.jpg "Spatial Media Group, University of Aizu")
An explanation about the picture: 2016 will see the mass diffusion of so-called HMDs, head-mounted displays for Virtual Reality, such as HTC & Valve Vive, Samsung Gear VR, Sony (PlayStation 4) VR, Samsung-sponsored (& eye-tracking) FOVE, Google Cardboard, and the Facebook-acquired Oculus Rift. Even those goggles with head-straps will often be grabbed to steady the somewhat awkwardly balanced helmet, and of course one must hold the hand-held versions, the so-called “VR salute.” We acknowledge and employ this salute as we doff our goggles, leaving immersive worlds for our nonsynthetic one (IRL: in real life), so we express “salute” as「さる」([monkey; 猿] or “not using”) ..「手」(hand). (三匹の猿の「さる」の意味のように)
| Pictured: Tsukida Naoki; 月田 直樹, Nagayama Yousuke; 永山 陽亮, Sato Masafumi; 佐藤 真史, Takeshige Akane; 竹重 朱音, Kaji Satoshi; 鍛 哲史, Suzuki Akihito; 鈴木 彬人, Kojima Hiromasa; 児島 弘将, Osugi Akari; 大杉 明里. Chamila Karunatilake; チャミラ カルナティラカ, Ryskeldiev Bektur; リスケリヂィエフ ベクトウル, Rasika Ranaweera; ラシィカ アミル ラナウィラ. | Absent:
Sasaki Taishi; 佐々木 太士.
|
Greetings to our colleagues and friends around the world!
The Spatial Media Group at the
Michael continues to serve as Chairperson of the University of Aizu Division of Information Systems. He is also faculty advisor to the DMC (Disco Mix Club), the Dual Boot Flying Disc Club; アルティメット フライング ディスク, and the Yosakoi「慧」Dance Club, and also continues to supervise, with Nishimura Satoshi; 西村 憲, the M-Project Digital Arts Circle, hosted in our Computer Arts Lab.
In January, we welcomed Ohtani Tomoko; 大谷 智子
(then at Tohoku Dai, now at Tokyo University of the Arts; 東京藝術大学)
for a workshop about optical illusions.
In February,
lab member Kaji Satoshi; 鍛 哲史 and his "Spiritual DB" teammates won
First Prize at the Sendai Gensai; 減災 (Disaster Mitigation) Hackathon
with their “Disaster Girls Project” submission.
This prototype was then exhibited the following month at the 3rd UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in Sendai.
Ryskeldiev Bektur; リスケリヂィエフ ベクトウル presented a lecture on "Making Musical Apps for iOS with Pure Data" at the Tokyo iOS Meetup.
Lab member Kojima Hiromasa; 児島 弘将
and alum Sasamoto Yuya; 笹本 佑哉
accompanied Michael to the Japan Media Arts Festival.
At the end of the February and beginning of March,
we hosted our annual symposium, the Int. Symp. on Spatial Media,
in conjunction with the Health 2.0 Fukushima Chapter/Medical × Security Hackathon.
Featured guests included
Jens Herder; イェンス ヘルダー,
Koizumi Nobuo; 小泉 宣夫,
Rob Oudendijk; ロブ アウデンダイク & Hayashi Yuka; 林 由佳,
Michael Frishkopf,
Fukasawa Naoki; 深澤 直樹,
and
Rasika Ranaweera; ラシィカ アミル ラナウィラ.
In March, Kaji Satoshi; 鍛 哲史 won another hackathon, the GClue "Fab Gadget" contest, with his electronic lantern submission.
At the end of March, we bid sayounara to graduating seniors (from left):
We also congratulated graduate students Shiratori Shun; 白鳥 峻 and Ryskeldiev Bektur; リスケリヂィエフ ベクトウル for their Masters degrees (and Bektur's admission into our doctoral program):
In April, our lab enjoyed its annual hanami cherry blossom picnic.
In May, at the Workshop on Electronics and Information Engineering,
Michael presented an invited talk “Cyberspatial Media for Managing Attention and Privacy: 3D Computer Graphics & Audio.”
In June, Rasika and Michael were invited to the Canadian Society for Traditional Music Conference in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada,
where they demonstrated one of Rasika's doctoral dissertation projects, the “World Music in Wonderland” immersive social music browser,
a related project of which is described here
and a representative video of which is available here,
and further descriptions are available here.
Besides the interesting conference and wonderful music,
they also enjoyed the Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site
and the Cape Breton Miners' Museum and mine tour.
That month, we finally got our “Twhirleds” app uploaded, thanks to heroic efforts by Bektur, with artwork by Yūki Kojima; 小嶋 優希 of Eyes, JAPAN. It's available on the Google Play store (for Android) and the Apple iTunes app store (for iOS). We have prepared a pre-release of the photospherical browser for those who want to experiment with its limited, “academic quality” features. We are still preparing extension software, but some videos illustrating a few applications are posted. The videos can be accessed via the Spatial Media Group YouTube Channel, or individually:
Alternatively, this photosphere of the University of Aizu can be panned in place:
University of Aizu #theta360 - Spherical Image - RICOH THETA
The annual Human Interface & Virtual Reality Chromastereoptic Image Contest concluded with its customary exhibition in the library, including finalists by a couple of members of the Spatial Media Group, Tsukida Naoki; 月田 直樹 and Takeshige Akane; 竹重 朱音. The year's winners are archived here. (This artwork is best appreciated with chromastereoptic eyewear, available upon request.)
In July at the TeX Users Group Meeting, Boris Veytsman presented the new multibibliography package, extended from a project with Michael (originally begun with Yannis Haralambous), renewing the multibibliography package.
In August, with partners YR Design,
we participated in Maker Faire Tokyo,
showing our “Dancing Wiper” project.
An interview from that expo is posted here,
linked off the organizer's coverage of the event.
Later that month, Michael visited LA, presenting “Hierarchical Narrowcasting” at the Int. Conf. on Human-Computer Interaction. He was then joined by Oyama Tomohiro; 小山 朋浩, with whom a demonstration of “Exocentric Rendering of “Reality Distortion” User Interface to Illustrate Egocentric Reprojection” was presented at the Symp. on Spatial User Interaction, both lingering afterwards to attend SIGGRAPH.
Over the summer, the second edition of Fundamentals of Wearable Computers and Augmented Reality was published, edited by Woodrow Barfield, and including two chapters by group members: Chapter 12 by Michael: Dimensions of spatial sound and interface styles of audio augmented reality: Whereware, wearware, & everyware, and Chapter 13 by Michael & Julián: Applications of audio augmented reality: Wearware, everyware, anyware, & awareware.
In the fall, a Special issue on spatial sound in virtual, augmented, and mixed-reality environments of the Virtual Reality journal was published, edited by Michael, Julián, and Woodrow Barfield, and including an article by Julián, “Locating virtual sound sources at arbitrary distances in real-time binaural reproduction.”
In September we organized our annual Creative Factory Seminar,
in which Yoshioka Rentaro; 吉岡 廉太郎-先生 and Michael, with TA Arai Masahiro; 新井 雅裕,
worked with Masters students on “Methods, Tools, and Devices to Design and Produce
3D Objects,” a hands-on workshop exploring haptic modeling and 3D printing.
.jpg "Michael @ AUSTech")
In October, Michael was invited to Abuja, Nigeria for two weeks to present a software engineering workshop and a keynote
speech at the AUST Int. Conf. on
Technology.
From the fall, we welcomed Peter Larson; ピーター ローソン to our group,
as an half-year exchange student from our university partner school Rose-Hulman.
Later that month, Michael led a seemingly marathon tour of multimedia events and conferences in the Kansai region; 関西地方. En route was the Digital Contents Expo in Tokyo, where he was met by current students Peter Larson; ピーター ローソン, Suzuki Akihito; 鈴木 彬人, Ryskeldiev Bektur; リスケリヂィエフ ベクトウル, Tsukida Naoki; 月田 直樹, & Mizuno Hideki; 水野 秀紀; former students Yokomatsu Yoshiyuki; 横松 禎之, Doi Kunihiro; 土井 邦裕, Sasamoto Yuya; 笹本 佑哉, Sakai Takemitsu; 酒井 健充; “almost student” Chernyshov George (Cernîşov Gheorghe); チェル二ショフ ゲオルゲ; and mentor Koizumi Nobuo; 小泉 宣夫.
Besides the
superhuman sports demonstrations
and the Honda “Uni-Cub” installation in Miraikan,
highlights included the Kowloon Walled City recreation
at the Warehouse Game Center in Kawasaki.
In Kyoto at the Int. Conf. on Artificial Reality and Telexistence and the Eurographics Symp. on Virtual Environments
(ICAT-EGVE),
Ryskeldiev Bektur; リスケリヂィエフ ベクトウル, Oyama Tomohiro; 小山 朋浩, and Tsukida Naoki; 月田 直樹 presented demonstration of “Exocentric Visualization of
‘Reality Distortion’ Interface to Interpret Egocentric Reprojection Perspective.”
In Kobe at the Int. Conf. on Virtual Reality Continuum and Its Applications in Industry
(VRCAI),
Bektur presented a poster of “Rendering spatial audio through dynamically reconfigurable smartphone loudspeaker arrays,”
using beacons, proximity sensors as micro-location sensors, to parameterize spatial sound diffusion,
and Michael presented “Lights, Camera, Action!,”
for which we won 3rd Prize in the Posters and
Demonstrations Section.
(A video of this project is available here.)
Lingering in Kobe for SIGGRAPH Asia,
we met many friends, including “almost student” Kapilevich Viacheslav.
Especially interesting were the Emerging Technologies section,
the course on WebGL,
the Symposium on Mobile Graphics and
Interactive Applications,
and the IEEE Trans. on
Visualization and Computer Graphics (TVCG) session on Augmented and Virtual Reality.
At the end of the year, we welcomed back Yokomatsu Yoshiyuki; 横松 禎之,
who consulted on modernizing our Primassa spatial sound diffuser deployed in the UBIC.
At the end of the calendar year,
two of our group members participated in HC, the 18th Int. Conf. on Humans and
Computers,
held distributedly with Shizuoka University; 静岡大学 in Hamamatsu; 浜松市 and Hochschule Düsseldorf in
Germany:
Takeshige Akane; 竹重 朱音 presented “Mixed virtuality scene modulated by flying disc,” and
Sato Masafumi; 佐藤 真史 presented “Coordinated Panoramic and Photospherical Browsing.”
We welcomed new Graduation Research Students Noro Yuki; 能呂 勇気, Yamada Toshihiro; 山田 稔洸,
Okuyama Naoya; 奥山 直哉, and Kanno Arisa; 菅野 ありさ.
The “Candy Shake” team of lab member Kaji Satoshi; 鍛 哲史 won the “Rakkathon”
(Rakuten "Save the Earth" Hackathon) in Tokyo with
a game crafted in Unity, echoing the hackathon victory they'd achieved at the beginning of the year.
Later that month he won yet another contest, the GAINAX x UoA; GAINAX x
会津大学のハッカソン hackathon,
with his Afureko Voice Actor submission.
Coming up next year,
we'll welcome a Study Tour group from Deakin University (“DUST”!) in Australia
for a workshop on software engineering and machinima.
Michael will visit to Hong Kong in February, invited to present a seminar by Caritas Institute of
Higher Education.
Takeshige Akane; 竹重 朱音 will continue in our group as a masters student,
and we will welcome new Masters student Isuru Jayarathne (referred by lab alum Senaka Amarakeerthi, now Head of Computing and
Information systems at Sabaragamuwa University in Sri Lanka) in the spring,
as well as Research Students Malte Weiß and Kai Wilgen (both from our partner school Hochschule Düsseldorf in Germany)
and expect Florian Debaene and Loïck Walle (both from France) to arrive in the fall.
We wish all our friends and colleagues a happy new year!
