Exertion Games Lab

Experience your dreams come alive. Walk in the dreams of others. DREAM 2.2 is interactive brainwave art in the form of an audio-visual performance and interactive installation. The performance features a sleeping person and abstract projection mapped, audio-visual representations of the sleeping person’s brain activity.

We use EEG (electroencephalogram) sensors to track the electrical activity of the brain and generate audio that in turn generates audio-reactive visuals. The audio and visuals respond to different types of brain activity. The EEG sensor generates abstract real-time audio-visual art. The visuals are projection mapped onto maze-like projection surfaces in the exhibition space.

DREAM 2.2 imagines a future where instead of sleeping, people stay awake to experience being inside others’ dreams. This hybrid work invites audiences to reflect on our contemporary obsession with observing others’ activities through digital and reality media. More information here.

The Playground is a participatory media artwork that features a co-designed sculpture, interactive projection mapping and public participation. The public is invited to find sculptural pieces that are hidden around the exhibition area. They bring these pieces to the exhibition space and connect them to The Playground sculpture. Audiences can also take photos of their city environment and upload them to an online platform. These images are automatically animated in real time and projection mapped onto the The Playground sculpture.

During special Playground exhibitions we also exhibit our unique custom designed movement tracking and projection system. When audiences enter the exhibition area we track the small sculptural piece that is in their hand and project the audience member’s own “city environment” image onto the piece as they move around the exhibition area.

The Playground seeks to socially and physically engage audiences and personalise their experiences of art and technology. More information here.

Publications

Sargeant, B., Mueller, F., Dwyer, J., Using HTC Vive and TouchDesigner to Projection-Map Moving Objects in 3D Space: A Playful Participatory Artwork. CHI PLAY 2017. Spotlight. ACM. 1-11.

The Storytelling Machine transforms the public’s drawings into animated characters that roam the artwork’s video worlds. The machine delivers a randomly generated collective story created from public content.

People of all ages can draw characters of any shape and feed them into the machine. The machine instantly animates the characters and decides their path across video settings that feature international locations. The public can also contribute short story texts in any language. The Storytelling Machine determines what combination of characters and texts will be shown.

In many ways social media has become our society’s dominant narrative. Social platforms often dictate how we write, publish and consume our stories. The Storytelling Machine reflects practices used in social media. As soon as audiences enter their character and text into The Storytelling Machine they relinquish control over them. The machine determines the narrative. More information here.

Peter’s work presented at TEI in Stockholm, Sweden, is available here:

Arnold, P., Khot, R. A., & Mueller, F. You Better Eat to Survive: Exploring Cooperative Eating in Virtual Reality Games. Proceedings of the Twelfth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction. TEI 2018. Long paper. ACM. 398-408.

For leading a healthy life, regular breathing exercises can be beneficial. We developed Life Tree, a virtual reality game in which the player controls the growth of a virtual tree by practicing the pursed-lip breathing technique. We chose VR because it allows to focus on the virtual environment and limit external distractions, which is beneficial for breathing exercises. More information here.

“Ava, the eBike” is an augmented eBike that aims to support the experiential aspects of cycling. If sensing a leaning-forward action when aiming to speed up, the engine kicks in and accelerates the cyclist, supported by a joyful sound similar to sports cars when accelerating. Through this work, we aim to highlight the potential of interactive technology to not only support instrumental, but also experiential aspects of exertion activities. In particular, we see a unique opportunity to experience our bodies as play through actuation technologies, such as afforded by eBikes. As such, eBikes are for us readily-available exoskeletons for the masses. More information here.

Our Dagstuhl report on “Body-Centric Computing” from our seminar is now online:

http://drops.dagstuhl.de/opus/frontdoor.php?source_opus=8592

Benford, S., Höök, K., Marshall, J., Mueller, F., & Svanes, D. (2018). Body-Centric Computing (Dagstuhl Reports 17392). In Dagstuhl Reports (Vol. 7, No. 9). Schloss Dagstuhl-Leibniz-Zentrum fuer Informatik.

We have a new Journal article published:

Höök, K., Caramiaux, B., Erkut, C., Forlizzi, J., Hajinejad, N., Haller, M., Hummels, C., Isbister, K., Jonsson, M., Khut, G. and Loke, L., 2018, February. Embracing First-Person Perspectives in Soma-Based Design. In Informatics (Vol. 5, No. 1, p. 8). Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute.

We have a new book chapter out, special congratulations to Tom Penney!

Penney T., Mueller F. Playing the Subject. Book chapter in: Playful Disruption of Digital Media. Gaming Media and Social Effects. Cermak-Sassenrath D. (eds) Springer International Publishing, 2018, 29-46.

Betty Sargeant, Justin Dwyer and Florian ‘Floyd’ Mueller won the Good Design Award in the category of digital design (interface), received at the ceremony at the Sydney Opera House!

Angelina is offering Maker experiences at lunchtime:

http://culturecycle.co/products/make-break

We presented the following at CHI’18:

Mueller, F., Byrne, R., Andres, J., Patibanda, R. Experiencing the Body as Play. Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. CHI 2018. Long paper. ACM. Talk video. BEST PAPER AWARD.

Marwecki, S., Brehm, M., Wagner, L., Cheng, L., Mueller, F., Baudisch, P. VirtualSpace – Overloading Physical Space with Multiple Virtual Reality Users. Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. CHI 2018. Long paper. ACM. Talk video.

Sargeant, B., Mueller, F. How Far Is Up? Bringing the Counterpointed Triad Technique to Digital Storybook Apps. Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. CHI 2018. Long paper. ACM. Talk video.

Mueller, F., Gibbs, M.R., Vetere, F. and Edge, D. Designing for Bodily Interplay in Social Exertion Games. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction. Volume 24, Issue 3, 2017, 1-41. Presented at CHI 2018. Talk video.

Li, Z., Brandmueller, F., Greuter, S. and Mueller, F. 2018. The Guts Game: Designing Playful Experiences for Ingestible Devices. Proceedings of Extended Abstracts of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. CHI 2018 Videoshowcase. ACM, 1-1. Video.

Dolej, M., Khot, R., Davis, H., Ferdous, H. and Quitmeyer, A. 2018. Designing Recipes for Digital Food Futures. Proceedings of Extended Abstracts of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. CHI 2018 Workshop (organizing). ACM, 1-8.

Kelly Mackintosh and Melitta McNarry from Sports Science at Swansea University visited the lab the other day, they had previously used the “Data as Delight” work by Rohit to support children to understand their physical activity better:

https://theconversation.com/how-3d-printing-may-help-cut-childhood-obesity-by-getting-children-active-63533

Betty has just won her category “Play” at the Veski Fast Smarts Innovator of the Year award, congratulations Betty!!!

Our talks from CHI’18 are live:

We received the Best Paper Award at CHI’18, making it the top 1% of all submissions!

Mueller, F., Byrne, R., Andres, J., & Patibanda, R. (2018, April). Experiencing the Body as Play. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (p. 210). ACM.

Angelina is presenting a talk on “Fabricating humanities futures: a case for innovative partnerships in the regions” at the University of Tasmania on 9 May, 6pm.

Betty Sargeant is shortlisted for the Innovator of the Year award: she will present as finalist for the Veski Fast Smarts Innovator of the Year Award at Federation Square on Wed, 8 May 2018. Well done Betty!

All our CHI 2018 publications are now online:

This is our flyer for CHI’18: