Wednesday, February 8, 2012

My First Project Semester!

I love the design of the building we work in!
This semester I've embarked on a journey of a different kind - my first project semester at the ETC. To make it even more exciting, I'm part of the first ETC project group to work at the Manchester campus. We are here at MediaCityUK in University of Salford, working on a project with the university in conjunction with the Psappha ensemble. Our project team, Madhouse, has been given the task of creating an interactive visualization of Psappha's performance of the musical piece, "Eight Songs For a Mad King," with the input of the composer, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies.

I am lead programmer on this team, and I will be working with Unity3d to design and implement interactions using the Microsoft Kinect as well as several Microsoft surface tables. I am so excited to be programming again! The area here and the facilities are all really nice; I'll definitely post more photos soon!

In addition to working here, we are each taking an elective class as well as some shorter classes. I'll be taking a virtual environment design class (basically BVW, except that I will be filling all of the roles on my own) as well as a short NUKE class.


The view from my bedroom window - beautiful!
Aside from school stuff, we have gotten settled in at our apartments and have done a bit of sightseeing around Manchester as well. Carlos, the ETC's liaison with Manchester, was amazingly generous with his time. He gave us a great tour of the city and went above and beyond in getting us settled in, introducing us to the right people, and, most importantly, feeding us! We love you, Carlos! Some of the places he took us to include the Manchester Cathedral, John Ryland's Library, and Chetham's Library (the oldest public library in the English-speaking world!) More photos to come soon on this front as well, once I get around to uploading things from my camera.

Cheers!

The "Manchester Eye" - a ferris wheel in downtown Manchester.
It's much smaller than the London Eye, though!