Technology

From REMAP

REMAP's technological research harnesses the diffusion of processing power from centralized computers into distributed networks of eclectic devices with unique input, output and storage capabilities.

These technologies can move individual and group interaction with computing away from the mouse, keyboard and screen. They can link immersive experience with massive databases of content and real-time activity in other locations. They suggest new opportunities for rethinking relationships among technology, creative expression and society.

The Center will help artists and engineers engage together these technological frontiers, the new forms of creative expression and aesthetic experience they enable, and the role they can play in enabling new individual and group experiences.

While REMAP's primary focus is the process of designing new technologies and frameworks for cultural and community applications, we have identified the following key technological research areas that form the core of our activity:

Sensor networks

• Observing and interpreting individual and group activity;
• Describing and recognizing events in sensor data streams;
• Integration of privacy and anonymity controls;
• Guided incremental deployment of sensor systems in the field;
• Synchronization and integration of sensing with traditional sound and image recording;
• High precision high sample rate localization.

Embedded computing and control

• Systems approaches for highly designed buildings and environments;
• Embedded systems’ integration with entertainment distribution;
• Closed-loop control involving wireless sensor networks;
• High-performance interfaces to legacy media and performance systems.

Middleware and authoring for responsive media-rich physical environments

• Visualization of system topology, health, sensed data, state, and their evolution over time;
• Low-complexity high-performance middleware strategies;
• Managing distributed interaction with many users;
• Experience authoring tools incorporating timeline- and event-based approaches.

Advanced display and media control systems

• Applications of compact high-resolution projection systems;
• Local closed-loop management and quality assurance in display/output systems;
• Integration of live action, computer graphics, and recorded media in ‘live’ systems;
• Flexible interfaces to complex geographically distributed display systems.

Databases

• Methods for spaces, events, and artworks to ‘remember’ and evolve over time;
• Mapping of story structures into database systems;
• On-the-fly queries synchronized with media streams;
• Storage and query of interaction paths of many users and other spatio-temporal data.