Control Geek
552 FOLLOWERS
I'm John Huntington, a Professor of entertainment technology, sound engineer, and author of the book show networks and control systems. This site covers entertainment technology, severe weather, and photography.
Control Geek
1w ago
I’ve long wanted to go to the Themed Entertainment Association’s SATE (Storytelling, Architecture, Technology, and Experience) conference, but, before I had early retired from full-time teaching, I just couldn’t work it out. So, when I saw that this year it was being hosted at always-fun Dollywood, where I hadn’t been in probably a decade, I decided to go! While it was my first SATE, it won’t be my last. I made a lot of connections, the conference was informational and inspiring, and very well organized and run.
I applied for a talk, entitled “Show Control for All” and got accepted. I was a b ..read more
Control Geek
2w ago
I’ve long backed the LUMA Festival on Kickstarter, but never been able to check it out. But last month I took a run up to Binghamton to see it, and it was well worth the trip. Here’s a few photos (click any to enlarge):
View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize View fullsize ..read more
Control Geek
2M ago
I’m honored to be doing a presentation on show control at the TEA (Themed Entertainment Association) SATE North America conference in October in Dollywood! “SATE North America is TEA's signature international conference bringing together the brightest minds and top decision makers exploring what's next in Storytelling, Architecture, Technology, and Experience in themed entertainment. “
in the theme of "exploring secondary regional markets in experiential entertainment”, my talk will be called “Show Control for All”.
Here’s my session description:
Show control is the array ..read more
Control Geek
4M ago
I’ve been going to biannual the Hackers On Planet Earth (HOPE) conference since 2002 (past writeups here), and this most recent—HOPE XV—was my 11th time attending, and I gave my eighth talk. The conference organizers were very public about slow early ticket sales for this year, and—from appearances—this seemed to be the smallest conference in many years. But it was still fun and it felt more intimate than past years.
And even though this conference is well established now, and—like so many things in the culture (as I’ve written here)—HOPE is kind of stable and somewhat repetitive at thi ..read more
Control Geek
4M ago
I’ve been to a bunch of these “immersive” installations (for lack of a better word), and I have to say a lot of them are pretty ho-hub. But I was relentlessly targeted by Mercer Labs Instagram ads, so on Sunday I finally checked it out, and I thought it was pretty good.
While the start of this experience is a fairly typical projection installation (which I find kind of boring these days), one of the thing that sets this “museum” apart is that it contains a number of physical installations. There’s a room full of pneumatic tubes with moving pieces, an industrial robot drawing in the sand, and ..read more
Control Geek
4M ago
Summer Camp Revelations
I don’t have a lot of clear memories from my childhood, but I do remember when I was about 11 or 12, sometime around 1974 or 1975, walking into the little empty assembly hall of summer camp, where some mysterious older teenager spun a record on a little self-contained player. I was entranced. I didn’t know this record beyond possibly a couple songs I had heard on the radio, and the album had no label or name on the outside. But I remember clearly this experience of hearing Led Zeppelin “IV” for the first time. I’m pretty sure I talked my parents into buying the record s ..read more
Control Geek
4M ago
I was honored this past Friday to do my ninth talk at a Hackers On Planet Earth conference on a theme I’ve thought and written a lot about: the evolution and maturity of live show technology. (Much more on all that here).
Here’s some video I captured from the live stream. The sound system in the room was not working at all by this point, and so I had try and talk loud ..read more
Control Geek
5M ago
The Australian entertainment technology publication CX published a nice review of my book, Introduction to Show Networking. You can read it here. PDF archive here ..read more
Control Geek
5M ago
From the ANBC site:
Starting in January 2024, we will be hosting 5 weeks of sessions over John Huntington’s Introduction to Show Control with John himself running each session! Sessions will take place on Monday nights ..read more
Control Geek
5M ago
I’m excited and honored to be speaking at the upcoming HOPE conference! I’ve presented HOPE talks in 2022, 2020, 2018, 2016, 2014, 2012 and 2010 (info on past talks here). The schedule hasn’t been released yet but it will be sometime July 12-14. Here’s the session description:
Live Show Technology: Past, Present, and Future - Have We Reached a Maturity Point?
The modern era of live show technology is often thought to have begun with the Beatles at Shea Stadium in 1965 (only a few miles from the HOPE site!). Production and technological development progressed slowly until an explosion of innov ..read more