Ghost Hack

When I ask attendees what their favorite talk was — most pointed to Robert (Flight404) Hodgin’s presentation. It was a real delight watching his new simulations presented and packaged up so neatly, lens-flare, lipsticks and all. I remember someone telling me off-hand that perhaps, of all speakers, Robert prepared the most of anyone. It really shows. I’m eagerly waiting for the EyeO video archives to be placed online so that you too can see his latest stuff.

One thing I want to note was his “Cornell box” that he presented all his simulations in. I often did similar things when writing software that required me to have a defined, three dimensional space — it was really helpful to get a sense of scale, to have a ground. Robert takes this to the extreme, creating a Portal (the Valve game) like “test chamber” environment, typography and all, with a fluorescent overhead light that could be turned off at will.

Another aspect of Robert’s presentations that I was really blown away by was the sound design he carefully paired the visuals with. Sound really does add 50% on top of the 100% rock solid visuals which were presented.

What really takes the cake was the humor and lighthearted-ness of it all. I don’t want to ruin it for you, but by the end of the talk I’ve really come to like party balloons.

Casey Reas’ talk was another highlight of EyeO. He had been the most important teacher in my university experience, and a guide to my subsequent career, so of course I had to sit front row and center. I sat there relaxed, and pretended to be once again in a UCLA D|MA lecture, soaking up wisdom and knowledge via osmosis.

Aaron Koblin also gave a talk slash interview. He showed some up and coming work from Google Data Arts Team that I’m part of, and was cool enough to give me some shoutouts and showed slides from some of my past work at Creative Lab. I’m still eagerly waiting for a lot of this work to be released publicly so I can write more about it.

Finally, I gave a quick five (ten? I forget) minute show and tell about my work with Google IO visuals and the sketches that led up to the final pieces. Hopefully in the next update or two I can talk more about them in detail.