Motion and Action, Gesture and Touch
The concept of body-mediated or embodied interaction, of the coupling of interface and actor, has become increasingly relevant within the domain of HCI. With the reduced size and cost of a wide variety of sensor technologies and the ease with which they can be wirelessly deployed, on the body, in devices we carry with us and in the environment, comes the opportunity to use a wide range of human motion as an integral part of the interaction with all sorts of applications.
In this talk, Sile will present her recent work on body-mediated interaction in the context of two application domains - gestural control of hand-held devices and tangible interfaces for digital musical instruments. Finally she will discuss some of the broader issues which we have tackled such as frames of reference for action and the role of touch in expressive gestural control.
Sile O'Modhrain's research focuses on human-computer interaction, especially interfaces incorporating haptic and auditory feedback. She earned her master's degree in music technology from the University of York and her PhD from Stanford University's Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA). She has also worked as a sound engineer and producer for BBC Network Radio. In 1994, she received a Fulbright scholarship, and went to Stanford to develop a prototype haptic interface augmenting graphical user interfaces for blind computer users. Before taking up her position at SARC, Sile directed the Palpable Machine's group at Media Lab Europe, where her work focused on new interfaces for hand-held devices that tightly couple gestural input and touch or haptic display.