Sanders Series Lecture

Speaker

Andy Wilson:
Trois trompe-l'œil pour le plaisir et le profit

2016-11-29 12:30 at MaRS Discovery District, Bottom Floor

Abstract

I will present three very different works in human computer interaction that play with our perception in surprising ways. Ostensibly, they address problems in interaction (profit! – ok not yet, maybe someday?), but there is also an element of fun and pleasure to be experienced, or at the very least surprise. While in our field three exemplars is enough to lay claim to an unassailable generality, the three projects I will talk about are so radically different that a coherent theme would be a real stretch. Yet together they suggest how recent developments in sensing and display technologies allow us to manipulate the user’s perception in new and evocative ways.

Bio

Andy Wilson is a principal researcher at Microsoft Research. His work is focused on applying sensing techniques to enable new styles of human-computer interaction. Today that means multi-touch and gesture-based interfaces, display technologies, depth cameras and so-called “natural” interfaces. In 2002 he helped found the Surface Computing group at Microsoft. Dr. Wilson now directs the Natural Interaction Research group at Microsoft Research.

Before joining Microsoft, Dr. Wilson obtained my BA at Cornell University, and MS and PhD at the MIT Media Laboratory. He grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania and now live in the Wallingford neighborhood of Seattle.

Videos of his and his collaborators’ work may be seen on his YouTube channel.