Immersive Experiences: Links

• Tribeca Games and Immersive 2023: How are immersive technologies changing the way we tell, view, and perceive compelling stories? (Wunderman Thompson Intelligence)

•  Vision Pro: What has Apple built, what is it for, what does it mean for Meta, and why does it cost $3,500? Check back in 2025. (Benedict Evans)

• Early Stats from the General Social Survey: How Virtual Arts Participation Fared in 2022: The arts module of the 2022 GSS was designed to track various types of arts activity among adults in the U.S. Unlike previous surveys, the module includes many questions about virtual participation in arts events. The module also asked respondents whether, at the time of the survey, they were taking part in such activities more or less often than when the pandemic was in its first year. (Arts Journal Blogs)

• NASA Is Behind New York’s Newest Immersive Art Show: The federal space agency has a surprisingly long history of art collaborations. (Observer)

• Some quick notes on Apple’s Vision Pro by Andy Matuschak: The hardware seems faintly unbelievable—a computer as powerful as Apple’s current mid-tier laptops (M2), plus a dizzying sensor/camera array with dedicated co-processor, plus displays with 23M 6µm pixels (my phone: 3M 55µm pixels; the PSVR2 is 32µm) and associated optics, all in roughly a mobile phone envelope.
But that kind of vertical integration is classic Apple. I’m mainly interested in the user interface and the computing paradigm. What does Apple imagine we’ll be doing with these devices, and how will we do it? (Andy’s working notes)

• Olfactory Overload: How it feels to have hyperosmia, a heightened sensitivity to smells, which can accompany autism. (The Polyphony)

• How your brain stays focused on conversations in a noisy room: The brain processes voices differently depending on the volume of the speaker and if the listener is focused on them. (New Scientist)

• Why Being in Nature Makes You Smarter, According to Neuroscientists: The scientific evidence is overwhelmingly clear: spending time outdoors boosts your brain function. (Outside)

• Why VR Photography Could Be the Next Big Thing: Pictures that let you see more; Apple’s new Vision Pro headset lets you take immersive photos and video; Canon is showing off a camera that lets you take 360-degree shots; The new technologies could boost the popularity of virtual reality photography. (Lifewire)

AI's IQ: Links

Links on AI, from how it works to how intelligent it actually is:

• There is no AI: There are ways of controlling the new technology--but first we have to stop mythologizing it.
As a computer scientist, I don't like the term "A.I." In fact, I think it's misleading--maybe even a little dangerous. Everybody's already using the term, and it might seem a little late in the day to be arguing about it. But we're at the beginning of a new technological era--and the easiest way to mismanage a technology is to misunderstand it. (Jaron Lenier, The New Yorker)

• What Is ChatGPT Doing … and Why Does It Work?: That ChatGPT can automatically generate something that reads even superficially like human-written text is remarkable, and unexpected. But how does it do it? And why does it work? My purpose here is to give a rough outline of what's going on inside ChatGPT--and then to explore why it is that it can do so well in producing what we might consider to be meaningful text. (Stephen Wolfram)

• AI for data storytelling: Artificial Intelligence in data journalism projects often showcases some of the most imaginative aspects of how to use new tools to perform analyses that just weren't possible before. (Simon Rogers)

• A.I. Pop Culture Is Already Here: We're living in a world in which every style, every idea, and every possible remix can be generated as fast and frictionlessly as possible. (Kyle Chayka, The New Yorker)

• What Kind of Mind Does ChatGPT Have?: Large language models seem startlingly intelligent. But what's really happening under the hood? (Cal Newport, The New Yorker)

• The Andy Warhol Copyright Case That Could Transform Generative AI: The US Supreme Court’s upcoming decision could shift the interpretation of fair use law—and all the people, and tools, that turn to it for protection. (Madeline Ashby, Wired)

• AI Desperately Needs Global Oversight: As ChatGPT and its ilk continue to spread, countries need an independent board to hold AI companies accountable and limit harms. (Rumman Chowdhury, Wired)

• The stupidity of AI: Artificial intelligence in its current form is based on the wholesale appropriation of existing culture, and the notion that it is actually intelligent could be actively dangerous. (James Bridle, The Guardian)

Photo by Hitesh Choudhary on Unsplash.

Meta, Physical: Links

Here are a few links on the current state of play in the evolution towards spatial computing:

• This is Meta’s AR / VR hardware roadmap for the next four years: During an internal presentation, Meta execs laid out plans for three new Quest headsets, AR glasses in 2027, and a ‘neural interface’ smartwatch. (The Verge)

• Meta announces big price cuts for its VR headsets: Meta announced a dramatic price drop for its higher-end virtual reality headset, the Quest Pro. Both the Quest Pro and Quest 2 will see price cuts, dropping by $500 for the Quest Pro and $70 for the Quest 2. (CNBC)

• I don’t think Meta knows it’s a game company: Meta seems very committed to making hardware to usher in a whole new world and racing away from the games that drive its VR business. (The Verge)

• Tim Cook bets on Apple’s mixed-reality headset to secure his legacy: The stakes are high for Cook. The headset will be Apple’s first new computing platform to have been developed entirely under his leadership. The iPhone, iPad and even Watch were all originally conceived under Apple’s co-founder Steve Jobs, who died in 2011. (Financial Times)

• The full saga of Apple’s troubled mixed reality headset has been revealed: A series of reports paint a detailed picture of politics and problems facing Apple's plan to develop a virtual, augmented, or mixed reality headset since the initiative picked up steam back in 2015. It's a complicated tale of processors, base stations, politics, and Jony Ive. (Arstechnica)

Photo by Barbara Zandoval on Unsplash

Tech as Art: Supporting Artists Who Use Technology as a Creative Medium

The report Tech as Art: Supporting Artists Who Use Technology as a Creative Medium, presents findings from a field scan commissioned in 2019 by the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with the Ford Foundation and the Knight Foundation:

This report is the result of a two-year research initiative exploring the multifaceted creative practices of artists who engage with digital technologies. The research examines the creative infrastructure supporting tech-focused artistic practices and provides insight into the existing challenges and opportunities faced by artists and organizations working at the intersection of arts and technology.

The report (available here) shares detailed findings; identifies challenges; and ends with recommendations for different stakeholder groups, including funders, arts practitioners, policymakers, and educators. Of particular interest to me is the section addressing artists creating projects within and between virtual worlds using extended reality technologies to create completely new forms of art experiences never seen before.

The following essays were commissioned as a companion to the report:

“Recoding the Master’s Tools: Artists Remake Systems of Oppression and Extraction in Technology” by Vanessa Chang

“How Artists Can Bridge the Digital Divide and Reimagine Humanity” by Agnes Chavez

“Teaching the Co-Creators of a New Economy from Lincoln, Nebraska” by Megan Elliott

“Artist Perspective: Building Afrocentric Technoculture and Community” by Ari Melenciano

“Space, Time, Sustainability, Community: Giving Digital Artists What They Need” by Stephanie Pereira

“How the Arts Sector Can Support Transformational Technology” by Omari Rush

“Funder Perspective: Broadening Support for Arts and Technology” by Eleanor Savage

“Future World-building Depends on Artists and Collaborative Networks” by Kamal Sinclair

“Where Is the Public Discourse Around Art and Technology?” by Hrag Vartanian

“A Call-to-Action in STEAM Education” by S. Craig Watkins

Building the next computing user interface

Craig Grannell, writing for Wired UK, delves into Apple’s announcements during the recently concluded World Wide Developer Conference and what role they may have in making audio the next big user interface:

This infatuation with audio is also a refreshing change in a world routinely obsessed with what you see rather than what you hear. We’re so often informed about innovations in AR and VR, dazzling environments and visual immersion. But voice UI and audio are just as important –and, in some ways, more so when you consider Apple’s reasoning regarding focus and clarity.

Much of what you can glean from AR you can get from audio, and with fewer distractions. An always-on AR overlay can be disruptive and in your face. It changes how you experience and interact with the world, in a not necessarily positive fashion. Audio input, by contrast, is fleeting and focused. It enhances the concept of mindful and meaningful tech use, in context, unlike equipping all humans with a heads-up display. Bose tried something similar with its Frames audio glasses, but couldn’t stay the course.

A counterpoint argument is that Apple Glasses are long-rumoured and may appear in the near future. But, even then, it’s the union of the senses combined with the foundations Apple is laying that will make them all the more powerful. Apple is being considered about the audio layer to the point than if visuals are added, the company will have a big advantage over rivals trying to do everything at once – or, worse, multiple organisations attempting to combine fragmented resources to achieve the same goal. Plus, importantly, Apple has that sense of focus.

While Grannell focused on audio, the work Apple is doing for accessibility across all their devices and operating systems is what resonates with me. In a special 10 minute session titled Accessibility by design: An Apple Watch for everyone Apple engineers and designers highlight their approach to accessible design, iteration and community engagement.

I suggest you watch the whole session, but if you prefer you can jump ahead to around the 6 minute mark, where you can see the Apple Watch team addressing this question ‘could we create a completely gesture-based human-to-computer interaction?’ and see what they achieved using four very simple hand gestures to fully control the watch, which feels like an evolved version of hand tracking for head mounted displays.

That pursuit of “gesture-based human-to-computer interactions” sounds very much like the development of a new user interface. Between the accessibility features on AirPods Pro with spatial audio and the accessibility features on Apple Watch and the many years of accessibility design work, Apple appears to be introducing features that are helpful to many right now, while simultaneously getting everyone used to those features and how they work. In the process creating the human interface for spatial computing.