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Our uni Project at the moment is to take a mouse and create an innovative input device and a piece of software to demonstrate it with.

Device
So far my idea is to have a device akin to a large trackball that uses the whole hand, along with a couple of switches wired where the buttons would otherwise be. The device will be used to manipulate a 3D space. The reason I want to do this is because I am fed up with 3d manipulation using mice, even with high end 3d software it is a hassle, I think with a device like this a much better result is possible without too much effort.

Breakdown:
X&Y:Rotate space around X and Y axis
Scroll wheel: dolly forward and backward through 3D space
Switches: Change modes

As for the software, I would like to continue exploring reactive imagery. That is, imagery that reacts dynamically to external input. To this effect I would like to include music synthesizing to some extent, perhaps changing colour when it peaks or similar.

My current plan is to draw off some inspiration and have vectored boids. This will require importing certain libraries into processing I think. The boids will be rendered in 3D using OpenGL and use a sound processing library to determine direction, colour, etc.

The 'boids' could also be moved using perlin noise or predator/prey algorithms.

Next I'll start looking at the code for setting up the 3D space.