Exertion Games Lab

Chad was invited to give a talk at “w00t”, the Copenhagen Play Festival in Denmark, on his research work on play in changing spaces:

Florian ‘Floyd’ Mueller is giving a talk on “Bodily Digital Play” in the Digital Interventions seminar series on 24 July 2013, 4pm, in the Design Research Institute: “DIGITAL INTERVENTIONS explores how digital media, methods and practice are participating in contemporary and emergent processes of change.” Details here.

Florian ‘Floyd’ Mueller speaks on a panel at PAX Australia, on “Videogames are Good For You (and other ridiculous ideas)” organized by our friends from the Young and Well CRC. If you like the indie games at PAX, you’ll love the games at Hovergarden the next day, Monday, 22 July 2013.

Chad presented his Cart-Load-O-Fun public transport game in Sydney, Australia, on the train as part of CUSP’s design exhibition at the Casula Powerhouse, run by the Australian Design Centre and supported by the Australian Government and the Sydney train authority. A nice write-up is here.

We are on the RMIT homepage (again), this time with our success at CHI: “Work from RMIT University’s Exertion Games Lab has been featured widely in a prestigious conference in Paris.” rmit.edu.au (direct link)

2 more publications for the Exertion Games Lab: Amy, Alan and Rohit are going to Ubicomp, the premier conference in the field of ubiquitous and pervasive computing. Acceptance rate was 18%. Amy also received a travel award, and Rohit was accepted to the doctoral consortium.

Huggard, A., De Mel, A., Garner, J., Toprak, C., Chatham, A., Mueller, F. 2013. Musical Embrace: Exploring Social Awkwardness in Digital Games. Ubicomp 2013. Note. 4 pages. Video.

Chatham, A., Mueller, F. 2013. Adding an Interactive Display to a Public Basketball Hoop can Motivate Players and Foster Community. Ubicomp 2013. Long paper. 10 pages. Video.

CUSP – Designing in the Next Decade is a touring exhibit showcasing the work of 12 designers curated by Object, the Australian Design Centre. Tonight is the opening night in Sydney’s Casula Powerhouse, and the video below profiles one of the 12 “currently emerging and established practitioners working today”, Florian ‘Floyd’ Mueller. 

Sarah will be speaking at the IAC 2013, the 64th International Astronautical Congress, 24th Symposium on Space Activity and Society in Beijing, China.

Here is the associated publication:

Pell & Mueller (2013) Designing mixed gravity exertion games for humans in space, IAC 2013 64th International Astronautical Congress, 24th SYMPOSIUM ON SPACE ACTIVITY AND SOCIETY (E5) New architectural, Strategic and Design Approaches to the Future of Human Space Flight (1) Beijing CH

Florian ‘Floyd’ Mueller has been selected as one of 12 designers featured at Cusp, an Australian design exhibition that travels all over the country, organized by the Australian Design Centre. Floyd will present a new version of Hanging off a Bar. The opening night is Friday, 5 July 2013 in Sydney. Here is the press release.

Rohit Khot passed his confirmation about Understanding Material Representations of Physical Activity with flying colours, here is the confirmation report and a video of the presentation:

Florian ‘Floyd’ Mueller received RMIT’s College of Design and Social Context Research Award in the category “Design”. We believe this is the first time this award was given to gamedesign, which is a great honour.

Vero Vanden Abeele mentions both Cart-Load-O-Fun and Hanging off a Bar in her TEDx talk, drawing on the writing of Goffman, while featuring Chad’s work:

Chad’s Cart-Load-O-Fun is in the New Scientist, reporting on his work he presented at the Foundation of Digital Games conference (click here for the online version or on the article to see the paper version)!

Copy Paste Skate has a new video!

Chad’s paper on Designing Digital Games for Trams as well as his Doctoral Consortium paper Understanding Digital Play in Moving Spaces have been presented and published at FDG 2013 (Foundations of Digital Games) in Chania, Crete, Greece.

Toprak, C., Platt, J., Ho, H., Mueller, F. 2013. Cart-Load-O-Fun: Designing Digital Games for Trams. FDG 2013. 8 pages.

Toprak, C. 2013. Understanding Digital Play in Moving Spaces. FDG 2013. Doctoral Consortium. 3 pages.

Sebastiaan received an Honourable Mention from CHI 2013 for his skateboarding work, which celebrates that his “4 Design Themes for Skateboarding” is in the top 5% of all submissions at the premier conference in human-computer interaction worldwide. Congratulations!

Here is Sebastiaan’s excellent talk about “4 Design Themes for Skateboarding” at CHI2013, including a skateboarding trick on stage!

The Exertion Games Lab’s Tom Penney will present a talk about the lab’s work at the RMIT Convergence exhibit on Sat, 4th May, 1-2pm, Level 4, in the Design Hub. Ruth, Helmut, Robert and Chris will also show Dr. Giggles, Hanging off a Bar and Musical Embrace right after the talk and throughout the day from 10-6pm.

CHI 2013, the premier conference in human-computer interaction, with the featured community “Games” this year, is coming up, and we are going with a large group to make a splash and have impact: 10 members of the Exertion Games Lab will be presenting 16 submissions!

We are running a Game Jam as well as a Special Interest Group on Sports and HCI, demonstrate 5 of our games and also have a best paper nomination. Everyone is on the plane to Paris now or already there! We are also having a networking party on Tuesday night with RWTH Aachen to celebrate our success, if you are around, find us at Interactivity and we give you the details!

Paris here we come!