I discussed the subject of QR codes and other hybrid reality systems briefly in a Kenan Institute Ethics “Good Question” brochure that was distributed on campus and online in Spring 2011. I attempted to push these questions a bit at the ACM SIGGRAPH 2011 conference in Vancouver, BC, where I created an augmented reality “tour” of the SIGGRAPH Art Gallery that paired art gallery installation pieces with local sites around the Vancouver Convention Center. This early experiment was a first step towards creating dialogic connections between related work an the local community.
The theoretical/critical/historical and social questions of digital places and spaces were the topic of a graduate seminar I taught in Fall 2011 – ISIS 260S/VMS 262S: Digital Places and Spaces. In 2011 the course was organized around the topic of “Digital Cities.” I hope to reprise the class in 2011-12 with a stronger emphasis on the “making” aspect of our study.The Digital Durham 3.0 project, in combination with work on digital cities in Bremen and Venice, will form the core practice component of that course/project stream.
We are also exploring the use of Panorama and Tour software to profile the Duke Hyperbaric Medicine Center as an experimental project focused in this case on recruitment of potential residents to Duke Medicine. Our goal is to use this project as a case study to develop techniques to create a different kind of interlinked, annotated hybrid reality experience. This will be of benefit to both GreaterThanGames and the Wired! Lab Digital City projects, including Visualizing Venice, Digital Durham 3.0, and, we hope, the Two Cities collaboration with Jacobs University in Bremen.
