BPN 1280 Europrix Multimedia (11): my favourites

The Europrix 2008/2009 is over. All the nominees have gone home as have the winners. Looking back at the selection of nominations, I have picked a few of my favourites. There are in fact only two favourites for me, as I was not too impressed by the nomination in general and not with the selected projects either.

I missed a real smash project. To me in 2007 that was the light installation which reacts to human movement and the nice mobile application for mountaineers. But this time it was all okay, but a shadow casted forward. No not in my opinion. The overall winners had a nice interactive game ply for kindergarten children with even a file of the game for the parents. So the social aspect was okay. But technically there was not that much invention. The interactive game table was not the invention, but is known as the Barcelona table.

Of the nominees there are two entries which hit me. The RETYPE device for texting and the Treehuggers. The RETYPE It device is a daring experiment. There have been experiments with keyboards so far, but none of them have been able to overrule the good old QWERTY keyboard lay-out. But tradition is certainly not a reason to experiment when a new device comes around. Of course the fingers have been trained. They have in fact digital knowledge, meaning that the pointer finger (digitus in Latin) knows where the keys are located. Yet the experiment with RETYPE is also interesting as the texting device is basically handled with two fingers or perhaps better thumbs. And those fingers do not have the digital knowledge in them. Besides, the order of letters is not a fixed order for them. So the experiment is more than interesting, certainly when you see all those too small keyboards of for example the Research in Motion Storm for those thick fingers. To me this is the type of innovation which might be implemented in some years.

The other nomination which I think was underrated was the submission of the Treehuggers. It is of course touchy as it is a Dutch submission. It was and is to me a real submission in the sector of ambient installations. In fact it is a real monument of immersion and a museum should acquire it and preserve it for the future, not just for curiosity but also for people to experience. Just sitting in the cubicle and undergoing the intensity of the animations and sounds. The basic idea is not new. I still remember that in the Tsjech Republic, I think, a one-person cinema was built. The viewer took place and the movie was projected from the back. The Treehuggers looks like a modern day version, but with a new theme.

Blog Posting Number: 1280

Tags: immersion, keyboard