NOTE: Distance Lab became part of the Glasgow School of Art Innovation School in October 2010. This is a snapshot of the Lab's web site around July 2010 for historical reference.
Tourism, Heritage and Technology projects launched
The three winners of Tourism, Heritage and
Technology Challenge Fund awards presented their work at the
Integrate to Innovate
(i2i) conference in Aviemore. Distance Lab provided assistance on
technology and design factors to the winners and facilitated the
overall project, which was funded by Highlands and Islands Enterprise
during 2007.
Distance Lab researchers Matthew Karau and
Cindy Jeffers ran the High
Five workshop in which two sets of participants, one in Scotland
and the other in Romania, came together to create networked electronic
interfaces for conveying celebration over a distance!
1 November 2007
Distance Lab featured in REN final conference
Stefan Agamanolis delivered a presentation
about Distance Lab at the final conference of Rural Expertise in
the North (REN), an EU-funded Northern Periphery Programme
project. The conference was held in the town of Ii in northern
Finland.
Smart Cities and Sports over a
Distance featured as themes at the second major Open Studio event at
Distance Lab.
Keynote speakers included Susanne Seitinger and Florian
'Floyd' Mueller. Seitinger, a PhD candidate in the Smart
Cities group at the MIT Media Lab, discussed MIT research on how
digital media can be incorporated into the design of urban spaces and
mediate our relationship with cities. Mueller, a PhD candidate
in Interaction Design at the University of Melbourne, Australia,
presented the theme of "Sports over a Distance" including 2 new
prototypes created during a summer of work at Distance Lab.
The event included "open studio" time during which attendees
could view project prototypes and interact directly with Distance Lab
researchers.
In early 2007 Distance Lab ran a major digital
photography competition entitled Highland Exposure.
Participants submitted their most stunning and inventive expressions
of "distance" in the contemporary Scottish Highlands & Islands.
The Highland Exposure exhibition featured all ~800 submissions to
the competition. An innovative digital
interface created by Distance Lab allowed audience members to
select and project the images on a large screen, retrieve information
about the photos, and leave voice messages for the photographers. The
winners
of the competition were announced during an opening reception on
Thursday 7 June 2007.
Keynote speakers included Dan Stiehl and Elena
Corchero. Stiehl, a PhD candidate in the Robotic Life group
at the MIT Media Lab, discussed the Huggable, a robotic teddy
bear in development at MIT which is intended for a number of
therapeutic applications. Corchero, a graduate of the "Textile
Futures" Masters program at Central Saint Martins College of Art and
Design in London, presented her latest work on how electronics and
solar technology can be incorporated into garments and fashion
accessories in a delicate and appealing way.
The event included "open studio" time during which attendees
could view project prototypes and interact directly with Distance Lab
researchers.
18 May 2007
Matthew Karau delivers presentation in Aviemore
Distance Lab researcher Matthew Karau delivered
a presentation at the UK Tourism
Society's Annual Conference in Aviemore on the theme of immersive
media recordings for cultural exchange and tourism applications as
exemplified by an earlier project in which he was involved entitled RAW.
17 - 18 May 2007
Distance Lab featured in Ukrainian conference
Stefan Agamanolis gave a talk about the
creation of Distance Lab at the International Conference on Regional
Development, held at the Chernivtsi Trade and Economics
Institute in Ukraine.
7 - 16 May 2007
Installation connects Distance Lab with French gallery
A media space project called Passages
created a connection between the lobby of Horizon Scotland, where
Distance Lab is located, and the Maison Populaire, an arts centre in
Montreuil, France. Passers-by in either location could interact by
gesturing and touching each other's projected silhouettes on a
wall-sized screen. The project was originally developed in the Human Connectedness
group at Media Lab Europe by Joëlle Bitton, Céline
Coutrix and Stefan Agamanolis. Watch video from the
installation...
Florian 'Floyd' Mueller and Stefan Agamanolis led a
workshop on Exertion
Interfaces at the CHI 2007 Conference on Human Factors in
Computing Systems in San Jose, California.
23 - 24 March 2007
Drawbot frenzy at Distance Lab
Participants in the Drawbots workshop at
Distance Lab built simple vibrating robots that draw patterns on paper
placed underneath them. The workshop was based on a design created by
Jonah Brucker-Cohen was held as part of the Going Nova Science
Festival at Horizon Scotland.
9 February 2007
Laura Nichols describes how Engineering meets Art
Art and engineering - are they opposites, or
can they interact creatively to open up new opportunities? Laura
Nichols, a research assistant at the MIT Media Lab, tried to answer
this question in front of a full-house audience at Distance Lab today.
19 January 2007
Distance Lab holds Scrapyard Challenge
Jonah Brucker-Cohen and Katherine
Moriwaki, techno-designer-artists from New York City, led the
MIDI Scrapyard Challenge at Distance Lab today. Participants
built their own musical instruments from scrap electronics gave an
impromptu performance at the conclusion of the workshop. The day
before, Jonah and Katherine gave a talk about their other work at the
Green House in Inverness.
Highlands and Islands Enterprise today
announced the launch of Distance Lab, a unique research institute in
the Highlands that will become a world leader in digital media and
communication technologies. Read the
full press release...
