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| Introduction / Preliminary Research / IDEAS & CONTENT / The Project: Curious Displays / Project Development / Experiential Prototype / Conclusion |
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UNDERSTANDING DISPLAYS A large part of my thesis work focused on an expression of the communicative affordances offered by display systems in and through physical space. I was largely drawn to notions of augmentation, of mixed-media interfaces and the role that current display technology took on given these visions of future models of interaction. I conducted research on an array of different display systems, from high-resolution to completely low-resolution, from handheld to building-sized. The different displays, mounted or mobile, all share a fundamental characteristic—they are all fixed-size/ratio surfaces. Further research led me into study of existing paradigms in mixed / augmented reality. Mixed Reality (MR) (encompassing both augmented reality and augmented virtuality) refers to the merging of real and virtual worlds to produce new environments and visualisations where physical and digital objects co-exist and interact in real time. A mix of reality, augmented reality, augmented virtuality and virtual reality. A survey of mixed reality projects revealed a majority of work done in the form of a digital interface overlay as a supplementation to physical objects and space. Take, for example: Augmented Reality Heads-Up Display Head-Mounted Display / Eyewear Display These definitions provided a foundation for my developing research work. There were aspects that were particularly interesting to me about the different mixed reality models, most notably, the social context, or rather, lack of social context, in each of the examples. The Heads-Up Display can be super practical in very defined scenarios. In a airplane cockpit, for instance, a heads up display could prove invaluable to a driver. Similarly, augmented reality, as exemplified by years of motion picture work and recently by the new Yelp! iPhone application, has proven both durable as a concept and practical in the real world. These applications are extremely situational and use-driven, i.e., a user needs information about a specific thing in their line of sight, and an augmented / mixed reality display provides the relevant information on command. Interaction with these mixed-reality interfaces is largely isolated, with a single person looking through his own heads up display or through his own augmented reality device. There is very little room for collaborative discussion or shared experience. This is particularly evident when we get to the head-mounted display. Imagine a world where everyone is walking around wearing a digital head-mounted display over his or her face, in semi-isolation, seeing the world through his or her own digital lens. |
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CURIOUS DISPLAYS. Copyright 2009. Media Design Program, Art Center College of Design. About Julia Tsao. Acknowledgements & Thanks.