Email Responses
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Exploratorium
Paul Doherty
- From: Paul Doherty <pauld@exploratorium.edu>
- Date: November 1, 2007 5:53:37 PM EDT
- To: Eric Gordon <eric_gordon@emerson.edu>
- Subject: Re: Digital Lyceum Project
Dear Eric Gordon
Congratulations on receiving the NEH grant!
1.) How new technologies can connect proximate and distant audiences in real time.
I have been involved in a couple of projects that do this. I am a senior scientist at the Exploratorium. As part of my work at the Exploratorium I was the scientist/guide for a live webcast of the 2006 eclipse of the sun. We streamed live video of the eclipse to live audiences at the Exploratorium and to many other museums around the world reaching thousands of people, we provided our feed to NASA TV and to MSNBC where it was seen by millions of people, but most important for the use of new technologies, we streamed the webcast live into the virtual, three dimensional, world of Second Life where hundreds of avatars representing viewers watched the eclipse. Streaming the live video into the world of Second Life allowed viewers all over the world to talk with each other using instant messages as they watched the eclipse. For example an eclipse fanatic from Japan conversed with the avatar of another eclipse lover from Finland, these two avatars were sitting next to each other in the virtual world. I also created some exhibits in this virtual world that helped people to understand how eclipses are created.
We also streamed 5 hours of live coverage of the transit of mercury across the sun in 2006 to these same audiences. In the virtual world my avatar was on stage giving a presentation to an audience of avatars from around the world. The transit was videod live at Kitt Peak National Observatory. The video was streamed onto the web and also into second life. Where I stood on stage and narrated the event. As part of my presentation I used 3 dimensional models I had created to explain the transit.
2) how new technologies can enhance (not distract from) the experience of physical presence.
To experience an eclipse it is best to be there in person, However only tens of thousands of people actually see any one total solar eclipse. Up to now the other people interested in seeing the eclipse would have to watch a video of the eclipse. Such video viewing is usually done alone on a computer monitor or with a couple of friends on a television screen. Streaming the video into Second Life opens up the possibility of live social interactions with people who have similar interests during the course of the live event. In fact you are more likely to find people with interests similar to your own in the virtual world than you are while watching television at home. (Although if you watch an event live in a museum there will usually be people with similar interests present.) Also eclipses happen when it is night over half the world, at times when a public viewing place for the eclipse is likely to be closed. The virtual world is always open for groups of avatars to experience an event together.
In the virtual world of Second Life I have also built an interactive science museum with science, art and human perception exhibits. Thousands of avatars come and interact with my exhibits. Once again the virtual world allows the avatars to come together from all over the world to visit the exhibits in small social groups.
I hope these few sentences help and give you a better understanding of what I have done.
Paul Doherty
PhD Physics MIT 1974
Rob Gothfarb
- From: Rob Rothfarb <rrothfarb@exploratorium.edu>
- Date: November 2, 2007 2:15:25 PM EDT
- To: Eric Gordon <eric_gordon@emerson.edu>
- Subject: Re: Digital Lyceum Project
Hello Eric,
Thanks for your interest in our work at the Exploratorium. Congratulations on your grant, the work sounds engaging.
I'd say it would be best for us to have a conversation about what we've been doing with virtual worlds like Second Life and our live webcasting program. It's an active practice and i am always trying to bring these two practices together. In just a few weeks, we'll begin a series of live webcasts for the International Polar Year called Ice Stories. We'll be making these webcasts available in Second Life on our island.
Next week is bad for chatting as i'll be travelling and at conferences. One of the conferences is the Museum Computer Network conference in Chicago where i'll be on a panel about museums using Second Life.
I just published an article in the Nov/Dec issue of the Association of Science and Technology Center's bi-monthly journal, Dimensions, entitled "From 2-D to 3-D Web: The Science Center and Second Life" The article will be available on the http://www.astc.org website in a few weeks.
Here are some links to information about what we've been doing in this area:
Exploratorium public page about our presence and programs in Second Life: http://www.exploratorium.edu/worlds/secondlife/index.html
Wiki site we're developing to help educate and facilitate best practices regarding museums and other informal learning institutions use of virtual worlds: http://apps.exploratorium.edu/worlds/wiki/
Published paper for Museums and the Web 2007: Creating Museum Content and Community in Second Life available online at http://www.archimuse.com/mw2007/papers/rothfarb/rothfarb.html
best regards,
Rob Rothfarb Director of Web Development Center for Learning and Teaching Exploratorium
tel: 415 674-2844 fax: 415 561-0307 http://www.exploratorium.edu
Workspace Unlimited
Kora Van den Bulcke
- From: Kora Van den Bulcke <kora@workspace-unlimited.org>
- Date: November 2, 2007 3:05:28 PM EDT
- To: Eric Gordon <eric_gordon@emerson.edu>
- Cc: Thomas Soetens <thomas@workspace-unlimited.org>
- Subject: Re: Digital Lyceum Project
Dear mr. Gordon,
Thank you for the interest in our work. We are glad to participate to your research questions. Have you seen and experienced one of our installations recently or did you discover our work on the internet?
Our main project is called Common Grounds. Common Grounds is a network of virtual worlds connected to physical places in Europe, North America and Asia. The project started in 2001 and continues to expand with new hybrid (virtual/physical) nodes. Common Grounds is both an artistic project and a platform for live discussion and exchange around the topics related to virtual worlds (networks, augmented reality, immersive spaces, etc.) Within the project we perform live lectures and i-chat discussions that are streamed into the virtual world and which can be followed form any active node of the Common Grounds network.
I have included a short description of our collective and the project but to give you a complete overview of our work it would be better if we could give you a live demo of Common Grounds. We are planning to be in Montreal for the next coming months. If you see an opportunity to meet us we would be glad to give you a live presentation in Boston.
Looking forward to hear back from you,
Kind regards,
Kora
Stanford Humanities Lab
Henrik Bennetsen
- From: bennetsen@gmail.com
- Subject: Re: Digital Lyceum Project
- Date: November 2, 2007 4:20:11 PM EDT
- To: eric_gordon@emerson.edu
- Cc: crhinesmith@comcast.net
Hi Eric,
my first mixed reality event was ourt HASTAC presentation back in November 06. There was an audience at Duke that got a tour of our Second Life project conducted by us at Stanford.
Later I helped launch Lynn Hershman's film Strange Culture simultaneously at Sundance and in Second Life.
Recently I am putting on a conference that we plan to stream out live on the web.
Feel free to ask more questions,
Henrik
Mixed Realities Laboratory
Holger Schnädelbach
- From: Holger Schnädelbach <hms@Cs.Nott.AC.UK>
- Date: November 7, 2007 4:04:03 PM EST
- To: Eric Gordon <eric_gordon@emerson.edu>
- Subject: Re: Digital Lyceum Project
Thank you. This makes your interest very clear.
The work that you refer to, experiencing a presentation in Mixed Reality, is part / pre-cursor to my core research interest into Mixed Reality Architecture, buildings that consist of physical and virtual spaces. This earlier work was already an example of that, but this has since been developed further.
Mixed Reality Architecture links physical and virtual spaces in a dynamic topology, giving its inhabitants full control over its architectural building layout. It is best understood as an office environment, where you can take your office to join up with any other/or multiple other offices that are part of the system, across virtual space. The key here is that the emphasis is on connecting spaces before individuals. MRA gives those physical spaces and their physical properties (whatever appears in the camera view or can be heard by the microphone) a presence in virtual space. This presence then allows inhabitants of MRA to be present themselves.
MRA has proven useful as a tool for maintaining awareness and for communication among distributed teams. It has been studied long term and is currently under further development. The two references for this work are:
Schnädelbach, Holger, Alan Penn, and Philip Steadman. "Mixed Reality Architecture: A Dynamic Architectural Topology." proceedings of Space Syntax Symposium 2007, Istanbul, Turkey.
Schnädelbach, H, Penn, A., Steadman, P., Benford, S., Koleva, B., Rodden, T., Moving Office: Inhabiting a Dynamic Building, proceedings of CSCW 2006 conference, Banff, Canada, pp.313.322
However, this current work has not been used for mixed reality presentations or events as such. It is an always on communication tool.
Other work in the lab probably better fits that bill (of events and performances) and I suggest looking at the following example on the ERENA project as well:
http://www.erena.kth.se/intro.html
Since then, most or our performance work has moved into the outdoors experiences on PDAs and mobile phones, not really involving virtual reality anymore.
Hope this is useful. You have an interesting project, collecting this information and making it available in one place.
Best regards,
Holger
