August 7

PIRT at SIGGRAPH LiveBlog Day 1


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Friday, August 7th – 7pm EDT:

Hi everyone and WELCOME to Public Interactives Research Team’s LiveBlog from SIGGRAPH 2015. I’m David, research assistant for PIRT and your LiveBlog moderator. The team has wrapped up its preparations in New York City and is looking forward to a great week. Most of us will be making our way west tomorrow, but our Dale MacDonald is already on site at the Los Angeles Convention Center making preparations to our booth. We are looking forward to sharing our experiences over the course of SIGGRAPH 2015 with you.

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August 4

PIRT at SIGGRAPH 2015 – Official Press Release

The Public Interactives Research Team (PIRT) from The New School will present the AIDS Quilt Touch Project at SIGGRAPH 2015 whose graphic theme is the interplay between two ideas: Quilts and Xroads of Discovery. PIRT will showcase a suite of technologies designed to enhance and expand viewers’ experiences of the AIDS Memorial Quilt in an installation which includes 6 of the 5914 12’ by 12’ sections of the Quilt. As the largest living memorial of its kind in the world, the AIDS Memorial Quilt is composed of 48,000 individual panels made by more than 33,000 people that commemorate more than 93,000 names. If laid out in its entirety, the physical Quilt would cover 1.2 million square feet.  Our research team has created the first virtual Quilt that is composed of more than 5900 individual digital images of Quilt blocks that include nearly 48,000 Quilt panels. We have created several applications that enable members of the public to interact with this digital representation of an important work of cultural heritage.

 

The AIDS Quilt Touch project serves the following objectives:

  • to enable members of the public to experience the scale, history, and importance of the Quilt;
  • to enable viewers to explore the stories embedded within the Quilt as told by families, communities, and activists;
  • to clarify and augment information describing those honored on the Quilt, the makers of the Quilt, and the history of the Quilt over the past 30 years;
  • to elicit new stories of the Quilt and those honored in it;
  • to create a research platform for scholars of the Quilt who are interested in investigating the histories of the development of the AIDS pandemic and of AIDS activism, as well of the histories of folk art, textile art, activist art, and quilt crafts.

 

The suite of technologies we will present include the following:

  • The Interactive Tangible Browser for the AIDS Memorial Quilt utilizes an 55” multitouch table which enables viewers to search for a name on a Quilt panel, browse the virtual Quilt, and zoom among different viewing distances: from a bird’s eye view to a view of an individual Quilt panel.
  • The Timeline for the History of AIDS and the AIDS Memorial Quilt utilizes a Microsoft PPI 55” touchscreen that displays an interactive timeline recounting key episodes in the 30-year history of the AIDS pandemic and the 25-year history of the creation of the Quilt.
  • The AIDS Quilt Touch Mobile Web App enables a web-user to search for a name on the Quilt, view Quilt Blocks, comment on a specific panel or on the Quilt itself. Visit:  www.aidsquilttouch.org

 

This project has been supported by funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Microsoft Research, and a consortium of University research partners.  Beta versions of this digital project was initially presented during the 2012 Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, DC. Even in beta form, the digital applications generated positive press coverage from TechCrunch and other technology media outlets;  it was featured on the top page of the Bing site, and widely promoted by Microsoft Research including through a personal tweet from Bill Gates.  The digital applications have been updated for SIGGRAPH 2015 with hardware and software enhancements.

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July 23

AIDS Memorial Quilt Digital Experiences Project

The AIDS Memorial Quilt is a unique work of international ARTS ACTIVISM that reflects the worldwide scope and personal impact of the AIDS pandemic.

  • The textile Quilt is composed of 48,000 individual PANELS that commemorate more than 93,000 NAMES.
  • The size of the physical Quilt measures more than 1.3 million square feet.  If laid out in its entirety, it would cover more than 29 acres of land.
  • It would take a visitor more than 33 days to view every panel—spending only 1 minute at each panel.
  • It is the largest LIVING MEMORIAL of its kind in the world.

 

The AIDS Memorial Quilt Digital Experiences were created in collaboration with Dale MacDonald from Onomy Labs, Julie Rhoad and Roddy Williams from the NAMES Project Foundation, Jon Winet and his team from the University of Iowa’s Digital Studio for Public Humanities (DSPH), and Andy VanDam and his LADS team at Brown University.

 

The aim of this project was to design a digital memorial using appropriate technologies that would augment the experience of viewing the AIDS Memorial Quilt. Created by the Public Interactives Research Team (PIRT) at USC, the work was supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities Digital Humanities Office, Microsoft Research, and the USC Fund for Interdisciplinary Research. The experiences were exhibited as part of the 2012 Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, DC.

Digital Experience Tent at the 2012 Smithsonian Folklife Festival,  Washington D.C

Digital Experience #1

The Interactive Tangible Browser for the AIDS Memorial Quilt enables viewers to SEARCH for a NAME that is commemorated on a Quilt panel, VIEW Quilt blocks, BROWSE a virtual “Quilt” that is composed of 5800 individual digital images, and ZOOM among different viewing distances: from a bird’s eye view to a view of an individual Quilt panel.

This digital experience was created in collaboration with Microsoft Research, under the guidance of Donald Brinkman, and Andy VanDam and his LADS team at Brown University.

Visitors to the Smithsonian Folklife Festival view the digital AIDS Memorial Quilt on an interactive tabletop browser

Digital Experience #2

The Interactive TIMELINE for the History of AIDS and the AIDS Memorial Quilt recounts key events and episodes in the 30-year history of the AIDS pandemic and the 25-year history of the creation of the Quilt.

This experience was created by Lauren Fenton and Rosemary Comella at USC in collaboration with Microsoft Research, under the guidance of Donald Brinkman, and Roland Saekow and Madison Allen from the University of California Berkeley (of the ChronoZoom project).

Many scholars and activists contest these “official histories” for the homophobic bias that sneaks into descriptions and accounts. For example, these official histories often refer to people who are infected with HIV as “AIDS patients” or even “AIDS victims.” These labels do not represent the identity of those who are living with HIV. The identity of “patient” is meaningful only from the point of view of a medical system. The term “victim” implies a state of powerlessness.The AIDS Quilt Touch Timeline enabled USC docents during the Smithsonian Folklife Festival to talk with visitors about the broader social, political, and bio-medical events that are part of the multi-faceted history of AIDS and the Quilt in the United States.  There, the docents were especially interested in taking into account the critiques of the way in which AIDS/HIV have been “narrativized” in the “official histories” of the epidemic.

In effect, the team created counter-narratives that displaced the figure of the “hero scientist” and the process of “science as discovery.”  While we noted the specific medical researchers who were involved in identifying HIV, we contextualized these accounts by including key episodes that highlighted critical acts of intervention — when activists confronted government officials and protested official policies.  The story about the history of AIDS/HIV that is not told enough, we believe, is the account of how the practice of medical science was actually transformed by the work of activists during the early days of the epidemic.  Remember that it was the work of an activist, not a government official or medical researcher, that prompted the RED CROSS to finally understand that its ENTIRE national blood supply needed to be screened in order to prevent transmission of HIV.

USC student and docent, Brittany Farr meets a young visitor who asks questions about the history of AIDS.

Digital Experience #3

The mobile web app AIDS QUILT TOUCH enables a web-user to SEARCH for a NAME on the AIDS Memorial Quilt, VIEW Quilt Blocks, COMMENT on a specific panel or on the Quilt, and LOCATE the display of a specific panel during the Quilt 2012 events. visit:  www.aidsquilttouch.org

 

Bill Gates tweets about AIDS Quilt Touch, July 2012

 

The AIDS Quilt Touch mobile web app was created by a team at the Digital Studio for Public Humanities at the University of Iowa under the direction of Jon Winet and Mark NeuCollins.

Each of these experiences illustrates the important role of collaboration among humanists and technologies in projects that take culture seriously for the purposes of technological innovation.

During the Quilt 2012 events, the USC docents often served as “digital quilt archaeologists” using the applications to find specific quilt panels, or in some cases to identify panels based on imprecise or incomplete information. Verbal feedback from visitors provided informal evidence that we had succeeded in meeting the basic objectives established for the Start-Up project: the interactives indeed “augmented” people’s experience of the textile quilt.

 

A woman weeps after viewing digital image of her husband’s panel displayed on the AIDS Quilt Touch Table and interactive browser, 2012

 

The AIDS QUILT TOUCH mobile web app goes live on June 27, 2012

 

USC student and Docent, Tisha Demanjee uses the AIDS Quilt Touch mobile web app to help visitors find a quilt panel on the National Mall, 2012.

 

CREDITS

Anne Balsamo: Principle Investigator for grants from NEH, Microsoft Research, and USC. Currently Dean, School of Media Studies, New School for Public Engagement, New York. Formerly Director of Research in Public Interactives Team at University of Southern California. Balsamo has been involved in the project since 2002 when it was first conceptualized as a Project by Onomy Labs. Served as project coordinator and lead experience designer for Quilt Digital Experiences.

Dale MacDonald:  Currently serves as the Director of Creative Technologies at the School of Media Studies, New School for Public Engagement, New York. Formerly Chief Technology Officer, Annenberg Innovation Lab, University of Southern California. Co-director of the creation of the digital experiences for QUILT 2012 events. MacDonald has been involved in the project since 2002; serves as LEAD researcher for all digital experiences and project coordinator for all the tech teams.

Jon Winet:  Director of the Digital Studio for Public Humanities (DSPH), at the University of Iowa that provided the design and tech team that built the mobile web app AIDS QUILT TOUCH.

Mark NeuCollins:  Technical Director at the DSPH and for the mobile web app.

Andy van Dam:  Thomas J. Watson Jr. University Professor of Technology and Education; Professor of Computer Science.  He is the director of the Brown University Graphics Group and of the Large Art Displays on the Surface (LADS) project sponsored by Microsoft Research.

Alex Hills: Principle developer of the Interactive Quilt Browser on the LADS platform.

Donald Brinkman:  In his position as Digital Humanities liaison at Microsoft Research, he served as project “wrangler” for the Microsoft Research and Development Team.

James Wren:  Senior Consultant, Microsoft Consulting services; responsible for all the visual processing of quilt images to create the database for the deep zoom experience.

Lei Yu: Senior Consultant, Microsoft Consulting services; responsible for creating a prototype using PIVOT that allows for parameter searching of the Quilt image database

Julie Rhoad:  President and Executive Director, The NAMES Project Foundation, Atlanta, Georgia.  Provided the invitation and opportunity to participate in Quilt 2012 events, and serves as domain expert for all digital experiences.

Roddy Williams:  Chief Operations Officer, The NAMES Project Foundation, Atlanta Georgia; responsible for provision of NAMES data and Quilt history context, and serves as domain expert for all digital experiences.

Brett Bobley:  Director and Chief Information Officer, Office of the Digital Humanities, National Endowment of the Humanities; provided expert guidance in the creation of the first iteration of the project and serves as development advisor for the broader Digital Experience Project.

Sherry Moore:  Photographer at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival and logistics coordinator.

Information reposted from

http://www.annebalsamo.net/projects/digital_experience_project_2012/

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June 2

Summary of experience // Let’s SEE the Trash @ Ideas City

We learned alot about our Let’s SEE the Trash project by entertaining many visitors in our booth at the Ideas City Festival this past weekend.  In total, approximately 50 people visited us, who took roughly 30 of our bookmark business cards with QR code, designed by SMS graphic designer Chad Phillips.

letsseethetrash_bookmark_frontletsseethetrash_bookmark_back

From those visitors, our embedded video site received approximately 20 unique visits. Of those visitors, we did not receive any repeat visits to our booth.

 

 

We found it very useful being able to situate the project in public to discuss with visitors their impressions of what they thought our work would be based on how we described it. The process of our attempting to explain what the piece was, how it worked, and what the goal was in the greater context of the festival was very useful on our fine-tuning how we described the piece. Our description drifted away from mobile augmented-reality app towards location based documentary. Several visitors inquired as to whether we were able to physically track garbage across a large distance, or if we were able to obtain any data about the phenomenon we were attempting to depict. We were fortunate to be visited by a Department of Sanitation worker attending the festival, who provided us useful insight towards who to contact and how the department handles producing media pieces about their work. He stressed that the public should be made more aware about the process that garbage goes through after its initial disposal.

 

After our experience at Ideas City, the team feels that this was more a first iteration of the project rather than a finished product. That being said, we’re definitely proud of the technology we were able to develop for this first iteration of the piece that included: GPS detection and real time updating in a web based app using Google Maps API , applying custom map styling, geo-fencing points of interest, reactive points of interest icons, and custom video playback using YouTube API.  We plan to reach out to our new contact in the Department of Sanitation in an effort to involve them. Additionally, we think it would be beneficial to rework our description of the piece to that of a location based documentary. This describes more the intention of our piece given it’s current technological approach. In describing the project as documentary, the footage currently employed would need to be reconceived and reshot, most likely with the help of Red Dog Productions. Finally, we found that if we were to include a URL in our promotional material, that the URL be shortened by goo.gl or bitly.

 

-David Wilson
Research Assistant
Public Interactives Research Team
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June 2

PiRT to participate at SIGGRAPH 2015

The Public Interactives Research Team recently learned that we were selected to participate in SIGGRAPH 2015 – The 42nd International Conference and Exhibition on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques. We’re very excited and honored for the opportunity to present the AIDS Quilt Touch Digital Experience during the conference in Los Angeles in August. We’ll post more information about our participation as details become available.

We will certainly need some help greeting and helping visitors to our exhibits. If you or any SMS-friendly people you know will be in LA 8/9-13 we would love to hear from you. Let David (wilsd575 at newschool.edu) or Tracy (veritest at newschool.edu) know!

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May 15

PiRT at IDEAS CITY – Saturday May 30 12-6pm

SATURDAY

05/30

12:00 PM – 6:00 PM

Playable Media Lab (Sarah Lawrence College),

Public Interactives Research Team (the New School):

Let’s SEE the Trash!

 

Let’s SEE the Trash is a mobile augmented-reality app about garbage. This project intends to address the “out of sight, out of mind” phenomenon surrounding waste and discard in everyday life. While pointing this app at a trash can, users will connect to micro narratives that describe the lifecycle of trash near the Festival site. This app also features the many ways garbage collection is a part of the Invisible City.

http://www.ideas-city.org/#event/let-s-see-the-trash

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May 6

Progress on Online Gallery of Public Interactives

The Public Interactives Research Team is busy compiling data to be included in an Online Gallery of Public Interactives. The project will serve to function as a curated repository for examples of PI’s in the wild, and a platform by which to apply analytics to better understand the phenomenon. More info on the project soon.

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May 5

Summary of experience // Temperament of Space @ Dawn of Summer event

I just wanted to send along a quick summary of my experience with Curiosity of Temperament of Space during the Dawn of Summer event at The New School University Center on Friday 5/1, specifically highlighting areas where I feel the piece was really successful, our challenges where the piece might be able to improve, and other general observations.
I would estimate the age range of students who were experiencing the piece as 18 to 27. The ratio of female visitors to male is what I would call 3 to 1, for every 3 female visitors, there would be one male visitor. I would estimate the average length of experience with the piece at between 1 to 3 minutes, with the short outliers around 30 seconds, while the longest stay with the piece were two students constantly interacting with it for well over 30 minutes (more on these two later). In total I believe the piece saw between 60 and 70 unique visitors over the course of the 12 hours.
Feedback that I received from visitors was overwhelmingly positive. I took questions about who on campus was responsible for the piece, and found myself describing the nature of the research, and also the Public Interactives Research Team. Many visitors had specific questions about the technology and software that were employed, and how each were working in specifics to “see” or “detect” them.
< Successes >
Many visitors were drawn in by the visual aesthetics of the piece, to be pleasantly surprised by the interactive audio element. Many commented that the piece was “relaxing” and “meditative”, that the audio and visual elements were “beautiful”. Some visitors wanted to know where in the world the natural imagery was taken from. Some visitors, even though the interaction design meant that the interaction with the piece was “slow” rather than a direct mirror of their movements, wanted to DANCE in the piece. At least 10 visitors over the course of the evening did this. Watching these visitors, I got the sense that their perception was as if the piece augmented, rather than mirrored, their movement. One group of students, actors from the drama school, mentioned that the piece could function well as a teaching aid (act out what you see, and what you see acts with you).
< Challenges >
Many visitors had to be prompted to enter INTO the piece to interact with it. At one point, Dale taped arrows on the ground in an attempt to help people into the space, then into the piece to begin the interaction (unfortunately, it didn’t help much). I found that if I greeted guests and told them to walk in a general direction and that “something cool” would happen, visitors took that as a general invitation to enter the piece. I also thought that general instructions kept visitors in the space longer as opposed to directing them specifically and telling them what would happen.
< the Outliers >
Two Parsons fashion design students, undergrad juniors, one male, one female, spent a very long time with the piece, and in the room in general. Each of them commented that the piece was relaxing and that they enjoyed the pace at which the piece interacted with them. Each told me that they were very stressed out by their final projects and that the piece helped them to relax in a really engaging, but not ‘lame’ way. They made fun of the dance party happening in another part of the building, and that Temp of Space provided them with a great social/technological alternative. Them seemed to enjoy watching other visitors interact with the piece. The male student was very interested with the technology and commented that he wished the fashion department would incorporate reactive elements into their design curriculum.
< Suggestions for further development >
* a random mechanism with the audio distance detection, where once a users distance is detected the upper and lower bounds of the ultrasonic sensor are altered slightly (for instance +/- 5), to prevent users from finding a zone that does something specific. Essentially, to contextually randomize the experience further to promote further engagement and wandering within the space.
* We should consider strategies for shepherding users/visitors INTO the space, eliminating (or reducing) the need for a person to be there with the piece to guide visitors inside.
-David Wilson
Research Assistant
Public Interactives Research Team
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May 5

We are the Public Interactives Research Lab

PIRL is a research-design project led by Dr. Anne Balsamo. The term Public Interactives names the broad category of mediated experiences that are now on offer in communal and public spaces.

  • Public Interactives are technological devices that serve as the stage for digitally mediated conversations with audiences members in communal spaces such as museums, theme parks, tradeshows, outdoor entertainment plazas, and urban streets.
  • Public Interactives include works of public art that evoke new experiences and perceptions through experiments with scale, mobility, built space, and modes of human engagement in public spaces;
  • Public Interactives are a mode of public communication designed to engage people through the use of digital media in conversations for the purposes of information exchange, education, entertainment, and cultural reproduction.

A compelling example of a Public Interactive was British Airway’s The Magic of Flying advertising campaign situated in London, England, United Kingdom – 2013 by Ogilvy & Mather UK. Photo from fastcocreate.com

 

Members of the Public Interactives Research Team include SMS Head of Creative Technologies Dale MacDonald, SMS Associate Professor Diane Mitchell, Sarah Lawrence College faculty member Angela Ferraiolo, and students from various New School programs.

The team’s current research design projects include:

  • The AIDS Quilt Touch Digital Experience – funded by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Microsoft Research, and The New School. The team recently presented the project at SIGGRAPH 2015 in Los Angeles.
  • Development of an Online Gallery of Public Interactives.
  • Prototyping Experimental Embodied Interfaces.
  • Exploring Interactivity in the Wild.

The team always welcomes new members. For more information please contact research assistant David Wilson at wilsd575 at newschool.edu.

 

Sunny Sale, a sundial QR code developed by E-mart, is another interesting example of a Public Interactive situated in Seoul, South Korea – 2012. Photo from displaypro.wordpress.com

 

Featured Image – The BCP Affinity, Banco de Crédito Building located in the San Isidro District of Lima, Peru is an example of a Public Interactive as a large media facade. The facade’s LED display is controllable by the public via a large touchscreen. Photo from http://www.colorkinetics.com/showcase/installs/BCP-Affinity/

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