A Most Favored Nation was an original immersive performance using augmented reality, set in the world of the Amazon Studios streaming series The Man in the High Castle. Developed over the course of 2019-202, it built on the research conducted by the Future Storytelling Summer Institute 2018. Created by REMAP Director Jeff Burke and developed by a team of faculty, students and researchers, originally intended for in-person audiences at UCLA's Freud Playhouse, the piece explored theatrical and … [Read more...] about A Most Favored Nation
Extended Reality (XR)
Performance for Virtual Environments & Production Practice in Theater with Emerging Technologies
Two undergraduate courses conduced online during the Covid-19 pandemic, in parallel, explored performance and production techniques for remote virtual environments. A selection of scenes from The Last Days of Judas Iscariot (2005) by Stephen Adly Guirgis were rehearsed within different evolving virtual worlds, made with real-time virtual backgrounds in Zoom, shared-screen real-time 2D compositing in TouchDesigner, and a shared 3D environment in Unreal Engine. Taught by Theater … [Read more...] about Performance for Virtual Environments & Production Practice in Theater with Emerging Technologies
UCLA TFT Future Storytelling Summer Institute 2020 (Remote Edition)
In July 2020, a multidisciplinary group of graduate students, faculty, staff, and guest mentors investigated how shared virtual environments can support “next generation narrative.” As with the previous two editions of FSSI, the 2020 Institute focused on creating a resonant storytelling experience centered on social impact themes—inspiring students to illuminate the human condition, inspire social change, and make a difference in the world—using emerging technologies: augmented reality in … [Read more...] about UCLA TFT Future Storytelling Summer Institute 2020 (Remote Edition)
UCLA TFT Future Storytelling Summer Institute 2019
From September 9-21, 2019, UCLA TFT’s Future Storytelling Summer Institute (FSSI) brought together a multidisciplinary group of graduate students, faculty, staff, and guest mentors to investigate how social impact storytelling can incorporate contemporary artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. As with the 2018 session, which used AR to bring audiences into a fantasy world as apprentices preparing to fight for their identities amid border and environmental crises, the 2019 Institute … [Read more...] about UCLA TFT Future Storytelling Summer Institute 2019
TouchDesigner+NDN Integration
REMAP is pursuing new approaches to networked video using Named Data Networking (NDN). It is using several of its own artistic productions as use cases. NDN suggests a powerful data-centric approach to video and future media formats, introduced in this paper. REMAP is researching how to use it for efficient multicasting, seamless streaming between live and stored video, and synchronization of video streams from multiple sources. Integrated with Derivative’s TouchDesigner, a visual … [Read more...] about TouchDesigner+NDN Integration
UCLA TFT Future Storytelling Summer Institute 2018
From July 9 to 28, the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television’s 2018 Future Storytelling Summer Institute brought together a multidisciplinary group of graduate students, faculty, staff, and distinguished guest artists/mentors to investigate storytelling in augmented reality (AR) and explore the unique possibilities it offers as a platform for social impact entertainment. The guiding question, at the intersection of research and practice, for the Institute was: What makes … [Read more...] about UCLA TFT Future Storytelling Summer Institute 2018
Future Storytelling Summer Institute 2014
From July 17 to August 1, 2014, a multidisciplinary group of graduate and advanced undergraduate students from the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television (TFT) explored new forms of storytelling and performance using virtual production, motion capture, and dynamic design tools. Each day, they received instruction in cutting-edge technology, and applied these skills to collaborative projects. Each evening, they rehearsed these works-in-progress while creating media at a … [Read more...] about Future Storytelling Summer Institute 2014
Future Storytelling Studio
Co-taught by J. Ed Araiza (head of UCLA's MFA acting program) and REMAP Director Jeff Burke, this two-quarter, multidisciplinary studio-style course explored the intersection of text and code in live performance, through the collaborative development and staging of a new multimedia theater piece. Araiza, Burke and students created the text for the piece, Los Atlantis, and the class worked closely with REMAP artist-researchers to envision and build performance, media, and technology … [Read more...] about Future Storytelling Studio
ICN-Enabled Secure Edge Networking with Augmented Reality
Today’s Internet operates with the address-based TCP/IP protocol architecture developed 40 years ago, which greatly limits the full promises of new Augmented Reality (AR) applications. AR implementations face challenges in performance, scalability, and availability upon disasters. ICN-Enabled Secure Edge Networking with Augmented Reality (ICE-AR) aims to develop a new wireless network architecture to address these limitations, and provide pervasive support for emerging AR applications. To … [Read more...] about ICN-Enabled Secure Edge Networking with Augmented Reality
Interactive Science Through Technology Enhanced Play (iSTEP)
The National Science Foundation-supported Interactive Science Through Technology Enhanced Play (iSTEP) project builds on the ongoing Science Through Technology Enhanced Play (STEP) project---which has been using REMAP and Open Perception's OpenPTrack as the interface between the movements of groups of elementary school students and media. iSTEP continues STEP's investigation of socio-dramatic play and learning about scientific phenomena by adding new forms of embodied engagement with … [Read more...] about Interactive Science Through Technology Enhanced Play (iSTEP)
Science Through Technology Enhanced Play (STEP)
The National Science Foundation-supported Science Through Technology Enhanced Play (STEP) project is investigating how socio-dramatic play among elementary school students can help them understand scientific phenomena (e.g., the working of natural forces, complex behaviors of bees). STEP is instrumenting elementary school classrooms with REMAP and Open Perception's OpenPTrack as the interface between the students' movements and media. A collaboration with the UCLA Graduate School of Education … [Read more...] about Science Through Technology Enhanced Play (STEP)
Acting for Virtual Environments
This course focuses on synthesizing actors' gestures, actions and, ultimately, characterizations into creating scene work for motion capture and virtual environments. By using short scenes, acting, film production and animation students immerse themselves in a collaboration exploring character through different acting techniques, and playing with size and intensity of energy. Principles of acting and physical performance empower and liberate the students to create characters, explore the … [Read more...] about Acting for Virtual Environments
Grace Plains
As one of two productions resulting from TFT's participation in Google's Glass Creative Collective and the corresponding two-semester course, Location-Based and Audience-Aware Storytelling, Grace Plains combined interactive theatre with live-action role-playing. Audience participants were led along a continuously changing set of circumstances as they unfolded on three different sets at Google's YouTube Space Los Angeles. A team of writers, directors, and technicians from control rooms elsewhere … [Read more...] about Grace Plains
Location-Based and Audience-Aware Storytelling
This two-semester workshop-seminar guided students to conceptualize, author, produce and distribute "next generation" experiences. Key enabling technologies---such as wearable computing, augmented reality, GPS, and HTML5---were covered from both a conceptual and practical perspective. Experimental cinema, television and performance, new media art, oral storytelling and the design of built environments were surveyed, as challenges of interactivity, openness, and dynamic narrative structures … [Read more...] about Location-Based and Audience-Aware Storytelling
Location-based Storytelling
Involving research and hands-on production, this course focused on creating non-linear cinema for mobile devices. With support from Nokia Research Hollywood, the students ultimately produced 50 minutes of edited footage, shot in 15 different places over 12 days. The locations included the Bradbury Building, Santa Monica Pier, and the Los Angeles Central Library. Jeff Burke, with Juha Hemanus and Vids Samanta (Nokia Research)---Film, Television and Digital Media 298A---Fall 2010/Spring 2011. … [Read more...] about Location-based Storytelling
SPASES: Semiotic Pivot Activity Spaces
Using computer vision, Wii remotes, RFID tags, and other sensing technologies, SPASES aimed to engage first and second graders in learning the physics of force and motion. Similar to recent work in middle schools, the project used the students' physical actions as an interface to computer simulations. Younger students are good at pretend play. It is fun, but most significantly, it contains imaginary situations and sets of rules. Like play, the physical world (and computer simulations of force … [Read more...] about SPASES: Semiotic Pivot Activity Spaces