London #15 – This happened

We have 4 great speakers in the usual format, 10 minutes pecha kucha talks and 10 minutes Q&A.

Sitraka Rakotoniaina

Sitraka is currently a director at Nexus Interactive Arts. He specialises in designing objects, artefacts and devices as a form of storytelling to question and excite his user.

Sitraka uses science as,

“a fuel to imagine new relationships between people and technology, whether it allows me to achieve something fantastic or perceive reality through a different prism.”

He has a BA in industrial design, an MA in graphic design & multimedia and graduated in 2010 from the Royal College of Art in Design Interaction

Sitraka will be presenting his most recent project the Prophecy Program. He tells me he found this his most challenging project to date, in terms of time. He collaborated with his friend Andrew Friend and built the entire installation from scratch within 6 weeks. Really looking forward to hearing how they managed that!

Tomomi Sayuda

Tomomi is a London based Japanese interactive and product designer, whose work is concerned with humour and sub-cultures. As well as running her own projects, she has worked as a designer since 2004 at creative companies such as Kin Design in London and TV Asahi in Tokyo. Currently, she is in the final year of her Master Degree in Design Product at Royal College of Art.

She will be sharing how she made the iBum chair, what she learnt along the way and where this surprising idea came from. The iBum is a modern simple chair. However, the surface of its seat is covered in transparent plastic. Beneath the plastic hides a scanner; thus the chair is able to scan the bottom of whoever sits on it and print out the image a few minutes later, giving the sitter an exact picture of his or her ‘derrière’. The chair delivers a new visual and interactive experience as well as entertainment for its users.

Eidos

Eidos is a radical new approach to wearable augmented reality that lets us enhance and control our existing senses in real time. Eidos currently consists of two prototype technologies: Eidos Vision enhances the way we see motion, while Eidos Audio allows us to hear speech more selectively.

All four of the Eidos team met while studying for a double masters in Innovation Design Engineering at the Royal College of Art and [Imperial College London]. Eidos is the result of their collaboration, blending design, science and technology.

Tim Bouckley

Born in the UK, Tim originally studied Fine Art before turning to design. He currently works at London based design consultancy Seymourpowell.

Millie Clive-Smith

Born in the UK, Millie has a background in Physics and Astrophysics. She has completed industrial design projects for Quarterre, Concrete Canvas, and Unilever.

Mi Eun Kim

Born in South Korea, Mi Eun is a mechanical engineering graduate and has worked on product development and engineering for Motorola.

Yuta Sugawara

Born in Japan, Yuta has degrees in Philosophy and Industrial Design, as well as many years experience at lead branding agency Landor.

TWSU

Technology Will Save Us (TWSU) exists to educate and enable people to make and experiment creatively with technology.

Devices, gadgets and computers are a fundamental part of their everyday lives. Yet most people know so little about what these things are made of; let alone how to fix them or create new ways to use them. However, an exciting shift is emerging in society, a shift where people are finding new and inventive ways to re-skill.

They ( either Bethany or Daniel or both if we are lucky!) will be talking about their latest kit called DIY Gamer

With the DIY Gamer Kit you will build your own handheld games console then learn how to program your own video games using Arduino and our custom software library.

The DIY Gamer kit is a great-looking, well-engineered object that would most importantly inspire people to learn. It has the classic gaming controls you would expect but has the bonus added features of a buzzer to allow you to add music to your projects and wireless infrared links to allow you to link up with other Gamers for multiplayer gaming. Yes that right you can battle your friends and enemies.