Today I had a great opportunity to speak at the first annual Immersive Tech Summit, a conference dedicated to the further development and growth of immersive technologies. The speakers covered a wide range of technologies, from virtual reality and virtual worlds to haptic sensors, gesture interfaces, 3D holograms, and of course, robotic telepresence. The format of the summit was similar to TED, such that each domain expert would give a 15 minute presentation on their subject matter. The range and quality of the speakers, and the subject matters that were presented, were all excellent. And I am proud to have been a part of this world’s first conference.
Though I thoroughly enjoyed all the presenters and panelists, I would like to take a few moments here and highlight some of the presentations that were of particular interest to me.
Eric Whitacre’s Virtual Choir
Can you crowdsource a choir compositions? That was the question Eric Whitacre set out to answer. Eric asked people around the world to record on their computers using nothing but the microphone and webcam that every computer comes with. Each person would sing their own part of the song… alto soprano tenor bass… and submit the recording on Eric’s website. He then sifted through the music, picked the recordings he liked, and reassembled the videos together to create a single recording of the song. The resulting work is 185 voices, from 12 different countries, singing Lux Aurumque. This was the most inspiring and moving presentation at the Summit. Enjoy…
Dr. Jacquelyn Ford Morie of ICT/USC
Dr. Jacquelyn Ford Morie of the Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) at University of Southern California showed off videos of her work on virtual characters. A combination of Virtual Reality and Story Telling, her work includes combining these technologies to create museum guides, military training simulations, and other similar applications where life-size virtual characters using text inputs and/or speech recognition to interact with humans. So allow me to introduce to you to Ada and Grace, two life-sized virtual characters that are currently guiding visitors at the Boston Museum of Science.
Dr JoAnn Kuchera-Morin (UCSB) – The Allosphere
What can you do with huge amounts of multi-dimensional datasets? This is the question Dr JoAnn Kuchera-Morin of UCSB (along with countless colleagues) has been trying to answer for the last 24 years. The result of her work has culminated in what is called the Allosphere, one of the world’s largest scientific instrument capable of visualizing huge amounts of data with great detail and granularity. But its not just data visualization. This anechoic chamber, built in the shape of a sphere, is 3 stories high and capable of producing not only incredible visuals in great details, but also capable of synthesizing dimensions of the data into sounds… in other words, you can not only see, but also hear the dataset. So what kind of datasets? Anything as large as galaxies all the way to sub-atomic spin of electrons. This was by far my favorite presentation and Dr. Kuchera-Morin promised me a tour of the facility in person when I visit her in a few months.
Dr JoAnn Kuchera-Morin’s TED Talk
And a short clip I took on my iPhone today at Immersive Tech
I highly suggest that you visit the agenda of the Immersive Tech Summit and take a look at other presentations and topics that were covered.