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Comment on Folk Computer

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What is this?

https://folk.computer/notes/tableshots

This page gives more explanation than the landing page does I think

I think a better overview is under the "Towards a folk computer" link on the main page (perhaps the submission link should be changed?). Essentially (if I understand correctly) they want to let you control computer by moving things in the physical world: mainly items on a real tabletop. Sort of anti-virtual reality, in a way!

Not to sound dismissive, because this is cool, but this pretty solidly AR, just instead of a headset you're using a projector. I don't think it'd be too difficult to port this to vr headset of choice

Headsets are in many ways a less cool version of our own eyes.

Also, this would be helpful for the sightless.

Tangible Computing :D

Someone get Tim on the line to look into this.

Exactly, websites like this need straplines and a clear "about" page.

"This {convoluted previous story about an audience generated concert that uses computer vision} is basically the idea behind Folk Computer, a small human-computer-interaction (HCI) research project run out of a converted auto shop in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, that I visited one afternoon in March. Its founders, Omar Rizwan and Andrés Cuervo, want to make an interface that is haptic and three-dimensional: no longer an image of a desktop, but a real one. Folk’s hardware consists of a tiny, monitor-less Intel computer, a ceiling-mounted camera, a projector, a printer, and lots of paper spread out on an IKEA table. Each sheet is printed with a QR-code-like marker (called an AprilTag) that corresponds to a program written on a laptop and stored on the Github cloud. The camera reads the tag and executes its instructions, which, for now, are fairly simple – “draw a green box,” for example, causes the projector to cast four green lines onto the table. Folk is part of a larger “screenless” trend in HCI, ..." (Spike Magazine, https://spikeartmagazine.com/articles/essay-emily-dickinson-...)

I guessed that following the "in the media" link would lead to a story with a brief synopsis, but the link just goes to a blogroll that's no longer got the "Folk computer" story on, searching for it gets one the above page though.

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