, company (if there is one) and [optionally] any information about a framework, application, or project you have that deals in creative and emergent interactive technology.

If you’ve already sent me a request (prior to this post), don’t worry – I already have you on the list and you should be receiving an invite within the next week.

Beta invites are not needed anymore – the site is launched!! http://sethsandler.com/technology-multitouch/proud-announce-launch-techsparkedcom/

If you’re familiar with multitouch, you’re probably familiar with Jeff Han’s TED demo. In it, there’s an example of a lava application that shows an interesting use of multitouch.

A few months ago, I was trying to work on something similar.

The following is what I came up with. I never had the chance to finish and was only able to add mouse support at the time. So, here’s a preview of what might come to a multitouch screen near you at some point in the future.

It’s pretty slow since it uses bitmapdata and filters and the code is a bit of a Frankenstein of information I found online about ‘metaballs’. If I get a chance, i’ll see if I can get the code out.

Meanwhile, have some fun! Click around and push/move the lava!

What do you think? Lava enough for you?

I’ve been meaning to write about this for some time, but finally found the right time.

In June/July, I helped work on a combined project with University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and Recombinant Media Labs (RML).

The install was a reinstall of a previous setup. It consited of 10 individual screens 12 feet wide x 6 feet 9 inches tall. Together they formed a rectangle 24 feet x 36 feet. 10 projectors, 1 per screen, projected on each screen to create a full 360 surround experience. The setup was complimented by a 10 channel audio setup with dedicated microphones, 28 MM-4 miniature loudspeakers,  12 UPJ-1P VariO loudspeakers, and eight UMS-1P subwoofers. To say the least, it was a massive system.

On June 10th there was an opening performance of the system and later was open to the public for viewing. Check out the opening performance below which is a small portion of the 50 minute showcase.

Check out the timelapse of the entire setup:

For a detailed writeup, checkout Berry Threw (who also helped on the project) at: http://www.barrythrew.com/2009/06/15/recombinant-media-labs-at-ucsd-roundup/

Some images of the build/setup below:

Thanks to Peter Otto and Naut Humon for the opportunity to work on this project.

Before I started with multitouch, I was experimenting with interactive virtual gaming. As a result, for one of my final class projects at UCSD, I created a dynamic game I call ‘Slider’ which is a 1-3 player virtual hockey type game that adapts to the number of people playing.

This games uses reactivision software, along with Flash, to detect ‘fiducial’ or symbol block movements. The game is played by moving these symbols on a table. Players can enter and exit the playing field at any time. The game adapts to the number of players. The lower the score, the better; the first player with a score of 12 ends the game.

At the time of creation, about 2 years ago, the future plans included projecting directly on the surface and implementing multitouch so users can play with their fingers and objects instead of only object symbols. Hopefully i’ll be able to eventually revisit this project and release it for all to play with.

If you have other ideas about similar games or how to improve this concept, leave a comment. Don’t forget to send it to your friends and share the magic of multiplayer virtual hockey aka ‘Slider’. So what do you think? Is this the next game of the future? haha You’ll have to challenge me to a round next time you see me

I’ve been going through and trying to collect and organize things on my computer and happened to find some old artwork. I’m hoping to eventually get time to revisit some of the more visual and artistic times I used to have time for.

Here’s a glimpse of some of my past work. I’d love to hear what you think!

These include: pen and ink and pencil drawings, illustrator and photoshop work, logo and magazine design and some other random manipulations.

Check out some of the dates on these; I feel old.

So? What’s your thoughts?

Eugene has just ported Memo’s fluid solver work to AS3 http://blog.inspirit.ru/?p=248. With the source now out, I was able to quickly add multitouch support and it works great! Thanks to cyandesign and simpleex for keeping me on my toes.

A couple notes, the touchlib AS3 classes had to be corrected since they currently don’t send dX and dY values which the fluid solver needs to calculate directional velocity. Other than that, things went fairly smoothly and took little time to make touch sensitive.

Click the above image to play

Download:

Multitouch Fluid Solver FluidSolver.zip Version: 1

Multitouch Fluid Solver

Author:	Seth Sandler, Mehmet Atken, Eugene
Date:	November 18, 2009
MD5 Hash:	1c6974ecb841b09e6fdfbbe3539ca52e

260.9 KiB 3274 Downloads Details...

If you try this out, leave a comment here and let me know how things go. Video responses are welcome also!