Let's Get Visual: Visual Communication with Smartphones, Getty's Open Content, Art Everywhere and Visual Perception Research

Let's Get Visual....

It difficult to imagine a world without Instagram, Flickr, YouTube, Pinterest or Facebook photo-sharing.  According to a press release from ABI Research in 2012, over one billion cameras were shipped in smartphones and tablets.  Never before has it been this easy to shoot and share pictures and video clips in-the-moment.   Why talk on the phone for twenty minutes with one person when you can share a (visual) moment with your entire extended family and network of friends, colleagues, and acquaintances with just one touch?

We are communicating in ways that were not possible a decade ago.

Qmee, a online search rewards company, put together an infographic to show what transpires on-line in just 60 seconds. 72 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube. 20 million photos are viewed on flickr. 104,000 photos are shared on snapchat, and 3,600 photos are uploaded every second to Instagram.

Credit: Qmee

According to a 2012 study published by the Pew Internet & American Life project, 46% of adult Internet users took pictures or videos and posted them on line. 41% reported that they found photos or videos online, and then re-posted them to share with others.  If you have a Facebook account, you know that there are people who delight in taking digital content sharing to the next level. Websites such as the Programmable Web's Mashup Dashboard and Know Your Meme are examples of this trend. 

Getty Museum's Open Content Program

The Getty Museum recently launched the Open Content Program with a release of about 4,600 high-resolution images of all public domain artworks in the museum's collection, free for anyone to use, modify, or publish.  The Getty plans to release more images in the future. The images can be accessed via the Getty Search Gateway. 

Here is the motivation behind the release of Getty's digital content:

"Why open content?  Why now?  The Getty was founded on the conviction that understanding art makes the world a better place, and sharing our digital resources is the natural extension of that belief.  This move is also an educational imperative.  Artists, students, teachers, writers, and countless others rely on artwork images to learn, tell stories, exchange ideas, and feed their own creativity.  In its discussion of open content, the most recent Horizon Report, Museum Edition stated "it is now the mark-and social responsibility-of world class institutions to develop and share fee cultural and educational resources."" 


It will be interesting to see how this trend unfolds.  We are now past the clip-art era.

Art Everywhere

"Its all about flooding our streets with art this summer, and turning the UK into the world's largest art gallery" -Richard Reed

Art Everywhere was launched in the UK on August 12th and ends on August 25th of this year (2013).  The art is on display in public spaces on thousands of billboards and digital screens across the UK,  as well as on buses and cabs.  The art was chosen by the public, and the project was funded by the project's sponsors and donations.  

Photos of the artwork chosen for the Art Everywhere exhibition, along with related information about each selection, can be viewed on the Art Everywhere website. Richard Reed, who spearheaded Art Everywhere, provides an overview in the video below:

All of the Art Everywhere posters can come to life with when viewed through a smartphone. Using the free Blippar app, the viewer can scan the poster with the smartphone's camera to access more information about the artwork.  Viewers are encouraged to enter the Art Everywhere photo competition by taking pictures of the outdoor exhibition to win a camera, daily prizes.

Art Everywhere's partners include the Reed Page Foundation, the ArtFund, Tate, Posterscope, Vizeum, 101/   EasyArt, Blippar, Arts Media People, Clear Channel, CBS Outdoor, JCDecaux, Ocean, and Primesight

Neuroscience Research: Visual Perception Process

"The brain is plastic for life" .-Michael Merzenich*

There have been concerns that the internet and new technologies might have a significant impact, good or bad, on the human brain and child development, as discussed by a panel held at the University of Colorado Annual Conference on World Affairs.  

The good news is that neuroscientists have new technologies to explore how the brain works. We have evidence to support that our brains have more plasticity as we age than previously thought. Since the technology use in brain research is so new, it might be a while before we will know what exactly happens when our brains are "on the internet".

Theories of how the brain functions are changing as new discoveries are made. One example of this is the work of Dr. Randy Bruno, a neuroscientist at Columbia University's Kalvi Institute for Brain Science.  He has discovered that in rats, signals about sensory information are processed simultaneously in two parts of the cortex, as separate circuits.  The upper layers of the cortex might be integrating sensation with context or experience, as described in the following video:

Dr. Bruno's research aims to understand how experience causes structural changes in the brain. His research shows that neuronal connections between the thalamus and the cortex are very plastic and responsive. Although he studies brain functioning in rats, the cortical systems are similar to other mammals, including humans.

"The key is to be actively engaged in a task and that there be meaningful elaboration on the information taken in at higher levels in order to maintain associations between different pieces of information. Such active engagement, as opposed to passive acquisition of what we experience with our senses, may enhance changes in the brain." - Randy Bruno*

From what I can see, it might be good for us to accessing the web via smartphones to engage in social visual communication activities.  If we are excited by a visually-based experience, and share it with others, or if we take in visual information and use it to create a mashup, and send it out for others to enjoy, our brains are actively engaged. If the neuroscientists are right, we aren't really wasting our time online.  

We are growing dendrites!

RELATED

The Fantastic Plastic Brain*
The Kavli Foundation, 7/12

Study Advances New Theory of How the Brain Is Wired
Claudia Wallace, Columbia University Research, 6/27/13

The Internet and the Human Brain Panel (Video-1 hour, 14 minutes)
University of Colorado Annual Conference on World Affairs

Instagram at the Museum: Communicating the Museum Experience through Social Photo Sharing Alexandra Weilenmann, Thomas Hillman, Beata Junselius, CHI 2013, ACM

Open Content, An Idea Whose Time Has Come
James Cuno, The Getty Iris, 8/12/13

Getty Search Gateway

Horizon Report 2012 Museum Edition





Blippar Brings World's Largest Art Exhibition 'Art Everywhere' to Life
Blippar News Release, 8/8/13

Art Everywhere turns UK's streets into world's largest art show
Caroline Davies, The Guardian, 8/8/13

The Rise of Visual Socialization
The Halo Group Effect, 2013

The Unstoppable Trend of Visual Communications
David Amerland, HP InputOutput, 2/11/12

The Rise of Visual Social Media
Ekaterina Walter, Fast Company, 8/28/12

Research Modules: Next Generation Mobile Devices, ABI Research

Mashup Dashboard, Programmable Web

Know Your Meme

Prancercise video memes 

This Brain Discovery May Overturn a Century-Old Theory
Ben Thomas, Scientific American Blog, 8/8/13

Leap Motion and Google Earth Experiment: Cute Doggie Photo-globe Mashup

Leap Motion and Google Earth Experiment: Cute Doggie Photo-globe Mashup 

I finally experimented with my Leap Motion controller and Google Earth, using a mashup I created a few years ago with pictures of cute dogs from my Flickr photo-stream.  In the video below, you can see that my gesture navigation skills still need some practice!

I should have watched the following video of Leap Motion in action with Google Earth before trying this experiment at home : )  

I am pretty sure that developers will be able to tweak Leap Motion + Google Earth interaction in the near future.  I'd like to adapt it for use with kids as well as adults who have mild motor impairments.

Cute Doggies Photo-Globe Mash-up using Google Earth and a Flickr Set (How-to)

If you'd like to make your very own photo-globe using Google Earth and Flickr photos, here are the directions, ported and updated from a previous post:

This photo is a screen shot of photos of just about every dog I know, and some that happened to cross my path. In this post, I'll share some information about how to create a photo-globe in Google Earth. 

The first step is to make sure you have lots of pictures related to your theme uploaded to a site such as Flickr.  (You can also create a photo-globe using pictures from your computer's hard drive.)

To get the pictures into Google Earth, I used the Image Overlay feature, and in the "link" textbox, I entered the image URL for each picture that I'd previously loaded as a set in Flickr.

To do prepare for this, make sure you go to "view" tab on the upper left-hand section of your screen, and make sure that "toolbar" is checked. Also make sure that "Grid" is selection, as this will help make it easier to arrange and align your pictures.  You can turn off this feature later. Near the top of the screen, click on the Image Overlay icon. (I've highlighted it in the picture.)

You'll have to enter the URL of the image you'd like to add to the globe in the "Link" textbox, which I've highlighted in the above picture.  In this case, I've used a link to one of my pictures in a Flickr set I created for this project.

One thing to keep in mind is that the picture will take up a much larger space than you might prefer, so you'll have to adjust the size using the green markers:


The following directions are from the "Positioning the Imagery in the Viewer" section in the help section:

1. Use the center cross-hair marker to slide the entire overlay on the globe and position it from the center. (Tip: do this first.)
2. Use the triangle marker to rotate the image for better placement.
3. Use any of the corner cross-hair markers to stretch or skew the selected corner. If you press the Shift key when selecting this marker, the image is scaled from the center.
4. Use any of the four side anchors to stretch the image in or out of from the selected side. If you press the Shift key when doing this, the image is scaled from the center.

TIP:  Try positioning the center of the image as a reference point first, and then use the Shift key in combination with one of the anchors to scale the image for best positioning.

Directions updated to reflect latest version of Flickr, as of 5/27/13:

To find the image URL for a photo in Flickr that you wish to link on your photo-globe, select your desired photo and right click "Copy Image URL".

Put your curser in the Link section of  the "New Image Overlay" dialog box in Google Earth, and right click to select "paste" from the drop-down menu

Then repeat the process.  It helps to name each picture so that you can find it easily in Google Earth.

To enhance your mash-up, you can add place-marks that contain URLs that link to additional information about the subject of a picture, such as blog posts with embedded videos and/or text related to a picture, and so forth. Directions can be found in Google Earth's help section.

The process of building a photo-globe in Google Earth is a bit tedious.  If someone has a short-cut to share, please let me know!

RESOURCES
Google Earth
Flickr
Programmable Web (My hunch is that this site might provide some information about shortcuts for creating a photo-globe in Google Earth.)
LEAP Motion

BP Oil Spill Multi-touch Map Mashup by Ideum

BP Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Multi-touch Exhibit

In response to the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the team at Ideum has created a free version of their multi-touch-enabled Google Map and Flickr mashup application to educational organizations, including museums and aquariums.  The information included on the map includes oil spill and fishing restriction data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), along with pictures taken at the scene in and around the region of the spill.

Ideum is a company that "designs and creates interactive computer-based exhibits, multitouch installations, rich Internet applications, and social networking sites for museum and Web visitors. We work closely with museums, nonprofit organizations, and socially responsible companies to create memorable visitor experiences."   Ideum uses their own multi-touch framework called GestureWorks to create interactive applications.

Jim Spadaccini is the director and founder of Ideum. He formerly was the Director of Interactive Media at the Exploratorium in San Francisco.

Ideum is working on a version of the program optimized to work on 3M's  22" multi-touch system.  A single-touch version for the web might be available if there is interest.

RELATED

BP Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico Flickr Group

Ideum's oil spill-related pictures on Flickr