Dorkbot Melbourne Sun Feb 1, Richard Allen & Cagatay “Chatai” Goncu

Dorkbot Melbourne 25 >>> people doing strange things with electricity <<< 4pm, Sunday 1 February, 2009 Level 1, 124a Johnston St Fitzroy 3065 (just east of Brunswick St), Melbourne.

Dorkbot Melbourne once again brings together inspired and inspiring minds from across the known universe. Everyone with an interest in doing strange things with electricity is invited to come along and check out the presentations and participate in lively discussion. Doors open at 4pm, presentations start at 4.30 sharp. Bring your friends. Bring drinks and nibblies of your choice. Scheduled talks are outlined below.

::: LalaLullaby ::: Richard Allen

Richard Allen (aka Chi Chi Fibonacci) will discuss the maiden voyage of  “Lalalullaby” – a weird and wonderful immersive musical sculpture created with Pippa Willison and Paul Irving.

Fresh back from experimenting with punters at the Rainbow Serpent festival, Richard will attempt to explain what it’s like to sit inside a giant cosy knitted egg, swinging inside a five metre tall pyramid, being pushed by two costumed creatures while your motion generates a multilayered, synthesised, quadraphonic soundscape…

::: Diagramming For the Blind ::: Cagatay “Chatai” Goncu

Diagrams are important components of educational materials. They can be found in various media. Printed media, such as text books, have traditionally been the most commonly used media for educational material, however online electronic resources, such as web pages and e-books, are becoming increasingly popular sources of educational content. Online materials include static diagrams, like text books, but may also include dynamic content such as animations and components that can interact with the user. Unfortunately, these types of content are not easily accessible to blind people.

While there has been considerable research into generation of accessible diagrams, there is still no generic technique for automatically generating accessible diagrams from a standard input format such as SVG or image. Developing such a generic technique is the aim of this project. This generation should preserve the same semantics and pragmatics as its visual representation as far as possible, and be appropriate to users, tasks, devices and presentation media.

Cagatay (Chatai) Goncu is a PhD student studying at Clayton School of IT, Monash University. He is in his second year now, and working on presenting diagrams to blind people by using different modalities such as tactile, audio, and tactile/audio.

::: OpenDorks :::

P.S. Check out our mailing list and wiki to hear about future dorkbots… http://dorkbot.org/dorkbotmelbourne ( dorkbotmelbourne@dorkbot.org ) if you’d like to present something at a future dorkbot.