Bluecadet Interactive

We headed to Toronto to attend the FITC Design and Technology Festival last week, and discovered some incredible projects. For those who might be overwhelmed by the full FITC wrap-up, our interactive developer Stacey Wiley created a Bluecadet-curated countdown list of some of the most innovative and inspirational things from the festival this year.

10. Dennis Ippel from AKQA demonstrated gesture recognition examples using the Kinect, and gave me and other participants a breakdown of basics to start playing around.

9. The Adobe keynote speech shared the FITC Titles.

8. A review of Mike Creighton's talk is up on his blog Today Create. He shared fascinating aspects of the process involved in correlating physical drawings in a digital format. It was great to see some process-work, like this glove that holds the light while he draws.

7. Audio Code Clash Workshop with Andre Michelle – I came away with a lot of ideas for experimentation for an Armonica project.

6. Extremely articulate talk about inspiration by Jason Theodor. Personally, I think my creative type is a 'Dreamer' - check out a version of his talk online and discern your strengths and weaknesses.

5. Playing a game of tennis with the phones of 150 audience members. Users joined a team by dialing in, and once the game began, a group collaboration of mashing numbers would bring your paddle up (2) or down (8). In this case, right side strong side.

4. GMUNK did a breakdown of some parts of the new film TRON Legacy. Check out this interview with David Young, which gives you some details, and then check out the movie - and keep in mind the insane amount of design and experimentation that went into each frame the team worked on.

3. Robert Hodgin showed off their Planetary app, which creates a different way to explore the music library. It’s available for the iPad (and free to download).

2. Obscura Digital did a talk with Derivitive, showing off various projections. My favorite project from this is the Sydney Opera House.

1. And my favorite, the design I/O talk with Theodore Watson and Emily Gobielle, integrated beautiful design with creative coding. Make sure to check out the Funky Forest and Knee Deep.