bridell.com

An interaction engine for hybrid realities

Interaction engine for multiuser interactive environments. Developed at the Interactive Institute 2003-2004.

The Multiuser Interactive Environment Language (MIEL) is an interaction engine developed at the Interactive Institute. I was part of the development theme (together with Peter Lundén, Olof Bendt and William Sporrong) doing system design, coding, and testing. I am also currently one of about a handful of people who know how to express myself in the MIEL language.

The basic idea is that instead using conventional programming, you use an XML-based markup language to define how the interactive environment works. The system has been successfully used in two places, the Verket in Avesta and in China Before China, a permanent exhibition at the Museum of Far East Antiquities in Stockholm.

Read all about it in the MIEL White Paper and then contact me if you want to know more.

Interactive visitor environment (2003-2004).
Produced by the Interactive Institute.

When the steel factory in Avesta was moved to a new facility, the old factory was abandoned. The workers more or less dropped their tools and left. Ever since, the factory has been waiting by the riverside, its windows shattered and its looming passageways unvisited except by the ghosts of the past… until now.

Now the old steel works have been turned into a kind of industrial heritage museum. As a visitor you explore the building using special torchlights developed at the Interactive Insitute. There are a number of interactive pieces distributed in the building which try to give some kind of idea about what it might have been like in the blast furnace hall when it was operational (except we don’t actually have 1500° C molten iron - it just looks like it).

I did a bit of everything, from programming to rebuilding smoke machines and drilling ventilation holes in odd metal contraptions. The Verket was realized using the interaction engine called MIEL.

Verket was awarded the Nodem Award for large scale/immersive installations. (2004) and admitted to the Best in Heritage Club of Excellence (2005).