Han Yu Looking Outwards 08

Kate Hollenbach is an artist, programmer and educator based in Los Angeles. She works for Oblong Industries during the time she gave the speech at INSTINT. Oblong is a Los Angeles based company founded in 2006 that dedicates in designing interfaces and building gestural interactions. Hollenbach was the former director of Design and Computation at Oblong and under her leadership, Oblong came up with several groundbreaking products truly pioneered in the gestural interaction industry, which the company and many believed is the future of computers.

Oblong’s first project “Tamper” was commissioned by the university museum of Cal State. It is an interface that uses multiple surfaces to do different tasks and users can use gestures to browse through different video clips displayed at the museum. The project requires users to wear gloves that have reflective markers on them which is captured by the many cameras installed in the display room. The project was a success and fueled Oblong to continue their endeavors in gestural interactions.

Kate Hollenbach’s speech at INSTINT 2014 where she displayes “Temper” at 04:35.

Mezzanine is the flagship product of Oblong that realizes conference room collaboration through building a multi-screen environment. Users can embed multiple video and sources from their own computers on the screens around the room and even project them to virtual locations.  I really admire the organic aspect of Mezzanine where every interactive elements feel natural. The creators of Mezzanine utilizes animations and other tools to maximize the power of gestural interactions and make users comfortable with the new technology.

An introduction of Mezzanine by Oblong.