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"didn't we have a luvverly time, the day we went to Bangor"

Tested out the phenomenology of Angry Birds at a stimulating little conference at the University of Bangor, hosted by Astrid Ensslin and Eben Muse. The conference addressed

the blurring of boundaries in the mixed reality of ubiquitous computing and augmented reality. New technologies are moving users into the screen (Microsoft’s Kinect), making the user the screen (MIT’s Sixth Sense), and bringing the content out of the screen into the world (smartphones, Layars, Wikitude). Pervasive games, Digital tourism, telematic art and telematic performance are only a few manifestations of this new set of boundaries that must alter our definitions of fundamental concepts of culture, gender, identity, race, nation, authority, geography, space, narrative and time. The distinction between second life and first life is blurring at an increasingly rapid rate.

Rather more on Second Life than ubiquitous computing and augmented reality, but that’s OK. Here’s a photo that proves I was there.

There was an excellent keynote by Michael Nitsche, and great presentations by Alina Padilla-Miller, Isamar Carrillo Masso, and Rebecca Ferguson.