Monday, July 16, 2012

Overview Update July 16, 2012 NUI & Summer Salon Series


NUI: Natural User Interface

NUI pronounced newie) is the way the user interacts with any machine application in the most natural way. We are all now used to tapping, swiping and talking into our smart phones. We heard a presentation with demonstrations by Rodney Guzman co-found and chief architect of the local  InterKnowlogy (founded in 1999 in Carlsbad) at Mintz Levin hosted by CommNexas.  They are working on hand free interface. Think about a surgeon who can’t touch anything during an operation or he will pass on germs;   a mechanic working on an oily car engine who doesn’t want his computer contaminated; or a window shopper who can move her hands outside the store and get more information about that glorious red dress she fancies.  The real challenge seems to be to make a hand recognition program so sensitive it can turn a dial by virtually gripping it.

Why is this important to all app producers? Today’s users don’t want to read instruction.  Intuition has to play a huge part in the process of the interface. Think about double clicking as an example. Clicking once gave one set of actions, clicking twice another set. But that is learned and actually counter-intuitive except to programmers. One click, one gesture, one voice is all that should be necessary.

 When designing the SD View Art Now (SDVAN) App as part of the DNA of Creativity, San Diego Visual Arts Network are certainly keeping this in mind. We want an app that allows you to enter with one tap and immediately get information about all the visual arts events around you at any given moment. We need simple options to change the date or change the view from map to street view. And in phase two of our project we want some element of augmented reality that might let you create a video review of the event. We want that experience to be easy and apparent with no long explanation needed. So we are spending the time to plan this carefully before we have the code developer even start the work.

This area of technology is changing so rapidly and it is heartening that one of the companies that is creating advancements in right here in San Diego.

The Invention of Glory: Afonso V and the Pastrana Tapestries, is a major exhibition now showing at the The San Diego Museum of Art and it depicts event for the first time contemporary to its time instead of allegories. It shows the battles and sieges of that time.  We loved the Drone project which was part of the Summer Salon series featured every Friday night throughout the summer. This Salon projects is about conflict and its depiction in art, in this case a drone container was re-purposed as a room. It was originally displayed in front of the General Atomics (the producer of the drones in SD) and amusingly, as it was being hauled away was mistaken for the theft of an actual drone. The name of the Salon Series this month is Beyond the Banner which reveres not only to banner of war, but advertising banner like those at the top of our website pages.  Agitprop is the Series Co-Curator.


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