|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
||||
| Ed grew up playing with computer programming, with his first software title being published at the age of 17. Following a degree in Architecture at the University of Liverpool, Ed undertook the MA in Digital Arts at the Middlesex University Centre for Electronic Arts. His MA thesis on computer models of young children's drawing behaviour was subsequently developed into an ongoing PhD research project into artificial intelligence, dynamical systems and developmental psychology. After three years of research and teaching at the Centre for Electronic Arts, Ed joined Soda Creative Technologies Ltd (http://soda.co.uk) as Research and Development Director in 1998 and was the original author of the Java toy sodaconstructor (http://sodaplay.com), which subsequently received the BAFTA interactive entertainment award for Interactive Arts in 2001. Contribution: Creative play – interactivity, creativity and learning For myself the inspiration for interactivity is play; the joy that comes from spontaneous experimentation and discovery. Playing has always been a central part of the way I work and now facilitating creative play has become a fulfilling aspect of what I produce when I work. The convergence of interactivity and play is made manifest in Sodaplay. The first sodaplay toy, sodaconstructor, is an engaging online construction kit that gives visitors the ability to build interactive creations from a sparse framework of dynamically modelled limbs and muscles. By altering physical properties like gravity, friction and speed, curiously anthropomorphic models can be made to walk, climb, wriggle, jiggle or alternatively collapse into a writhing heap. Sodaconstructor’s playful agenda exploded across the internet in a wave of spontaneous e-mail communication and web postings in the summer of 2000. Since then a large and active worldwide community of sodaplayers have been creating their own sodaconstructions which populate the sodazoo with a bourgeoning menagerie of models that are stranger and more diverse than I ever imagined possible. The fact that sodaplay users have so surpassed my aspirations for the software points to valuable lessons about the roles of creativity, learning and emergent behaviour in interaction design. |
 |
  |
 |
 |
 |
 |
