Blog
Heist! at the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology
On Friday Heist software was used to show digital objects at the Opening of the "Look Close See Far: A Cultural Portrait of the Maya" exhibit opening at the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology. The digital objects were from the Maxwell's Mayan collection.
Heist is an experimental project that allows museum visitors to "steal" digital objects and put them on their iPhone, iPad, or Android device. You can learn more on Heist page on the Open Exhibits site. Congratulations to the Maxwell Museum for such a successful exhibit opening.
on Dec 5, 2011 NMC Horizon Report > 2011 Museum Edition
This is the latest from the New Media Consortium on technologies and their potential impact in museums. The final 2011 report can be found here. Interestingly, a draft PDF which included other topic areas has been widely circulated, the draft includes Gesture-Based Computing, which didn't appear in the final report.
Here's the description of the final report from the NMC website.
The NMC Horizon Report: 2011 Museum Edition, is a coproduction with the Marcus Institute for Digital Education in the Arts (MIDEA), and examines emerging technologies for their potential impact on and use in education and interpretation within the museum environment. The international composition of the advisory board reflects the care with which a global perspective for the report was assembled. While there are many local factors affecting the adoption and use of emerging technologies in museums, there are also issues that transcend regional boundaries and questions we all face. It was with this in mind that the report was created.
on Nov 28, 2011 New Free Kinect Software and Gigapixel Viewer Exhibit
We've just released a new version of the software package that is much easier to install and use. Check out TUIO Kinect Complete, it contains a single installer with all the necessary software to get started. It even includes an example of our Panoramic Viewer software. Of course, TUIO Kinect Complete can still be used with our Gigapixel Viewer software.
Our Kinect-based software has been very popular since we first released it last January. The new version should help with the issues that some of you had in working with the original software. We appreciate your patience and your feedback which directly led to this new version.
The other big news is that our Kinect and Gigapixel software appears in a new exhibit at The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose. This experimental application is part of the new Test Zone at The Tech. The exhibit uses a beautiful gigapixel photograph of Yosemite taken by xRez Studio.
The photo is from Test Zone opening at The Tech museum last week. There are more photos from the Test Zone at The Tech on the Open Exhibits Flickr site.
on Nov 21, 2011 MoPA's My Gallery Exhibit (Video)
The Museum of Photographic Arts (MoPA) has posted a video of their My Gallery exhibit. It shows the opening of the exhibit in Osaka, Japan. The software was developed with Open Exhibits.
The project involved MoPA, University of California San Diego, and the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) in Tokyo, Japan. An article on the project, UCSD Students Touch the Future in Collaboration with Museum of Photographic Arts is on the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology website.
on Nov 3, 2011 Open Exhibits on the Road: The British Museum
Last week we were in London showing off Open Exhibits software in the Samsung Digital Discovery Centre at the British Museum. Along with about 30 people from the British Museum, we had visitors from: Museum of London, Science Museum, the National Maritime Museum, Natural History, Victoria and Albert Museum, The Tate, University of Birmingham, among others. Commercial developers Cyan Animatica made the trip up from Sevilla, Spain and our partners from Sensus came in from the Netherlands.
We demonstrated the new Heist project and a version of the Kinect-based gigapixel viewer developed by Open Exhibits member Samuel Cox.
Heist is an experimental project that allows visits to "steal" digital objects from a multitouch table. For the demo we used a MT55 Platform table and visitors connected with iPhones, Android phones, and a few iPads and Android tablets that we provided. There were some interesting discussions about possible uses for Heist for wayfinding and as a method for creating social experiences for visitors. If you haven't seen this application action, please visit the Heist page on this site.
Visitors to the meetup also tried out the Kinect-based gigapixel viewer exhibit developed by Samuel Cox. The exhibit allows visitors to select a gigapixel image using a touch-pad on the floor. Visitors can then use gestures to pan and zoom the large format images. You can learn more about the exhibit and see a video by reading Samuel's blog post, Immersive Photography.
There are more photographs of the London meet up on the Open Exhibits Flickr site.
Next stop San Jose!
In two weeks, we will be showing Heist and a version of the Kinect gigapixel viewer at the Tech Museum in San Jose as part of the Interfaces for the New Decade one-day conference. You can learn more about this event by reading Bob Ketner's blog post, Upcoming conference - Interfaces for the New Decade - November 15, 2011. We hope to see some of you there.
on Nov 1, 2011 
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