Andrew Losowsky has posted the full, unedited version of an article he wrote for The Guardian last year on Eyetoy and embodied interaction, including comment from Ludology.org’s estimable Gonzalo Frasca and an interview with Richard Marks – who pioneered the tech behind Eyetoy for Sony – and what he’s doing next: The Clam…

Some excepts:

"EyeToy relies on the most basic interface ever invented – the human
body. Graphics may get photo realistic, but there’s nothing real about
bashing X to run faster, or clicking the mouse to jump. If your
character needs to run faster, run faster. If it needs to jump, jump.
The interface gap is suddenly made all but irrelevant. Look at the
screen. You see you? That’s you, that is."

and… The Clam!

"The Clam a single U-shaped squeezable piece of fabric you put in
your hand and when you squeeze it, it changes in aspect ratio very
fast. So you can use it as a mouse cursor. You squeeze to click and
drag, and then let go to release. Because you can monitor the direction
of the aspect ratio, you can also use it to rotate objects."

"His lab has developed a simple photo storage/manipulation program to
use The Clam with – and it works so simply, it seems almost too
obvious."

And finally:

"Touch is one of Sony’s four Interface Research Areas (the others
being Inertial, Video and Audio – the EyeToy has an in-built
microphone, by the way). Tilt-based gaming, through handheld games such
as Wario Ware, are also becoming successful. And there’s potentially
much more within our grasp.

"If you look at mobile phones now," says Ron Festajo, "practically
every one has a camera. You can take photos and use it as an input
device. It’s very exciting."

People understand cameras. And cameras open up all kinds of possibilities. The revolution is already upon us, comrades."

A great article, and a good intro to the already-happening-ness fun of tangible computing.