Kyle McDonald – Appropriating New Technologies

“There is an infinite amount of energy out there. If you put more of your stuff out there and engage with people who are doing things because they love it and not because they are getting paid for it, you can’t go wrong. You can only benefit from that.”

When Kyle McDonald first shared his face tracking software, he didn’t know what would happen: A large community quickly formed and explored the ways in which this tool could be used. In his keynote talk at NEXT Berlin 2012 he presented a variety of applications ranging from tracking emotions to making music by perking your eyebrows, or playing games through head movements.

Tools like “FaceOSC” or Microsoft’s kinect, which can be used as an 3D scanner, are great examples of how the digital and physical world can be merged through technology and what a wide range of possibilities arises from that. But for McDonald, the key thing he’d learned from all these projects was: “If you get stuff out there soon and you try to nurture a community, you can get something really amazing.”