Augmented Reality

Seminar: Graham Roberts, Director of Immersive Platforms Storytelling and Co-Director of the Virtual Reality Program for NYTVR, New York Times

Workshop: Yuliya Parshina-Kottas, Graphics/Multimedia Editor, New York Times & Kristen Leach, Product Designer at Etsy

Seminar: 5:00-6:30pm, March 23, 2018
Workshop: 10:00am-5:00pm, March 25, 2018

This is perhaps our most experimental event in terms of “distance” from journalistic practice. Augmented reality (AR) provides a view of an event or phenomenon that is enhanced, “augmented,” with computer-generated elements, perhaps responding to sensor input (sound, video of the event, GPS coordinates) or triggers computed through computer vision tools operating on the scene. A mobile device like a phone or a tablet are often the viewing portal for the augmented scene. Join us for a Friday evening seminar with Graham Roberts, Director of Immersive Platforms Storytelling, who will talk to the challenges and affordances of augmented reality in journalism.

At Brown, our major test case in AR is Village Live, a grant from this year that provides an overlay of a 1980s video collection atop a phone-based viewing of neighborhoods in Greenwich Village. The storytelling capacity with AR is enormous, although the toolsets are still a bit hard to use. Join members from Etsy and the New York Times on Sunday to get up-and-running with augmented reality, and spend the day building a story prototype utilizing the technology.