I have a recurring dream that starts as a nightmare but turns into something else altogether.
Imagine the stage of a monumental concert hall. The auditorium is packed, and as the audience notices you, thousands of conversations turn into a deep, imposing silence that sends a chill down your spine. Spotlights on a majestic grand piano. You take your seat, and the thought hits you – I don’t know how to play the piano!
This year’s Vivid Sydney light, sound, and ideas festival saw the collision of two powerhouse Australian art collectives – Ethno Tekh and Enig’matik Records. Together they built Enigma’Tekh, a whirring system of massive technicolor projections coating the facade of Sydney University.
How we think about everyday objects is changing with accessible 3D printing, and new tools are emerging to make it easier to design and create just about anything you can imagine. Sculpteo and the Autodesk Gallery recently hosted a “Decoding 3D Printing” workshop to help hobbyists and professionals get up to speed in an afternoon.
Our very own Raffi Bedikian took the mic to talk about how Leap Motion is making 3D design and printing more accessible – including how he brought a cup from his imagination into physical form.
For decades, motion controls have held a persistent place in our visions of the future. We’ve watched the super heroes, mad scientists, and space cowboys of popular media control digital experiences with just a wave of their hands. We’ve been captivated by these powerful, natural, and intuitive interactions; imagining what it would be like to have that power at our own fingertips.
Tony Stark’s workshop, Star Trek’s Holodeck, Firefly’s holographic brain scanner, and Minority Report’s pre-crime visioning computers all exude a sense of power and mastery, along with paradoxical senses of simplicity, ease, intuitiveness, and humanity. Simply, these experiences feel – “Arthur C. Clarke” style – magical.
The Art and Technology major at Saxion University of Applied Sciences delivers the type of curriculum many of us at Leap Motion would have killed to enroll in as undergrads – four years of learning how to meld mixed media with emerging tech in ways that will spring humanity forward, induce awe, and spiral our collective consciousness into new frontiers. It’s a maker’s paradise.
Recently, six sophomores who’d been itching to incorporate Leap Motion technology into their work since launch came together over the course of ten weeks to create Magic Canvas. Based in the Dutch city of Enschede, it’s an interactive art installation rallying to prevent the once heavily gentrified De Heurne retail district from becoming a veritable ghost town.
From art galleries and museums to retail centers and hackathons, the Leap Motion Controller can bring a little magic to interactive exhibits. Here’s a quick design guide to help installation artists and developers get started.
Old habits can be hard to break. When I’m building Leap Motion prototypes, I often find myself slipping into designing for cursors and touchscreens – paradigms based on one-handed interactions. By remembering to think outside the mouse, we can open ourselves up to interacting with virtual objects using both hands. But when are two-handed interactions the right approach?
Immersion is everything in a VR experience. Since your hands don’t actually float in space (unless you’re this guy), we created a new Forearm API that tracks your physical arms. This makes it possible to create a more realistic experience with onscreen forearms.
Hand tremors from diseases such as essential tremor, Parkinson’s disease, Wilson’s disease, dystonia and others affect tens of millions of people around the world, and the neurological and genetic basis for many tremors is still yet to be understood. Patients suffer physically, often unable to write and practice art, as well as socially, with tremors giving rise to more social anxiety. Unfortunately, there are relatively few ways for individuals and doctors to quickly and reliably track tremor progression over time.
Recently, I met a neuroscientist named Marianne Stephans at a hackathon in San Francisco connecting people working in the neuroscience field with technologists. We worked together afterwards to build a movement sonification application – a method for giving sound feedback for physical movement, related to research she does connecting motor control and auditory memory/control. I found myself inspired by the problem set, given the number of people suffering from these types of motor control problems.
With better tremor measurement and tracking using Leap Motion, I believe research could progress faster aiding in the treatment of tremors and doctors could have a more efficient tool for quantifying tremor.
Going from zero to 60 can feel exhilarating – but if you don’t know what you’re doing, it can spell disaster. The same is true for first-time app users. Even with traditional interfaces, a clear and intuitive onboarding experience is important. For new interfaces like the Leap Motion Controller, it can be the difference between joy and frustration.
The trick is to build an onramp – a starting experience where users can “speed up” to access the full functionality and interaction set.