Entangling surfaces, tangibles, webs, clouds, and architectural spaces

  • Brygg Ullmer | Louisiana State Univeristy

Interactive surfaces, tangible interfaces, the web, cloud computing, and computationally mediated architectural spaces have long experienced vibrant activity in research and production contexts. While most frequently engaged as distinct topics, we argue these can be actionably regarded as entangled. This perspective will be supported through examples including interactive computational STEAM machines (Surface-based interactive supercomputing), corridor cloud and community awareness systems, Union Carbide’s 1933 Vinylite House, medieval counting tables, ancient Egyptian and cartographic cartouches, and nomadic African memory artifacts. We will conclude with considering how syntheses of these suggest new paths for tabletops, tangibles, and textiles with research and production prospects.

Speaker Details

Brygg Ullmer is an associate professor at LSU, jointly in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and the Center for Computation and Technology (CCT). He leads CCT’s Cultural Computing focus area (research division) and Tangible Visualization group. He also serves as interim director for the Louisiana Biomedical Research Network (LBRN) Bioinformatics, Biostatistics, and Computational Biology
(BBC) core. Ullmer completed his Ph.D. at the MIT Media Laboratory (Tangible Media group) in 2002, where his research focused on tangible user interfaces. He held a postdoctoral position in the visualization department of the Zuse Institute Berlin, internships at Interval Research (Palo Alto) and Sony CSL (Tokyo), and has been a visiting lecturer at Hong Kong Polytechnic’s School of Design. His research interests include tangible interfaces, computational genomics (and more broadly, interactive computational STEAM), visualization, and rapid physical and electronic prototyping. He also has a strong interest in computationally-mediated art, craft, and design, rooted in the traditions and material expressions of specific regions and cultures.

Series: Microsoft Research Talks