ABSTRACT
MIXED REALITY, INTERFACES AND KNOWLEDGE DISCOVERY
AT THE MARS EXPLORATORY MEDIA LAB
Jasminko Novak
MARS Exploratory Media Lab,
Fraunhofer Institute for Media Communication
The presentation will discuss the development of strategies for
building mixed reality environments and collaborative knowledge
spaces in projects at the MARS Exploratory Media Lab. On one
hand, the concept of Mixed Reality (MR) unfastens real-time
interactivity from immersive environments and integrates technologies
of media-based participation into processes which are localised in
real space. MR thus becomes a method by which real physical spaces
and intangible information spaces may be overlaid in space and time.
On the other hand, MR can be understood as a method for externalising
and connecting the perceived realities of different actors in a
shared social situation. The conceptual starting point for this is
the multi-layered interweaving of different reality levels which
function as reference systems in managing personally conditioned and
continually reshaped social constructions of reality.
In technologically mediated environments such construction of a given
reality is determined by the available means of interaction and
communication between the participants. In this context, the
role of unobtrusive interfaces, the interplay between body and space,
and the notion of "situation as interface" as models for
understanding and constructing MR environments will be discussed.
Furthermore, an approach to creating a collaborative knowledge space
based on discovering and visualising implicit knowledge structures
shared by a group of users will be outlined. The attempt is to chart
out the idea of a knowledge space as a notion referring not merely to
providing sophisticated ways of combining immaterial and material
aspects of "information"; but as a concept integrating
different forms of human experience in technologically mediated
social environments.
Maintained by rbennett@cs.ucl.ac.uk