David Wilson – Public Interactives Research Lab

First Impressions – Samsung 837: Where Technology and Culture Collide

Last week, PIRT member Merrilee went to visit Samsung’s newest New York City retail experience, Samsung 837. She filed this report about what she found.

I went with my class to the Samsung Experience Store on Thursday, March 3. We went around 1pm, after lunch time, so there weren’t very many people inside the store when we got there. The store felt like a museum at first, and then slowly shifted into a showroom. There are two levels to the store and they have distinct characteristics.

The first floor felt a lot like a museum, showing exhibitions of Samsung’s products. It’s laid out pretty logically too so when you are finished with one item, the next one is right there. There are four main stations on the first floor. When you first walk into the store, you go to the left, where there is an employee that asks you if you want to take a selfie with their new Samsung Galaxy S7. After you take the selfie, in about 30 seconds, the photo is shown on these massive TV screens. The photo is then made up out of Instagram photos, like a collage.

After being in awe with that, I walked over to the next stations with their VR set up. The first VR station we went to was like experiencing a 4D cinema theatre with moving seats. We went on a roller coaster ride with the Samsung Gear and moving seats. I was really excited to experience this, but it did not feel the same as being on an actual roller coaster ride; I didn’t get the same adrenaline. I also sort of broke the Samsung Gear as I was putting them on, and the whole time, I thought it was similar to the Oculus, but it’s actually just like the Google Cardboard. The Samsung Gear is Google Cardboard, enclosing a Samsung Galaxy s7 inside to create the VR.

Moving on to the next VR station, this experience was more on the immersive side. It was basically a lounging area where you put on the Samsung Gear and surround sound headphones to experience whatever they were showcasing. In this occasion, it was (of course) a horror setting, where you are sitting on the couch, and it’s raining outside and weird stuff began to happen and a girl suddenly shows up, and then later, kills you. This experience really scared me, but that’s just the type of person I am. I got scared, screamed and immediately took the goggles off in fear. And then I immediately left to the next station.

In the last station, I considered it to be the “best” part of the store. It is this immersive Instagram tunnel, where users input their Instagram handle, and it loads all the Instagram photos that they have ever taken, and then the robot in the tunnel speaks out the different hashtags in your photos. The tunnel only allows three people at a time. The tunnel is sectioned off into three ways and every time a new person enters into the tunnel, the previous people’s position moves forward. Another trip factor of this tunnel is that it is made out of mirrors. So the Instagram wall itself is just half a wall, and then everything else is reflected off from the mirrors. And because the tunnel is made out of mirrors, everyone is required to wear shoe covers so as to not dirty the floor.

That covers the first floor of the store. Going up to the second floor, this is the part where Samsung tries to grab you and never let you leave. There is a coffee shop there with big donuts that you can buy and eat in the dining area. But moving past that, there is this interactive wall where you can see the different appliances that Samsung offers and beside it, a kitchen with their appliances working together, showcasing the wonders of Internet of Things. There were too many people in that area so I did not get the chance to play with the stuff. But moving on from there, there is this photo room, where you compare taking photos from the Samsung Galaxy s7 to its competitors like the iPhone, HTC, and so forth. After you take the photo, you can see a side by side comparison of the photo quality. I think that this was the part that really screamed at me that Samsung was not just trying to convince you to buy the phone because this section is basically like the apple store where they lay out all their tablets and phones for you to play with.

Overall, I would say that this was a good visit and a good experience as a consumer or if you are a Samsung fan. A fair warning for when you go, you will be asked to sign waivers for using the VR sets. I assume it’s just so that if you get sick from it, it’s not their responsibility. And for the Instagram tunnel, you agree that your Instagram account is public. I would like to go again, just because I am curious whether they change up their experiences. For example, instead of a haunted house during the VR experience, I’m sitting down having tea or something. And of course, for the doughnuts.

New School Archive, Uncategorized

Report – Newly Operational linkNYC Kiosks Between 24th and 27th Streets

A few days ago Letícia and I went out to inspect more newly operational linkNYC kiosks in Manhattan, on Third Avenue between 24th and 27th Streets. We took team member Sean’s advice in terms of his recommendations for follow-up exploration, focusing particularly on the web browser’s content filtering mechanism, what the kiosk’s touchscreen does when it is not being used, and whether or not the kiosk seemed to be drawing attention to itself in its newly operational state.

User Interface / Web Browsing / Apps: Letícia and I were able to pretty easily navigate the user interface. As Sean mentioned previously, it felt quite familiar, like a standard Android OS (if you’re an Android user).

We were able to use the various features of the Google Maps app with ease…

…and make a phone call to each other (the speaker on the kiosk was, if set at its loudest setting, loud enough to hear from around 20 or 30 feet away…EVEN competing with NYC traffic)

We were able to easily access the web browser and browse various sites, including those based in Brazil.

Content Filtering: Letícia and I were interested as to how/if the browser would filter web content.

Using the web browser, we decided to try searching a fairly objectionable search term (Porn), with the goal of seeing what results would be returned, or if the browser would filter a specific search. We found that the browser did not filter this specific search, that it would supply links (and accompanying graphic images), but that once a link was clicked the content would be blocked from loading.

We found what we considered a little bit of a bug with the content filtering mechanism, in that if a user were to search this specific term and access the IMAGES section of the Google Search, the images shown within the images search mosaic were graphic in nature, and in a resolution that made them clearly visible to the kiosk user and perhaps those passing by. As a result, a user could, hypothetically, access content (in some form) that others might find offensive given that the kiosk is situated in a public place.

The kiosk’s wait state and general noticeability: Letícia and I made this video documenting these aspects ….
[vimeo 157623855 w=500 h=333]

We’ll be continuing the documentation process as more linkNYC kiosks come online. In addition to documenting newly operational kiosks in-situ, we’re planning to follow up with those that we’ve already visited. It would be interesting to explore if the location of the kiosk and weather conditions have any specific influence on their usage.

New School Archive, Uncategorized

First Impressions – Newly Deployed linkNYC Kiosks in Manhattan

This is a first installment of an ongoing documentation series, where Public Interactives Research Team will observe linkNYC kiosks being installed and brought into operational mode. The roll-out process began during late December and early January, where there are now a few operational and non-operational kiosks in place along Third Avenue, between 14th street and 92nd street, in the east side of Manhattan. linkNYC has provided this map of installed kiosks (or “links” as they are referred to)

Of particular interest to PIRT are the media touchscreens featured on each “link”. According to the project documentation, each kiosk should feature hyperlocal content specific to where the link is deployed. linkNYC is one of the largest public touchscreen deployments of its kind, so the team is excited to be in such close proximity to this, and we’ll be right there to document its first months of existence.

PIRT member Sean Landers files this report about what he recently saw of the links on Third Avenue between 14th and 18th streets.

Walking past on my way in this afternoon — decided to perform an informal walking survey of the units between 18th and 14th streets, on the east side of Third Avenue. The screens on the terminals didn’t seem to be enabled on the links situated at 18th – 16th streets. I did find one touchscreen enabled, but it was non-responsive, near 16th street and Third Avenue. The first functional unit I found was on the southeast corner of 15th Street, found a second responsive link working on the west side of 3rd Avenue between 14th and 15th streets.

Kiosk / Link:

Outgoing calls and Internet worked on the kiosk.

Internet: Let me cruise around news.google.com, CBS website, YouTube with great freedom. There’s supposed to be content filtering. While I didn’t intentionally test it to see how inappropriate it’d let me get, I think it filtered a NYT story on me. Not sure if it was content (it might’ve been an article on fundamentalism or ISIS?) or some other reason. I am also curious whether filtering is just linkNYC terminal or if there is some type of filter active on the WiFi as well. The link played full motion video with audio, really smooth and clean, no loading bars whatsoever; audio through the headphone jacks was great.

Outgoing Call: Made an outgoing call to my cell-phone and left a voicemail for myself.

I heard my own voice mailbox message really well through headphones on the link. The incoming voicemail was really garbled, basically garbage. Which I guess makes sense, given that I was using a speaker phone from a foot away on the side of 3rd Avenue in the middle of the afternoon. The incoming number listed on my cell phone was (646)693-4500. Calling it results in a personable error message that the number belongs to a linkNYC terminal, which doesn’t receive incoming calls. The service is provided by (prominently branded) Vonage. I could make a phone call while browsing the web, exactly like a phone or a tablet.

Interface: Interface of the link seemed to be Android … had the characteristic “reverse button, home circle, open apps square” features on bottom of screen. Options gear in top right corner lets you adjust brightness and audio. There’s another grey bar which slides up and down just above traditional Android options bar — this bar gives options for what you can access… Outgoing Calls, Internet, 311. There’s a red X you can use to terminate your session — according to the FAQ, they also auto-terminate after 30 seconds (which I presume is ‘inactivity’?). There’s also a “circle-i” button near the gear which brings you to an extended FAQ + licensing information for the terminal.

Free WiFi:

FreeWiFi let me access it without giving it an email address. Apparently, the “Private WiFi” is only available to Apple Devices supporting Hotspot 2.0. The connection really did feel scorchingly fast (although let’s see what happens when everybody on 3rd avenue is using it). Unlike a lot of free wifi, it seemed to have no problem with me streaming music on Spotify. The WiFi signal seemed to drop off somewhere before Union Square east (a few blocks to the west of the link)… I’m not sure what the WiFi range is, exactly. I am also wondering if WiFi is active up-and-down Third Avenue, or just in pockets around functional links?

Recommendations for Follow-Up:

What is the reaction of other people to someone using the terminal? I was really in the experience of using the tablet — I didn’t get a chance to look up and see anyone seeing me.
Do you actually need to give an email address right now, or will it let you access the WiFi without it?
Could be interesting to see how (if) the interface and terminal functions evolve over time.
Was my bad audio recording a result of being too far from the mic, or is the mic just garbage?
I wish I’d run a speed-test on WiFi (BusinessInsider has some data from Jan 17th) and on the terminal.
Longer-term inquiry: see if/how different the capacities of ‘Free WiFi’ and ‘Private WiFi’ are.
Longer-term inquiry: confirm the WiFi connectivity range.
How manipulable is the outgoing call system? Can I call 900 numbers? Can I spoof other numbers? There’s no reason to call collect — but can I? Is there an operator I can speak to?
How many different browser windows and / or tabs can I open at the same time? How far can I push it before it gets sluggish? If the terminal gets sluggish or crashes, does that affect the WiFi? (are the functionality of terminal and WiFi tied together?)
How about the content filter? What is considered ‘inappropriate or malicious” material? What’s the error message inform the user, exactly? (Worth wondering — what does a blocked attempt inform the LinkNYC kiosk — does it track these access attempts? does it align it with any of your data?)

Bigger questions about the Link’s Privacy Policy:

We don’t collect personally identifiable information except what’s required to run the system. “except what’s required to run the system” What does that mean, exactly?

We will never sell your personal information or share with third parties for their own use. “for their own use” But does LinkNYC reserve the right to use your personal information for their own use? Is there something along the lines of a EULA posted somewhere?

New School Archive, Uncategorized

How Does Designing for Movement Affect the Design of Public Interactives?

The Public Interactives Research Team welcomed special guest researcher and educator Renata Sheppard, whose work focuses on understanding the relationship between movement, technology, and performance. We discussed Laban Movement Analysis, a language system and translation of movement and meaning, and how the system lends itself towards interaction design.

The Laban Effort Graph, for describing, visualizing, interpreting and documenting all varieties of human movement

A point that emerged during our discussions is that, based on our observations, most reactive environmental technology design may not take into account the complexity of possibilities that the movement of the human body could afford. For example, we discussed the fact that most reactive environments that we study (including those that PIRT has prototyped and deployed for research purposes) may only concentrate on a certain SPECIFIC ASPECT of presence, touch, or movement, in order to trigger a media event, like distance from a sensor, the magnitude of a sound, or the fact that a person occupies a specific area of a space. While technological limitations could be a factor, the team understood that Laban Movement Analysis could be an interesting and productive way to discuss and consider human agency in an environment that requires a presence in order to perform its media function.

Discussion also included ways to incorporate Laban Movement Analysis into the design of the interface for the AIDS Quilt Touch Digital Experience. This led to questions about how technology may constrict interaction, on how to achieve a one to one relationship between technology and a person interacting with it (meaning a more exacting mimesis between human movement and technology functionality), while considering that human beings perceive in three dimensions, and that interaction design should take into account that dimensionality.

New School Archive, Uncategorized

Project Update – Online Gallery of Public Interactives Database Now Contains More Than 1,000 Entries

A milestone has been achieved with respect to the Online Gallery of Public Interactives project. A curation process is ongoing in terms of collecting examples for entry into a database that will serve the forward and public facing version of the project, where that database has now grown to hold over ONE THOUSAND entries. Some entries in the database contain more information than others. For instance, approximately 250 feature detailed information about a particular example, while the remaining only contain a URL, with the intention of utilizing automation to populate the remaining data.

School of Media Studies and PIRT research associate David Wilson, who is leading the curation process, had this to say about reaching the 1,000 entry milestone:

“As the project grows and we collect and log more and more examples, we’ll be able to begin to put a solid visual reference towards addressing the question of WHAT ARE PUBLIC INTERACTIVES. We’ll be able to understand better public interactives antecedents and a type of taxonomy, as well as understand who are employing this emergent media form, where, why, and perhaps what may come next. In addition, we’ll also be able to more concretely address inquiry as to WHY OR WHY NOT A GIVEN MEDIA PIECE IS, OR IS NOT, A PUBLIC INTERACTIVE.”

More updates to follow as the project continues to unfold.

Cinimod Studio, in 2011, implemented an LED Facade for the National Football Stadium of Peru, that reacts to sound levels within the stadium during events. — Cinimod Studio, in 2011, implemented an LED Facade for the National Football Stadium of Peru, that reacts to sound levels within the stadium during events

New School Archive, Uncategorized

The Spring 2016 Semester Begins

Public Interactives Research Team will have it’s first meeting of the Spring 2016 semester on Friday, February 5th by taking a field trip to the New York Hall of Science to check out their Connected Worlds exhibit. One of the largest immersive, interactive, and reactive installations of its kind, Connected Worlds is a great place to begin our semester-long exploration into the emergent communications form that is Public Interactives.

This semester, the team will continue to experiment with building their own Public Interactive’s prototypes. Over the course of the next few weeks, we’ll have demo/hack sessions utilizing Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and MIT App Inventor. In addition, the team is currently designing an infographic describing the Public Interactives phenomenon, as well as preparing to curate and input content into our Online Gallery of Public Interactives.

New members are always welcome. The team meets Friday’s from 2pm to 4pm in the School of Media Studies Loft at 79 Fifth Ave, 16th floor. For more information contact David Wilson ( david.wilson @ newschool . edu )

New School Archive, Uncategorized

A Collection of Twitter Images from PIRT’s SIGGRAPH Experience

The Public Interactive’s Research Team had an amazing time this past August presenting the AIDS Quilt Touch Digital Experience at SIGGRAPH 2015 in Los Angeles. We were honored to be able to show a small part of the AIDS Memorial Quilt to conference attendees. The following is a collection of images found on Twitter via our #pirtsiggraph hashtag that chronicles some of our experience. A special thanks to everyone who stopped by our booth during the event.

The beginning of setting up the booth

The panels before going up

Our booth under construction

Another booth construction picture

AIDS Quilt Touch booth

Red ribbons visitors could take and wear as a symbol of support to the AIDS Quilt

PIRT member Sean Landers documented our experience at SIGGRAPH

Our team on the last day

Taking the booth down

New School Archive, Uncategorized

PIRT at SIGGRAPH LiveBlog Final Day

Tweets about #pirtsiggraph since:2015-08-13
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Thursday, August 13th – 10:40 pm PDT

Hi again, everyone! So the dust on our final day at SIGGRAPH 2015 has settled a little bit but not completely. The team definitely has more to share in summation of our experiences during the show. We’ll be posting those in various forms here over the next few days as they become available. For now, check out a video post from research assistant Sean, featuring myself and Letícia describing our experiences in our booth.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIj59CX-bhU&w=560&h=315]

Thursday, August 13th – 1:45 pm PDT

A flurry of activity from the show floor as SIGGRAPH 2015 comes to an end. We’ll be posting more once the dust settles here, and we get everything packed up. Bye for now!

Thursday, August 13th – 12:35 pm PDT

A report from research assistant Letícia:

Yesterday we went to the SIGGRAPH’s Animation Festival. We watched two hours of animations, from short movies to game trailers, including pieces of big blockbusters, edited specially to show the visual effects. In an overall reflection, I didn’t see anything particularly impressive. The perfection and beauty of the images are undeniable, however interesting and touching stories were exceptions. What really annoyed me, though, is the lack of representation of people that are not white, male, cisgender, straight, athletic or their romantic interests (objectified skinny white women that are The Standard Beauty and have no personality or will, just serve to the male counterpart). It is 2015, SIGGRAPH and people that make these animations! We need to talk about visibility, representability, and diversity. If VR and CG are supposed to reproduce the reality, why not talk about the real world and its real people of all colors, shapes, genders (or lack of any specific one), expressions, preferences and struggle? I am not even talking about bringing political and social debate into games (yet), for now is just about represent the diversity that the real world is actually about. I feel like the people producing these animations could use a bit of critical theory and/or real world experience in their work.

Thursday, August 13th – 11:05 am PDT

A report from School of Media Studies Dean and principal investigator for the AIDS Quilt Touch Project Anne Balsamo:

Reflections on Bringing the AIDS Memorial Quilt and the AIDS Quilt Touch Project to SIGGRAPH 2015

On the last day of the convention, I reflect on the reception of our project here at SIGGRAPH. Although it will come as no surprise to anyone who has been in the presence of the Quilt, many visitors to our booth were mesmerized by its beauty, scale, and symbolism. Several people returned every day, just to chat or look again. Many people knew nothing about the Quilt and were genuinely open and interested to hear of its history and cultural significance. Many others shared stories of lost loved ones. It was a quiet place for conversation in the middle of a noisy and technology-saturated convention hall. It was, also, the only place to reflect on real experiences that haven’t been designed to distract and amuse. Given the context of SIGGRAPH–one of the largest gatherings of computer graphics professionals–many visitors were intrigued about the interactive Quilt Browser that we displayed on an touch-enabled table. What I observed consistently was that although many visitors may have walked into the booth to see the technology, they stayed because of the Quilt.

Thursday, August 13th – 10:10 am PDT

Good morning and welcome to Public Interactives Research Team’s final day of LiveBlog coverage from our booth at SIGGRAPH 2015 in Los Angeles. I’m your moderator, research assistant David Wilson. It’s been a fascinating week and the team is a bit sad that the show is coming to an end. Today’s coverage will feature a wide variety of posts, from final thoughts and impressions we’ll take away from this experience, to our describing what we saw last night at the SIGGRAPH Computer Animation Festival.

New School Archive, Uncategorized

PIRT at SIGGRAPH LiveBlog Day 6

Tweets about #pirtsiggraph since:2015-08-12
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Wednesday, August 12th – 7:05 pm PDT

Approaching closing time, so here’s thanking all of my PIRT colleagues, all of our guests visiting us in our booth, and you for reading! Another day of experiences are now in the (virtual) books. Join us here tomorrow for LiveBlog coverage from the AIDS Quilt Touch Experience booth, the final day of SIGGRAPH 2015. Take care and good night!

Wednesday, August 12th – 6:35 pm PDT

A report from PIRT research assistant Leticia:

Now that we are in our fifth day, we are having new experiences related to being here for an extended period of time. For example, with our guests, we have been looking at the Touch Table a lot, and it is possible to identify the most popular symbols within the digitized quilt blocks: red ribbons, pink triangles, trees and birds are among the favorites. We also saw so many beautiful panels and blocks made with the most diverse materials, like paper, buttons, clothing, and teddy bears. It feels to me that there is always something new and unexpected to discover in the Quilt Touch Table. We also have now some visitors that come back everyday, sometimes more than once a day, to chat, take another look at the Quilt Touch, tell a story or just to hang out with us. We are very glad to have met these amazing people and to get to spend some time with them. It enriches the experience of being at SIGGRAPH.

Wednesday, August 12th – 6:05 pm PDT

We were very fortunate to be visited by a guest who was interested in allowing us to document their specific impressions of our booth and of our technology. They shared some wonderfully insightful information about how our digital presentation worked for them in conjunction with the physical quilts. We were really appreciative that they took the time to share an in-depth account of how our booth affected them. Prior to that, I was visited by a guest who is not from this country and, as I was talking to them, let me know that they did not speak much English. I found myself doing my best to describe how and why the Quilt came into being, and how the Quilt situates itself in a particular time in American history. My guest was drawn deeper into our booth by the Touch Table Browser presentation, then for a closer look at the Quilts, examining each more closely as I shared more details about them in the best way I could. We stood together with the Quilts for a little bit of time, after which they asked to take pictures of them. One of the goals of the AIDS Quilt Touch project is to communicate to the international community who were not of age to remember the initial appearance of the disease in the early 1980’s.

Wednesday, August 12th – 12:30 pm PDT

A continued steady stream of guests into our booth this morning. We’ll be open until 7pm tonight which is the longest day of the conference. Earlier Anne and Angela continued with their audio/video walkthrough of the Quilt panels we have on display with Sean. I’m really excited to see that footage, and will be posting as it becomes available. Dale (one of the principal investigators on the project) is in the booth keeping an eye on the software side of the Touch Table presentation, as well as taking guests on tours of Quilt blocks represented in the browser. Earlier, as I was walking though Hall G, I saw what I think was the conference’s first telepresence visitor. In the spirit of inclusion, it was encouraging to see a guest have that opportunity to experience what is going on here.

Wednesday, August 12th – 10:10 am PDT

A good morning to you from SIGGRAPH 2015! Welcome back to our continuing coverage from the AIDS Quilt Touch Project booth. I’m your LiveBlog moderator David Wilson, research assistant with the Public Interactives Research Team at The New School for Public Engagement, School of Media Studies. We’ve had an amazing time at the show so far. To lead things off for today, a video post from research assistant Sean featuring School of Media Studies Dean and principal researcher Anne Balsamo along with our research faculty Angela Ferriolo, describing the first of the Quilt blocks we are featuring in our booth.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HR2caiDdNLQ]

New School Archive, Uncategorized

PIRT at SIGGRAPH LiveBlog Day 5

Tweets about #pirtsiggraph since:2015-08-11
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Tuesday, August 11th – 5:35 pm PDT

Another great day at SIGGRAPH 2015 is coming to a close. This is David signing off, bye for now!

Tuesday, August 11th – 4:25 pm PDT

A report from PIRT research faculty member Angela:

Slow interaction! One thing I notice about visitors to the quilt, they demonstrate a way of interacting that’s usually hard to facilitate. Rather than going fast and overloading their senses, they move through the interface slowly, as slowly as possible. Nearly all users slow down to what I would call a walking pace, then wander through the quilt in a way that feels very tactile, human. People seem to want a slow experience. They are looking and reading hard. For those who have a more personal connection to the Quilt, memories come back slowly also in continual waves. Learned a lot today, good day.

Tuesday, August 11th – 3:20 pm PDT

A report from research assistant Sean:

Part of our mission with the AIDS Quilt Touch is to create increased visibility and awareness of the AIDS Quilt. SIGGRAPH 2015 has given us an excellent opportunity to put the mission into practice. Fairly frequently, people attracted by who-knows-what — the red ribbon, or the really remarkable quilt panels, or just an impulse of ‘what-the-heck-is-this-and-what-is-it-doing-here’ — drift to our booth and request — sometimes timidly, sometimes boldly — “so… tell me about this?”

Some of our visitors are too young to remember the initial impact of the AIDS crisis, and the exhibit gives us a chance to share and discuss the context in which the Quilt was initially created and the role it has continued to serve. Others are visitors from afar who, while they are aware of the AIDS crisis, have never heard of the AIDS Quilt. Some of our visitors, of course, are people who are very aware of the AIDS Quilt and, never having had an opportunity to see it in person, are grateful for an opportunity to be in its presence. Some, arriving on a lark, search our database out of curiosity (“I wonder if so-and-so is here”) and find themselves revisiting the memory of one who has passed.

It has been really wonderful to meet folks who have never heard of the Quilt, and fill them in on the history & context of the quilt. Likewise, it feels like an honor to be able to connect people with the names and memories of their loved ones. In this regard, SIGGRAPH has not only given us a chance to share our really neat suite of apps with the SIGGRAPH community, but also — perhaps just as or more importantly — created new opportunities to spread awareness and fulfill our mission.

Tuesday, August 11th – 12:30 pm PDT

Over the course of the past few days the team is noticing that the 30 Year History of AIDS ChronoZoom presentation doesn’t seem to have the same gravitational pull as the Touch Table Browser. Each are situated on opposite ends of our rather large space. We have many theories as to why our guests don’t seem to be drawn as much to the ChronoZoom presentation presented on our horizontal touch screen, among them is that the interface is not immediately identifiable as a touchscreen. We feel that because in other booths near to ours, a horizontal display usually functions as a video screen showing looped or live video. Our guests, at a first glance, may be perceiving a static video presentation, even though we have a conference sign describing that the horizontal screen is in fact touch receptive. Another theory is that the color template of our presentation may not be as inviting as the aesthetic presentation of the Quilts via the touch table. Here in the booth we’re going to try to tweak the ChronoZoom presentation slightly in order to drive more people towards information given in the presentation.

Tuesday, August 11th – 11:20 am PDT

Pleased to share our first video post by research assistant Sean, a recap of our arrival at the show:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r24vwo8IU90]

Tuesday, August 11th – 10:45 am PDT

A report from research assistant Leticia:

One of the things that has amazed me the most in this experience is the relation people have with the touch table. When they find a Quilt Block they are looking for, most people want to take pictures of it, sometimes in different angles or zoom levels, even being able to access these images in the AIDSQuiltTouch.org website. I think it is so interesting how powerful the Table is, how it is perceived as the “official” digital medium of the Quilt, as the digital materialization of the Quilt; it IS the Quilt, in some way. If it was perceived just as another way to reproduce the Quilt, perhaps people wouldn’t take pictures of it. It’s “worth” taking pictures of because it is official, it represents a powerful material instance. It is fascinating.

Tuesday, August 11th – 10:10 am PDT

Good morning and welcome back to our LiveBlog coverage from SIGGRAPH 2015! The rest of the conference floor opens today so as we walked through the convention hall towards our booth we’re definitely seeing an even larger spike in attendance compared to yesterday. During today’s coverage I plan to focus a little bit on our ChronoZoom presentation, as well as taking a little bit of time to wander around the entire conference while posting my impressions. Last night during the SIGGRAPH reception we had an opportunity to spend a few moments with Greg Panos where we chatted about ways of propelling the digital avatar into the real world. My experience so far has been completely enriching, if not a little bit emotionally exhausting. I value deeply being able to connect with our guests who want to know more about our project, or to discuss a personal connection with the AIDS Memorial Quilt. We are hearing incredible stories from our guests and there have been a few tears shed in the booth. Leticia and Angela are now with one of our first guests of the morning looking over the AIDS Quilt Touch Table Browser, they’ve just found a Quilt block they were looking for after some time searching for it without any specific identifying information. It feels good to be standing up here and representing this project.