Shift LIfe

Sam Moore, Eugene Ch'ng, Dew Harrison, Mat Murray and I have been working on a pervasive interface for an artificial life simulation. At the recent Shift-Time festival in Shrewsbury we exhibited an artificial life simulation of an fictional ecosystem, projected onto a sand pit. People could change the behaviour of the creatures in the ecosystem by changing the environmental conditions of the system. They could make the sun shine more or less by playing with a lamp, increase the humidity or change the pH by pouring in water, vinegar or soda mix from watering cans or cause an earthquake by hitting the side of the sand pit with a toy hammer. We had really good feedback from the people who came to see us. One family came back on the second day because their three children were talking about it "all night". Typical comments from kids were "I think it's cool" and one kid left saying "well, you've got to be impressed with that", which made us laugh. More info and an interview with Dew can be found here: [Event listing] http://www.shift-time.org.uk/events/shift-life.shtml [Interview] http://www.shift-time.org.uk/video/video-shift-life.shtml