Yahoo's Christian Heilmann - Met:space GeekUp talk

This week Leeds Met's co-working start-up facility Met:space hosted a GeekUp talk from Christian Heilmann who is a web architect for Yahoo! UK. GeekUp Leeds like OpenCoffee provides a chance for 'grassroots geekery' - web developers and creative technologists meeting up for an informal chat, networking and a space to share ideas.

Christian's talk 'Yahoo UI - Javascript Evolved?' gave an overview of the YUI toolkit, describing how Javascript libraries can simplify web development - letting people focus on innovations in their design rather than browser bugs and basic functionality.

He talked about how a key skill he has been seeking out in recruiting for Yahoo development teams is an ability to program for others rather than just yourself. He looks for developers who can write logical code that can then be passed to Yahoo teams elsewhere in the world without difficulty. Toolkits like YUI help to do this by organising namespaces, interface elements and plug-in widgets for rich interactive web interface design.

The event was packed and interesting. Thanks to the GeekUp team and the NTI for organising the event.

Alison Mealey - C3KE visiting artist

The Centre for Creative and Cultural Knowledge Exchange brings together creative technology practitioners from 5 Universities in Yorkshire. At our recent meeting I had the opportunity to speak with Alison Mealey from University of Huddersfield's Digital Research Unit (DRU) after we both presented our recent activities to the group.

At the DRU, Alison is currently working on a whole range of great sounding projects from 3D scanning & printing sculptural work to exploring the possibilities of text-based adventure games. However, I first discovered Alison through her work using the Unreal games engine and Processing to create beautiful generative 'atomic' collages - some abstract, some portraits.

The artworks are made by setting-up maps and computer AI 'bots' in Unreal. These automatic players are then tracked as they move through the corridors. The temporal traces are drawn onto a digital canvas using Processing to create final 'pointillist' images. The project is well documented online, and you can download Alison's code from the Unreal art site.

This visualising the unseen and mapping out of spaces reminds me of some of the eye-tracking research at Leeds Met. Tony Renshaw, for example, has been using the eye tracker recently to study usability in computer game play. While David Raybould and Richard Stevens re-working of Vertigo - a Hitchcock classic - for the RePossessed show in their piece ReViewed made visible and explicit the normally unseen audience engagement as viewer.

Concert: Echochroma 3: 29.2.2008

Another "Echochroma" concert is planned for 29. February 2008:
17:00 - 19:00 in the Jubilee Room, James Graham Building, Headingley Campus, Leeds Metropolitan University.



The concert will feature student works from the Electroacoustic Music module (level 3) and perhaps a few pieces from Creative Music Skills (level 2).

Contacts:
Adam Stanswbie a.stansbie@leedsmet.ac.uk
Nikos Stavropoulos n.stavropoulos@leedsmet.ac.uk