JumboScope: A Site-Specific Installation and Platform

May 1, 2001
12:30 pm - 1:30 pm
Halligan 106
Speaker: Andruid Kerne and JumboScope Group, Visiting Professor Tufts University
Host:

Abstract

Members of Comp 150-PWI has operated as a virtual high-tech startup. We have collaborated to create the site specific interactive multimedia JumboScope installation in Tufts University Dowling Hall. JumboScope uses Kerne's CollageMachine to build interactive multimedia collages, from the community's digital media, on a large, touch sensitive display. You can bring your own media into the installation via the web site, http://jumboscope.eecs.tufts.edu. The installation will remain open weekdays, 9 - 5, at least through the end of this term. JumboScope works with the immediate social space of its surroundings, using motion sensors and video. It experiments with intentional and accidental human computer interaction, as it explores tensions between democracy, promotion, surveillance, and censorship in public space. People who attend express their interests by directly interacting with the visualization. Through these interactions, the installation's agent learns about attendees' interests. It forms a model that functions as a collective memory, aggregating the interests of people who attend the installation. Along with the community's media, the agent model is stored in the JumboScope media repository. This 3-tiered web application system employs Oracle database and Java Servlet technologies. In this talk we will explain the media repository's architecture and mechanisms. JumboScope is based upon Professor Kerne's international award- winning CollageMachine research. CollageMachine has been featured in festivals, conferences, events, and exhibitions including ISEA in Paris, Milia in Cannes, The New York Digital Salon, and ACM SIGCHI. It is currently on display at the University of Valladolid in Spain, as well as in Tufts University Dowling Hall. Later this year, it will be exhibited in London and Bejing, and featured at SIGGRAPH in Los Angeles.