The Curzon Memories App was featured on BBC Radio 4’s You and Yours on Monday 30 July 2012. The item reviewed the recent AppCircus Google Campus London app development showcase where the app was selected to be pitched in front of a distinguished panel of judges, earlier in July. The section on apps is about 19 minutes into the slot.
In the broadcast, I introduce the app and outline its key features, including the unique Projection Hero installation, a miniature cinema which you can manipulate from your smartphone, which particularly appealed to one of the jury, Facebook’s Simon Cross:
“You take the concept of what they did which is to bring the history of this old cinema to life, they could’ve stopped at videos and text, but connecting it to something physical such as a screen you can control from your phone, that’s a completely different experience … it just feels like you are connected to it, because your phone is controlling it … that feels pretty cool to me”.
The things that Cross loves in an app involve “location and contextuality, because that’s what a phone does better than anything else, it knows where you are and it’s your device, it’s very personal.”
AppCircus organiser Rudy De Waele says “Apps are the way to engage users, so the mobile application becomes your remote control for the physical world”.
This idea is embodied in Projection Hero, an Internet of Things installation developed in collaboration with Tarim from Media playgrounds, where you can gain control of the cinema using your smartphone:
The installation situates you as the projectionist, inviting you to dim the lights, open the tabs and play the next reel using sensors and actuators to manipulate the installation. Hidden inside the box is a laptop which connects to an Internet server with an Arduino and h-bridge to control the curtains and lights.
The app, which was developed with AppFurnace by Calvium, sadly wasn’t to win the AppCircus pitch, but the opportunity to pitch in front of judges was invaluable.
The Internet of Things is the subject of a future REACT hub ‘Objects Sandbox’ theme which will be in development Jan – March 2014, with production running April through June 2014.
The Curzon Project 