Babbage Cabbage is a new form of empathetic living media used to communicate social or ecological information in the form of a living slow media feedback display. In the fast paced modern world people are generally too busy to monitor various significant social or human aspects of their lives, such as time spent with their family, their overall health, state of the ecology, etc. By quantifying such information digitally, information is coupled into living plants, providing a media that connects with the user in a way that traditional electronic digital media can not.  An impedance match is made to couple important information in the world with the output media, relating these issues to the color changing properties of the living red cabbage.

Publications:
(1) Cheok, A.D., Khoo, E.T., Liu, W., Hu, X.M., Marini, P., Zhang, X.Y., Confucius Computer: Transforming the Future through Ancient Philosophy. ACM SIGGRAPH 2008, article no. 10, pages 1.

Awards:
1. Nominated for the LAVAL VIRTUAL AWARDS 2009.

International Demonstrations:
1. New Technologies Demo, SIGGRAPH 2008, 11-15 Aug 2008, Los Angeles, USA.

Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2-Ky6D1Wy0

http://www.mixedrealitylab.org/media/all videos/Confucius/ConfuciusComputerConceptVideo.mp4

http://www.mixedrealitylab.org/media/all videos/Confucius/ConfuciusComputerSIGGRAPH2008.mp4

High Res Images:

http://www.mixedreality.nus.edu.sg//media/Confucius/confuciuscomputer.jpg

http://www.mixedreality.nus.edu.sg//media/Confucius/chat.jpg

http://www.mixedreality.nus.edu.sg//media/Confucius/music.jpg

http://www.mixedreality.nus.edu.sg//media/Confucius/food.jpg

Click the URL to launch Confucius Chat:

http://137.132.145.244/confucius/chat.htm

Click the URL to launch Confucius Food:

http://137.132.145.244/confucius/food.htm

Please allow few minutes for apps to be downloaded. JavaRunTimeEnvironment is needed. Click the URL to download Confucius Food for Windows, Mac or Linux:

http://137.132.165.105/confucius/food_download.htm

Confucius Computer is a new form of illogical computing algorithm based on the Eastern paradigms of balance and harmony, which are radically different from the ancient Greek logic normally experienced in computing. The system uses new media to revive and model these historical philosophies and teachings, presenting them in new contexts, such as online social chat, music and food. This enables people to experience and explore the ancient culture using the literacy of digital interactivity.

Free Network Visible Network is a project that combines different tools and processes to visualize, floating in the space, the interchanged information between users of a network. The people are able to experience in a new exciting way about how colorful virtual objects, representing the digital data, are flying around. These virtual objects will change their shape, size and color in relation with the different characteristics of the information that is circulating in the network.

Huggy Pajama is a novel wearable system aimed at promoting physical interaction in remote communication between parent and child. This system enables parent and child to hug one another through a novel hugging interface device and a wearable, hug reproducing jacket connected through the Internet. The hugging device is a small, mobile doll with embedded pressure sensing circuit that is able to sense varying levels of human force. This device sends hug signals to a haptic jacket that simulates the feeling of being hugged to the wearer. It features high fidelity, air pockets actuating to reproduce hug, heating elements to produce warmth that accompanies hug and color changing display to indicate distance of separation between the end users. 

Permeation of technology into everyday life is made easier when the human experience it creates is made associable with day-to-day encounters. Human Pacman, based on the popular arcade Pacman from the 1980s, is a novel and entertaining game which seeks to bring about such association through stimulating multiple human senses and perception.It is a real-world-physical, social, and wide area mobile entertainment system that is built upon the concepts of ubiquitous computing, tangible human-computer interaction, and wide-area entertainment networks. Human Pacman is pioneering a new form of gaming that anchors on physicality, mobility, social interaction, and ubiquitous computing.

Hunter Gatherer is one of the newest collaborative project between the Interactive Media Division (IMD) of the University of Southern California's (USC) School of Cinema Television in Los Angeles, and the Mixed Reality Lab (MXR) of Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore, with the working title "Hunter/Gatherer". 

Thesis available for download now.

This system is based on the novel idea of using Mixed Reality (MXR) technology in the design of a Japanese garden. It dramatically changes the way that humans interact with computer, especially in the area or art and design, architecture, education, etc...

In the age of new technologies, coexistence is still an unresolved task. Different religions, culture or gender are sometimes the focus of misunderstandings and conflicts between human beings including entire nations.

Live LEGO house is an interactive game in which the mutual coexistence matters. Education in this area can be applied for all ages. Nevertheless adults are mainly encouraged to play, as basically they are the ones building barriers against coexistence.

Living Media Video: http://www.mixedrealitylab.org/MEDIA/all videos/dDNA.mov

dDNA is a new form of living media which is used to communicate humanistic or organic information in the form of ambient media. In the fast pace modern world, people are usually too busy to monitor various significant social or human aspects of their lives, such as their time spending with family, their overall health, and their drinking or smoking habits. By quantifying such information digitally, information is then coupled into living organisms. Through the use of color changingcharacteristic of living organisms, we can set the color of living organisms according to the data and the information updated almost real time. Firstly, we studied on E.coli which has the ability of glowing after inserting glowing jellyfish DNA.

Phones have always been built for human-human interaction, the main purpose being so that people can interact with each other over any distance. Today, with the introduction of the 3G networks and fast developing 3D graphics on mobile devices, pervasive games and human-human interactions wil become widespread and more powerful. We believe ultimately 3D will be a stepping-stone to a console-like experience on your mobile phone.

An invention for mixed reality family entertainment has been developed by researchers in Singapore. Mixed reality technology, in which computer graphics are superimposed on the real world, enables traditional "magic cubes" to have three-dimensional fantasy for family entertainment. It has just been filed in 5 separate US Patents

 Magic Land DESIGN BIBLE NOW ONLINE!!

Dear users, our Magic Land Design Bible has now been made online for public viewing. Please download or save target the PDF file from the link below:

http://www.mixedreality.nus.edu.sg/media/projects/Magic_land_design_bible.pdf

A new form of interactive media, art creation and reception has been developed here at MXR Lab. People can be recorded in real time, and their small 3D images can be confronted in an embodied manner with 3d digital characters in the virtual world. Users can choose the pre-recorded people's models and 3D virtual characters to build up a complete mixed reality interactive story or mini scenes. Especially, people can see the scenes on the real table and tangibly manipulate the virtual characters at the same time as human live characters. Our system merges the virtual world with the real world live humans. 

Owen Noel Newton Fernando, Imiyage Janaka Prasad Wijesena, Adrian David Cheok
Mixed Reality Lab, National University of Singapore, Singapore

"Media Me" is a media interactive art work which comments on the bidirectional relationship between people and the media through the use of a realtime video mosaic. The elements of the video mosaic could be personal, cultural, historical, and educational. This research can be considered as a combination of creativity, art, and digital entertainment as well as an extension of personal media broadcasting. It comments on the growing trend of personal broadcasting and social media.

Television has been the mass media for broadcasting media content for a long time. However, developments in broadband internet and social networks have made it possible for individuals to use their own personal media as broadcast media. For example, "YouTube" allows individuals to submit personal videos for public viewing. From the previous concept of a few broadcast channels, now we have millions of channels broadcast by individuals. This has led Time Magazine to announce the person of the year in 2006 as "you", to highlight the revolution in personal media that has developed.

As an artistic reflection on new personal media, Media Me is an interactive video installation that displays a captured image of a person as a video mosaic made of hundreds of videos. We literally turn the body into videos, which artistically represent the revolution in personal media. Videos are continuously arranged in realtime to form a mosaic representation of the background to provide meaningful contents, such as cultural and historical media. When no image is captured by the system, Media Me activates and reflects the media itself by creating a mosaic of cultural and historical content.

Web:  http://mediame.wikidot.com/

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSg7gKRQkjc

Although animals and pets are so important for families and society, in modern urban lifestyles we can spend little time with our animal friends. Interactive media should be aimed to enhance not only human to human communication, but also human to animal communication. Thus, we promote a new type of inter-species media interaction which allows human users to interact and play with their small pet friends (in this case hamsters) remotely via the Internet through a mixed reality based game system "Metazoa Ludens". We scientifically examined the effectiveness of this system in a two pronged approach. Firstly, and most importantly the positive effects to the hamsters are ensured using Body Condition Score study. Secondly, the method of Duncan was used to assess the strength of preference of the hamsters towards Metazoa Ludens. Lastly, the effectiveness of this remote interaction with respect to the human users as a interactive gaming system with their pets/friends (hamster) was examined based on Csikszentmihalyi's Flow theory. Results of both studies inform of positive remote interaction between human user and their pet friends using our research system. This research is not aimed just at providing specific experimental results on the implemented research system, but is aimed as a wider lesson for human to animal interactive media. Thus also the lessons learned are extrapolated and detailed in this project as a framework in general for human to animal interaction systems.

Multimedia Productions: Global Leadership Forum on Economic and Cultural Development, San Jose, 6-8 August 2006.

Mixed Reality Lab recently produced a 2 min video commissioned by Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts (MICA) for the ISEA Festival 2006 in San Jose. It was done by Md Faisal, Roger Tan and supervised by Dr. Adrian David Cheok. The music was also orginally produced and composed by our lab.

To view the video, please click here.

In conjunction with and pointing forward to the launch of NUS Baba House in late 2007, Objects & Desire is a conceptual project challenging eight invited talents to present their works inspired by The Each piece is conceptual in its design, delivery and presentation. Each aims to tantalize our senses in appreciating the creativity and collaborative efforts of young artistic talents from Australia, Germany, Malaysia, Mexico, Singapore and USA.