Tackling Australia’s waste problem – one bot at a time!

Posted on 13 September, 2017

Australia’s waste problem is real and we want to create awareness and inspire kids (and adults) to look after our environment. Code-A-Bot has a strong environmental message teaching visitors to code, based on simple programming language featuring drag and drop, and the goal is to create efficiencies in a recycling plant for the future.

Code-A-Bot

Based around a fictional recycling facility DERP (Department of Environmental Resource Processing), the aim of the game is to program robots to sort waste into material categories for processing and recycling. Robots can be coded to move, sense, and collect or distribute rubbish around the facility and into the correct bins. We need your help to make DERP run more efficiently!

Meet The Cube’s newest robot

Posted on 2 August, 2017

Code-A-Bot is The Cube’s new interactive digital game in which players program robot workers to collect and sort rubbish in a bid to create the most efficient virtual waste recycling plant at DERP (Department of Environmental Resource Processing) .

This is what a robot in Code-A-Bot looks like – small and cube-like – we call him robot.

School students meet Pepper at The Cube

Posted on 28 June, 2017

Over the past two months’ school students participating in The Cube’s newest STEAM for Schools workshop, Tinkering with Technology, have had the opportunity to meet and interact with Pepper the Robot.

Students spend their day at The Cube imagining a future with robots as companions and helpers before tinkering with technology and craft materials to explore their ideas. The topic was developed in consultation with key QUT researchers in the field of robotics and aims to inspire curiosity and creative thinking.

Recoding robots at The Cube … DERP needs your help!

Posted on 16 June, 2017

For the past six months, the Cube Studio have been developing Code-A-Bot, a game ased around a fictional recycling facility run entirely by robots. Code-A-Bot will be launched and playable at QUT’s Robotronica on 20 August and afterwards will become a regular project rotating on The Cube screens.

Welcome to the DERP (Department of Environmental Resource Processing)

DERP has created an automated materials recovery facility, run exclusively by robots to sort waste into material categories for processing and recycling. Unfortunately, the code that runs the robots has bugs and is inefficient and we need your help!

Visitors to The Cube need to debug and recode the robots to boost the efficiency of the plant. Players will have access to a host of sensors and cameras to assist the selection of the waste and can fit different manipulators to move the waste around the facility and hopefully into the correct bins.

Creativity and empowerment through STEAM for Schools program

Posted on 4 May, 2017

Leighann Ness Wilson reflects on one of The Cube’s STEAM for Schools programs ‘Prototyping towards an age friendly city: LittleBits’

A few weeks ago we met RoboDog: a robotic companion whose tail lights up and sends a signal for medical attention if it senses its owner is unwell. We also met the founders of ICU productions who make bionic eyes for the visually impaired and heard a design pitch for a tech-enabled water collection system.

RoboDog

These were just three responses to the question: How might we prototype for an Age Friendly City? This was posed to a group of year 5 students from the Sunshine Coast region during our STEAM for Schools workshop at The Cube.

Echo reverberates across The Cube

Posted on 26 April, 2017

“Empathy is about finding echoes of another person in yourself.” Mohsin Hamid

Here we are, the final Echo reverberates across The Cube in hybrid glitch form.

The photo booth is installed, the virtual mirror throbs in anticipation and the Echo character maps across the space. She navigates us, “Come closer” she says, you are now part of something bigger”.

The last month has seen many creative and technical developments, including the integration of the narratives. They began as fiction and ended as readymades. Real intimate stories from real people. Through the mirror our storytellers confide in you, the user, revealing moments of their lives where they have suffered or overcome hardship. As their narrative unfolds the features of your face slowly morph into their face. They operate you with their expressions and leave you placed firmly in their shoes. This intimate experience forces us to relate and connect with those outside of our normal social sphere. Narrative has long been a tool for empathy, awareness and social change, Echo intends to push this further still by immersing the viewer visually as well as through the imagination.

STEM Girl Power Camp at The Cube

Posted on 29 March, 2017

The Cube and QUT’s Design Lab teamed up in March to host an exciting workshop program at QUT Gardens Point campus as part of the second annual STEM Girl Power Camp. The workshop coincided with annual World Science Festival (WSF) activities held in Brisbane.

Sixty regional high-achieving Year 10 girls and 10 teachers discovered the power of design in science, technology and enterprise innovation through workshops and presentations from STEAM leaders and experts in their field.

The STEM Girl Power Camp is an important initiative of Advancing education: An action plan for education in Queensland to address the lower participation rates of girls in STEM subjects and careers.

Program co-ordinators Natalie Wright (QUT Design Lab) and Jacina Leong (QUT The Cube) said they embraced the opportunity to provide such a diverse workshop program, revealing design’s critical role in STEM education. It also showcased the city campus and the varied opportunities available for regional girls to study at QUT.

Tuning back in from the reverberating world of ECHO …

Posted on 8 March, 2017

A month under my belt and still two to go. The project is growing limbs by the second and each day seems more exciting than the last. Tech wise our facial tracking application is well on the way to having the main functionality working smoothly. Here’s a taster video of the first stage recorded live from the application with a few treatments added.

The next stage is user interface design and narrative content. It’s time to bring fiction, drama and sound to the work so you might see me cruising around Kelvin Grove campus collecting and researching personal stories. Don’t be shy, come and say Hello and get involved in my project.

Over the next three weeks I’ll use this research to write some intimate stories with the help of the creative writing and drama students. These narratives will be integrated into the final user experience where you literally see through someone else’s eyes, kickstarting the empathy engine..

Still so much to do but with the support of The Cube and the Creative Industries team, anything is possible!

The Cube turns 4

Posted on 1 March, 2017

Happy Birthday to us!!! The Cube just turned 4 and like all birthdays we’ve been celebrating our achievements and thinking about what’s to come in 2017 …

2016 was a big one for us with the Dino Zoo Holiday Program attracting over 24,000 visitors in January 2016. For all you dinosaur lovers, you can still catch Dino Zoo on our screens, check Cube Screens for dates/times.

Lauren McCarthy completed the TRANSMIT³ Residency, The Changing Room, which explored the potential of The Cube as a “smart social environment,” responsive to the mood and activity of the people that inhabit it. The Changing Rooms was a custom software installation and performance that allowed participants to select one of hundreds of emotions, evoking that emotion in them and everyone in the space through a layered environment of light, visuals, sound, text, and interaction exhibited over a multi-level, many-sided display. Dealing with themes of surveillant architectures, social technologies, and smart homes, the piece simultaneously invades and cares for the emotions of passersby. Read more about Lauren’s final performance.

Physics Observatory launched in September school holidays and a very successful holiday program and Physics Fun Day followed in January 2017. At the moment our public programs team are busily preparing for the Easter Holiday Program which we can reveal involves a QUT exclusive from Street Science. Sign up to the holiday eNews to be the first to hear about bookings.

Their Majesties King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima of the Netherlands visited QUT to launch a flood management tool and summit that could help protect their country and Queensland. The Dutch royals, making their first visit to Australia since taking the throne, were shown the Smart Scanner for Water Resilient Cities, developed by QUT’s Dutch collaborators Deltares and HydroNET, during their visit to QUT’s Gardens Point campus. Translated on to The Cube’s screens, QUT researchers demonstrated the tool’s ability to predict likely flood impacts from a mix of different local measures and contrasting weather events. Read more about this in QUT’s news story.

What’s coming up in 2017?

The Cube Studio are busily developing their new screen project Code-A-Bot for launch at Robotronica 2017. Code-A-Bot will allow people to work together to run a recycling factory as efficiently as possible. You will need to attach parts to your own robot and then code the robot on the screen in order to perform tasks. This will be a great introduction to coding and will showcase QUT’s robotics initiatives, while also inspiring group collaboration and a greater understanding of resource management.

Georgie Pinn’s residency Echo is underway and we are excited to see what comes of her research project which uses interactive facial detection technology, combined with animation and sound. Read more about Georgie in her first blog post.

Welcome Georgie

Posted on 20 February, 2017

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Ello!

I’m a multimedia artist completing a residency at The Cube for the next three months.
I studied Vis Arts at QUT way back in the 90’s and since then I have been travelling across Europe and Australia making audio visual work for both stage and screen. 17 years later I’m back and with my geek on…

Here’s a link to my Showreel if you’re interested: https://vimeo.com/159136216

My creative practice has, for many years, used technology to explore notions of physical and emotional empathy. Here and now I’ll be developing a project called Echo. Over the next few months I’ll be designing elements and software for an interactive installation that is a morphing virtual mirror. The viewer will be able to customise an interchangeable avatar and fragment and mix their own face with the features of other people and animals, creating a range of morphing hybrid personalities. We’re also developing a real time facial tracking application that copies your expressions as you wear anothers face or multiple faces.

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I want to explore how we respond to our face being fragmented and manipulated by others and if it is possible to build community by developing a truly ‘shared’ identity? Does a combined identity extend the parts of us or dilute us? What can we learn about narcism and empathy through this experience? And what can we learn about micro expressions?

Two weeks in and already progress is being made within Unity, the game engine we are using to build the software. I’m also loving getting lost in transmission chaos land of animated glitch fragments! Here’s a video link to some animation tests I’ve been playing with: https://vimeo.com/203231463

In April the installation will run and the animated portraits will be installed into The Cube with an event that showcases the application as a live tool for Public performance.
Will tune in again soon, hope to face mosh with you…

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