philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

Tate and an augmented reality street art application are among the 2019 Webby Awards nominees.

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...many of this year’s Webby nominees defy traditional barriers between art and science to demonstrate the possibilities for digital innovation in the arts.

Storied institutions including Tate and the Metropolitan Museum of Arthave been nominated for innovative social media campaigns—the Met for #HaveWeMetYet, an Instagram campaign featuring different employees at the museum and Tate Modern for its savvy use of Instagram. In the category for net art, nominees include artists such as Nikolaus Baumgarten and Sophia Schomberg—whose Arkadia takes users into a dizzying digital landscape—and forward-thinking creators at MIT’s IBM Watson AI Lab, whose WonderNet transforms digital networks into sculptures.

See the full story here: https://www.artsy.net/news/artsy-editorial-tate-augmented-reality-street-art-application-2019-webby-awards-nominees

5 ways augmented reality apps are changing the game on college campuses

1. Researchers in Penn State University’s Department of Geography created an augmented reality app to give users more background about one of the oldest and best-known monuments on the school’s University Park campus. The Obelisk was constructed in 1896 from regional rocks and minerals, and its 281 stones are arranged in order by geologic time period. “There’s a database connected to each stone, so whenever you touch any stone in the app, you can see where it came from, how old it is, and other information,” says Arif Masrur, doctoral student in geography. “Eventually our goal is to also include 360-degree photos of the actual environment from where each rock was excavated.”

See the full story here: https://www.ecampusnews.com/2019/04/02/augmented-reality-apps-changing-game-college-campuses/

Edgybees’s new developer platform brings situational awareness to live video feeds

San Diego-based Edgybees today announced the launch of Argus, its API-based developer platform that makes it easy to add augmented reality features to live video feeds.

The service has long used this capability to run its own drone platform for first responders and enterprise customers, which allows its users to tag and track objects and people in emergency situations, for example, to create better situational awareness for first responders.

See the full story here: https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/02/edgybeess-new-developer-platform-adds-situational-awareness-to-live-video-feeds/

How The Big Five Tech Companies Make Their Money, Visualized

See the full story here: http://digg.com/2019/tech-companies-main-revenue-stream-data-visualization?fbclid=IwAR0v380R9zw2fMHRqAj8pNTl2t6mz16Pyoxql3jKs0LH7h15fezTZgFeJKI

Skills gap? Augmented reality can beam in expertise across the enterprise – PTC Vuforia

Hives of subject matter experts could man augmented reality switchboards, transferring knowledge to field.

"We are excited to offer industrial enterprises a new way to use AR to leverage the tribal knowledge of subject matter experts (SMEs) and help alleviate the skills gap crisis threatening today's industrial enterprise," says Mike Campbell, EVP, augmented reality products, PTC.

See the full story here: https://www.zdnet.com/article/skills-gap-augmented-reality-can-beam-in-expertise/

Google employees are lining up to trash Google’s AI ethics council

The newly-launched independent council was meant to help guide the ethics of Google’s AI projects. But the blowback shows just how fraught—and politicized— AI is becoming, writes Will Knight.

What’s happening: Almost a thousand Google staff and other workers in tech have signed a letter protesting the makeup of the council. One member of the council has also declined an invitation to take up the role.

Specifically: They’re worried about two members. One is Dyan Gibbens, CEO of Trumbull, a company that develops autonomous weapons system. But they're particularly unhappy at the inclusion of Kay Coles James, president of the Heritage Foundation, a thinktank which opposes regulating carbon emissions and takes a hard line on immigration. There has also been criticism at the board’s lack of any civil rights activist who has expertise in the ways that AI can neglect or harm minorities.

See the full story here: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613253/googles-ai-council-faces-blowback-over-a-conservative-member

PTC Improves Workforce Efficiency with Launch of Breakthrough Vuforia Expert Capture Augmented Reality Solution

Vuforia Expert Capture provides up-to-date, relevant information when and where workers need it most – in the real-world context of their daily work environment. Knowledge can be captured on-the-fly as needs arise, without causing disruption to high-value workers. No advance preparation or development efforts are required to easily create step-by-step instructions for hands-on training and task guidance.

Captured procedures can be fine-tuned in a secure, SaaS-based environment and then dynamically delivered on RealWear HMT-1, Microsoft HoloLens, and mobile devices to front-line workers across the enterprise. Spatial intelligence from HoloLens’ location-aware functionality can be leveraged to safely guide front-line workers through multi-step procedures at different locations without compromising speed and accuracy.

Vuforia Expert Capture is a valuable solution in manufacturing environments where existing service/maintenance/changeover procedures for equipment are unavailable.

See the full story here: https://www.nonpareilonline.com/ptc-improves-workforce-efficiency-with-launch-of-breakthrough-vuforia-expert/article_8fab6e5c-a52d-5429-b65c-4977cb27922c.html

The Top 5 Virtual/Simulated Characters and How They Foretold the Future

Virtual Character #3: Virtual Influencers: Kizuna Ai and Lil Miquela

This spot goes to two (real life?) virtual characters that never existed on TV or in the movies. They are among the biggest YouTube stars – in fact, the days of YouTube celebrities being human may be a thing of the past.

The trend stated In Japan, with Kizuna Ai, an anime-inspired character who looks cartoonish, is a major star in Japan. In 2018, the character has not one but two YouTube channels and has over 2 million subscribers. She was known as the first “virtual YouTuber” and later, Mattel launched virtual Barbie as a real character. Today YouTube estimates over half a billion views that have been attributed to virtual influencers on the platform.

See the full story here: https://variety.com/2019/tv/features/the-top-5-virtual-simulated-characters-and-how-they-foretold-the-future-1203176886/

How virtual reality could be the virtual end of hospitality

The biggest threat to the on-trade as we know it is here. And it’s goggle-shaped.

That, at least, is the hope of Larry Davies, MD of by the Cambridge-based technology firm VR Fictional. ‘The whole point of virtual reality is that it allows you to create your own narrative,’ he told Imbibe. ‘The universe that you inhabit isn’t pre-ordained.’

Davies has teamed up with top bars and restaurants all over the world to create a portfolio of ‘dream nights out’. Users simply download the venue, put on the company’s specially designed VR headsets – and are transported into the top bar or restaurant of their choice.

Food and drinks can be home-delivered by local establishments – perhaps even by the same ones that the user is ‘drinking’ or ‘eating’ in – for a fully immersive experience. What’s more, by linking VR systems, it’s possible for entire friendship groups to enjoy a virtual night out together without having to leave their homes. They need only ensure that their home fridges are stocked with vodka and Red Bull before they hit the virtual club.

See the full story here: http://imbibe.com/news-articles/general/virtual-reality-virtual-end-hospitality/

Virtual Reality Experience Takes Audience Back to 10,000 BC at This Year’s Tribeca Film Festival, April 24-May 5

The film experience moves forward while looking backward with the U.S. premiere of CAVE, a shared virtual-reality experience that transports audiences back thousands of years, April 24 through May 5 at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival.

CAVE was designed from the ground up to challenge the status quo of how audiences collectively experience immersive arts and entertainment. The coming-of-age tale is told using the cutting-edge Parallux system, a fundamentally new kind of shared VR technology that allows virtual experiences to be shared by many people in the same location.

Unlike conventional 360-degree VR, viewers see and hear the story—as well as one another—from a unique point-of-view within the same virtual environment, letting them feel as physically present in the shared world as they would when attending a live theater or concert event.

SPONSORS

Bose
Lenovo
Future Tech
Google

See the full story here: http://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2019/april/virtual-reality-experience-takes-audience-back-to-10-000-bc-at-t.html