New blog post: #AR in aid of disability

So the job I am doing now gives me the opportunity to work and interact with some amazing people. We work primarily with people with quite complex disabilities and interacting with them and their parents/carers got me thinking. We seem to rely an awful lot on touch, voice activation and what not but what if our audience could not use their hands or speak in a way that a machine could understand?

What if we could retro fit something like #googleglass to ‘read’ eye movement and trigger content? There is research out there to use eye tracking for disability, Professor Stephen Hawking using facial recognition to communicate, but is there anything/anybody out there who is developing this type of technology in relation to AR?

Obviously interaction with virtual 3D objects would be quite interesting but I think a system like this could easily be applied to a lot of practical tasks and would allow disabled people to be much more independent. you could start with basic functions like open and ‘manipulate’ a 3D object but what else could this be used for?

Just thinking….

Sam

New blog post: Socially modified objects?

I have applied for a post at EIF, we’ll see….good for the soul to think ‘laterally’ about Art. It would be a good opportunity to develop interesting stuff around performance…food for though people!

I am writing this whilst listening to YoYo Ma, so forgive me if I sound a tad…’Inspired’, he does that to me

I am chewing on this idea about ‘social collective’ contributing to the identity of an object. I know studies like the Participatory Museum have explored different ways already but I am thinking what if the reaction people actually have towards an object becomes part of the object itself? And you use social media or AR to record that?

There has been a lot of controversial art through the decades, Marcel Duchamp and Robert Mapplethorpe spring to mind. Reactions for their artwork were always very strong, sometimes outright violent. So I am wondering, do these become part of the object ‘memory’ itself? Does  its perception by people become part of the object itself?

I am interest in how social responses could be captured using AR and then delivered using AR as part of an exhibition to “augment” the identity of the object itself. Object center stage but additional content delivered by AR INCLUDING people responses to it. That’s in practice.

But what about the object’s ‘soul’? is it modified, expanded, developed into something different from what the artist intended?

Still very much chewing on that…thoughts welcome.

Sam

New blog post: the conundrum of being in a funk, aka: a cry for help

Help me. No, really…help me.

As I am writing this I am staring at yet another rejection letter for a possible employer. “Dear Ms Hammell, we thank you for your interest in working with us….unfortunately….however…” I seriously want to scream.

I wish they wouldn’t insult my intelligence by telling me the reason I didn’t get it is because ‘there were a lot very good candidates’, yeah? The reason is that employers look at my CV and think: BORING, heck I look at it and think boring! It’s called life, people! you take the jobs you need to take sometimes, it doesn’t mean the spark is gone, Get it @DI_Jobs?

I have worked in this field, one way or another since 1999. Count them, 14 years! of experience and I would love to get back into what I love doing. I am currently in a mighty funk.

Maybe because I think in life you have to do something that inspires you, drives you, makes your heart pump blood…you get the gist.  And although my current job is inspirational enough in its context, my heart belongs in a  university, or research centre or company that develops new technology, or…well, Google!

I want to research, develop, break barriers, think outside the sodding box!! yes I am whining! and I hate whiners! See what you did all of you rejecters? Thinking back to all my experience, my studies (I have two Masters for crying out loud!) what can I do to get there? Is it a lost cause?

Right now all I want is to research ground-breaking technologies, let me!

I want reconstruct Greyfriars in Leicester,  show that objects had a life outside a museum, a building that no longer exists still can be visited, that they way people “feel” about art is part of the identity of an object and technology can help connect that (watch out for the next post, yes, it will be about technology again!)

There is so much I want to do!

So help me, really.

Have job, will travel.

Maybe I’ll get lucky and I will come back in the next life as Nancy Proctor.

-Sam

New blog post: Of 3D, HFR and Hobbitses…precioussss #thehobbit

So I couldn’t resist, and why should I, thank you very much? Yes I am a museum geek but I also love epic sagas…wait…that also means I am a geek…

3D has been around now for what it feels like ions but frankly I was getting increasingly less excited about it as time went by because I couldn’t see anything really innovative with it since seeing a skull in stereoscopic 3D (that’s 3D without the glasses to you and me) at a fair in Birmingham. That was six years ago. I have been intrigued by 3D integration with  AR because I do think the two go hand in hand but then again I haven’t seen ‘real’ 3D (360 objects for example) integrated that much lately, if I am wrong by all means flag it up.

So it was with trepidation that I waited for the Hobbit to come out. I loved the LOTR trilogy so why would this be any different? I was slightly weary of the huge hype this film had however. When Fellowship of the Ring came out it was somewhat subdued in comparison, nobody really expected that much from a semi-obscure director and somewhat famous cast and of a film shot as far away from Hollywood you can get without moving to Mars. But this one, oh dear…seemed everybody had an opinion about it, 3D or HFR, or both and one million comments about beards.

The thing I have always loved about Peter Jackson (PJ as we lovingly call him) is that he is never been afraid to try new things, the hell with reputation, expectations or even, in some cases, good taste. I commend him for it, he goes for it. So here we are, the introduction of HFR in a pretty much slam-dunk of a blockbuster, just for the hell of trying something new. Will he succeed? Will this be end of his career?

Well I went to see both version 3D IMAX and 3D HFR. To have an even comparison I should have gone to see HFR IMAX but this is after all Scotland (or the sticks, in the most loving sense of the word) so that’s what I had to work with.

And the verdict is:

IMAX is bigger but not necessarily better. I had to blink about ten times to refocus my eyes and not miss bits of it. Forget the actions shots or swooping panoramics,  they all went into a big scooping blur with Thorin’s (divine) face coming out of it at the end. <insert wrong answer buzzing sound here> loved the film but not the format… so much.

Then it came the HFR. At first I felt like I was in a huge HD tv demo. Then I got it. When we bought our (beloved and adored) SMART tv we felt the same way. It was just too perfect and the 3D was mind blowing on it. Once you adjust to it though, the fun really begins. Remember all those swooping camera angles and actions shots I missed the first time around? Yep all there, in brilliant details, not a smidge missing. Dwarves running, jumping, fighting and yes, crying in perfect details…and still Thorin’s (now even more divine) face at the end of it. From a tecchie point of view, you basically have two bits of data where there was one so to me that works far better.<insert whoop whoop sound here>

This has got to be the future of cinematic endeavour and I am looking forward to potential other applications of it because,  who knows really?

I will only say one thing: if you are a fan of vintage, grainy, Capresque black and white film, then don’t bother. But if you are, like me open to new ideas and ‘things’, then by all means enjoy. After all, I will only see It’s a wonderful life in black and white but still enjoyed this one. Who knows what the future (or PJ) will bring.

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This will probably be my last post this year, more in the new year about #Ingress, quite intrigued about it really but before I can speak of it I need to play it!

Love to all, Happy Holidays and with all the evil in the world lately I wish you all joy, happiness and PEACE from the bottom of my heart.

Samantha

New blog post: the future is bright…maybe

So after a few months licking my wounds after the Leicester fiasco (they rejected my proposal for being to underdeveloped, errr… isn’t that what THEY are for? Mah!) I am still alive and somewhat kicking and trying to devote my attention and un-channelled energy for the greater good.

After taking up sewing, which I find really cathartic and satisfying, it’s now time to really, seriously, find a new quest.

I am looking at one project very hugh hush at the moment with AR (yes still kicking about with that) and certainly looking at other potential avenues. I think my days as a student are well and truly over but the interest and development will never be.

So what has been happening out there? I actually went to a seminar about creating interactive publications for Ipads and Tablets, which I thought was very interesting and had quite a lot of potential.

I use an Ipad2 and have no plans to upgrade for now as it is mighty expensive and Apple seems to launch a new one every 7 months (cue snigger here). we have in the house a Nexus tablet as well but it’s way too small for my tastes…

Anywho, turns out interactive pubs are really cool and I have been playing with the Lakeland one. 1- because I love my food and 2- because I find it really well done. Bummer they can’t add smells to it, although I am sure someone in a lab is developing something like that for sure.

So I am seeing this as an amazing potential tool for museums, where exhibitions catalogues are no longer static but  you can add rich media to it and make it a ‘living’ thing…plus you could integrate AR to it… (see what I have done there?)

watcha think?

New Blog Post: Coveting Google #ProjectGlass and #MuseumNext

So I have a (summer) resolution, no matter where it is, I am going to the next #MuseumNext conference. I was watching streaming presentations (but missed the AR one, deng it!) and I so wanted to be there also to hear my personal hero(ine) Nancy Proctor speak. She is always so amazing and insightful, I never get tired of listening to her and her brilliant ideas. She was instrumental in allowing me access the Antenna Audio handheld tour for Tate when it was in Beta, which formed the basis for my Master’s. Thank you Nancy (although I am 100% sure she won’t remember me!)

Watch her interview (all rights reserved to MuseumNext, don’t sue me!)

 

Anywho…Brilliant presentations and would love to hear more about it from the people who were there…Lots of stuff about using Google Analytics but I am wondering whether any other way of tracking was discussed? Can’t wait for the presentations to be posted on the MuseumNext site, if anything I find it a bit underdeveloped, they should really do more with that, me thinks…

I have been following Google ProjectGlass on Google+ and I am literally itching to use them for the soon-to-be-formed project for my PhD. I think I will try to get in touch once we actually have a project proposal, I will beg, steal and grovel if I need to but I know it would be ground breaking if we get to use them also, I am assuming, you will be able to integrate GA with them so to make tracking a lot easier.

Still no word about PhD proposal…

-Sam

New blog post: Conservation vs Experience: A dilemma

So my dilemma is: I want to use objects in context which is good. I want to use objects in their original context which means, in most cases, outdoors, not so good. Conservators will put my head in a bullseye if I even suggested taking objects out of cases and (shock! horror!) put them back where they were found.

I can see their point, really I do. You found this amazing thing, restored it and you are going to preserve it as a testimony of a life that no longer exists and never will be again bar a ‘the day after tomorrow‘ type cataclysm. BUT

then how do I use the object to trigger my content? Do I go back to the gallery? That would be against everything I want to prove.

In a recent article about 3D printing bells went off in my overworked head  and  I thought: eureka! we use replicas! then, as usual, I start to wonder: doesn’t the fact that something is authentic add to the excitement of the experience in handling objects?

I remember when I had an original Rembrandt in my hands, back in the days in Washington, and I could hardly contain myself.  That piece of paper was actually touched by the man himself, I mean, can it get any cooler than that?

So here’s the dilemma, if we use replicas we add to the experience by augmenting it with all this extra content but (and it’s a sumo wrestler big but) are we taking away the excitement of touching an original? Are we stuck with using low grade specimen like in sad outreach boxes? (ok no offence to the outreach boxes, they do the job but they are not terribly exciting are they?)

Over to you….

Sam