I subscribe to InteractiveTV Today, which focuses on news and information about interactive multi-platform television. Brian David Johnson, an Intel Futurist, is the author of the Jet Set column in ITVT. His most recent article provides a good overview of Intel's Developer Forum (IDF) in his article, Get Your Geek On.
In my opinion, the best part of the article were Johnson's links to his new book, Screen Future: The Future of Entertainment, Computing, and the Devices We Love, and a video interview of key players in the world of the future of interactive television/media. About Screen Future:"Screen Future is about the people, technology, and economics that are shaping the evolution of entertainment. Blending social and computer sciences, media history, and engaging conversations with industry experts, author Brian David Johnson provides an informed and illuminating vision for what happens when TV and entertainment are transformed by the power and intelligence of computers."
A New Vision of Television In the video below, Brian David Johnson discusses the future of TV with LeVar Burton and Mark Wolfe, of Burton/Wolfe, and Asra Rasheed, CEO, RRKidz:
Futurist and Director, Future Casting and Experience Research Intel Corporation
The future is Brian David Johnson's business. As a futurist at Intel Corporation, his charter is to develop an actionable vision for computing in 2020. His work is called "future casting"—using ethnographic field studies, technology research, trend data, and even science fiction to provide Intel with a pragmatic vision of consumers and computing. Along with reinventing TV, Johnson has been pioneering development in artificial intelligence, robotics, and using science fiction as a design tool. He speaks and writes extensively about future technologies in articles and scientific papers as well as science fiction short stories and novels (Fake Plastic Love, Nebulous Mechanisms: The Dr. Simon Egerton Stories and the forthcoming This Is Planet Earth). He has directed two feature films and is an illustrator and commissioned painter.
Immersive Tech (imTech) is a "non-profit think tank created to promote the development and adoption of immersive technology for the benefit for advancing fields in public interest, such as education, health, arts and entertainment."
Immersive Tech hosts an annual summit. On October 21st, 2010, the summit will be held at the Los Angeles Center Studios:
"The summit organizes a community that bring together technologists, visionaries, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and industry leaders in various fields of immersive technology.This year's summit will feature groundbreaking speakers, a 360° fulldome installation (think planetarium style), exhibitors demonstrating cool new technology, and with your support, this simulation system!"
Here is the list of speakers and their bios, from the website:
John Smart, Acceleration Studies Foundation John Smart is a developmental systems theorist who studies accelerating change, computational autonomy, and the singularity. He is President of the Acceleration Studies Foundation, a nonprofit community for research, education, consulting, and selected advocacy of communities and technologies of accelerating change. He co-produces the annual Accelerating Change Conference, an annual meeting of 350 change-leaders and students at Stanford University, and edits ASF's free newsletter, Accelerating Times, read by future-oriented thinkers around the world. He is a member of the Association of Professional Futurists, the FBI Futures Working Group, and the editorial advisory board of Technological Forecasting and Social Change.
Dr. Joanne Kuchera-Morin,UCSB Allosphere Dr. JoAnn Kuchera-Morin is a composer, Professor of Media Arts and Technology and Music, and a researcher in multi-modal media systems, content and facilities design. She created, built, and designed the Center for Research in Electronic Art Technology and has been the Center’s Director since its inception in 1986. Her years of experience in digital media research led to the creation of a multi-million dollar sponsored research program for the University of California, the Digital Media Innovation Program. In 2000 she began the creation, design, and development of a Digital Media Center within the California Nanosystems Institute. The culmination of her design is the Allosphere Research Laboratory, a three-story metal sphere inside an echo-free cube, designed for immersive, interactive scientific and artistic investigation of multi-dimensional data sets. She serves as Director of the Allosphere Research Facility.
Dr. Albert "Skip" Rizzo, USC Institute for Creative Technologies Albert "Skip" Rizzo's work in Virtual Reality has created technologies being used to treat combat-related Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, help clinicians practice skills for challenging clinical interviews and diagnostic assessments, address the use of VR applications to test and train attention memory visuospatial abilities, and executive function, and has created VR Game systems to address physical rehabilitation post stroke and Traumatic Brain Injury and for those aging with a disability.
Chris Noessel, Cooper His prior experience has seen him developing interactive kiosks and spaces for museums, helping to visualize the future of counter-terrorism, building prototypes of coming technologies for Microsoft, and designing telehealth devices to accommodate the crazy facts of modern health and healthcare. His spidey sense goes off about random topics, and this has led him to speak at conferences about a wide range of things including interactive narrative, ethnographic user research, interaction design, sex-related interactive technologies, free-range learning, and, most recently, the relationship between science fiction and interface design with co-author Nathan Shedroff.
Greg Hyver, BCINet Mr. Hyver has 30 years of high-technology experience working in Silicon Valley firms. He spent ten years working within the Aerospace and Defense industry at Lockheed Missiles and Space, serving as a software and hardware engineer for “Star Wars” defense projects. In the late 80’s, Mr. Hyver joined Market Intelligence Research Company as Senior Market Researcher and, in 1994, joined Xilinx as Product / Test Engineering Manager in the ASIC division. In 2005, he joined NeuroSky as VP of Marketing and became VP of Business Development at BCInet in 2009, two companies in the Brain-Computer Interface industry.
Mark Goulthorpe, dECOi Architects / MIT Mark Goulthorpe was educated in England and the USA, and apprenticed professionally for 4 years with Richard Meier in New York and Paris. In 1991 he established the dECOi atelier to undertake a series of architectural competitions, largely theoretically biased. These resulted in numerous accolades around the world, which quickly established a reputation for thoughtful and elegant design work suggestive of new possibilities for architecture and architectural praxis. The Hyposurface was designed principally by Mark Goulthorpe and the dECOi office with a large multi-disciplinary team of architects, engineers, mathematicians and computer programmers, among others. The piece is a facetted metallic surface that has potential to deform physically in response to electronic stimuli from the environment (movement, sound, light,etc). Driven by a bed of 896 pneumatic pistons, the dynamic 'terrains' are generated as real-time calculations.
Dr. Sheryl Flynn, Blue Marble Rehabilitation, Inc Dr. Sheryl Flynn is the founder and CEO of Blue Marble Game Co, a serious games company that focuses design and development of video games to enhance rehabilitation for people with disabilities worldwide. The heart of which is centered on a passion for using technology to revolutionize health care delivery and outcomes. Recently, her company received funding from the Department of Defense to develop a video game for troops with mild traumatic brain injury who wish to return to work. Sheryl has also begun the development of the Games4Rehab.com social network that aims to bring together individuals with disabilities, clinicians, researchers and game industry professionals to push the games for rehabilitation agenda forward quickly. In addition to her entrepreneurial pursuits, Dr. Flynn also consults with the University of Southern California, Institute for Creative Technologies and Division of Biokinesiology and Physical Therapy on the NIDRR funded OPTT-RERC grant to develop a suite of games that clinicians can use in rehabilitation settings.
Tino Schaedler, NAU Tino Schaedler is an established art director, production designer and trained architect. He is something of a chimera, moving seamlessly across disciplines, always working at the leading edge of change. Be it production design for feature film and commercials, event design or architecture: His work is about spaces that tell and frame stories. Tino is a regular guest speaker at universities and conferences worldwide, whilst also regularly contributing on film design to ‘Mark’ and ‘Build’ Magazine. His designs have won various awards and have been widely featured in internationally renowned publications.
Aaron E. Walsh, MediaGrid Walsh is Director of the Grid Institute, an international best-selling author, and a Boston College faculty member. In 2006 Walsh received the Teaching with New Media award for his work on Immersive Education. He received this prestigious national award for his pioneering work on immersive education, which was recognized as “…innovative, promising technology which holds the potential to significantly affect society in the near future.” In 2007 Computerworld named him one of the forty most innovative people in the information technology industry. After more than a decade of research and development in the field, Walsh began using his prototype technologies to teach Boston College courses from a distance. At that time he coined the term “Immersive Education” to describe learning platforms that combine interactive 3D graphics, commercial game and simulation technology, virtual reality, voice chat, Web cameras, and rich digital media with collaborative online course environments and classrooms.
Howard S. Lichtman, Human Productivity Lab Howard S. Lichtman is a productivity-focused technology technologist, author, publisher and consultant with specialties in telepresence and visual collaboration to improve organizational and personal productivity. He is the founder and president of the Human Productivity Lab, an independent consultancy and research firm that helps organizations design telepresence strategies and deploy telepresence solutions. He is the publisher of Telepresence Options, the #1 website on the Internet covering the telepresence revolution and editor of the Telepresence Options Telegraph, the world’s most widely read publication covering telepresence technologies.
Bruno Uzzan, CEO & Co-Founder Total Immersion Bruno Uzzan has been driving the growth of Total Immersion since 1999 – from start-up to the company’s current position of global category leader. As a pioneer and AR visionary, he has led Total Immersion’s global expansion and built the company’s client roster with blue chip accounts that include Disney, McDonald’s, Mattel, Twentieth Century Fox and Nissan Motors. He also is responsible for developing strategic alliances, bringing his vision for the potential of next gen AR to these relationships. Before establishing Total Immersion, Uzzan served as a consultant for Pierre Henri Scacchi and Associates (Price Waterhouse Group). He holds a masters degree in management from the University of Paris Dauphine.
Immersive Technology Summit Agenda (From the Immersive Technology website) Time Event/Topic Speaker 8:00am Registration & Morning Refreshments 9:00am Welcome Ken Rutkowski & Harold Tan 9:10am Collaboration Successes Jody Turner 9:25am Collaboration Challenges John Canning 9:40am I-Cocoon Tino Schaedler 9:55am Q&A Panel 10:10am Virtual Choir Eric Whitacre 10:15am Panel Discussion TBA 10:30am Refreshment Break & Networking 11:15am Video 11:20am Telepresence Howard S. Lichtman 11:35am Immersive tech in physical therapy Dr. Sheryl Flynn 11:50am Immersive education Aaron Walsh 12:05pm Q&A Panel 12:15pm Imagined Communities Bonnie Bucker 12:30pm Lunch & Dome presentations 2:00pm Video 2:05pm Institute of Creative Technologies Dr Belinda Lange (USC) 2:20pm Augmented Reality Bruno Uzzan (Total Immersion) 2:35pm The Allosphere Dr JoAnn Kuchera-Morin (UCSB) 3:05pm Brain-Computer Interfaces Greg Hyver (BCINet) 2:50pm Q&A Panel 3:05pm Immersive Tech Awards Arts / Health / Education / Communication / Startup 3:30pm Refreshment Break & Networking 4:20pm World Builder Bruce Branit 4:25pm Future Visualizations of Spatial Relations Tali Krakowsky, Ed Lantz, Greg Downing, Bruce Branit 4:40pm Science Fiction & Immersive Tech Chris Noessel 4:55pm Immersive Tech Ubiquitousness Benjamin Bratton (UCSD) 5:10pm 10 Years and Beyond John Smart 5:25pm Closing Remarks
If you are new to this blog, you should know that I'm passionate about interactive tables and surfaces of all sizes! Although this technology has been around for a while, it is a new concept to most people. The researchers and practitioners involved in the upcoming 2010 Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces Conference have been an important influence in the way people think about interacting with technology, and have made significant contributions to this emerging field over the past several years. It hasn't been an easy road, given that most of us have minds brainwashed through years of forced keyboard-and-mouse interaction and traditional WIMP (Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointers) interfaces.
I first learned about the first Interactive Tabletops conference, held in 2006, in early 2007. At the time, I was working on projects for my HCI and Ubiquitous Computing classes, trying to learn everything I could about natural user interaction, large touch-screen displays, tabletop computing, and multi-touch. I was inspired by the interesting work going on in this field. This was before the first iPhone was introduced, before Microsoft's multi-touch Surface was unveiled, and three years before Apple broke out with the iPad.
Many of the people involved with the 2010 Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces Conference are (or have been) affiliated with the NUI group. NUI stands for Natural User Interface, or Natural User Interaction - the NUI group is "a global research community focused on the open discovery of natural user interfaces." I joined the NUI-group in 2007 when I was looking for more information about the nuts and bolts of multi-touch programming and systems, and have been encourage to see how things have evolved since then.
Members of another group, sparkon, are also participating in the Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces conference. Sparkon is an on-line community that includes people involved with interactive technologies, including tabletop and surface computing. "On sparkon, you'll find projects demonstrating the latest interactive techniques, applications, software frameworks, case studies, and blog articles relating to creative and emergent technology." (I'm also a member of Sparkon.)
Here's the information from the conference website:
ACM Interactive Tabletops and Surfaces, Saarbrücken, Germany: 7-10 November, 2010 "ITS 2010 is a premier venue for presenting research in the design and use of new and emerging tabletop and interactive surface technologies. As a young community, we embrace the growth of the discipline in a wide variety of areas, including innovations in ITS hardware, software, interaction design, and studies expanding our understanding of design considerations of ITS technologies and of their applications in modern society. ITS 2010 will bring together top researchers and practitioners who are interested in both the technical and human aspects of interactive tabletop and surface technologies. It is our hope that we will be able to achieve increased synergy of approaches between the disciplines engaged in the research in the area of interactive tabletops and surfaces, Design, HCI, UbiComp, Psychology, MobileHCI and other related fields. More directly, we intend to encourage immediate interdisciplinary collaboration on future research topics. Young scholars and Ph.D. students are especially encouraged to submit papers and participate in the doctoral colloquium."
KEYNOTE SPEAKER: W. Bradford Paley "Bio:W. Bradford Paley uses computers to create visual displays with the goal of making readable, clear, and engaging expressions of complex data. He did his first computer graphics in 1973, founded Digital Image Design Incorporated in 1982, and started doing financial & statistical data visualization in 1986. He has exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art; he created TextArc.org; he is in the ARTPORT collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art; has received multiple grants and awards for both art and design, and his designs are at work every day in the hands of brokers on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. He is an adjunct associate professor at Columbia University, and is director of Information Esthetics: a fledgling interdisciplinary group exploring the creation and interpretation of data representations that are both readable and esthetically satisfying."
SAMPLE TOPICS
Applications
Gesture-based interfaces
Multi-modal interfaces
Tangible interfaces
Novel interaction techniques
Data handling/exchange on large interactive surfaces
Data presentation on large interactive surfaces
User-interface technology
Computer supported collaborative systems
Middleware and network support
Augmented reality
Social protocols
Information visualizations
Interactive surface hardware, including sensing and input technologies with novel capabilities
PLUGS From the conference website -Links to the conference sponsors:
We appreciate the generous support of the following sponsors, without whom this conference would not be possible. Click on the logos to learn more about our generous supporters, and let us know if you are interested in becoming a sponsor.
Here is part of the description of Playful Interface Cultures:
"This years exhibition of the Interface Cultures Department is showing emerging artistic ability profiles transformed by heterogeneous sets, tools and methods of creation departed from interactive media- and interface technology. To take advantage of disciplines related to communication technology, bioscience, physical computing, interaction design, fashionable technology or information visualisation, artists are focusing on new ways to combine these complex frameworks within test environments and experimental concepts. This origin is supporting group- and project based developments and inspires a flexible and multi-perspective sharing of knowledge and abilities within the process of artistic creation."
"To keep your adrenaline pumping while waiting for SIGGRAPH to start, here's a few juicy bits of inspiration:
"Simulating Real-world Film Lighting Techniques in 3D. Light, shadows, and rendering play together to create realism in your 3D models. Learn to bring these art techniques into your 3D scenes to create compelling cinematic views."
"Creating UVs for Characters in Autodesk Maya*. Regardless of whether you're using a model in a real-time environment or as part of a rendered sequence, here are some tips and tricks to making UV mapping work efficiently."
