A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to attend i-Design, a one day conference and showcase for anyone with an interest or passion for interactive design and the digital arts. The programme certainly lived up to its aims as I came away truly inspired and entertained as well as being somewhat perplexed too!

The day kicked off with a panel debate centred around the idea of ‘Post Digital’ asking the question, 'If everything is digital, then what's next?' In a world where everything references digital media, how does our industry need to respond? This was a fascinating insight into the minds of the panel members more than anything, with the illustrious Adrian Shaughnessy leading the discussions.

This then lead the way for the first 5D interlude of the day by MOTH who beautifully showed their passion for experimental technology and for pushing the boundaries of traditional VJing. MOTH bridge the divide between video mixing and street art, generating site-specific video graffiti designed in response to the morphology, texture and ambience of the spaces and structures of the outside world.

Another presentation that particularly caught my interest was one by Lichtfaktor. You might recognise the work of these lords of luminosity from the TalkTalk television adverts (which also bookend each segment of ITV's popular X-factor). Their work in light-writing is spectacular, ranging from relatively standard incarnations of the practice, through to an amazing light-printer that allows pre-written messages to be created and captured in the same way as standard light-writing.

Wet Design also grabbed my attention. They're known for their work on the incredible Bellagio fountain, and are just finishing a new fountain installation on behalf of Emaar Properties for the Burj Dubai Lake. This new attraction - which incorporates 6,600 lights and 50 colour projectors - is 275 metres long and shoots 22,000 gallons of water 150 metres into the air... that's a lot of big numbers I'm sure you'll agree, and the end result is extremely impressive.

Joe Baskerville of Cogapp fame also contributed a 5D interlude. His talk focussed on human-computer interaction and the various exciting technologies that are being implemented in this realm to allow us to interface with technology in new and unusual ways. One of my personal highlights from his talk was a projector that could detect when people came near the image it was projecting and adapt so that their bodies became part of the canvas for the display. The result was eerie but awesome.

I also particularly enjoyed his information about Sony and Microsoft's recent divergence into experimental interactions, and the display of digital graffiti (which we demonstrated to partygoers at last year's Cogapp Christmas party). Reactable - a new musical instrument created by placing objects on aninteractive surface - was also fascinating and showed how progress in interaction is racing along.

Joe rounded off his presentation by enlightening the audience about our recent exploits in combining the world of people and the world of pong to create... People Pong! This game revolutionises the classic concept of pong by allowing players to control the paddles with their eyes! Read more about it here.

All in all, i-Design was a great day and really showed how interactive design is a fast-moving realm. Who knows what incredible feats will be on display at next year's conference?