"Hello, we're from the internet" is an art project that took over the MoMA's Jackson Pollock room without permission.
A collective of eight internet artists transformed the Jackson Pollock room in the New York City Museum of Modern Art into their own augmented reality gallery—without the museum's permission.
The collective, which calls itself “MoMAR,” is making a statement against elitism and exclusivity in the art world with its group art installation Hello, we’re from the internet. The eight artists had their own works overlaid on top of seven Jackson Pollock paintings using augmented reality technology. By downloading their MoMAR app, anyone with a phone can see their work.
“It’s funny, because even people who were just visiting MoMA seem to primarily experience the work through the lens on their phones by taking selfies or photos of the work,” Barcia-Colombo said. “Our AR work added an extra layer of digitization by hacking the pre-existing work to reveal the work of artists who are experimenting with a new form.”
To deliver on the film/book’s virtual vibe, the exterior of Brazos Hall will be transformed into the Stacks, the vertical trailer park where people live. Attendees will receive an RFID wristband, and enter the venue through Wade’s van, the protagonist’s hideout, and also experience a slice of the fantastical online world of the OASIS through both VR and physical installations.
With HTC as the film’s official VR partner, VR demo stations will include a number of experiences such as an Avatar Creator, a WaveVR DJ set by the film’s star Tye Sheridan (who plays Wade Watts), and VR versions of classic arcade games and experiences inspired by the universe of Ready Player One.
Here’s the full list of things to do:
The RFID wristband will keep score as guests test their knowledge of ‘80s trivia, play arcade games, or look for hidden clues, to move up the Leaderboard to win fun prizes, including one grand prize per day: an HTC VIVEVR System.
Visitors can browse at Avatar Outfitters, offering the Hot Topic “Ready Player One” Pop-Up Shop. Guests will have a chance to score officially licensed gear, including exclusive t-shirts, caps, jewelry, backpacks, collectible pins and other cool accessories, as well as fan-favorite Funko Pop! vinyl figures and Copper, Jade and Crystal key sets, and much more, all available for purchase.
Guests can try out the “Ready Player One” Avatar Creator by VIVE to choose their new digital identity, and then send the avatar to their personal email.
Drop into 2045’s hottest nightclub, The Distracted Globe, where infinity mirrors create the impression of being gravity-free for a cool photo op, and guests can enjoy “Ready Player One”-themed specialty cocktails.
From the stage: ‘80s trivia happy hours and nightly artist performances, with special guest DJs and performers, including a WaveVR DJ set by Tye Sheridan, who stars in “Ready Player One”; Them Jeans; FM-84; Bird Peterson; and a special performance by a surprise guest.
On Saturday, March 10, the SXSW Film Festival will hold its 25th Edition party, celebrating the anniversary of the film festival, at the Experience.
On Sunday, March 11, the venue will hold a livestream, “Ready Player One” LIVE at SXSW, powered by Twitch and IMDb, hosted by Aisha Tyler and correspondent Alex Correa. The stream will be live on Twitch and IMDB and will feature some of the stars and filmmakers from “Ready Player One,” including cast members Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, Lena Waithe, Win Morisaki, Philip Zhao and Ben Mendelsohn; screenwriter Zak Penn; and author/screenwriter/co-producer Ernest Cline.
Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey has brought his own company to task, for what he said is a less-than-stellar performance in handling malicious activity. More specifically, he said that he did not move quickly enough to take action against the Russian efforts to create divisions between Americans. Dorsey, who has previously expressed contrition for his slow reaction, has now made it clear that the company needs to take actions to prevent this from happening again, rather than just reacting after the fact.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Dorsey has stated that, “Twitter is looking to hire outside experts to help it measure the quality of conversations on the social network, echoing concerns expressed recently by Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg.”
The Verge reports that Twitter also said it is “seeking proposals to determine exactly how the company is fostering ‘healthy debate, conversations, and critical thinking’ versus abuse, spam, and manipulation.” Dorsey said the company is now looking to create a “systemic framework,” that will “increase the collective health, openness, and civility of public conversation around the world.”
Twitter is accepting proposals until April 13 and plans to announce the first projects in July; “the chosen applicants will partner with Twitter and receive funding for their projects.”
Whereas in the past we may have primarily associated VR with video games, military and flight simulations, it has now found its place in several other professional and recreational activities. Some of those use AI algorithms and programs to operate and increase user experiences, flowing over into the workplace.
We’ve covered LookVR before and how you can edit and change graphs and data as if these visual representations were tangible items for you to shape using their virtual headset. Well, for similar purpose, companies like Virtualitics are collaborating with companies like NASA to create these kinds of analytics programs that work with AI and machine learning.
In what may be the oddest example of VR, The New York Times recently created a VR newspaper. That’s right, you can use buttons to flip the pages of a virtual newspaper using VR, rather than buying a physical newspaper and flipping those pages with your fingers. Whether this is to reduce paper waste or just get the newspaper to more people, they did it, and one may wonder how the digital world will ultimately affect paper media in the future. It may be hard to imagine other magazines and newspapers moving to this format, but one never knows.
Even now, there are no likes, no retweets, no comments. You open the app, and you're looking through a lens. Evan Spiegel, the company’s founder and CEO, doubled down on this commitment to the camera when he filed for Snap's IPO last year, plainly saying, “Snap Inc. is a camera company.”
Despite Spiegel's succinct summation, Snapchat's evolution tells a different story. As the app became more popular, its users started commanding huge followings on the app. DJ Khalad showed up, along with the Kardashians. It became the place to see to your real friends, but also your internet friends, your favorite celebrities, and your ex-girlfriend's cousin's dog.
Call it the great homogenization of social media: As Facebook and Instagram and Snapchat started competing for users and features, it became harder to tell them apart.
If you had to reduce that identity crisis to a single thing, it would be the constant comparison to Instagram.
Instead, focus on being the internet's best augmented reality camera. Pour resources into improving the camera technology that made it great in the first place. Then someday, in the future, people will look back at selfies with the puppy filter and instead of calling it "AR photography," they'll call it a Snap.
The ETC’s Philip Lelyveld was one of five subject matter experts invited to speak before the EU’s “Preserving Democracy in the Digital Age” hearing at the European Political Strategy Centre in Brussels on February 22, 2018. The EU is working to understand and deal with the problem of ‘fake news’ and Russian interference in democratic processes in Europe. This one day event is part of an ongoing multi-organization effort within the EU.
The invited speakers were;
Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer-Prize Winning Author; Columnist, Washington Post and Professor of Practice, London School of Economics
Philip Howard, Professor of Internet Studies and Director of Research, Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, Professor of Political Communication and Research Director, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford
Philip Lelyveld, Project Director on Immersive Experiences, Entertainment Technology Center, University of Southern California
Keir Giles, Senior Consulting Fellow on Russia and Eurasia, Chatham House and Director, Con ict Studies Research Centre
Philip was invited to present an outsider ‘Hollywood’ perspective.
Philip defined ‘fake news’ as data or information that is either 1) verifiably false and 2) partially reported and taken out of its original context in a way that distorts its original meaning. The tools to create fake news, including faking a person’s audiovisual record and adding or deleting elements within a live video feed, are advancing to the point where even experts will soon have trouble identifying what is fake versus what is real. We are moving into a ‘post-evidence’ world.
A good story captures and holds your attention, and creates ‘sticky’ memories by engaging your emotions. He said that we are well on our way to developing and deploying the tools that will allow anyone to create and distribute personalised ‘sticky’ memories on a global scale. The tools don’t care whether the story is fact or fiction, true or false.
In his testimony Philip highlighted the point that innovation is never stifled. It is only redirected by regulation, the bottom-line imperatives of business, and societal forces. The purveyors of fake news are innovators. The way to counteract their efforts is to out-play them.
It may make more sense to create a system that identifies, elevates, and rewards a bounded set of data, information, and knowledge that we can verify to be true, reliable, and undistorted, than to try to detect and react to an unbounded flow of false, distorted, and fake content, he said.
Philip suggested one possible strategy for counteracting fake news in a manner that protects democratic processes without diminishing online freedoms
The storytelling arts and sciences have regularly evolved to keep up with the rising sophistication and expectations of our audiences. Similarly, if you are going to detect and respond to the outsider innovators and storytellers propagating targeted psychological manipulation tools including fake news, then you have to put in place technical and social processes that can also evolve to stay one step ahead of them, and that contribute to helping the average citizen make informed decisions based on reliable data.
The EU will publish a transcript of all of the speakers’ comments and will draft a high-level summary document to move their internal effort forward. They would like to continue seeking the input of the ETC@USC as their effort progresses.
One immediate result of Philip’s presentation in Brussels was a meeting with Dr. Antti Sillanpaa, the Branch Chief of the NATO Strategic Communications Operation, and his team. They were in Los Angeles as part of a ‘fake news’/’Russian meddling’ fact-finding tour of the west coast. Their tour included visits to the Rand Corp, Facebook, Google, Twitter, and other companies. The team met with Philip at the ETC for an hour on February 26th. The discussion continued the following night at a dinner at the Finnish Consulate, which the ETC’s Erick Moen also attended. Dr. Antti Sillanpaa and his team were impressed with the unique ‘Hollywood’ perspective that Philip and Erick brought to the discussion, and would like to loop back to them as their efforts progress.
The world of augmented reality has made incredible strides in recent years, and now USC students will be among the first to demo one of the most exciting apps in the field to date. Utilizing the burgeoning technology of AR, the new app Neon AR will make it easier to meet up with friends and navigate to points of interest. With its social-friendly interface, the app is designed to give users a fun experience that complements the practicality of the service it provides.
I thought to myself, ‘Wouldn’t it be amazing if we came back to this spot years later, with friends or kids, and I was able to open my phone and see a neon sign, saying this is where David camped on July 10, 2015?’” he said. “That was the genesis of it, the ability to expand a new layer on the world, and have a more engaging visceral connection with the physical world.”
Neon AR works by latching on to the user’s phone’s GPS signal, and then digitizing their real world location onto the phone with the onboard camera. When trying to find a user’s friend, the app positions a beacon that remains in place on the screen, allowing them to make their way over to them with the virtual aid. The user interface incorporates fun elements to enliven the experience, and make the on-screen world even more engaging.
Neon, a new app created by alumnus Dave Urbina, augments reality by allowing users to see virtual makers showing where their friends are and “shoot” 3D emojis at people with the app in close proximity. Photo courtesy of Dave Urbina.
Founder Dave Urbina attended USC, and said that conducting beta testing with students at his alma mater was an easy decision.
“The way that you interact in the app, you can shoot 3-D emojis at people,” Urbina said. “So I shoot emojis at Tim and he gets a push notification, so he opens his phone and turns in my direction, and they come zooming at him, and he can fire back.
Urbina sees the app becoming popular at massive gatherings such as Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, where meeting up with groups amid large crowds can often be difficult.
Harry Potter: Hogwarts Mystery is an upcoming mobile game from Jam City, the developers of Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff and Futurama: Worlds of Tomorrow. The game will see you create a character, Sims style, who starts the game by receiving a Hogwarts letter and then attends the school, just like Harry. You’ll get to choose your own house, Gryffindor, Slytherin, Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff, then receive “lessons” from teachers and interact with other students.
Harry Potter: Wizards Unite is an upcoming augmented reality mobile game from the creators ofPokemon GO, Niantic, in collaboration with Warner Bros.
On the website, Niantic promise that Harry Potter: Wizards Unite will reveal the “magic all around us”. Like Pokemon GO, you will explore ‘real-world’ areas to discover mysterious artefacts, cast spells, and “encounter legendary beasts”. The game will also include familiar faces from the series, so you can really feel like a part of the Hogwarts legacy.
To deliver on the film/book’s virtual vibe, the exterior of Brazos Hall will be transformed into the Stacks, the vertical trailer park where people live. Attendees will receive an RFID wristband, and enter the venue through Wade’s van, the protagonist’s hideout, and also experience a slice of the fantastical online world of the OASIS through both VR and physical installations.
Whereas in the past we may have primarily associated VR with video games, military and flight simulations, it has now found its place in several other professional and recreational activities. Some of those use AI algorithms and programs to operate and increase user experiences, flowing over into the workplace.