On Friday the 20th of May, Brunel University’s School of Engineering and Design opened its doors to anyone interested in its students’ spin on the future of digital media. The soon-to-be Multimedia Technology and Design and Broadcast Media Bachelors of Science exhibited over 70 final year projects to a wide ranging audience, including lecturers, placement students (getting a day off work in search for inspiration for their own final year projects) and anyone interested in the rare blend of technology, art and design that the exhibitors had explored.
External examiner Chris Speed from the University of Edinburgh was among the crowd and spotted some interesting projects whilst overseeing the action. He highlighted the increasing importance of a human centred approach when introducing a digital medium into everyday life – a way of thinking that students from these courses are placing in high regard.
The standard of work was exceptionally high this year. Noteworthy projects included Khaled Shaaban’s fascinating idea of combining motion tracking and face recognition software with a gaming console camera to enable an intuitive interactive viewing of 3D objects. As the viewer moves in front of the screen the chosen object rotates accordingly, creating an impressive illusion of space and depth on a flat computer screen. Another featured project aims to introduce an intuitive front-end approach to website content management. In other words, it picks the best genes of design software and the power of web code to afford the user a focus on creativity whilst ensuring the website’s functionality. It’s called Paste Up and its creator James Shakespeare is confident he can satisfy analytical and creative minds with his product.
The two courses’ legacy of producing engaging 3D animations also continued unabated this year, with work from Laurence Dawes and Sarah Yu standing out as particularly impressive. Their work can be seen after the jump.
Other projects included 2D animations, smart phone apps, corporate promotional media, online services and augmented reality concepts. A selection of these and many other innovative projects can be explored at Bargehouse as part of Made in Brunel next week.
Tags: broadcast, degree show, exhibition, multimedia
[...] UPDATE: My friend Mani Koechert has published a review of the show on the Made in Brunel website. [...]
I Love Sarah’s Yu video it’s fantastic! Great to see the quality Brunel Multimedia School can produce!! The man in the Below film is scary, he’s going to haunt me in my sleep! Great work guys!