Telepresence

During my life, I had to move several times. First from my parents house to my dorm, then from the dorm to an apartment close to the college, then I moved to Milan, then back to Salamanca… The last time I moved was to weeks ago, from Brooklyn to Manhattan. I had important personal experiences in all these places and I use to think of them when I feel nostalgic.

Last week I had to come back to my old room to repaint the wall. I was there alone, with nothing to do, waiting for the wall to get dry in order to put on a second coat of paint. Suddenly I started remembering when I just came to New York and moved in. It was the particular noise of the street what recalled these memories. The alarm of the car, the loud music… I had got used to it and I didn’t hear it anymore… till now.

Everyplace has specific associated sounds. You can use it to recall these places and the activities around, what happens on the street, the habits of your neighbors… If I had installed a microphone connected to a network in everyplace I lived, I could now trace the sound, the noise and recall my experiences there…I should have done that, but now it’s to late…or perhaps not?

Rodrigo

When exploring the perspective of another entity through some form of broadcast medium one must consider the importance of time. By this I am trying to understand if one needs to experience the “teleplace” or “teleactor” in real time.

I was motivated to explore this topic after stumbling across the following website:http://www.mr-lee-catcam.de/pe_catcam1.htm. Although the images were still, and there was no relative sense of common time between the “actor” and the reader there is still a profound sense of connection between actor, the location and the viewer.

As pictures are able to flood our minds with rich memory based experiences, I feel the teleactor and the teleplace do not have to exist at any specific moment of time. There availability is enough and it is up to the user to make the necessary interpolations in order to satisfy their own expectations from the experience.

I will be implementing a project that follows this logic over the course of the semester. My mother and father were the inspiration for the idea. Given the nature of my lifestyle, balancing graduate studies and part time employment, I often find that there are not enough minutes in the day to complete my most essential tasks. Given this condition, I often do not have time to contact my parents for a significant stretch of days. My parents understand my situation and simply request I check in from time to time to let them know that I am still alive.

My solution to this dilemma is to create a non invasive solution that will allow for my parents to know that I am alive and well while not presenting any sort of inconvenience on my end (this relationship can work in both ways, I can check in on them and not bother them).

Each participating user will require a small desktop application. The application will allow them to send a request to “check up” on any of their listed contacts. A central server will receive the request and pass it on to the appropriate individual. The next time the recipient of the request starts their computer they will notice a small window asking them to either ‘accept’ or ‘deny’ the request. If the accept, (or deny) a single click of the mouse is the extent of the effort necessary to participate in this project. The appropriate camera will activate, capture a fixed amount of footage, and upload the video to the central server before sending a notification email to the original requester. Now the concerned party will be able to see a moving image of their contact allowing them to see their face, surrounding environment, and general demeanour.

Furthermore, I am hoping to extend this concept to the mobile world, allowing one to receive a request on their mobile phone presenting the opportunity to broadcast while on the go.

Although there is no real time interaction, it presents the ability for people to subtly experience the presence of their friends and family.

-ameya.

Feeling weather, not to check weather. I have been interested in visualizing dynamic information, as I said in the first class. I don’t know how many people remember it.. This web page, Teleweather, is challenging idea to show weather more lively and visually. People sense weather by watching web camera also, newest date is updating often.

Web camera makes it possible for us to watch far place. We dramatically get rid of time and don’t need to travel in order to glance the world. They look like interesting; moreover their images must contain a lot of information rather than text. Nowadays, the weather information system is almost text or illustration, as far as I know. To utilize information from web camera, I try to build dynamic information system on the web site. I believe it can be my proposal.

please check link below.

Teleweather ver1.0

Noriaki Okada

While webcams are really about providing us with a window to a different place, surveillance cameras are most often used for security and protection. They are placed in discreet places to see who goes by and what they do, ready to catch any ‘evil’ deeds. They transfer the image of the place they are in to someone who is overseeing (a security guard), or to a machine that is recording, or sometimes nowhere at all. This is such a common concept that numerous websites are selling imitation security cameras that you can attach to the outside of your house if you can’t afford a real one and want to scare away people with bad intentions.

Traditionally the act of seeing is considered so powerful that there is a very widespread, deeply rooted in very old traditions belief that someone can harm you just by looking at you, by casting on you the Evil Eye. To protect yourself from that, you would wear one of a variety of amulets, depending on where you are from (different cultures have different amulets). Greeks and Turks use a blue bead that represents an eye as protection against the Evil Eye. I am not sure why that is, but one interpretation is that the protective eye reflects the malevolent gaze, protecting its wearer.

By merging the iconic traditional eye with a camera, the symbolic charm turns into an active observer, perhaps one that, at a time that superstitions are frowned upon and technology is glorified, might be able to protect you better. The renewed eye contains a cell phone camera embedded into a blue bead. It is worn discreetly on your body, observing (and recording?) everything even when you are not. Wearing it and believing that you are protected by it is still a matter of faith however, as it is not certain that what is seen by the camera is being sent to someone who will be able to protect you.

Last year when I was in seattle, I went hiking with my friends. When I was tired, I started with both feet and hands touching the ground and crawling. After being laughed at for a while, I started feeling that must be the way how I see the world, the grass, the earth, the tree, the insects, and the people, when I was little, that tall.

Another thing is I always enjoy my parents telling me my scary experience when I was 1 years old: living in the hospital as a little patient and dragging away the transfusion wire and throwing the bottle to the ground, for some reason. Is that me? I really wish I could have good memory of my baby time.

Also interesting when I was doing my shopping in the mall, being stared by a baby in his/her (not sure) baby cart for 2 min and 3 times. We always encountered and the baby always looked at me, no distraction.

So having experienced these things, I want to make a baby-Eye: to track what a baby sees by having the baby wearing a camera hat.

First of all, it’s really interesting to learn from baby as an adult, see how the baby see the world. Even though parents and baby are always together, the thing parents  see is different from their baby.

I want it to help parents know how the baby see the world, what they may be more interested in, what they may be more focusing on, baby likes to imitate other’s behavior, so it would also be nice to get the source why they behave in certain way if we could follow baby’s eyes.

It’s also be good to leave a memory or evidence for the baby him/herself, so that when they grow up, they could be reminded what great things they’ve done when just came into the world. 

meng

When people want to sit on a chair or bench in public place, they used to sit at enough spaces to others.

If there are 3 seats in a bench, people used to sit at side seats, because we can lean on wall and also we can avoid being touched by other passengers. No one wants to sit right next to your seat while there are many seats still available in the subway.

In consequence, next person about to seat the bench usually tends to sit the other side. I wondered how people react to the seats right next to them when the seat represents that a person in somewhere is just sitting down or standing up. Do people concern about blinking LED or projecting image on the seat in accordance with other seat far away?

Meng and I talked about this idea with diverse point of view. We decided to show manipulated webcam images in silhouette over the seat using a projector. When a person sits down a bench then the other side of a bench represents the person’s movie.

I remember that a movie called ‘strange days’ several years ago. In the movie, there was a device allows people to feel and see exactly what other people saw and felt with wearing the device. Even though someday we will be able to record all information of us into some device, we probably act a little bit different from usual while we know the fact that we are being recorded.

People like to be looked good when they are in front of camera. Besides some of documentary films, what we see through the small rectangle is intentionally modified images in some manner. However, when someday we do not recognize a camera or any sensors that acquire information like as ubiquitous computing era, people will no longer concern about being stored their data. Then they should abandon their privacy in some degree. I would like to see what is going to happen when people can see someone’s image is sitting next to him/her. Also, I am wondering how people react after they knew that they are being presented to somewhere another bench.

Jaeyoon 

Since the first hand drawn maps of the stars to satellite imagery and GPS navigation today, our frame of reference and our perception of space has been molded into a view from above. Our understanding of place is often linked to an abstract representation on a map rather than a physical relational comprehension. You could probably point out Azerbaijan on a map, but how many of us can simply point in its direction across the globe? The image of the globe projected onto a vertical surface is so pervasive, we often associate “up” with north as we project ourselves into a mental image of map.

The accessibility of GPS and online map services have continued to reinforce the “up” vector while creating a greater divide between the physical world and its virtual representations. Today, we view from above, as primarily experienced on our screens, in an elevation view without any regard to its physical context. We project our presence into the screen through multiple translations of orientation. Viewing a map on a computer screen requires one to find a location on the screen that represents a position, then the abstracted orientation of the vertical screen must be translated and scaled into the physical context of the current position. We’ve lost a step in comprehension without the compass and the horizontal map. The traditional map and compass gave an intuitive understanding of a current position in relation to physical space by rotating the map to align with the space it represented. What appeared one inch to the left of my location on the map could be confirmed by looking up to my left.

Ornos is a telescopic view from above. The horizontal screen reconstructs a view from a position directly above itself using satellite imagery and maps. Exploring your current surroundings is as simple as sliding the device on any surface to pan across the globe. Zooming is controlled by rotating the device itself. The onboard digital compass and GPS modules orient the image on the screen to reflect your physical surroundings while satellite imagery and maps are dynamically loaded from Google, Microsoft, or Yahoo.

Humans are very fascinated by the fact that they can talk to each other or can see each other or feel like they are at the same place even though they are not in the same place. My family once tried to talk and look at each other at the same time by using skype. Somehow it wasn’t working well. We almost gave up but my father (in Seoul) called to my sister and my niece (in NJ) by using MSN and my sister called me(NY) by using skype. I could hear everything my father saying through my sister’s mic. It was fun but I was thinking if it’s really that much worth for people who are in different places to talk to each other.

For me, broadcasting is more one-way of expressing. You are not really moving and the person that is seeing you is not really moving either. Even though you are moving it doesn’t mean people who are watching it need to show their reaction. One-to-One is two people meeting at some point and it’s pretty close to the physical conversation comparing to broadcasting. Can the communication happening in the space caused by One-to-One streaming be more effective than physical communication? If that’s not, then can it be at least very close to the real one? From the experience in HP HALO center, besides the whole ‘trust’ thing, I was more curious about the efficiency of the communication in that TelePlace. Even in real life, people need to know better than to trust someone. The very specific way of giving your opinion to the other can be really important. But in the teleplace, you won’t be able to see the other person is really looking at you and listening to you. So, I was thinking maybe it would be fun that you can check if they are really looking at you or not. For example, randomly you can give the other quick question which needs yes/no answer into the one’s window. So people can’t fake where they are looking at by hiding the chatting window behind other windows. Just..thinking.

Jain

I was recently reading about JenniCam—which was one of the first websites to use several webcams to stream video of a person—Jenni—involved in her daily activities. Wikipedia claims, “At the height of her popularity (around 1998), an estimated three to four million people watched JenniCam.org daily.” I think that there is an interesting relationship that comes from being able to tune in at anytime and see another person (or the space they inhabit) with complete anonymity. Jenni’s case is especially interesting because it was a sustained relationship—most fans seemed to visit on a frequent (even daily) basis, and so they probably felt some sense of intimacy with this one individual. Jenny was a teleActor in the sense that she could be seen remotely, but also because she would occasionally dress up and create spectacles for the audience behind the camera. I find it very interesting that in spite of the fact that Jenni orchestrated performances for the camera, the sustained presence of Jenni (JenniCam existed for five years) creates a feeling that most of the time we are seeing the “real” Jenni, which is validated by the accumulation of so much presence. Maybe that is one of the appeals of webcams—in a world dominated by artifice and actors, the fact that we hop in and hop out of observing someone gives a sense that what we are seeing is authentic. Perhaps people equate webcams to video surveillance, forgetting that the webcam captures someone who is 1) aware that they are being observed, and 2) had some reason/motive for wanting to expose their actions to a viewing audience. Whatever our understanding of the nature of or viewing relations, it is somehow satisfying to partake in this voyeurism—we want to see without being seen, just as a few like to perform for the many without the accountability or social constraints imposed on normal (face-to-face) interactions. In a way, I guess webcams and teleActors has created yet another of connection-without-connection—we are in someone’s life and yet completely out of it. All normal conventions that we would go through in getting to know someone in reality are disregarded—we do not develop intimacy, there is only exposure. This relates to telePlace, too. For example, yesterday in class Zannah was showing her favorite telePlace—Antarctica. I believe when I look at my computer screen that I am getting to know this place—if only a little bit—and yet I am never going to freeze to death or curse the cold from seeing it on my computer screen.

Project Proposal One:
For a project I would like to set up a webcam in my house. In front of the webcam, I would place another webcam, so that all viewers saw when they went to my website would be another webcam staring at them on their screen, thus commenting about he nature of viewing relations and perhaps– for a moment, creating a feeling that THEY are being watched.

Project Proposal Two:

I’ve been thinking a lot about people in nursing homes and the lack of stimulation and connection with the rest of the world that they experience. I think it’s especially hard when people forget people or places that they once knew, and no longer appear to be the person that they were. I was thinking about installing webcams in the homes of their family and displaying them on a screen in the nursing home. This would require some software that would manage multiple feeds—showing maybe one resident’s family for a brief period and then switching to another. In this case, I think that seeing even other people’s families would provide a connection to the wider world. Also, it would allow for the families of these people to feel their “presence” because they know that they may be being watched by that person during their daily activities.

Kacie

To be in another place. Perhaps a beautiful place, a dangerous place, an impossible space, an important place.  A window. Public encounter. To be another Person.

http://www.earthcam.com/ http://www.naimark.net/projects/bigprojects/livevideo.html

http://livelook.com/

http://www.modmylife.com/

http://teleactor.berkeley.edu/introduction.html

I am going to put a wig on the Sony pan and tilt camera and give it a seat at the table in the lounge.  The web page for seeing it and controlling it is behind password protection