Three undergraduate Computing students were awarded Goldsmiths Innovation Awards worth £200 each at the department’s end-of-year show on 4 June 2014.

The three prizes, supplied by Goldsmiths Student Union, were awarded by a panel of industry judges featuring audio technology consultant Martin Roth, Justin Spooner (Unthinkable Consulting), Ashley Elsdon (Palm Sounds) and Student Union President Conrad Grant.

Best Product Stroke music project Pedro Kirk	This project investigates the role of music in stroke rehabilitation with a focus on trialling some traditional forms of physical intervention on new devices using a variety of haptic systems. “I’ve built three prototypes to trial these ideas and I’m using the preliminary feedback from 25 stroke survivors to assess their interest in music as a motivator for performing standard repetitive tasks.”
Best Creative Work Mediated perceptions Terence Broad	Two webcams are attached to the front of an Oculus Rift headset. By feeding the images onto the VR screen the user gets a replica of their normal vision, which can then be distorted and manipulated the ‘reality’. “I’ve been experimenting with using it as a synaesthesia simulator – using music to trigger visual effects like colour shifting, wobble, blurring and temporal layering. But you can also trigger perceptual distortions using head movement, changes in brightness, or the detection of motion and faces.”
Best Software Evolution Sim Dan Clarke	A simplified representation of evolution. Each lifeform has a unique DNA string composed of 242 numbers between 0-9. These values are reflected mainly through their appearance and movement. There is also an impact on behaviours such as flocking and desire to attack others.When the creatures mate, they exchange DNA and the two children produced are a mixture of their parents (with a chance of mutation). Through their ability to survive, the strongest life-forms should increase in numbers.

—–

• Info about Goldsmiths Computing courses