Digital Economy USRG

SXSC Presentations: ICON – A content exchange mechanism for 3D Cultural Heritage Models

May 15, 2012
by Sotonde

Ajay Chakravarthy and Paul Walland will demonstrate a new way of viewing digitised 3D objects from cultural heritage collections. They will talk about some of the cool applications they see for this kind of virtual model representation.

Paul is a manager at IT Innovation responsible for media-based collaborative projects and social networking. He has many years experience running R&D groups in media equipment companies (from fibre optics to cameras to 3D to compression and digital TV). Ajay is a researcher at ITI, expert in knowledge modelling using Semantic Web. He has a PhD from Sheffield in knowledge acquisition, has worked on various media projects at ITI among other things.

The ICON project is developing a content exchange mechanism, through which 3D digitised design artefacts will be made available for reuse by the digital media industries. High-quality digitised 3D models and textures are required for use in film and television post production, games development, architectural visualisation and, most recently, furnishing virtual business premises within VR worlds like Second Life. Traditionally these models and textures have been created from scratch by digital artists as required, but this is a costly and time-consuming process. The task of just researching the source designs takes a significant amount of effort before modelling can even begin.

ICON will allow for pre-digitised furniture, decorative objects, fashion, fabric designs and wallpaper patterns to be made available for the dressing of virtual sets and clothing avatars amongst many other uses. Users of ICONcontent will benefit from easy access to pre-built high-quality authentic period and contemporary digital models. For design rights holders, ICON will provide new promotional channels from pre-digitised designs. The projectaddresses the technical challenges that must be overcome in order for this vision to be realised.

Link

http://www.it-innovation.soton.ac.uk/projects/iconproject/

SXSC Presentations: Using the potential of high speed networks for real time distributed musical interactions

May 15, 2012
by Sotonde

Alain Renaud will be talking about distributed music. Alain’s research explores high-speed networks as a medium for developing real time interactive performances in a multiplicity of spaces. The technological usefulness of the latter is of limited importance if the various musical, sociological and philosophical aspects are not considered. Once the latter factors are taken into account, high-speed networks provide a timeless and borderless collaborative medium for mixing musical cultures, acoustic environments and performance practices which offer potential for developing applications that use the network as a core for interactions. Moreover, such research spans across a multitude of disciplines where natural interactions are needed, including the development of smart connected spaces, which can be used in a wide variety of ways.

Alain’s background in is music production and sound engineering. He is a senior lecturer in Music and Audio Technology at Bournemouth University, and holds a PhD from the Sonic Arts Research Centre in Belfast, Northern Ireland. His research focuses on the development of networked music performance systems with an emphasis on the creation of strategies to interact over a network musically and the notion of shared networked acoustic spaces. He performs regularly over the network with the NetVs.Net collective and the Jackson4s. Alain held residencies at the Banff Centre for the Art and The Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) at Stanford University.

http://alainrenaud.net

SXSC Presentations: Re-Reading the British Memorial

May 15, 2012
by Sotonde

We are starting to get in details of some of the presentations at SXSC:

The Re-reading the British Memorial project is investigating the potential for using a variety of technologies for the recording, interpreting and sharing of data about church memorials in the UK. Find out about them at: http://ourti.org

RTI captured using an iPhone

Gareth and Nicole Beale will be talking about the project and demonstrating Highlight based Reflectance Transformation Imaging capture using Digital SLR cameras and RTI with an iPhone Camera.

Creative Digifest #SxSC is now just one week away!

May 10, 2012
by Lisa Harris

A few tickets are still available for this event on 18th May in the Student Union at Southampton University – you can register here

Our keynote speaker will be Alan Patrick who is the co-founder of Broadsight:

Broadsight focuses on market intelligence, strategy and systems development across the multi-media ecosystem. Broadsight has consulted to many of the major digital-media players in Europe and has helped start or turn around a number of startups. They have also developed innovative technology for a number of clients.

Alan founded Broadsight after a career both consulting to, and working at, senior level for leading global multimedia companies. Prior to setting up Broadsight, he was Managing Director and COO at Jacobs Rimell, who specialise in multi-media OSS systems. Before that he held positions as VP Corporate Development for Globix Corporation in New York, Head of Internet Business Development at British Telecom, and consulted widely on multimedia to a number of major TV and cable companies in his consulting career at McKinsey and PriceWaterhouseCoopers. He has worked in the US, Europe, South Africa and the Far East. Alan also writes the well regarded Broadstuff blog on technology development (www.broadstuff.com).

The topic of Alan’s talk is “Technology Hype and Bubbles – Why do they Exist?”

He says: “Over the years Broadsight has done a number of technology trend prediction papers for clients. We use a fairly rigorous system dynamic approach, and one of the things we have found quite interesting is the cyclical (aka Bubble) nature of the industry. I was asked to give a talk on technology prediction at the Design of Understanding conference in January this year, and one of the topics we touched on was the role of bubbles, and hype, in the ‘creative destruction’ process of new business innovation. The part on hype and bubbles drew the most questions, so I have developed a more in depth ‘Part 2’ for the talk, as well as dealing with its interaction with predicting technology evolution. This talk will deal with Creative Destruction, the role of bubbles in these cycles, and the role of hype in creating bubbles – and what you need to look for to understand where you are in the cycle.”

A precis of Part 1 can be found on the Broadstuff blog

Alan will examine how this is applied to (complicates) technology prediction, going through various prediction models and laws. He has also developed the ‘Broadstuff Bubble-o-Meter’ tracking the current Social Media bubble’s evolution, which has been picked up by other technology blogs and the Guardian. If you wish to read of its developments check out the postings on the Bubblewatch section.

Look out for another post shortly with more information about our other fabulous speakers…and there is still time to volunteer your own talk or demonstration :-)

Sponsored Digital Economy PhD Opportunity

May 10, 2012
by Lisa Harris

Funding available to support PhD research into small business and cultural heritage interpretation partnerships in the Digital Economy

A team of Digital Economy members have just been awarded a Vice Chancellor’s Award to recruit a PhD student who is interested in researching this topic. A grant of £7K p.a. for 3 years (or pro rata for part time work) will be available to cover fees and contribute towards living costs. The project needs to begin before 1^st December 2012.

This project provides an opportunity for the successful student to provide significant practical value to local heritage sites and representatives from the creative industries, while drawing upon multi-disciplinary academic perspectives such as:

Digital marketing and online community development
Innovation and creativity in high tech firms
Archaeology
Visual communications

The successful applicant will develop a project to manage new digital communities around local heritage sites. The objective is to encourage visitors to engage more specifically with these sites and appreciate the stories they have to tell, by updating what are often rather old fashioned displays with creative applications of digital technologies. This might involve, for example, partnering with small businesses with expertise in augmented reality, virtual worlds, video, touch screens, mobile apps, serious gaming etc. Technologies such as motion capture allow sophisticated approaches to the 3D reconstruction of heritage sites, and when taken together with augmented reality applications, they provide new opportunities to enhance our understanding and appreciation of what living at these places must have been like for the benefit of both visitors and scholars.

The project will explore mechanisms for building industrial/ cultural heritage partnerships to increase footfall, improve visitor experience and engage new demographics. Southampton’s unique expertise at the interface of the web, design, HCI, marketing and innovation and cultural heritage will enable an innovative piece of work to be completed while stimulating new collaborative research across the faculties. The topic is one which has considerable public, industrial, academic and third sector impact potential.

If you have any queries about this application or if you can recommend a student who might like to apply for this role please contact Lisa Harris (l.j.harris@soton.ac.uk ) for more information. The email address for submission of applications on the standard University PhD application form please is PGapply.FH@soton.ac.uk

Global Futures Seminar at WSA

May 10, 2012
by Lisa Harris

Winchester Centre for Global Futures in Art Design & Media

Tuesday 15^th May @ 4pm in seminar rooms 8-9 Graphics Building, WSA

Alex Galloway: The Cybernetic Hypothesis

In an essay from 2001, the French collective Tiqqun speaks of what they call the cybernetic hypothesis: “[A]t the end of the twentieth century the image of steering, that is to say management, has become the primary metaphor to describe not only politics but all of human activity as well.” The cybernetic hypothesis is a vast experiment beginning in the overdeveloped nations after World War II and eventually spreading to swallow the planet in an impervious logic of administration and interconnectivity. What are the origins of the cybernetic hypothesis, and what are its futures?

This workshop offers a media archeology of cybernetics through an exploration of nineteenth-century chronophotography, the history of the pixel, developments in computer modeling, bit arrays and grid systems, and that most enigmatic cybernetic device, the black box. Instead of contributing to the many heroic histories of cybernetics that already populate the cultural imagination, this workshop aims to uncover an alternative history of digital systems via an examination of the aesthetics and politics of control.

Alexander R. Galloway (NYU) is a writer and computer programmer working on issues in philosophy, technology, and theories of mediation. He is author or co-author of three books on media and cultural theory, and his new book, The Interface Effect, will be published this fall by Polity.

The talk will be chaired by Dr Jussi Parikka, Senior Fellow at the Winchester Centre for Global Futures in Art, Design & Media

This talk will be of special interest to students or staff with interests in visual culture, new media, IT, and cyberculture.

Centre for Global Futures: http://www.soton.ac.uk/wrc

Twitter: @WSAGlobalFutures

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/wsaglobalfutures

Lots of Digital Literacy Workshop and Conference Planning sorted today with @fionajharvey bit.ly/IHI2q5 #sotoncite

— Lisa Harris (@lisaharris) May 1, 2012