First of all, my apologies for not being here. At the time of this ceremony, I am listeninging to students presenting their final projects for the serious gaming course. You have been to the opening lectures of thos course, and perhaps followed the discussions on facebook, so you know it will be exciting. It will very likely also remind you of the occasions that you presented a (candidate) final project yourself, such as for example the video mixer project for multimedia authoring, which is, I may say still a fine example of explorative development of multimedia technology, making full use of the opportunies the technology offers.

For your final thesis project at the creative learning Lab of the Waag Society entitled -- Sensor based physical interaction for embodied playful learning games -- you first did an exhaustive literature study, with an indepth, and I may say exhaustive (...) investigation of available technology for physical interaction, ranging from motion detection to direct Brain-Machine Interaction. An important contribution of your thesis was formed by what may be called a reference architecture, distinguishing between a layer of sensing, a layer of communication, and a layer of interpretation, which allows for critical distinctions in delays and response time, as well as more in general the applicability of sensing technologies with respect to aspects such as reliability and intrusiveness (for the user), all potential impediments to the effective depoloyment of physical interaction.

With the phrase critical distinctions I am reminded of how you became angry in the multimedia autjoring course, because of some broken links in my newly developed tutorial, that you were apparently interested in. And I liked that about you, enthusiast and not easily satisfied, also not with yourself.

After your formal stage was finished with a solid literature study and the proposal of a reference architecture, as mentioned, you decided to sharpen your skills and started implementing a real game -- playing with mathematics, using physical interaction -- appropriately named: NumHop. It is truly beyond the scope of this ceremony to explain any details, but I may mention the use of both unity and the kinect, which as the insiders know both require solid development skills.

Again, I apologize for not being here, but I invite you, as we did before in the summer, to have a coffee and discuss ongoing matters and perhaps the possibility of continuing your work in a creative and/or scientific environment.

To finish, my congratulations to you, and your family and friends, and (real or virtual) -- see you, let's have a drink later!

A. Eliëns, 2/10/12

(C) Æliens 2014