augmented reality
i attended part of barcamp hong kong 2008 today and learned about a lot of cool new stuff. among the things catching my eye was a demonstration of an open source app called levelhead, created by julian oliver of australia as a spatial memory game. i'm not sure whether this would more accurately be considered art or a game, but there is no question that it is cool. it's actually been around for about a year so i may be late to the party.
it is setup by using cubes with barcode-like designs imprinted on each side. these are viewed with a webcam and the app decodes the bar code into a game screen. each cube represents a room in which a small figure resides. by tilting, flipping, and moving the cube, the figure will walk in the direction you choose. the object is to pass through appropriate doorways in a given amount of time. that's probably a pretty crappy explanation, so check it out in the video below.
levelHead v1.0, 3 cube speed-run (spoiler!) from Julian Oliver on Vimeo.