CTIN 511 Comments:
I found Michael's presentation to be quite interesting. But, while the exploration of "placeness" and simulplaneity (my made up word for shared space across time) was engaging, I found the best tidbits were the tangents, with the camera zapping (the idea of de-presentation in an increasingly intrusive world; see Brin's Transparent Society), and his bit on technological-art.

This led to the most interesting ideas that came out of the Q&A I think, the distinction of 'media artist' as someone who explores the medium itself and the gulfs that split both across artistic/technical lines, and across 'First Word'/'Last Word' art within the field.

To comment on Michael's main focus, personally, the idea of upping fidelity/resolution of representation via increased bandwidth doesn't seem to be as as pressing/significant as exploring the consequences of ubicomp/ubicapture (although maybe he doesn't disagree). From a technical point of view, it might still be desirable/interesting to work on better perceptual coding rather than brute forcing with bits.

In any case, while there may be applications that will require higher-resolution, as the past and present shows, people are willing to accept and embrace mediated experiences of quite low 'sense'fidelity if the emotional and intellectual engagement is sufficiently high.

I agree to a large extent, with Leonard- especially in reference to the talk about the drive towards highest resolution representations. Yes, there will always be a push towards high-res representations of 'reality,' but personally, I think this is merely a small area in media representations. As Leonard noted, people seem to be just as willing to accept lo-res representations as they do higher quality, more 'realistic' work. In the end, it's all (or mainly) about the content. I think that this is a direction that still mirrors the path that early computer graphics took. Since computer graphics was at the outset largely a offshoot of computer science, the field looked towards the more technically challenging goal of creating photo-realistic graphics rather than play with the abstract, or the more unexpected or whimsical possibilities of the technology. I think that VR has gone in a similar direction, and it's important to remember that immersion does not necessarily require a full IMAX Cave, but can be achieved almost as easily if we pay attention to the right things. This is where I think the 'sliders' naimark was talking about come into play. in doing immersive and representational works, we need to define those sliders, and then decide how to use them to our advantage as designers.

The things I found most interesting in Naimark's presentation were his discussion on bandwidth and his "Overall Observations" at the end. Wouldn't it be awesome to have a 120TB hard drive? I'd challenge anyone to fill it up nowadays, but if internet bandwidth increases at a comparable rate, then perhaps the trading of DVD quality videos will become more widespread. I suppose it could also come in handy for video editing--we wouldn't have to worked with compressed formats like DV anymore.
I was also interested in his observations on how art comes into play. I agree with the comments above that artistic content should play the ultimate role. As much as I liked the Aspen Map, I think we need to move beyond experimental works and art installations to full fledged narrative & cinematic experiences. This may very well mean trying to work with existing technology, and let others push the envelope (as was suggested in the lecture). Sadly, I think the reason many haven't pushed this "artistic envelope" is financial risk. Perhaps this IM Grad program will give us that kind of opportunity.

Overall Mike's presentation was very thoughtful and informative, as well as engaging. I liked his enthusiasm and the many different project examples he showed us. A couple ideas, some random, popped in my head as he discussed his work through the last 20 some years. For Example:
Combining Movie Maps with Panorama, or moving through space while also being able to look through space. I know I thought of it because I had been discussing an hour earlier whether there was any technology available to do this type of thing. This of course generated a couple questions, mainly is there any sort of content that this technology could significantly enhance?

Second, I got very excited about the HotNow! concepts and social software, not to be used as a way to catalogue something ocurring on a live webcam at that moment, but just a way to mark down what you have found interesting on the internet and share it with your social circle. I was discussing this with Leonard and Kellee at dinner later, and Leonard said it would be like indexing, and Kellee made the good point that it would be indexing, but maybe slightly more random. I think this randomness might contribute to spontaneity and discovery.

Third, this one could definitely be considered random, but I thought maybe we could figure out some way to have a robotic viewmaster? Ha.

And to comment on space representation, since that was mainly his point, I am in total agreement with everyone else that the slider's level on resolution is determined by content. For example, I still prefer Super Mario Bros 3 to Second Life's graphics....but maybe that just makes a point about me!

Just like Will, the thought underscoring my understanding of Mike's presentation was "substance, substance, SUBSTANCE!" (or content, content, CONTENT!, but substance just feels better to me for some reason.) The idea that there are possibly artists now committing themselves to the technology of a certain generation so that they may become "virtuosos" of that technology in decades to come is thrilling to me, and something I really had not considered.

Why was Super Mario Bros such an exciting experience despite the fact it looked nothing like reality? Because the experience it offered was unique.

I also enjoyed viewing Mike's use of rotating cameras and stiching the images together. The errors of disappearing objects or duplicate objects when this happened were quite beautiful. Which brought up the question, how can we use "errors" to our advantage? Now that we have digital cameras, we often find ourselves longing for the beauty in the flaws of film. Now that we have CD players, we miss the warmth of records. How does this translate into place representation? Now that we can travel anywhere virtually we miss the bad airplane food? haha.

Thanks so much to Michael for coming in and sharing this bit of his rich portfolio with us.

I believe we accept the desire for privacy too readily. Without introspection into the cause of the desire, we will never be able to navigate the complex rights issues that are multiplying as observational technologies narrow the space in which we can exist privately. Even though I am not an anthroplogist, I feel the need to study the privacy structures of many human cultures and even primates before I can prepare a comprehensive theory for how to address the issue in the future.

In the present, I am interested in the power relationship between the observer and the observed, specifically analysing the direction and amount of data movement between the participants. Some interesting problems quickly arise: who has more power, the person with the most privacy or the person with the least? There is no absolute answer as far as I can tell. In the case of a security camera, the observer seems to have some power over the observed. But in the case of a politician on television, seeking ever greater exposure, the observed has the attention of the observer and seems to gain the upper hand. Clearly, privacy structures are very complex and our intuitions will only take us so far before we have to find new way to explore personal and social boundaries.

As a thought experiment, imagine a world with no privacy where every thought and action is public. What are the advantages and what are the disadvantages?

Michael’s diverse works are impressive and inspiring from an academic perspective. However, it is the application of these concepts that are most interesting. I remember going to Epcot’s “World Showcase” and being completely overwhelmed by a 360-degree Theater “Place Representation” at the China and Canada pavilions. Flying through various countries, urban caverns, and snow-capped mountains was invigorating in this enveloping format. These were packaged as immersive travel brochures for each country.

I recall three aspects of the experience being paramount. MOVEMENT was the primary emotional inducer and, to use Michael’s analogy, the slider with the most significance and/or impact. The SIZE/SCALE of the 360-degree theater was the second most important element. The screens were approximately 25 feet high, and the theater diameter 125 feet. It was such a viscerally convincing experience that the entire audience (standing) would lean together as the image tilted from one side to the other. MUSCICAL SCORE also played a key role in the emotional impact of the experience.

I would enjoy seeing more of Michael’s experiments put to use in commercial applications. There is no doubt that many would benefit from his insight & creativity.

One of the things I've been thinking about is the scale and resolution of depicted enviornments, but not in the way people normally think...for a variety of reasons, most of the immersive spaces recreated are big: big in virtual area and in the depiction of that area. Imax deals with screens wider than our normal field of view, the Aspen movie map was designed to simulate navigating a city. People (I among them) love to be overwhelmed by spaces, be it through visual awe or intellectual completism in trying to explore every nook and cranny of the space laid before me.

However, some of the most powerful spaces I've been in have been rather intimate. The Grand Canyon is sublime, yes, but my old treehouse, complete with cobbled-together furniture, old drawings, and spiderwebs has had a very powerful, subtle effect on my childhood memories. If one were to virtually depict such a space, the objective would be to overwhelm the senses, but not in a bombastic manner.
The scale and resolution of the space required would still be enormous, but would go towards detail, not acreage. 2D resolution doesn't count...such spaces would also demand more than simple "ghost of christmas past" type tourism. The boundary between "space" and "objects" begins to blur at this point, as objects will probably be the most dominant factors in such spaces. The polygons or pixels devoted to shaping a martian mesa would instead go towards rusty nails that hold the jury-rigged treehouse together.

I can think of some virtual spaces that move toward this end (even if they were not explicitly designed to do so). myst, for instance, had a knack for dwelling on the details, and creating tiny, meaningful spaces. I'm sure anyone reading can offer other examples.

Of course, I'm not suggesting a virtual "personal space" replace the real thing, nor do I think virtually recreating it could ever achieve the same effect. I think an end result would be different than nostalgia or comfort, and the results would be something worth exploring.

Indeed, the idea of recreating these sorts of spaces virtually has usually been met (not entirely unjustly) with redicule. Recreating these spaces-in the current VR context-sounds akin to selling the velveteen rabbit on e-bbay and using the cash to buy a portable television. Recreating many of theses places could probably be considered an violation of privacy (as evidenced by the placement of many webcams). Still, I think "zooming in" to more focused enviornments could be a very interesting journey, as much as virtually hiking around mars on foot or watching Niagara Falls on an 80 foot screen. Examining these encapsulated spaces may help find what makes these places so engaging, or at least show a different route than the "bigger, better, badder" bombast associated with so much interactive technology. Plus, I'm willing to bet it'll be a lot more difficult to pull off.

too many comments at this point to single out any one. i agree with everyone who is screaming content, but i think that we are falling into traps of catagorizing things too easily.

do we need to focus on narrative instead of experiemental works? i dont think so. i dont believe that they are mutually exclusive. i also believe that the basic tools must be in place before narratives can easily be developed. and i dont see those tools in place yet.

theres a lot i want to do with the ideas we bounce around every day, but the medium isnt quite there yet. to understand the limits, the conventions, the factors and the usability, we have to experiment.

unlike most of the comments, i found the installations and video work the most compelling pieces of the lecture. last semester i pointed my cameraphone at my shadow as i walked and recorded a movie of myself walking. i kept walking and played it back. it was a weird sense of deja-vu/vertigo type thing that i could also see poking out of many of michaels pieces. im not sure what it all means, but there is something there that is (and has been) nagging me.

(finally, as a side note - i agree with you kellee, but i dont think smb was popular just because of uniqueness. i think it was also simple. for the time, it looked great, but you had 2 moves for your character and you navigated a 2d plane. simple to understand, complex to master. i think this is something games today are lacking. the fact that you have tutorial missions, 8 or 10 buttons on a controller and psuedo-3d spaces make games far more complex than the older ones. so i think smb was popular for a number of reasons and its important not to discount of forget its elegant simplicity.)

Wow, you wait for a few days, and then everyone has already commented on everything . . .

I enjoyed the small tangent on how cinema was one of these forms that when it came around, people just said "That's it. We can start to do some of what we want with that," and everyone followed along. I find the idea intriguing that some media can be more expressive than others, or at least that more people can understand what's being expressed through them.

On a side note, I hope we also start to explore non-VR (let's call it that for simplcitity's sake) types of interactivity. While I understand the discussion about content/substance vs. realism, I think there are also discussions to be had concerning interaction between people and about other topics (like Julie, I really enjoyed the HotNow! concepts).

After having worked with stereoscopic panoramic video for a couple years I sympathized with many of the issues and was intrigued by many of the questions that Michael raised in his talk. At Micoy (formerly Prairie Logic) we attempted and succeeded to a degree in capturing an “experience” of a “place.” We constantly wrestled with issues in pursuit of this goal, including: color correction between cameras, image consistency, blooming, artifacts, color matching, white balancing, etc. After spending so much time concerned with the technicalities of the technology and the pursuit of capturing a single experience as faithfully as possible, I was particularly intrigued by the time-offset images of Be Here Now.

Instead of faithfully recording and presenting an experience of a place, the time offset imagery goes against the convention of presenting a recorded experience linearly in the pursuit of replicating an experience in every manner with which a human would have experienced it. It points out that even if that “grail” of simulation is achieved, the presentation of the experience may very well miss taking advantage of the abilities of the technology that presents it. By offsetting the time of panoramic imagery, Be Here Now takes advantage of the fact that unlike our human perceptions, with technology you can jump around in time and experience more than one moment in time with the same degree of vividness.

As high dynamic range photography points out the limitations of film’s perceptual ability, Be Here Now points out the perceptual limitations of our human senses. We cannot offset perceptions at the same time, nor play back memories with the same degree of vividness as they were experienced. At least, not yet. Though Be Here Now lacks the polish of other Virtual Experiences, it uses technology in a wonderful way to present a more holistic representation and higher attention to the subtle details of “placeness.” It inspires my own thoughts on Virtual Experience Capture to look beyond replication and towards thinking about creative and sensitive representation.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the presentation. I was particularly taken by much of the visual representations of the various locations and how the user was introduced to and allowed to experience them.

When I was first introduced to immersive environments and VR as an undergrad, it did not really strike me as anything too exciting. How could abstract representations of bodies and shapes, psychedelic colors and ethereal music make me engaged and forget about the outside world? After seeing the movie maps and See Banff Kinetoscope, my ideas about what immersive environments and VR could be changed. I agree with Andrew in that “place representations” are more engaging than any computer generated VR experience could be right now. While watching the Banff footage, I felt as if I was there traveling through the forested area. I did not need a cave or even a head mount display to experience that.

Another interesting aspect of the lecture was watching the triptychs of the various locations. It was fascinating to see how the images melted together and seemed to flow. I agree with Kellee in that the errors that would normally be considered a flaw, instead created a very beautiful effect.

Michael Naimark’s presentation is a brainstorm to me. His works are completely wise and creative. I’m wondering how he set his foot in such a wide area and keep his ideas original. All these works and thoughts would be a fortune in my future career.

Virtuality, a video sequence which has been shown during the 511 last semester, is the best preview of immersive reality. It is outstanding not for the cinematography or the editing, but the idea. I have never thought about eating nutritional food with an image of cake. Such a tiny idea could trigger a whole butter fly effect in the future. Kids won’t be picky at food. Patient could have a better appetite. The most overwhelming thing is to combine man-made taste with virtual image. Just imagine the future, there is no beef any more, or human lose the recipe of certain dish. They can still load the taste data and the virtual image in order to let the human at that time have the cate of today.

Displacements, the most efficient way to realize phantom effect and such a wise idea to achieve mix reality. Without panorama camera, he took advantage of normal camera and got an even better result. What if we have a panorama camera how could we shoot all these actors by hiding the crew? Even if we can make that happen, would audience in the house pay attention to every people like what they did under one camera situation? Sometimes, dark and shadow is a good tool to interact with the audience and be used to narrate.

Be Now Here, another classic attempt. The idea of merging video sequence by same location or same time is pretty evocative. Sun rises from one world and down to the other world. I feel completely adaptive to this new kind environment and feel better than the same location sequence. To me, it is a invaluable experience.

Camera Zapper, the simplest one and my favorite one. This is a pure invention, a study from curiosity. Who can imagine that such a normal laser torch can be used in spy action and does a serious damage to the nowadays security system?

Michael could be a model for all of us. We should keep an eye on our daily life, and maintain a curious mind. Thus, a creative attitude can be the most fatal tool in our own development.

I liked Mr. Naimarks approach to his entire presentation. The list of bandwidths and the associated sizes/times was especially enlightening, given the access we have to a rather large pipeline ourselves (Internet2). My favorite part of the presentation however, aside from knocking out cameras with lazer pointers, was his idea of "displacement of space over time". The pano's that were presented of different places all over the world juxtaposed with their different time frames were absolutely incredible. I found myself drawn to the idea of what might happen with the displacement of virtual space over time. Such an idea of monitoring a large mp deathmatch game in which the time of day in the real battle arena is reflected in real time...then certain cameras would capture the overall action from static viewpoints. Place the two over one another like Naimark did and watch the amount of people grow and disapate through day and night. This would be an interesting social/game study I think, especially if you time lapsed several weeks together, maybe even months at a time.

I am backlogging my personal comments from Michael's lecture.

Being able to map space from a single photograph would be a feat. Seeing from his presentation that others had tried it and found a way....at least partially...to shove the pixels from a single 2D image of trail in Banff into 3D space, allowing people to see a recreation of what the place would look like in real life.

In agreement with both Stephanie and Andrew, I think that re-presenting real spaces in our world that may not be reachable by many is an intriguing concept. One in which Disney excels at. Both with the World Showcase and also of note to me the "Planet Earth" ride inside the big white sphere at Epcot. Therein, they use yet another "hyper real" tool, like many of their attractions. They attempt to recreate the world or parts of it physically, using audio-animatronic constructs, smells, sounds etc...VR can only use our sense of sight and maybe our reaction to motion.

I would be interested to see where Animatronics fit on Michael's "slider" analogy.

I was pleased to see Timbuktu recreated in a moving seamed panorama, and at varying times of the day....it was interesting to note how our attention was drawn to the people and not to the environment...an interesting question "why does that happen" when landscapes with people in them are presented to us?

I have been to the middle east and I am currently working on a space mapping kind of project. I want to take my footage from my journey to Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and so on...and create an interactive sort of documentary which relies mainly on the presented space and the time in which it was recorded.

Kurt mentioned the power of privacy....and what if our entire lives were to be recorded at all times. Every thought, word spoken and every deed available for the public eye...what kind of world would that create. Good question, no simple answer.

But as Michael's explains, you could at least knock out cameras with a low power laser I have footage where you can't see any of me from about 300 ft away, it was a good experiment. And I was reading in WIRED how an American based company was designing projected audio. If you were in an airport and you needed a message, a sound would play for your ears only, projected from the ceiling some 15 feet up. Maybe there is a way to cancel out listening devices using the same tech, projected out from your person.

Webcams have not yet become invasive, only when you get obscene spam mail telling you how you can't live without some random "live" feed. It would have been interesting to see something like "HotNow!" and the Kundi idea come to more prominence. I would love to see a webcam projecting images from the globe in nature or just what's going on in Uzbekistan....