Picture credit: Kerin Bryant |
Dr. Florian ‘Floyd’ Mueller directs the Exertion Games Lab at RMIT, Melbourne, Australia.Floyd’s research has spanned four continents, including research posts at the University of Melbourne (Australia), MIT Media Lab (USA), Media Lab Europe (Ireland), Fuji-Xerox Palo Alto Laboratories (USA) and Xerox Parc (USA). Floyd was also leading a team of 12 researchers at the Commonwealth and Scientific Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) on the future of “Connecting People”. He has been a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Stanford University (USA). Floyd has also been a Microsoft Research Asia Fellow and has worked at Microsoft Beijing (China) with the research teams developing Xbox’s Kinect.
Floyd’s research work was presented at the top conferences in the field of interaction design and computer games, including several best paper nominations. Floyd’s Exertion Games work has been shortlisted for the European Innovation Games Award (next to Nintendo’s Wii Fit), received honorary mentions from the Nokia Ubimedia Award, was commissioned by Wired’s Nextfest, exhibited worldwide and attracted substantial international research funding, including numerous grants from the US, the Australian, the UK and the German Government. His team’s Exertion Games were played by over 20,000 players across 3 continents and were featured on the BBC, ABC, Discovery Science Channel and Wired magazine. |
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Wouter Walmink has recently joined the lab as a visiting researcher. He is a multi-disciplinary interaction designer with a background in Industrial Design (TU/e) and is co-founder of studio:ludens, a company creating design tools for non-designers.Wouter’s talent is understanding how to merge new forms of interaction and technology to create meaningful user experiences. In the past 5 years he has developed a range of design tools among with the pattern creator Repper (>120K user-created patterns), Magic Box (2x Unlimited Design Contest winner) and a range of tools for the world-renowned design agency Droog. His aim at the Exertion Games Lab is to apply his industry experience in the academic context and create a deeper understanding of creativity and play in exertion games.Wouter secretly uses weighted comparison tables in Excel to make arbitrary decisions between close-to-equal options.Wouter’s personal site Wouter’s business site Wouter’s Twitter |
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Eberhard Gräther is student of Bachelor’s degree in MultiMediaTechnology at Salzburg University of Applied Sciences in Austria. He visits the lab in order to do an amazing project, Joggobot, and acquire experience in research and user study.Besides his interest in research, Eberhard is a talented programmer and has developed a lot of games and digital simulations during his study. He started programming in C++ and did various projects using openFrameworks, amongst others a Minesweeper in 3D and an Exertion game where players have to throw balls against a projection. Soon he got interested in JavaScript and did projects with HTML-Canvas and WebGL. His biggest achievement so far was winning the Mozilla Game On Challenge with MarbleRun, a browser game he developed in collaboration with student colleagues. He finishes his Bachelor’s degree in June 2012 and has no idea what to do next. Visit his website to have look at his projects.Eberhard does not like using his big 27″ screen.Eberhard’s website Eberhard’s Twitter |
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Cagdas ‘Chad’ Toprak is a passionate game designer and researcher at the lab who holds a Bachelor of Arts (Digital Art) degree at RMIT University.With the intention of doing further research and studies in games and digital play, drawing inspiration from streams such as human-computer interaction, interaction design, games interfaces and social interactivity, Chad has recently completed Honours in the Exertion Games Lab and is currently undertaking a PhD degree. His passion lies in social, playful and pervasive games, with evoking playfulness through ludic interventions as one of his main research interests.
Chad actively participates in and contributes to festivals and events such as Freeplay, IDEF/eGames Expo, Pause Fest, and recently Games for Change ANZ. He has previously co-organised and curated RMIT’s Games Open Day (’09-’12) and 2011 Games Graduate Exhibition. In his spare time, Chad likes to indulge in rapid game development. |
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Joshua Platt is serious about games, gaming and games design. He has completed his Honours in the lab. Josh has been working in the Exertion Games Lab, designing and building game environments that immerse users in multi-sensory experiences. He enjoys combining game mechanics with physical activity; developing ideas that invoke the imagination and push boundaries. So why exertion games? Earlier this year Josh tore his anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) and underwent a full knee reconstruction. Through the rehabilitation process Josh was exposed to some very mundane and uninspiring exercises. He soon began to understand how these exercises could have a negative impact on people’s motivation, which in turn impacts their health outcomes. Josh believes there is an opportunity to transform the exercise and rehabilitation process through exertion games, potentially giving people much better recovery prognosis.Josh finds it funny that everyone has better spelling than him in the lab, and its not even his second language!Joshua’s website Joshua’s Twitter Joshua’s research blog |
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Jonathan Marquez graduated from Bachelor of Arts (Games Graphics Design) and Bachelor of Arts (Creative Media) Honours Program from RMIT University. For his Honours program, he wrote an exegesis about how game level design can emote fear from a player and made an Unreal map to accompany his findings. Jonathan is a visual artist and an occasional programmer. Right now, as a volunteer he is finding ways he could apply his findings about emotion into exertion games as well as doing various projects to improve his knowledge. He is currently working on an iPhone app that can show friend connections beyond political and cultural borders.Jonathan does not like knives pointing at him.Jonathan’s portfolio Jonathan’s Twitter |
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Danielle Wilde holds a PhD in Body Technology Poetics, from Monash University Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture and CSIRO Division of Materials Science and Engineering, Australia. She also holds an MA in Interaction Design from the Royal College of Art in London, has a background in circus arts and a penchant for participation. She is trained in a number of performance techniques, that inform her approach to embodied engagement in playful as well as pragmatic contexts. By placing the body central to her research, and engaging the body through the imagination and the imagination through the body, Danielle is able to blur boundaries between disciplines and question the divide between art and everyday life. Her work, through process and outcomes, questions how we design, create and live. In 2009 Danielle was honored with an inaugural Australian Prime Minister’s Australia Award to undertake research at The University of Tokyo. Her PhD was awarded the 2012 Monash University Vice Chancellor’s Mollie Holman Medal for excellence. She has undertaken Research Fellowships and Artist Residencies at STEIM, Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music in Amsterdam, The Pervasive Interaction Lab at the Open University, UK, The Department for Design, Architecture and the Built Environment at Nottingham Trent University, UK and has been resident at the Creative Systems Lab at Sussex University, UK. Her work is exhibited and published widely.daniellewilde.com d on twitter |
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Timothy Jeffs is currently studying a Bachelor of Arts (Animation and Interactive Media) at RMIT University. A keen animator and cartoonist, Tim also loves making games and is part of the team responsible for the development of the Waterfall Climber at the lab. Tim is interested in creating unique experiences for people, pushing the familiar into new contexts and situations to create something new. He has mainly worked with Flash and ActionScript 3.0 when developing games but is constantly extending his knowledge in other software and languages.Tim is a terrible rock-climber. |
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Christopher “Kit” Mackenzie is currently studying a double degree in Computer Science & Multimedia (Games & Interactivity) at Swinburne University. He is in the lab working on a novel Kinect body projection game. Kit previously travelled to Concordia University, Montreal, collaborating on computer graphics and artificial intelligence projects. These fields, along with Computer Vision, constitute his main interests. After graduation, he aspires to investigate collaborative A.I., particularly in the areas of robotics and 3d bioprinting. As well as computer science, Kit is also interested in entertaining people. He has previously been spotted playing the Double Bass, trained for many years within a Circus school as a contortionist, and occasionally works as a Data Wrangler & Digital effects technologist on digital film sets.While on the set of a film, Kit was almost squashed by this tank-however, they made up and Kit later enjoyed some delicious lemon slice atop the turret. |
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Chris Jones is an independent games programmer currently also working on the Kinect body projection game. Chris has a Bachelor of Multimedia Systems from Monash University and has recently completed his Advanced Diploma of Professional Game Development specializing in software development. Chris is currently also working with the people at Raptus Games on the IOS game Draw: the showdown.Chris feels like he is the lone PC in a world of macs.Chris’s blog |
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Chris Berry has a Bachelor of Information Technology (RMIT). He is a PhD student at the GEElab investigating enjoyable experiences within vehicles. His interests include interaction systems incorporating lessons learnt from years of playing games and procedural methods of content creation and modification. Chris has worked for RMIT on multiple research projects as a technical adviser and programmer since his first year. Alongside his research, Chris is collaborating with a local game developer on a new web-based game to be released in 2012! Some examples of his work are:www.games.rmit.edu.au/vroom www.games.rmit.edu.au/assetgen |
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Alan Chatham is a visiting researcher at the Exertion Games Lab. After graduating Pomona College with a degree in economics, he spent the last 3 years designing innovative video game controllers, including the award-winning OpenChord guitar. Having a particular interest in how designers can create systems to alter user behaviour, he is currently researching how scoring systems influence player motivation.He is also a champion bodybuilder. Alan’s Tumblr about his UnoJoy project. |
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Harry Lee is an independent game designer passionate about play, puzzles, and people. He loves creating fun experiences that make people think, infused with clever design and playful narrative. Harry is currently studying medicine at Monash University and making award winning games with his studio, Wanderlands. At the lab, he aims to violently collide his medical and ludic interests, and his research into the playful applications of electrical muscle stimulation is the beautiful lovechild of that curious union.Harry derails metaphors like a steamroller. |
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Alexander Perrin is soon to undertake his second year in digital arts (games) at RMIT. He is passionate about the visual arts- specifically 3-dimensional graphics development, but also takes great interest in bringing things to life with the use of programming (Have a look at his website). Outside his studies, Alex appreciates architecture, cats and bicycles. Alex is in and out of the lab assisting with the general design of a kinect game project utilizing projection upon the body. |
| Atticus Bastow comes from a strong music performance background, having studied music (specifically Drums and Percussion) for over 10 years. After completing a Bachelor degree in Music Performance, Atticus decided to follow a pathway exploring the limitless possibilities of sound, freeing himself from the rigidity of music theory. Atticus’ music performance and composition experience ranges from minimal ambient and digital music synthesis (including a large focus on MAXMSP), to arranging for Big Band jazz ensembles and orchestras. His sound design palette is similarly diverse, having sculpted sonic pieces for numerous disciplines including Dance, Animation, Film and experimental video art, as well as approaching the computer as a performative music tool in both solo and ensemble environments. Atticus is currently undertaking a Bachelor of Fine Arts at RMIT, specializing in Sound Design. |
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My name is Sebastiaan Pijnappel. Optimist, perfectionist and life-lover for 25 years, designer of novel interactive products for 6.5 years.
I was born in the Dutch city of Nijmegen, and later spent time in Eindhoven (TU/e), Melbourne (RMIT) and Pittsburgh (CMU) exploring my passion for design and technology. I hold a bachelor’s and master’s in Industrial Design, and am currently applying and deepening my passion for interactivity at the Exertion Games Lab. What drives me? A deep interest in how aesthetics of human-product interaction influence our experience.
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Eric Dittloff is a video director fascinated by games and their designers.Working with members of the Exertion Games Lab has offered the opportunity to work with the researchers of complex and sometimes nuanced ideas. The challenge in their projects is to introduce details and the project’s mood in the simplest and most elegant way possible. As a recent graduate of RMIT’s Media program, he finds the Exertion Games Lab is an excellent environment to refine his understanding of the content, form and experience of different media. He hopes to profile separately the Exertion Games Lab and the nature of game design as it relates to society in the immediate future.Eric is secretly terrified of his internal organs being replaced by aliens in the night and, unaware, waking up as a cyborg. |
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Ruth Sancho Huerga has worked on the stage for more than 20 years. She studied Theatre Studies in Laboratorio de Teatro William Layton (Madrid), Drama in Collegi del Teatre (Barcelona), English Philology and a Postgraduate in Digital Literature (University of Barcelona). She is an actress, poet, playwright and theatre director. Her curiosity and interest in new technologies pushed her to experiment, create and research on the interrelation between movement, poetry and digital art. In 2011 she was awarded with the Australian Endeavour Postgraduate Award to study in RMIT University.
“Every day at the Lab I feel like living in a new amazing planet, sometimes it’s scaring, and I love it!”
Ruth’s blog: http://morepoetryplease.
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Ho Hsin Yang is a game designer, programmer and developer that has graduated in a Bachelor of Design in Games from RMIT. Yang originally studied Electrical & Mechatronics Engineering at UniSA in South Australia, though he found himself very much into the modification of games ever since the first release of Half-Life in 1999. He eventually found his passion in games and its development after being introduced to programming and design. Yang is now currently involved in the development of a few indie game titles and lends his skills as a developer and designer, and mainly a programmer to the Exertion Games Lab at RMIT University. He has a love deep down for anything augmented or virtual that combines physical space, body and mind together with a digital world to create an intensely immersive and deep experience. He sometimes wonders though if the Exertion Games Lab took him in not for his skills, but as a provider of some of the finest trance music. Yang’s website: http://mainframerodent.weebly.com |
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Rohit Ashok Khot is a perfectly adequate researcher and a PhD student in the Exertion games lab, at RMIT Australia. Rohit holds a masters degree in research in computer science from IIIT Hyderabad, India. He has a prior experience of working in the areas of usable security and human computation. His work on graphical passwords, has led to many first-authored papers in peer-reviewed international conferences, including a best paper award. Rohit enjoys working on the humans-in-the-loop systems and appreciates the minimalism in design. Rohit is currently passionate about connecting human experiences in a playful way.
On a lighter note, if the world were to end, Rohit would love to get married and visit 221B Baker street.
Rohit’s website: http://rohitashokkhot.com
Rohit’s blog: http://phdfied.tumblr.com/ |
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Betty Sargeant is a PhD candidate at RMIT University. She writes and illustrates picture books and produces interactive, multimedia book apps. Her research interests centre on the design and analysis of children’s book apps. She specifically focuses on: the relationship between interaction design and narrative flow; and the design of social interaction [user to user and designer to user]. Betty currently lectures in digital design (graphic design) at Charles Sturt University, Australia. She completed Honours in creative writing and visual design (Deakin University, Australia), and also holds a Bachelor of Education. Twit – @BettySargeant Betty’s candidacy is through RMIT’s school of media and communication [creative writing stream] – but she joined the Exertion Games Lab so that she could talk geeky with the cool kids on the block.
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Dr. Sarah Jane Pell is an artist, researcher and diver most noted for her work in the field of ‘Aquabatics’. Dr. Sarah Jane Pell is currently a Chair of the European Space Agency (ESA) Topical Team Art & Science (ETTAS) responsible for the ESA Arts Initiative (EIA). Dr. Pell has 17 years experience as a visual artist and interdisciplinary researcher working most notably large scale collaborative art & science research with a specific emphasis in the performing arts, human movement, and underwater diving and habitat technologies. She received a PhD Visual Arts from Edith Cowan University, WA and was awarded Best PhD abstract Art & Science (English Language) 2007 from Leonardo LABS, MIT US. She is the first “artist” alumni of both the International Space University FR and Singularity University, NASA Ames. She led the NASA-ISU Luna Gaia: closed loop habitat for the Moon project, 2006- and her first Space Art payload was launched on-board SPRITE-SAT Payload H-IIA JAXA Japanese Space Agency (GOSAT) 2009. She is an ADAS Part 2r Commercial Diver with over 1500hrs in-water time logged and she regularly contributes to space analogue design and undersea habitat mission research, aquatic outreach and ocean awareness. She also serves as an Australian Standards Committee Member advising Australia’s Prime Minister on Diving in Australian waters. Sarah is a regular public speaker, international exhibiting artist and performer, awarded Australia’s only TED Fellow. Her work has been featured broadly from TED, to Time Magazine, ABCTV and Artlink. Sarah believes underwater play is all part of preparing humans for future life in outer space.
Official Website: www.sarahjanepell.com
Twitter: @aquabatics
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Jayden Garner is a game developer and researcher with a degree in Game Design at RMIT University and has progressed onto an honours year in 2013, where he strives to create disruptive and novel physical experiences that make a worthwhile contribution to our existing knowledge of what games are capable of.With the Exertion Games Lab, Jayden is currently involved with the development of Musical Embrace as well as a project exploring the emotional connections between physical exertion and horror themes in a digital game.He hopes his work will inspire developers to think differently about how we physically interact with games to make more emotionally engaging experiences.
Outside of games, Jayden enjoys electronic and alternative music, photography, camping, swimming and jogging. Jayden has a collection of retro games that has inspired his passion for games and loves to replay from time to time. Jayden’s Website: http://jaydeng.wix.com/games
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Amy Huggard, is Geelong based game designer, researcher and artist who has recently graduated RMIT University with a Bachelor of Design (Games) Degree. She has also previously graduated Gordon Institute of Tafe, with a Diploma in Applied Fashion Design & Technology. Through these years of study, Amy found her passion for games, research and art and is inspired to bring these elements together and continue to discover new and exciting things. Therefore, Amy will be undertaking her Honours Degree at the Exertion Games Lab in 2013.Furthermore Amy hopes to continue to learn and push herself further into the field of games and explore their limitless possibilities. In doing so, she aspires to share her new found knowledge with others, and open people up to the possibilities of games, and the importance of fun and play as a lifestyle.When Amy is not glued to her laptop screen, or procrasti-baking (procrastination in the form of baking), she can be found outdoors pottering in her veggie garden, running very long distances or just relaxing in the sun.
Amy’s Portfolio Website: http://amyhuggard.weebly.com |
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Anushka De Mel (Otherwise known as ‘Chet’) is a Melbourne based game designer, researcher and artist who has recently graduated with a Bachelor of Design (Games) Degree at RMIT University. Having acquired a newfound love and appreciation for research that intends to alter the way in which we think, art, game and (even) embrace, Anushka plans on undertaking her Honours Degree at the Exertion Games Lab in 2013. Furthermore, as part of it, she hopes to fascinate, provoke and terrify others with her creations as well as open them to new ideas that are only possible through the medium of games. Finally, when she’s not game-storming, sketching or thinking on the benefits of close physical proximity (between strangers), Anushka spends much of her time making lists and watching random, yet inspirational, videos which feature mutant robot monkeys, fluffy unicorns and badass sheep.Anushka’s Website: http://anushkademel.weebly.com/ Anushka’s Twitter: http://twitter.com/A_nush_ka Anushka’s Research Blog: http://a-nush-ka.tumblr.com/ |
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Robert Cercós is a chilean industrial engineer. He is currently doing a PhD at the Exertion Games Lab focused on increasing the physical activity of a group of people by using digital games and wearable computing devices like pedometers. He also holds a Master of Information Systems from The University of Melbourne, where he became interested in HCI and pervasive computing. In the past, he worked as the Operations Manager of a frequent flyer program, dealing with a huge database of activities from more than 5 million members. Before that, he worked doing music for TV series and also producing, arranging and playing electric guitar for several chilean pop/rock/romantic music artists.
He would love to play cool solos like Slash, but his hair is definitely far from being that cool.
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