Jeff Winkworth's IMM Blog

Friday morning kicked off around 8am when myself and Kaleena (or as ROM security referred to her, “friend of Jeff”) headed to the Clarkson Go Station. We were planning to catch the 8:38 train and meet up with the class whom mostly got onboard at the previous stop. However, we arrived early and got on the 8:30 super-fast-express to union train, which made us super-early at Union station, where we stood around in the subway station for about 20 minutes. We were afraid that somehow we missed the group, so we got aboard the subway and rushed to the Royal Ontario Museum.

Of course, it turns out we didn’t miss them, and once again were super-early. So we waited with some of the class, until the big group all arrived.

We were lead into the ROM Digital Gallery by Brian Porter, the sr. Director of New Media. He oversees everything from catalog publishing to 2D/3D imaging. The digital gallery is a classroom-sized room with touch screen kiosks at every desk and a giant projector unit at the front. The idea is that for a premium fee, class trips to the ROM can include a multimedia experience. Currently they have two programs: Ancient Egypt & Canadian Heritage, but they plan to add more over time. The kiosks allow visitors to get a “virtual hands on experience” by manipulation 3D representations of Museum artifacts that users would never be allowed to touch in real life. Meanwhile, a video experience plays on the projector, developed in Final Cut Pro and Watchout.

The ROM is also working with the Virtual Museum of Canada to allow groups from far away destinations who cannot afford or make it to the ROM to connect to the Digital Gallery. Over the internet, groups can watch and experience the presentations and virtual kiosks.

Part of Brian’s job is to find funding for all of these projecs, as the Royal Ontario Museum is a non-profit group. Due to this, alot of the new media utilized by the ROM are proven technologies such as touch-screens. While not quite the coolest and advanced touch screens ever, they get the job done. Apparently they are nothing more than a touch screen laptop running Internet Explorer Web plugins. Somewhere down the line, they intend to expand by utilizing broadcast media of current events to allow speakers to link Museum exhibits with stories ripped from the headlines. I find this goal exciting, because it is the convergence of new media, current events, and museum history.

Brian then told us about their newest goal: to digitally archive all 6 million specimens in the ROM. This includes 3D photographing every article, and linking it to their database of information. They plan to eventually put all these high resolution photographs online. Their business model is to allow licensing of these photographs and videos, similar to a Stock Photography company.

A brief tour was involved, where we witnessed a ROM touch screen from Gesturetek, and a practical application of touch screen kiosks at the Dinosaur exhibit. The kiosks appeared to be built in flash, and worked similarly to youtube. We were then given some time to “view the kiosks” ie look at the Dinosaurs.

When the tour was over, we were given some time for lunch. Originally, we were to disperse to find somewhere to eat, and then meet up across the street to visit Steve Mann at U of T. Turns out, it was a good half-hour walk through downtown Slush and Snow. Luckily, Heather had brought along a GPS device. Barbara and Dwight chose to drive. They were smarter than us.

When we arrived, we discovered there was a Subway station just down the street. It would have been a 2 minute hop on the train. Oh well, it was good to get some air.

We were hoping to get some insight on Steve’s cyborgism, however it appears that for the most part he is no longer as interested in it. He wishes to “return to the womb” and visit more primordial concepts such as water and the inner child. Thus, he created Nesse. Nesse is what he calls his hydraulophone, which is a flute-like instrument that blows water out of a pump instead of air through your lungs. It is played like a piano. Currently the largest one is outside of the Ontario Science Centre. One thing I found interesting was his creation of a new form of MIDI, to allow hydraulophones to communicate to one another. He cited the example of having a water fight between two people over the internet; where you would push down on one key and water would shoot out of the same key on the other side of the planet. That blows my mind.

Dwight then drove Heather, Kaleena and I to union station, after a quick visit to the comic book store so Heather could stock up on some new toys for her collection. We then heard about the Sheridan lockdown, and were relieved that Dan the Man had “rescued” us due to his well planned field trip that day. Eventually we met up with Dan the Man and headed home on the busy Go Train, where Kaleena bumped into the father of some children that she baby-sits for. Small talk ensued.

2006 Canadian New Media Award Programmer of the Year James Eberhardt chatted with us today about mobile devices and their different features and applications. One of the first things he demonstrated was the unlimited types of interfaces associated with mobile devices. When it comes to developing applications, mass acceptance could be very difficult, as not every device has every interface involved. Most have a D-Pad and a way of using text input, but certain devices have unique buttons or interfaces.

He then ran down different types of mobile applications: SMS, MMS, GPS, etc. James demonstrated a basic Flash Lite app which would create a text message to be sent to the weather network to find out the weather in a Canadian city, all through a GUI. That way you would not have to know the code of the city you are looking for. These types of apps are actually very handy, and I could see them not taking up much space and therefore very cheap and easy to download.

James demonstrated how easy it was to create a flash lite application using Device Central. Of course the problem is that in Canada the average cost is $1/mb $20/1mb which means anything involving video is completely out of the question for the average user. I had to laugh when he went through a series of icebreakers asking how many people do things such as texting or taking photos on their phone; and that nobody put up their hands for over half the questions (surfing the net, downloading video etc).

Another example was a photo uploader that would allow a user to place a photo taken on their phone immediately onto their flickr site. James also ran down the steps and technology needed to set up a SMS/MMS server. Apparently currently in Canada Rogers is the only way to do this (I find that hard to believe). But you can set up your own PC to be a server which would be great for testing.

The world of QR codes was revealed, a technology I had never heard of or see before. You take a photo of the code with your phone, and use an interpreter to decode it. Now this is neat. I would not be surprised if this takes off as a new trend. Compared to a modern day UPC code, this technology is a standard in Japan, where things such as newsprint ads, wine bottles, and train schedule information can all be accessed on your phone. There is also semapedia which allows anyone to create a code, print it off, and place it at a real world location. When a user loads the code on their mobile device, they are taken to the appropriate Wikipedia page. This is a great application of the technology: If you know what it is, you can use it. If not, it’s not intrusive and you can ignore it.

Overall I found the entire presentation confusing. James is obviously passionate about his work, as he has won awards, but he admitted repeatedly about being Jaded within the industry, and seemed to stress the point that the technology isn’t perfect and doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. I suppose the goal was to inspire us to come up with new ways to utilize the technology, but when half your presentation discusses the limitations and cost factors, it doesn’t seem to inspire an unemployed college student to spend countless amounts of money “exploring.”

Kudos to James for almost completely ignoring the iPhone and iTouch, two devices I am tired of hearing about.

I find that our open lab periods at school are usually unproductive for me, as I end up spending a lot of time not being able to concentrate. So today, I opted to stay home and work, as Dan the Man informed us of an all day open lab period. So much to my surprise, as I was working in my pajamas and eating my lunch of spaghetti and fries (cold fries from KFC the night before that is), that an msn message from Heather arrived on my desktop at 12:40:

“Hey”

“Hi,” I responded.

“There’s a guest speaker coming at 1pm”

“Really? Who and why?” I inquired.

“Simon someone. To give us our last blog post”

And with that, I changed into a pair of pants, ran down the stairs still chewing on my soon to be cold spaghetti, and got in the car to drive to school.

I made it there for 1pm. I am amazing.

Simon someone turned out to be none other than Simon Conlin. I know, THE Simon Conlin, from Flash in the Can. I know, THE Flash in the Can. He showed us examples of Algorithmic Synthetic Interactive Applications (or I think that’s what the ASIA acronym stands for; he talked kind of fast for that part. That was soon rectified as he stopped talking and began to show us YouTube videos of practical applications of Physical Interactivity:

One that was interesting (and quite long; both Simon and Dan the Man left the room at one point, perhaps thinking that no one would notice) was of Zack Booth Simpson discussing his Interactive Art. I know, THE Zack Booth Simpson. What was interesting was that most of the video was of Talking Heads, and not of the actual art. There were a few examples that I totally missed the visuals for as I was busy taking notes of what he said.

The virtual Calder Mobiles however were neat. Simon also showed us a video of a camouflaged octopus. I am not sure why.

Simon also directed us to webcamtastic, a site which is a very simple demonstration of cameras entering the public’s use for art and for creating an interactive experience.

One amazing application was of a George Michael concert where giant interactive screens and floors were manipulated using movement as well as sound. It makes for a very interesting floor show and I wonder if more artists are going to design stage shows using this technology.

Simon showed us an interactive music wall which appears to be an amazing version of my inferior “Air Guitar Hero” project for MP/AV class. Well at least I can argue great minds think alike. Also, there was a great video of Adobe’s Interactive Wall. That would be something I would like to try and build on a smaller scale. Perhaps next semester.

While there were some interesting videos displayed, overall I was quite disappointed by the speaker; Simon came out all this way to essentially send us links to YouTube. Schoolwork-wise I did not get a chance to accomplish as much as I was hoping to today, and Most of the videos shown were just using similar technology to GestureTek. I understand it was an attempt to inspire us (and for me, mission accomplished) but I felt like Simon came all this way for really no reason whatsoever.