Alice Pintus, CIID alumnus, was invited to the 4th TEI Conference (tangible, embedded, and embodied interaction) to present her final project - Tangible Lightscapes - developed as her final project on the Pilot Year.

Alice explains: ‘The aim of Tangible Lightscapes was to design a vocabulary of light behaviours that shows people what their devices are doing. This vocabulary is described in a map of light behaviours and gestures that can be applied to a wide range of contexts where devices - such as speakers, headphones, memory storage devices, cameras and laptops - communicate wirelessly.‘

The conference encouraged submissions of prototypes and daring ideas, tools and technologies, methods and models, as well as interactive art, interaction design, and user experience that contribute new understandings to the broad area of tangible computing, embodied interaction, interactive surfaces, and embedded interactive systems. Applications came from all over the world.

TEI is about HCI, design, interactive art, user experience, tools and technologies, with a strong focus on how computing can bridge atoms and bits into cohesive interactive systems. It is an annual round-up of both theoretical and applied research on tangible interactions. It includes a paper session where researchers discuss their explorations, as well as a demo session in which actual prototypes can be shown and interacted with. Alice presented in both sessions.

The conference also included a hands-on studio session in which all participants could spend an afternoon playing around with electronics and related topics.

To find out more:
Alice Pintus: http://www.alicepintus.net/
Tangible lightscapes: http://alicepintus.wordpress.com/
TEI: http://www.tei-conf.org/10