Data driven design and build

The programme's Superfused Collaboration Awards were awarded to enable creative and social value of data from Gatwick Airport's data lakes.

One Superfused Award winner, Future Visual, has teamed up with academics from the University of Brighton, with expertise in human-centred design, cross reality UX and digital transformation to develop a real-time interactive representation of Gatwick Airport fused with the airport’s live data feed as part of the university’s DRIVA’ project, hosted within their immersive VISIONxR™ platform.

Future Visual are prototyping what a data-driven environment could look like and what would be the best way to represent this diverse set of information across many different formats whilst enabling teams from around the world to join together to view, collaborate, and learn using VR, AR, mobile, or desktop and work together cohesively in their use of this data.

A selection of projects will be presented at the Sparking a fusion of creativity, technology and business: Showcase and Conference taking place on Tuesday 23 February – sign up is required but free.

The full list of Superfused Award winners are as follows:

Eric Drass, Fortunecat Productions

Eric is creating a generative, AI driven musical composition and performance system, which turns data into music, delivered online as a continuous audio stream.

He will combine real-time flight-data from Gatwick with environmental data sources (weather, traffic, air-quality) to create an endless online musical performance.

Utilising machine-learning methods, historical data will be compared and integrated into real-time feeds influencing the arrangement and key of the work, creating a sense of ‘the mood’ of the airport compared to historical states. As such, the emerging composition will be able to reflect global effects, most notably, the influence of the COVID pandemic on international flight patterns.

Maf’j Alvarez, Root Interactive

Root Interactive recently created Inkibit Immersive, a new female-led, Brighton-based creative collective who nurture and develop early stage projects using VR and AR. This award will enable capital investment in gaming PCs, supporting Inkibit’s ambition in creating tools for individuals and organisations in underrepresented groups, telling diverse stories, using new immersive technologies.

Zach Walker, Make Amplify

Using Gatwick data as a sandbox, Zach is developing a methodology and model that will enable him to create live visuals such as bioluminescence within Unity, and to effect in real time the animated content such as the Octopus within their Unity AR world.

The data visualisation model will be used within the 5G testbed at the FuseBox, to test how it integrates into a live AR experience with performers and geolocation data. This project is also being supported by the Brighton Dome and Festival and Digital Catapult.

Michael Connolly, Artist

Michael is developing an online ‘automatic art’ system that creates artworks derived from the live Gatwick data set and live weather data. This award enables Michael to continue prototyping and developing Gatwick Airport related artworks with an online art generator which will be made operational by the end of the project.

Graham Luckhurst, Unique Uncut LTD

Graham has been developing the concept of a location-based audio platform for the last 12-months. Imagine Silent Disco meets Pokemon Go, with your favourite artist’s new tracks.

By placing audio objects that can be discovered and experienced by users using only a smartphone and headphones, the platform facilitates unique, exciting, memorable, authentic and accessible music experiences that would otherwise be impossible to realise. This award accelerates the software platform build to MVP.

Martin Hawley, Winsland Ltd

Martin will be modelling airport outages using Bayesian Network modelling combining data from airports around the world, potentially with Gatwick as a lynchpin. Ultimately Winsland envisage the creation of a global airport collaboration around resilience where airports share resilience data anonymously and interact through a community of practice supported by Bayesian Network modelling and exchange of best practices.

Perry-James Sugden, Studio Above and Below

Perry-James will use Gatwick’s data and transform it into a haptic feedback that can be felt – creating an alternative and more inclusive method to traditional data visualisation, which typically focuses on vision.

Tim Fleming, Future Visual

Future Visual is developing a real-time interactive representation of Gatwick airport fused with DRIVA’s data feed, hosted within their immersive VISIONxR™ platform. Users from around the world will be able to join to view, collaborate, and learn using VR, AR, mobile, or desktop to explore how the airport reacts to changes in the data feed.

Mark Knowles Lee, Fracture Games

This project builds upon their internationally acclaimed airport projects: ‘Digital Twin’ and ‘Command and Control’, delivered in partnership with SITA, the world’s leading specialist in air transport communications and IT. ‘Command and Control’ is an AR virtualisation of the SITA Control Bridge product, and was shown at Air Transport industry events including ATIS, the Paris Air Show and the Beijing Air Show.

In parallel, Fracture’s ‘Digital Twin’ project makes sense of complex IoT data via Digital Twin interfaces allowing intuitive overviews for non-experts and also detailed analysis of complex location based datasets for expert users.

The team are developing a lightweight application of their Digital Twin project that uses the Gatwick live data feed, for integration as part of a remote AR collaboration platform that assists with the delivery of their airport solutions.

The DRIVA Arts DRIVA project is receiving up to £500,000 of funding from the European Regional Development Fund as part of the European Structural and Investment Funds Growth Programme 2014-2020. DRIVA Arts DRIVA is also supported using public funding by Arts Council England.