XR Events @ ODL

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In conversation (online) with: Nonny de la Peña Tuesday | October 13, 2020 | 12PM – 1:30PM EST Watch the lecture. The Body is Along for the Ride: The power and considerations of embodiment in constructing extended reality stories Nonny de la Peña, PhD, will discuss some of the key considerations about the experience of the body in constructing extended reality stories including the embodied edit, duality of presence, and spatial narratives. Looking back at her early career as a

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In conversation (online) with: Robert Hernandez Tuesday | September 15, 2020 | 12PM – 1:30PM ET Watch the lecture. JOVRNALISM: Hijacking a Dancing Hot Dog for the Future of Journalism JOVRNALISM is a production course created and led by Professor Robert Hernandez, where they use emerging tech to tell award-winning, innovative non-fiction stories. Their goal is to inspire the journalism industry to embrace the next disruption by leading the next disruption, whether that is through 360 video, augmented reality, virtual reality,

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In conversation (online) with: Halsey Burgund and Francesca Panetta Tuesday | May 5, 2020 | 12PM – 1:30PM ET | Zoom ID 963-0294-0569 Watch the lecture. Audio Augmented Reality in times of social distancing Halsey Burgund and Francesca Panetta have been working in Audio AR for over a decade. Much of their work is geo-located: site specific work where participants can hear audio relative to physical space as they move through it. But what does that mean and how could that work in

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In conversation (online) with: Glenn Cantave and Idris Brewster Tuesday | March 31, 2020 | 12PM – 1:30PM ET | Zoom ID 861-996-013 Watch the lecture. Augmented Reality for Education and Activism Glenn Cantave and Idris Brewster run Movers & Shakers NYC, a nonprofit that uses augmented reality (AR) to highlight underrepresented narratives in public spaces, classrooms, and cultural institutions. Their talk will unpack their advocacy efforts and two of their initiatives: The Monuments Project (a digital catalog of AR monuments of

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In conversation with: John Fitzgerald and Matthew Niederhauser Tuesday | March 10, 2020 | 12:00 – 1:30 PM MIT Open Documentary Lab | E15-318 MIT Campus, Wiesner Building, 20 Ames Street, 3rd Floor, Cambridge MA 02142 Watch the lecture. The Experiential Dynamics of Capturing Reality This talk will survey the creative possibilities of emerging XR technologies and how they are shaping projects produced by Sensorium, an experiential studio based in New York. Sensorium draws from a diverse background of influences, including journalism,

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In conversation with: Steye Hallema Tuesday | February 11, 2020 | 12:00 – 1:30 PM MIT Open Documentary Lab | E15-318 MIT Campus, Wiesner Building, 20 Ames Street, 3rd Floor, Cambridge MA 02142 Telling Stories with The Smartphone Orchestra Developed by creative director Steye Hallema and WildVreemd, The Smartphone Orchestra is an orchestra in which anywhere from ten to thousands of smartphones are synchronised to potentially form the biggest orchestra in the world. An orchestra in which every participant’s smartphone plays

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In conversation with: David Green Tuesday | October 29th, 2019 | 12:00 – 1:30 PM MIT Open Documentary Lab | E15-318 MIT Campus, Wiesner Building, 20 Ames Street, 3rd Floor, Cambridge MA 02142 Watch the lecture. Who says VR is a good platform for nonfiction? The last five years have seen a turn towards immersion within documentary. However, while there has been enthusiasm for VR nonfiction among early-adopters, art curators and academics, there has not been much audience research with wider publics, and the case

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In conversation with: Jilann Spitzmiller and Lauren Cason Tuesday | October 22nd, 2019 | 12:00 – 1:30 PM MIT Open Documentary Lab | E15-318 MIT Campus, Wiesner Building, 20 Ames Street, 3rd Floor, Cambridge MA 02142 Watch the lecture. Immersive Documentary: Pushing the Boundaries of the Documentary Viewing Experience Join us for a talk by Jilann Spitzmiller and Lauren Cason of Meow Wolf, a Santa Fe-based arts and entertainment group that creates unique immersive art experiences. Spitzmiller will discuss the documentary Meow

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In conversation with: Michelle Cortese Tuesday | October 15th, 2019 | 12:00 – 1:30 PM MIT Open Documentary Lab | E15-318 MIT Campus, Wiesner Building, 20 Ames Street, 3rd Floor, Cambridge MA 02142 Watch the lecture. Designing Respect for Virtual Reality Virtual reality designers accept the ethical responsibilities of removing a user’s entire world and replacing it with a reality of their own creation. These unique challenges are intensified when virtual experiences become public and socially-driven. As a female VR designer in

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In conversation with: Graham Sack Tuesday | April 16th | 12:00 – 1:30 PM MIT Open Documentary Lab | E15-318 MIT Campus, Wiesner Building, 20 Ames Street, 3rd Floor, Cambridge MA 02142 Watch the lecture. Narrative Fiction in Virtual and Augmented Reality Through a series of case studies based on recent projects, this talk will examine the unique opportunities and challenges for narrative fictional storytelling in virtual and augmented reality. Projects to be discussed include: Lincoln in the Bardo (NYT VR), The

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In conversation with: Cory McLeod Tuesday | April 9th | 12:00 – 1:30 PM MIT Open Documentary Lab | E15-318 MIT Campus, Wiesner Building, 20 Ames Street, 3rd Floor, Cambridge MA 02142 Watch the lecture. Perkons: A VR Rockumentary In 1981, a band from Latvia took on the Soviet establishment with homemade instruments, a 2 KW sound system and a hard rock sound. The Soviet authorities banned Perkons twice, put their fans on trial and tried to force the band into exile.

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In conversation with: Yelena Rachitsky and Isabel Tewes Hacking XR Speaker Series Monday | April 8th | 1:30 – 2:30 PM MIT Open Documentary Lab | E15-318 MIT Campus, Wiesner Building, 20 Ames Street, 3rd Floor, Cambridge MA 02142 Creating Immersive Experiences With Humans In Mind Rethinking the rules of immersive storytelling. Representing reality is not just about "looking real". It is about how we design, create and share with human knowledge, feelings and senses. Immersive storytelling at Oculus has evolved from

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In conversation with: Doug Trumbull Hacking XR Speaker Series Monday | April 1st | 6:00 – 8:00 PM MIT Open Documentary Lab | E14 LH-633 MIT Campus, 75 Amherst Street, 6th Floor, Cambridge MA 02142 Watch the lecture. Memories From the Future of Immersion To think about where we are heading next with extended and immersive reality, stepping back in time may be an inspiration to better step forward. Doug Trumbull is an immersive media pioneer, a filmmaker and a visual effects visionary.

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            In conversation with: Eliza McNitt and Jess Engel Tuesday | March 5th | 12:00 – 1:30 PM MIT Open Documentary Lab | E15-318 MIT Campus, Wiesner Building, 20 Ames Street, 3rd Floor, Cambridge MA 02139 Building Worlds Immersive experiences have evolved, ranging from passive, observant, interactive and multi-user…But how does one create immersive worlds that are simultaneously compelling, immersive and comfortable for a user to visit? What about interaction design? Pacing? Music and tone? What about aesthetics and narrative approaches?

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In conversation with: Zahra Rasool Tuesday | February 26th | 12:30 – 2:00 PM MIT Open Documentary Lab | E15-318 MIT Campus, Wiesner Building, 20 Ames Street, 3rd Floor, Cambridge MA 02139 Still Here Zahra Rasool will talk about her project, Still Here, an interactive VR + AR experience about incarceration, gentrification and Afro futurism set in Harlem. Zahra Rasool is the Head of Contrast— Al Jazeera’s immersive media studio where she focuses on the production of compelling 360-degree video,

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In conversation with: Gabo Arora Hacking XR Speaker Series Tuesday | February 19th | 1:30 – 3:00 PM MIT Open Documentary Lab | E15-318 MIT Campus, Wiesner Building, 20 Ames Street, 3rd Floor, Cambridge MA 02139 Pioneering Emerging Media How does one create compelling and relevant immersive experiences? VR/AR are quickly expanding. In less than 4 years, this nascent field has seen focus shift from 360 videos, to interactive CGI immersive worlds, to 6 degrees of freedom and explorations of AI.

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In conversation with: Dave Maass and Laura Schatzkin Tuesday | December 11th | 12:00 – 1:30 PM MIT Open Documentary Lab | E15-318 MIT Campus, Wiesner Building, 20 Ames Street, 3rd Floor, Cambridge MA 02139 Watch the lecture. Spot the Surveillance: How EFF Is Using VR to Take on Big Brother The Electronic Frontier Foundation's Spot the Surveillance project is a virtual reality (VR) experience that teaches people how to identify the various spying technologies that police may deploy in communities, including body

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In conversation with: Lisa Osborne Tuesday | December 4th | 12:00 – 1:30 PM MIT Open Documentary Lab | E15-318 MIT Campus, Wiesner Building, 20 Ames Street, 3rd Floor, Cambridge MA 02139 Encouraging Black Participation in VR: The Role of Gatekeepers In April 2018, Black Public Media,  a 40-year-old arts nonprofit that supports black filmmakers and funds black films, hosted its first AR and VR showcase. That event kicked off BPM's entry into emerging media, overall, and its mission to increase

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In conversation with:  Kathy Trogolo - More Than a Gallery: XR as the Vehicle for Confidence and Creativity in Middle School and Beyond Tuesday | October 23rd | 12:00 – 1:30 PM MIT Open Documentary Lab | E15-318 MIT Campus, Wiesner Building, 20 Ames Street, 3rd Floor, Cambridge MA 02139 Kathy Trogolo will present and discuss the process and outcomes of a recent VR project co-designed with a local Girls Who Code Club. In this project, middle school students learned about

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In conversation with: Fran Panetta: Working with emerging media in a 200-year-old newspaper Tuesday | October 9th | 12:00 – 1:30 PM MIT Open Documentary Lab | E15-318A MIT Campus, Wiesner Building, 20 Ames Street, 3rd Floor, Cambridge MA 02139 How do you incorporate the latest technologies into an old newspaper? How do you explore new storytelling possibilities into newsrooms with established and sometimes inflexible practices? Francesca Panetta moved to the Guardian 12 years ago at the dawn of

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In conversation with: Rus Gant Tuesday | September 25th | 12:00 – 1:30 PM MIT Open Documentary Lab | E15-318 MIT Campus, Wiesner Building, 20 Ames Street, 3rd Floor, Cambridge MA 02139 Watch the lecture. Rus Gant is a well-regarded international multi-media artist, computer engineer and educator. Currently on the Research staff at Harvard University and the teaching faculty at Tokyo’s Showa Women's University he is currently pursuing work in the future of real-time immersive computer graphics, including virtual reality, augmented

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In conversation with: Fred Volhuer - New Challenges in Distribution Tuesday | May 8th | 12:00 – 1:30 PM MIT Open Documentary Lab | E15-318A MIT Campus, Wiesner Building, 20 Ames Street, 3rd Floor, Cambridge MA 02139 Watch the lecture. VR is still in its infancy, but it’s taking flight quickly. What should pioneers consider when exploring, producing, and distributing this new medium? This year has been a game changer in the distribution of immersive media content. From the popularization of

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In conversation with Lecturer: Viktor Phoenix, HeadSpace Studio Tuesday | March 20 | 12:00 – 1:30 PM MIT Open Documentary Lab | E15-318A MIT Campus, Wiesner Building, 20 Ames Street, 3rd Floor, Cambridge MA 02139 Watch the lecture. Some say sound is 50% of immersion in VR but also AR and XR. How does it translate to new platforms? How should we think of music, sound, audio and texture in immersive media productions? With it’s patented sound design, HeadSpace Studio has

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  In conversation with: Hyphen-Labs, Ida Ely Rubin Artists in Residence at MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology Tuesday | February 27 | 12:00 – 1:30 PM MIT Open Documentary Lab | E15-318A MIT Campus, Wiesner Building, 20 Ames Street, 3rd Floor, Cambridge MA 02139 Watch the lecture. Whose Story? VR/AR/XR are always presented as extending and augmenting the way we perceive the world. From the empathy machine narrative to the “portal to somewhere else” promises, storytellers are also redefining culture through

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This talk brings together artists Kim Albrecht, Matthew Battles, Rachel Kalmar & Sarah Newman, Maia Leandra Suazo-Maler, and Jonathan Sun from metaLAB’s August 2017 exhibition Machine Experience at Harvard Art Museum. The possibilities of AI long seemed futuristic and far-fetched. Now, however, the impact of AI technology is felt in every aspect of public and private life, with results ranging from the delightful to the disturbing. At the same time, discourse about these advances is mostly limited to

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Karim Ben Khelifa returns to the Open Documentary Lab to talk about the final iteration of his groundbreaking interactive Virtual Reality (VR) exhibition and immersive experience “The Enemy.” The project was incubated at the Open Documentary Lab and MIT’s Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST) and developed in collaboration with MIT Professor D. Fox Harrell. It is currently being exhibited at the MIT Museum. Through 360-degree imaging and recordings, “The Enemy” offers encounters with combatants

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FRONTLINE has spent the last three years exploring how they can bring its journalism to life in new ways through VR. How might it feel to be locked up in a cell that measures 15 feet by 6 feet – where the cement cot takes up nearly a quarter of the floor space? What is it like to live in a place where civil war has forced you to leave your home? Where you must walk

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On Thursday 10/19 at 12pm, we will welcome CMS/W alum Ainsley Sutherland to Open Doc Lab! Ainsley Sutherland is a media technologist and researcher working in immersive computing and human-computer interaction design. She is a cofounder of Mediate, a company that enables collaboration in and analysis of 3D environments. Her project Voxhop is a 2017 j360 Challenge winner, funded by the Knight Foundation and Google News Lab. She was a 2016 fellow at the BuzzFeed Open Lab,

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On Tuesday 10/10 at 12pm, Hyphen Labs will be followed by Allan Adams, physicist and PI of the Future Ocean Lab at MIT. Allan Adams earned degrees in physics form Harvard, Berkeley, and Stanford, and spent three years in the Harvard Society of Fellows, before joining the faculty of the MIT Dept of Physics in 2008. Along the way, Adams developed a passion for ocean conservation and photography; his documentary work and art have been exhibited at the

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Join us for a talk by Hyphen Labs on Tuesday 10/10 at 10:00am! Hyphen-Labs is an international team of women of color working at the intersection of technology, art, science, and the future. Through our global vision and unique perspectives we are driven to create meaningful and engaging ways to explore emotional, human-centered and speculative design. In the process we challenge conventions and stimulate conversations, placing collective needs and experiences at the center of evolving narratives. Bios: ​Ece Tankal is

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Join us this Thursday at 12pm for a talk by Sultan Sharrief, a trans-media activist, filmmaker, educator, and social entrepreneur. Sharrief’s interest lies at the intersection of art, business, and community impact. His directorial debut, Bilal’s Stand, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2010 in the inaugural program of the NEXT category. He was a two-year fellow at the National Center for Institutional Diversity to further develop his Detroit youth program and study ways media impacted

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Join us for a talk by Isabelle Anouk Bourduas from MinorityVR on May 8 at 12pm at the Open Doc Lab! About the Speaker: After obtaining her MFA in Film Production from The American Film Institute, Isabelle Anouk Bourduas spent five years producing independent feature films in Los Angeles. She returned to Montreal to produce live television for Just For Laughs. Shortly after, she became Head of Production for Cineflix where she supervised numerous international documentary series for Discovery’s and National

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We are coming to an end in our Hacking VR Speaker Series. It was an honor to host Vincent Morisset, Brian Chirls, Karen Vanderborght, Arnaud Colinart, Eloi Champagne, Vicki Ferguson & Olivier Palmieri this semester and pick their brain on VR production, ethics, distribution, and more! If you missed the talks, don't worry, watch the lecture videos here. The series is coming to an end this Tuesday at 12pm with a talk by Jessica Brillhart, the principal filmmaker

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Rus Gant is a well-regarded international 3D artist, computer engineer and educator. Currently on the Research staff at Harvard University and the faculty at Tokyo’s Showa Women’s University, he is currently pursuing work in the future of real-time 3D computer graphics and virtual reality. He is the Director of the Visualization Research and Teaching Laboratory at Harvard and the Lead Technical artist for the Giza 3D project at Harvard reconstructing the pyramids, temples and tombs

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On April 4 at 12pm, Nieman Foundation fellow Sandra Barrón Ramírez, and María Laura Ruggiero and Gia Castello from StoryHackers will be at Open Documentary Lab to discuss their recent work. SeirenFilms is a transmedia storytelling and experiential design company based in Argentina. Ranging from Film to VR, from documentaries to interactive installations, this lab explores new narratives in the digital universe combining a passion for stories and poetry and a love for tech and a human approach

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How does our brain react to VR? How can neurobiology help us tell more effective stories? What can scientists learn from VR storytelling? And how do creative VR makers work with scientists to push the limits of immersive experiences? What are the affordances and impact of VR from narrative and scientific perspectives? This interdisciplinary panel brings together VR creators whose stories focus on real human lived conditions, Arnaud Colinart of Notes on Blindness and Kalina Bertin of

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Julia Yezbick is a Detroit-based filmmaker, artist, and anthropologist who received her PhD in Media Anthropology and Critical Media Practice from Harvard University in 2016. Her work has been shown at international festivals and venues including the Berlinale--Forum Expanded, MOMA PS1’s print shop, the New York Library for Performing Arts, the Ann Arbor Film Festival, Mostra Internacional do Filme Etnográfico (Rio de Janeiro), the Montreal Ethnographic Film Festival, and at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit.

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On Tuesday, Feb 21 at 12pm, Harvard metaLAB's Sarah Newman, Jessica Yurkofsky and Matthew Battles will visit Open Documentary Lab to present their project TRUST (the presence of secrets). This event is open to public. TRUST (the presence of secrets) What are the personal, cultural, and political implications of digital correspondence? Into whose hands might our secrets fall? TRUST (the presence of secrets) is an interactive installation designed by Sarah Newman and Jessica Yurkofsky from metaLAB at Harvard.

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#Mickey directed by Betzabé García and designed by Gibrann Morgado #Mickey is a multi-platform project, that is conformed by a linear documentary that makes an intersection within an interactive app of AR and WebVR technologies. It tells the story of Mickey, a gender fluid Youtube celebrity from Sinaloa, Mexico. Mickey found in social media a platform where he can explore his sexual identity and deal with the deep homophobia of his environment. Mickey’s story is about the perpetual

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Cagri Zaman, Nil Tuzcu and Deniz Tortum will discuss their project September 55 at  ODL. September 55 is a 10-minute virtual-reality documentary of the Istanbul Pogrom, a government-initiated organized attack on the minorities of Istanbul on September6-7, 1955. This interactive installation places the viewer in a reconstructed photography studio in the midst of the pogrom, allowing one to witness the events from the perspective of a local shop-owner. Drawing on the photographic archive of Maryam Sahinyan (1911-1996) and Osep Minasoglu (1929-2013), Armenian photographers who

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Our recent conference brought together scholars, technologists, and artists from around the globe to discuss the language, implications, and future of virtual reality and documentary. VR is capturing the imagination of documentary storytellers, journalists, artists, technologists and investors all over the world. An industry is emerging. Yet for all of its enthusiasts, VR has its skeptics. For all it is talked about, VR can be deeply misunderstood. Virtual reality means many things to many people: an immersive

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A work in progress presentation on Wander, Wonder, Wilderness, an interactive documentary project designed to promote a deeper understanding of urban green spaces and the exploration of relationships between humans, community and nature. Project Director Paul Turano and members of his team will present selected scenes from the film, conceptual designs for the interactive components, conduct a Q+A, and enlist audience feedback.

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Join us for a presentation and discussion with transmedia producers Todd Melby, Julia Kumari-Drapkin, and Ken Eklund, 3 of the 12 producers who led AIR's nation-wide Localore initiative. They will discuss their projects and experiences using social media, crowdsourcing, games and other methods of working with communities to tell stories Localore is a public media initiative produced by Boston-based AIR, Inc., incubating "full spectrum" media projects at 10 radio and television stations across the U.S. designed

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