All XR News @ ODL

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Cambridge, Mass. (October 29th, 2020) – Ten Indigenous media scholars and artists are headed to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)  — virtually —  next month for the inaugural Indigenous Digital Delegation at MIT. In a week-long series of gatherings, the delegation will share their current media and research works-in-progress with over 50 MIT scientists, staff, fellows and students. The theme of the gathering is Indigenous Knowledge, Artificial Intelligence and Digital Worlds. “This is an incredible opportunity for Indigenous

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To support the field, MIT Open Documentary Lab and Co-Creation Studio will begin offering pro bono virtual "office hours" for the emerging media and documentary community, starting with 10 available slots in November, December, and January, 2020-2021.  We are inspired by Field of Vision, who opened up a similar mentorship and consultation service earlier this year. Here are topics that we can provide consultation on for emergent media projects and research: Ideation and/or development Matching user experience/story

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Cambridge, Mass. (October 5th, 2020) — Last month, ODL Affiliate Jessica Clark and Carrie McLaren launched Making a New Reality: A Toolkit for Inclusive Media Futures, a project that updates and supplements Kamal Sinclair’s original research with recommendations and resources to help readers further diversity, equity, and inclusion in emerging media.  To celebrate the launch, we spoke with Jessica Clark about what the toolkit is and why she and Carrie McLaren created it.  For those unfamiliar, could

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July 23rd, 2020 Can you recognize a digitally manipulated video when you see one? It's harder than most people realize. As the technology to produce realistic "deepfakes" becomes more easily available, distinguishing fact from fiction will only get more challenging. A new digital storytelling project from MIT's Center for Advanced Virtuality aims to educate the public about the world of deepfakes with In Event of Moon Disaster (moondisaster.org).  The project is supported by the MIT Open Documentary

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By Amelia Winger-Bearskin, Mozilla Fellow at Co-Creation Studio Wampum.codes is my new podcast. It’s named after wampum, the craft of weaving beads into patterns that represent contracts and other agreements, and was practiced by my tribe (Seneca-Cayuga Haudenosaunee) for many years. Just like the craft that serves as its namesake, Wampum.codes is a recording of the stories, ideas, and wisdom that is collected through conversations with other native people. On the show, I interview people from my

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The MIT Open Documentary Lab brings storytellers, technologists, and scholars together to explore documentary forms and processes with a particular focus on collaborative, interactive, and immersive storytelling using emerging technologies. Join the conversation at our weekly lecture series on Tuesdays at 12pm*! For detailed descriptions of each talk, please follow the weekly announcements by email, on our website, and/or on social media. * Week of 4/28 -Talk moved to 12:30pm In case you're not able to attend in person,

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January 23rd, 2020 Artificial Intelligence (AI) is everywhere – from the photo enhancer in your smartphone to Alexa, the virtual assistant in your kitchen. But what is AI? Aside from the constant promises and expectations for the future, what does it mean to try to emulate human intelligence? OpenDocLab Fellow and MIT Visiting Scholar Sandra Rodriguez is the creator of Chomsky vs. Chomsky: First Encounter, a 10-minute prologue to a VR experience produced by the National Film

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November 22nd, 2019                     In Event of Moon Disaster, an immersive installation that reimagines the story of the moon landing co-created by Halsey Burgund and Francesca Panetta, is having its worldwide premiere today at the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA). Burgund is a Fellow at the MIT Open Documentary Lab, and Panetta is Creative Director at the MIT Center for Advanced Virtuality. The project was selected for the IDFA DocLab Competition for Digital Storytelling, and is also

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                    ODL Fellow Rashin Fahandej’s project “A Father’s Lullaby” is currently featured in the 2019 installment of the ICA biennial James and Audrew Foster Prize exhibition highlighting the work of Boston-area artists. Fahandej is one of four 2019 Foster Prize winners, an intergenerational group of artists working across media including painting, sculpture, film, and video to explore questions of place, portraiture, and belonging.  “A Father’s Lullaby” is a multi-platform, multi-year community-engaged project that investigates and reflects

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Cambridge, Mass. (Aug. 21 2019) — At the 76th Venice International Film Festival, the Co-Creation Studio at MIT Open Documentary Lab will celebrate the festival launch of its ground-breaking field study, entitled Collective Wisdom. At a panel and reception called Collective Wisdom on VR Island, the studio will showcase three Virtual Reality projects from the official Venice Virtual Reality program, to highlight the significance of co-creative practices in contemporary media-making, practices of creation that live

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On Friday, May 31st at the 2019 Augmented World Expo, ODL Fellows Kathy Bisbee and Charity Everett were announced as this year’s Nextant prize winners by the Virtual World Society. The Virtual World Society awards The Nextant to influential leaders who use compassion to guide their contributions to emerging tech and society. According to the Virtual World Society website, “‘Nextant’ is a term coined by VWS founder Tom Furness to describe a way to guide our

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Manic VR, a virtual reality documentary on mental illness and bipolar disorder produced and co-directed by MIT Open Documentary Lab Fellow and CMSW Lecturer Sandra Rodriguez and directed by Kalina Bertin, has won the prestigious Ars Electronica Golden Nica Award for Best Computer Animation! The Prix Ars Electronica is the world’s most time-honored media arts competition. Winners are awarded the coveted Golden Nica statuette, prize money ranging up to € 10,000 per category and an opportunity

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The time between semesters is an opportunity to reach out and engage with MIT and local communities. The lab ran a session with Innovators for Purpose on Saturday, February 3rd. Innovators for Purpose is a "Student-Centered Creative Exploration of Design, Science, Technology & Entrepreneurship.”  IfP develops creative and technical skills in kids from Cambridge-based under-represented communities so that they not only gain experience innovating but begin to think of themselves as future participants in the innovation economy, currently mostly a

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Originally posted on MIT News: School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences Publication Date: May 31, 2018   One of the newest makerspaces on MIT’s campus exists in virtual reality — where students are pioneering a medium so new that the terminology is still being defined. In the hands-on humanities class CMS.339 (Virtual Reality and Immersive Media Production) students are grappling with multiple dimensions of making virtual reality (VR), among them: technical challenges, such as how to prevent the fatigue common to

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The Enemy by Open Doc Lab alumnus Karim Ben Khelifa, a groundbreaking interactive Virtual Reality (VR) exhibition and immersive experience, makes its North American premiere at the MIT Museum. Through 360-degree imaging and recordings, participants will encounter combatants on opposite sides of conflicts in Israel/Palestine, the Congo, and El Salvador. In their own words, each will offer personal perspectives on war, including thoughts on motivations, suffering, freedom, and the future. The exhibition incorporates concepts from artificial intelligence

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We are proud to announce our fellow Anandana Kapur’s outstanding achievements at The Reality Virtually Hackathon hosted by the MIT Media Lab. Anandana was awarded the Leader Award for leading a diverse team with integrity and initiative from over 400 hackers. Anandana and her team #ARound won the AR and VR for Good and Education Award for their AR navigational app for the visually impaired and are selected 2nd best in the Mobile Hack category. Congratulations to Anandana and

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Open Doc Lab fellow Callum Cooper was selected to participate in Sundance Institute’s New Frontier Story Lab with his work-in-progress project Porton Down. We interviewed him about his experience. OpenDocLab: Can you tell me about Porton Down? What is it about? What are the techniques and technologies you are using?  Callum: I have been developing this project through my MIT Open Documentary Lab fellowship so its great to expand that support now with Sundance. The project is a room-scale VR piece that

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Codes & Modes: ReFraming Reality, Virtuality & Non-Fiction Media aims to create an intervention into the uncritical excitement about virtual reality, augmented reality, artificial intelligence and machine learning to establish a space for conversations about long-term socio-cultural and neurobiological impacts. Presenters will discuss how theorists, activists and artists can develop useful frameworks to explore the complex implications of using these emerging technologies. Featured speakers include Lev Manovich (Director of the Cultural Analytics Lab, CUNY Grad

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Offered in Spring 2017 in conjunction with the MIT class Hacking VR, Hacking VR Speaker Series is presented by the MIT Open Documentary Lab and the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology. The series is free and open to the public. Reservations recommended.

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This coming semester, Open Documentary Lab's William Uricchio, Sandra Rodriguez and Deniz Tortum will be teaching the Hacking VR course at the Comparative Media Studies department. Course Description Mens et manus

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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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Open Documentary Lab Director Sarah Wolozin was featured in Indiewire's Movie Lovers We Love column. In the interview, Wolozin talked about the MIT OpenDocLab and the interactive documentary field at large. There are so many of these emerging technologies impacting how we experience stories -- non-fiction stories in particular," Wolozin told Indiewire. "We don't sit back and watch them. We are using multiple screens; we are living in a participatory culture where people are making their

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Christine Walley and Chris Boebel are working on an online interactive documentary as part of the transmedia Exit Zero Project. The project also includes an award-winning book Exit Zero: Family and Class in Post-Industrial Chicago (University of Chicago Press, 2013) and a long form documentary film Exit Zero: An Industrial Family Story currently in the final stages of post-production. The interactive documentary website, conceived in conjunction with ODL, is being created in partnership with the Southeast Chicago Historical Museum. The website is

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