The demonstration event was hosted by The University of Salford at their MediaCityUK building which is one of the few places that had the complete set of facilities to support what we were trying to do, the infrastructure of the building was actually designed for this kind of thing and was tested to the limit by the FascinatE team for this event. FascinatE partners worked through the nights and the fantastic tech support team at MediaCityUK pulled out all the stops to make it happen smoothly.

The event featured a live performance in the Digital Performance Lab (DPL) which was recorded and streamed live to a conference suite (The Egg) on the other side of the building. The live demonstration was based around the premiere performance of 'Deeper than all roses', the latest large-scale music composition from Stephen Davismoon, featuring 'rock' band Bears?Bears! and live performance artists Joseph Lau and Shona Roberts in celebration of the works of the celebrated American poet E.E. Cummings.

Visitors were invited to view the performance being relayed live to the Egg presentation room. The Egg was equipped with a large data projector and a ambisonics spatial audio rendering system consisting of 17 loudspeakers. The live demonstration was divided into three phases, allowing specific aspects of the technology to be highlighted (full bandwidth interactive experience, content streaming on a lower bandwidth network and the virtual director). Visitors were also invited to look around the many offline demos which were on display in the foyer of the MediaCityUK building.

The performance was captured with the OmniCam panoramic camera, using the latest version comprising of 10 HD cameras capable of giving a 10k x 2k 360-degree panoramic image, of which 5 cameras were used for the demo to produce a 180-degree live video panorama. A manned HD broadcast camera placed close to the OmniCam captured close-ups of particular areas of interest. The video from this was ingested into an IP-based production framework, running a plug-in that generated camera metadata describing pan, tilt and zoom derived by tracking background features in the image.

Audio was captured using an Eigenmike to generate a 4^th order Ambisonic representation of the ambient sound in the performance room. Six additional audio objects were also captured using mics on the guitar amplifiers, drum kit and the PA speakers used by the singers. The DPL also housed a WiFi access point, providing network access to a set of tablet computers that visitors could use to explore the live panoramic image.

All of this AV data was streamed in real time to a range of displays from TV sets, large projectors,  a Christie tile wall in our building foyer and to iOS and Android mobile devices. People at the demo could freely pan and zoom around the panorama, controlling their own virtual camera by swipes on tablets or by intuitive hand gestures using Kinect for larger displays.

There’s a nice review post here from a visitor to our event and a storify of tweets from the day.

For more information and to register for this event please click here

For more FascinatE videos can be viewed here

This workshop focuses on novel forms of interactive content consumption. It will explore the shifting balance between lean-back passive TV consumption and lean-forward interactivity; this shift is especially relevant considering the explosion of companion screen interaction, multi-modal gesture/voice control and advanced audiovisual content interaction such as free viewpoint video and user-controlled shot selection. New media formats and consumption paradigms have emerged that allow for new types of interactivity.

The workshop’s objective is to provide a highly interactive discussion forum that will allow to capture a comprehensive view on this research area. During the workshop, an overview on new content interaction concepts, research activities and future challenges in this area will be concluded and documented. An interdisciplinary view on the topic shall be compiled by contributions from technical research, user-centric studies, and industry developments. Part of the discussions is fueled by technical demonstrations of interactive content consumption forms. The workshop aims to examine and evaluate new forms of content interaction by discussing the field along three axes:

• Recent technological advances that provide new forms of audiovisual content interaction;
• User studies that evaluate new types of audiovisual content interaction;
• Technologies that supports the user in finding the balance between passive consumption and lean-forward interaction.

The following will sketch areas and aspects that are considered within the scope of the workshop. We seek technological research on more active interaction with audiovisual content, e.g. immersive pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) navigation, game-like interfaces to media, or intelligent storytelling and narrative engines. The workshop will deal with both recorded and live media access. Both mobile and domestic consumption may be investigated. Beyond entertainment, other domains of interactive TV are sought. Topics are not limited to these examples, but should remain within the overall scope of the workshop. Below, some of the questions that the workshop aims to answer are listed:

• How can content personalization be enhanced through interactivity, and at which abstraction level do users want to interact?
• Which new requirements for content capture and production, user-generated, professional and prosumer, do new forms of interactive media imply?
• Do trends in content consumption behavior influence technical research by revealing new challenges?
• What do studies on interaction with content in the realm of social media sharing reveal?
• How can forms of (inter-)active media access be designed to be interwoven with passive consumption modes?
• How can interactivity enhance the experience of people watching together, even when they are in disjoint locations?
• Can 3D free viewpoint video lead to an interactivity revolution in the media industry?
• Which technical advances are needed to allow the industry to offer more interactive media services?
• How does the balance between active and passive consumption affect the Quality of Experience?

Workshop Format
The full day workshop will be an active forum to discuss research challenges, methodologies and results. More than half the time will be reserved for discussion. The chairs aim to establish an informal atmosphere, inspired by Barcamps. There will be a keynote and a Fishbowl discussion. In an active moderating role, the chairs will make sure the workshop’s questions will be answered and documented, yet will allow some flexibility where appropriate to meet the interest of the audience. Results will be collected on flipcharts along multiple questions which will emerge throughout the day, e.g. what are the latest innovations in that field? Which research activities exist to tackle unsolved challenges? How could we combine different interaction technologies to the benefit of the user? Throughout the day, the audience will be encouraged to contribute, and especially to comment on existing inputs (I’d love to collaborate on this! … This has already been solved in my project!). Live comments by both the local and remote audience through Twitter will be promoted and collected. A detailed program will be published later.

Important Dates

• April 1st 7th (extended): submission deadline
• April 29th: notification
• May 10th: final version due
• June 24th: workshop @ EuroITV2013 in Como, Italy

Submission Details
The workshop is seeking 3 types of submissions:

• Workshop papers: 4-6 pages, to be presented in as talk
• Posters and demos: max. 2 page description and background

All submissions have to be in English language. Please submit a single PDF file via EasyChair, based on ACM guidelines and the following template:

• Download Word template
• LaTex Template

Keynote Speaker

We are proud to welcome Wei Tsang Ooi, Department of Computer Science National University of Singapore, as keynote speaker of the WSICC workshop.

Organizers

Program Committee

Pablo Cesar, CWI, Netherlands

Teresa Chambel, University of Lisbon, Portugal

Arvid Engström, The Interactive Institute, Sweden

Rene Kaiser, JOANNEUM RESEARCH, Austria

Britta Meixner, University of Passau, Germany

Omar Niamut, TNO, Netherlands

Johan Oomen, Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, Netherlands

Erika Reponen, Nokia, Finland Patrice

Rondao Alface, Alcatel-Lucent, Belgium

Graham Thomas, BBC, UK

Marian Ursu, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK

Elizabeth Valentine-House, BBC, UK

Goranka Zoric, The Interactive Institute, Sweden

Contact:
Email: rene.kaiser@joanneum.at
Discuss on Twitter: #WSICC

This workshop is supported by the FascinatE project.

Download cfp

This document is the third iteration of the first deliverable of WP4, Task 4.1; Business models for network-based services. According to the FascinatE proposal this task is concerned with identifying viable business models and associated services. In the previous iterations of this deliverable, we focused mainly on the non-financial aspects of the business model canvas. In this document all aspects of the business model will be discussed. The main objective of this deliverable is to view from the perspective of the companies that want to adopt the technology and understand their position, interests and way of working. The central questions in this deliverable are:

• Do third parties recognize the selected PMC as viable for their own business?
• How do these parties analyse

This document reports on the second public demonstration of FascinatE technology, at the concert hall Arena in Berlin in May 2012, during the production of a dance project by the Compagnie Sasha Waltz & Guests and the Education Programme by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Simon Rattle performing a choreography of the Carmen-Suite by Rodion Schtschedrin. Invited journalists and other guests were able to see live stitching of a panorama from the new OMNICAM equipped with ALEXA-M cameras at the Arena, as well as audio capture using two Eigenmike® microphones. Some of the latest results from other parts of the project were shown in a demonstration room at HHI’s premises nearby. These demonstrations resulted in several press publications, which are also listed in this deliverable.

View our full list of public deliverables

This deliverable is a continuation of the business and market overview, following on from D4.1.2a. This document presents a market overview, to validate the working hypothesis from D4.1.1. Its scope is to provide an overview of the current market for FascinatE-related services. This overview is built up by describing and analysing the markets that we have marked as interesting in D4.1.1b, and then by analysing several service and technology examples, that provide service value and use technology similar to FascinatE.

View our full list of public deliverables

You can view the newsletter here.