David Benqué

Kjen Wilkens, fellow interactionist at the RCA, and I had the chance to visit Dr Luc Berthouze’s lab at the Wolfson Center in London last thursday (University of Sussex and Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Unit (DCNU), at the Institute of Child Health (ICH), University College London).

Dr Berthouze’s research involves recording the movements of 2 month old babies and studying the data in order to be able to diagnose neurological disorders such as cerebral palsy at an early age. He was kind enough to give us a demonstration of the equipment in the lab, namely 6 Infra Red cameras, capable of recording data at 200 frames/sec, IR markers (more than 50 to fit on a tiny baby) and a range of 3D software to capture and analyse the data.

Luc was very excited to hear about the couple of ideas we had come up with since our phone conversation 2 weeks ago, and his feedback really pushed the projects forward. The Science and Society brief, within which our exchange with Dr Berthouze is framed, finishes this week, so we are currently working hard at producing design outcomes that place his research in a social context.

Tobbie Kerridge and Elio Caccavale are the visiting tutors running the project

further reading :

- University of Sussex press release (with video clip)

- Kinematics Lab

Pascal Finette from Mozilla Labs, came to speak to us about “the browser being the new black”. They are working on a number of interesting projects, one of which, the Chocolate Factory, seems like a promising way for “disillusioned” interaction designers like us to build apps and projects from idea to mockup to prototype in a collaborative way.

The Artzilla projects subvert/punk the browser in funny and sometimes political ways , and the best part about Mozilla being a non-profit organization is that they can officially ‘like’ these twisted projects.

During our trip to Tokyo we were lucky enough to visit Takeshi Ishiguro’s studio. His work ranges from the Book of Lights (simple electronic pop up books) to a smoke-ring machine and the Love Sofa that makes sound when people sit on it and make skin contact. The quirky poetry of Ishiguro’s work always seem to be perfectly embodied in very simple designs that reveal just enough while leaving space for imagination.