Tag Archives: dean terry

High pitched wails and moans came out of the Motion Capture Lab on April 5 as nebulotinklstab team Dean Terry and Patrick Murphy walked a large, attentive audience through the making of their recently released debut EP.

Terry and Murphy demonstrated the tools used to create their collaborative effort. Both revealed some of the internal production methods used for the music and the video, showing how they combined a multitude of sounds and musical rifts to create a pleasant yet challenging musical endeavor.

Director of Emerging Media and Communications, Dean Terry demonstrated his analog modular synthesizer and Moog guitar, while Patrick Murphy discussed his favorite iPhone and iPad apps to create and modify sounds: Beatwave, Beatmaker 2, SoundPrism, Mod-Axis, and Animoog.

Copies of the EP are still available for free on their Bandcamp site. For updates and more information, visit their Facebook page or Twitter.

Images by EMAC Senior and Radio UTD Station Manager Laura Carroll.

A new Facebook application developed by a team in the UT Dallas Emerging Media and Communications program allows users to now list enemies as opposed to just friends.

EnemyGraph, an app that explores social dissonance on Facebook, is the creation of EMAC faculty Dean Terry, developed by Emerging Media and Communications graduate student Bradley Griffith, with invaluable help from undergraduate Harrison Massey.

“When I saw the first friends list at the beginning of the social media era, I thought where’s the enemies list?” said Dean Terry.

EnemyGraph is an attempt to further define relationships between users and other entities across Facebook’s social graph.

“In a way, EnemyGraph is a social media blasphemy. Because we’re suggesting that you share differences you have with people or talk about the things you don’t like,” Terry said.

Users of EnemyGraph aren't limited to making enemies of people -- any object, place or thing that has a Facebook page can be an enemy.

“Most social networks attempt to connect people based on affinities. But people are also connected and motivated by things they dislike.”

Users of EnemyGraph aren’t limited to making enemies of people — any object, place or thing that has a Facebook page can be an enemy. “You can have an entire list with no people on it at all,” Terry said. “In a way we are misusing the word ‘enemy’ just as much as Facebook and others have misused ‘friend.’”

One early user described EnemyGraph as a way to “interact with friends over common enemies … creating alliances based on shared animosities.”

Dean Terry writes on his blog, “We look at EnemyGraph as a test to learn from for the new project we are about to start on for this semester. Because these kinds of tools have not been available previously we are interested to see how they are used. We plan to take what we learn and apply it to a site outside of Facebook that explores similar territory, but in a broader fashion.”

Terry recently shared his thoughts about EnemyGraphy in an interview on Outriders, a program dedicated to exploring the frontiers of the web from BBC Radio 5 live. Listen to the audio of the program below.

Try out EnemyGraph on Facebook.

A social media platform for mobile devices created by Emerging Media and Communication (EMAC) students is creating buzz at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Conference in Austin.

Placethings is one of 32 finalists in the second annual Accelerator Competition at SXSW Interactive, which has become the world’s premier emerging technology event.

Placethings beat out hundreds of other companies to become a finalist. Its EMAC student creators will present before a live audience and panel of judges at SXSW on March 15 at the Hilton Austin.

“Placethings creates personal, shareable layers of media on top of real-world locations, connecting places with stories,” according to Dean Terry, director of the UT Dallas EMAC program.  “Tell people about your trip, guide them through a city, tell stories about where you’ve been, what happened, and what is important with video, pictures, sound, and beautiful, shareable maps.”

Placethings was developed in EMAC’s MobileLab research group under Terry’s direction.  It was co-created by Terry, undergraduate Arts and Technology student Nicholas Spencer and EMAC graduate student John Syrinek.

Research Aims to Further Expand Connections Between Real and Virtual Worlds

UT Dallas researchers are working with Texas Instruments Inc. and GetFugu Inc. to enable next-generation human-device interaction (HDI) technologies that merge a physical, real-world environment with virtual, computer-generated imagery on mobile devices.

EMAC students Kate Aronson and John Syrinek check out a Texas Instruments OMAP processor development board.

The $100,000 project brings together TI’s OMAP processor and WiLink connectivity technology with GetFugu’s search tool and innovative work by researchers in the UT Dallas MobileLab.

When it’s all combined, users will gain quick access to information, seamless connections and vivid multimedia experiences, providing them with information about the world around them instantaneously.

Practically speaking, that means object-recognition technology that allows you to snap a picture of a company logo with a smartphone camera and instantly receive company information via the phone’s Internet connection – all because the smartphone identified the logo and searched for relevant information. It means taking a picture of an ad for a band and immediately obtaining the band’s latest tour dates and ticket information.

TI introduced the idea of next-generation human-device interaction at Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2010 in February.

While HDI is just starting to emerge in commercial applications, GetFugu has been in the field for more than two years. By integrating mobile phones’ core strengths into a single search tool, GetFugu provides user-friendly access via mobile devices to Web content previously available only on computers.

“TI is excited about the promise of HDI and how it will change the way we interact with our mobile devices,” said Leo Estevez, technology strategist for TI’s wireless business unit. “Our applications processors and connectivity solutions provide the powerful technology mix that sets a foundation for these applications and offers quicker access, improved user experiences and out-of-this-world advancements. As we demonstrated during MWC in February, we truly are at the cusp of a mobile revolution.”

MobileLab researchers at UT Dallas are now testing and running these concepts on the Zoom OMAP34x-II Mobile Development Platform, which features high-performance low-power capabilities that enable easier acquisition of content, an improved search experience and enhanced voice- and visual-recognition capabilities. OMAP processors are the sophisticated chips used in many smartphones.

“Our researchers from MobileLab and the University’s electrical engineering department are excited to collaborate with TI and GetFugu not only on the compelling technology of emerging HDI, but also on the new kinds user experiences it introduces,” said MobileLab’s director, Dean Terry.

Added Rich Jenkins, GetFugu’s co-founder and business development executive: “Our applications are designed to utilize vision- and voice-recognition, bypassing the mobile device’s cumbersome keyboard to connect with the content people want quickly and conveniently. The technology, while spectacular, remains a function of the search and is almost invisible to the consumer. We expect this to proliferate among mobile users and, when combined with powerful engines from TI, bring new levels of interactivity to mobile devices.”

Blend of Technology and Creativity Has Industry Players Taking Notice

At the MobileLab at UT Dallas, cell phones do more than allow people to communicate with one another. In the hands of MobileLab researchers, these ubiquitous hand-held devices are like Alice’s rabbit hole: a portal to experience a different reality.

Students at the UT Dallas MobileLab are encouraged to hold brainstorming sessions to keep a steady stream of ideas coming.MobileLab creations include an iPhone application that works with GPS to produce location-specific photos and video.

“Mobile technology, because it is also a social tool, is radically changing the way we think about our world and interact with it,” said Dean Terry, director of MobileLab and an associate professor in the School of Arts and Humanities. “A lot of our work explores the difference between the mobile experience and the desktop one, and the collaboration with others on new kinds of meaningful interactions with people and places via mobile devices.”

Less than 2 years old, MobileLab is supported by some of the world’s biggest technology and wireless companies. Ericsson, Texas Instruments,Research in Motion, Samsung and Apple are helping fund hardware, software and graduate student stipends. Ideas in the development stage include:

• An iPhone application called Placethings, which uses Global Positioning System technology to enable the creation, placement and viewing of photos, video and audio in a specific locale. This platform creates virtual layers of information and “place-based conversations” accessible via an iPhone.
• My Mobile Pet. A 3-D avatar created with an emerging technology called augmented reality, in which graphics appear superimposed over a real field of vision, creating a somewhat hallucinatory effect. When viewed through the camera phone, the avatar is seen as a virtual object moving in actual space and time.

Graduate students from engineering, computer science, and arts and technology – which includes specialties in game, animation and Web design, among other disciplines – collaborate on projects. Some students have technology expertise, while others focus on design and user experience. The result is an interdisciplinary team that can do the back-end engineering for a technology project and design a user-friendly interface, too.

MobileLab creations include an iPhone application that works with GPS to produce location-specific photos and video.

Industry collaboration is important. Last year Ericsson gave the lab $100,000 with the only stipulation that it devise new uses for its wireless technology. A team of faculty and graduate students from the Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science and ATEC worked with Ericsson engineers over the course of nine months to come up with the idea of a bicycle outfitted with a wireless sensor network that monitors a rider’s vital signs and streams that data to the athlete’s coach.

In addition to Terry, the team included Dinesh Bhatia, an associate professor of electrical engineering and director of the school’s Embedded and Adaptive Computing Group, and Balakrishnan Prabhakaran, associate professor of computer science.

The team performed hardware and software systems integration and created a slick user interface. Ericsson executives were so impressed by the bike that it was featured at the company’s trade booth last spring during CTIA Wireless, the world’s largest wireless industry event. And the resulting system operates on very low power, which will be particularly important in spin-off applications under consideration for firefighters, soldiers and recently discharged patients, Dr. Bhatia noted.

“That’s what comes of giving free rein to a multidisciplinary team of bright graduate students and faculty,” said Dr. Bhatia.

A 3-D avatar created with augmented reality superimposes graphical images over a real field of vision.

Terry, a former West Coast entrepreneur, designed MobileLab to be more like a technology startup than a traditional university research lab. To keep a steady stream of ideas coming, his team holds regular brainstorming meetings, where ideas flow freely and industry partners are invited.

“Although the MobileLab relies on technology at its core, it functions more like a creative community,” said Simon Kane, graduate student in arts and technology. “I credit Dean Terry and his academic and industry background for this open approach. He lets students conceptualize and develop their own ideas with a tremendous amount of freedom and creativity.”

The wireless industry is taking notice of MobileLab. The students have been invited to present their ideas at such influential tech conferences asMobilize, which is organized by the wireless technology blog, GigaOm; and Supernova, whose host is the technology startup blog TechCrunchand the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Terry says the ideas from MobileLab are an example of the kinds of research that students majoring in Emerging Media and Communication at UT Dallas will have a chance to pursue once the new degree program begins in the fall.

At the MobileLabat UT Dallas, cell phones do more than allow people to communicate with one another. In the hands of MobileLab researchers, these ubiquitous hand-held devices are like Alice’s rabbit hole: a portal to experience a different reality.

A 3-D avatar created with augmented reality superimposes graphical images over a real field of vision.

“Mobile technology, because it is also a social tool, is radically changing the way we think about our world and interact with it,” said Dean Terry, director of MobileLab and an associate professor in the School of Arts and Humanities. “A lot of our work explores the difference between the mobile experience and the desktop one, and the collaboration with others on new kinds of meaningful interactions with people and places via mobile devices.”

Less than 2 years old, MobileLab is supported by some of the world’s biggest technology and wireless companies. Ericsson, Texas Instruments, Research in Motion, Samsung and Apple are helping fund hardware, software and graduate student stipends. Ideas in the development stage include:

• An iPhone application called Placethings, which uses Global Positioning System technology to enable the creation, placement and viewing of photos, video and audio in a specific locale. This platform creates virtual layers of information and “place-based conversations” accessible via an iPhone.
• My Mobile Pet. A 3-D avatar created with an emerging technology called augmented reality, in which graphics appear superimposed over a real field of vision, creating a somewhat hallucinatory effect. When viewed through the camera phone, the avatar is seen as a virtual object moving in actual space and time.

Graduate students from engineering, computer science, and arts and technology – which includes specialties in game, animation and Web design, among other disciplines – collaborate on projects. Some students have technology expertise, while others focus on design and user experience. The result is an interdisciplinary team that can do the back-end engineering for a technology project and design a user-friendly interface, too.

Students at the UT Dallas MobileLab are encouraged to hold brainstorming sessions to keep a steady stream of ideas coming.

Industry collaboration is important. Last year Ericsson gave the lab $100,000 with the only stipulation that it devise new uses for its wireless technology. A team of faculty and graduate students from the Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science and ATEC worked with Ericsson engineers over the course of nine months to come up with the idea of a bicycle outfitted with a wireless sensor network that monitors a rider’s vital signs and streams that data to the athlete’s coach.

In addition to Terry, the team included Dinesh Bhatia, an associate professor of electrical engineering and director of the school’s Embedded and Adaptive Computing Group, and Balakrishnan Prabhakaran, associate professor of computer science.

The team performed hardware and software systems integration and created a slick user interface. Ericsson executives were so impressed by the bike that it was featured at the company’s trade booth last spring during CTIA Wireless, the world’s largest wireless industry event. And the resulting system operates on very low power, which will be particularly important in spin-off applications under consideration for firefighters, soldiers and recently discharged patients, Dr. Bhatia noted.

“That’s what comes of giving free rein to a multidisciplinary team of bright graduate students and faculty,” said Dr. Bhatia.

Terry, a former West Coast entrepreneur, designed MobileLab to be more like a technology startup than a traditional university research lab. To keep a steady stream of ideas coming, his team holds regular brainstorming meetings, where ideas flow freely and industry partners are invited.

“Although the MobileLab relies on technology at its core, it functions more like a creative community,” said Simon Kane, graduate student in arts and technology. “I credit Dean Terry and his academic and industry background for this open approach. He lets students conceptualize and develop their own ideas with a tremendous amount of freedom and creativity.”

The wireless industry is taking notice of MobileLab. The students have been invited to present their ideas at such influential tech conferences as Mobilize, which is organized by the wireless technology blog, GigaOm; and Supernova, whose host is the technology startup blog TechCrunch and the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Terry says the ideas from MobileLab are an example of the kinds of research that students majoring in Emerging Media and Communication at UT Dallas will have a chance to pursue once the new degree program begins in the fall.

Project Documents History Prof’s Use of Popular Service as a Teaching Tool

An Arts and Technology student’s video account of a professor’s classroom experiment with Twitter is making waves on the World Wide Web, capturing thousands of viewers on YouTube and prompting an article in U.S. News & World Report.

“I have gotten several direct messages from people saying that they were more ‘traditional’ and would not have considered using the social networking and micro-blogging tools in this way, but opened their minds after seeing the video.” Kim Smith, creator of "The Twitter Experiment"

UT Dallas graduate student Kim Smith’s video, “The Twitter Experiment,” shows how Dr. Monica Rankin, assistant professor of history in the School of Arts and Humanities, uses Twitter to engage her 90-student history class in discussion.  The communication application helps overcome the logistical issues involved in having scores of students interact in a short time span and encourages shy students to participate in the course.

“The video is a living example of what my Content Creation and Collaboration course with Dan Langendorf was all about: using emerging media technologies as a tool for education, collaboration with other fields, and documenting the experience for everyone to have access to,” said Smith.

Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that lets users send and read each others’ updates, known as tweets, in short posts of 140 characters or less.   The Twitter video was a course project for Smith’s digital video class.

The video, which took roughly 20 hours to record and edit, was shot during two class periods, one at the beginning of the semester and one at the end. Classmate Joe Chuang helped with the video and editing.

The collaboration of Smith and Rankin began when Smith documented a class trip to Guanajuato, Mexico, in 2008. They kept in touch via Facebook, and developed the idea of using Twitter in the classroom at the beginning of the Spring 2009 semester.

Smith worked out details on Twitter with Emerging Media and Communication (EMAC) faculty members Dr. Dave Parry and Dean Terry, who referred her to individuals who had done similar experiments.  To get students comfortable with using Twitter in a classroom setting, Smith created a simple how-to video and attended class to help Rankin introduce the idea to her students.

The video was first released on Facebook; Terry and Parry both tweeted about it on Twitter and it went global within 48 hours.  New-media icon Howard Rheingold tweeted about it, which helped it further circulate in the “Twitterverse.”

“I have gotten several direct messages from people saying that they were more ‘traditional’ and would not have considered using the social networking and micro-blogging tools in this way, but opened their minds after seeing the video,” said Smith.

A few weeks later Smith posted the video on YouTube, and an entirely different wave of viewers picked up on it.  On Monday, June 1, “The Twitter Experiment” registered 500 views in a few hours. Read Write Web and other popular blogs had picked up the video, causing views to skyrocket.

“I love my classes and experience at UT Dallas and want to master how to use what I learn in EMAC to help professors like Dr. Rankin, who are willing to consider new technologies intelligently and experiment with what they offer,” said Smith.

Challenging traditional ideas of art and its limitations, the world of emerging media meets art in an exhibition presented by a UT Dallas student of the Arts and Technology program.

The TimeFrame exhibition will be held Sept. 25 to 27 on Seesmic, a video-based social networking site. Ten artists will interpret the concept of time found in an immersive space that allows for varying yet concurrent moments of presence.

The TimeFrame exhibition will be available for view Sept. 25-27 on the seesmic.com Web site.

“I was interested in exploring how to use these types of spaces as an actual venue. Seesmic seemed perfect for this. But this is not meant to be a replacement for gallery exhibitions, rather an extension,” said Christi Nielsen, the curator of TimeFrame.

Artists included in the exhibit are UT Dallas students, graduates or faculty: Elizabeth Alavi, Sheila Cunningham, LeeAnn Harrington, Kyle Kondas, Betsy Lewis, Manuel Pecina and Dean Terry. Tiil, a Boston artist, will also participate.

“This is an excellent example of how creative people can use communications mediums as platforms for expression, in a collaborative, iterative process rather than creating fixed objects,” said Terry, who is a professor of emerging media. “The ‘art’ is the experience and participation in the communication itself.”

The Emerging Media and Communications bachelor’s and master’s degrees within the School of Arts and Humanities are new to UT Dallas. EMAC focuses on the uses, impact and implications of digital networked technology on media and culture in the 21st century and is closely associated with the arts and technology program.

“TimeFrame is a great example of how artists can use emerging media as alternative spaces, and what a concrete example for the new Emerging Media degree in ATEC [Arts and Technology program],” said Nielsen.

Nielsen points out that “artists who embrace emerging media have far more opportunities outside of their local art scene.”

In this 72-hour event, viewers are encouraged to respond and interact with the artists and their work. Participation requires a free account on Seesmic.

High culture comes to gamers with the help of a group of graduate students from UT Dallas Arts & Technology program.

An avatar of Edvard Munch's painting "The Scream" created by Arts & Technology students.

Twelve graduate students have created a virtual art education environment in which art lovers can learn about museum practices and the visual arts.  Among the activities to do in this virtual world gallery are the following:

• Take a two-dimensional painting and create an avatar from painters Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” or Pablo Picasso’s “The Guitarist.”
• Learn how to mount an exhibition of just about any great work of art or historical subject matter that would not be possible in a real-life museum.  For example, the student’s virtual museum exhibition is of a Mayan pyramid.
• Interact with art experts and learn the principles of design, color and light.
• Stroll through a virtual art gallery with works created by UT Dallas students.

The School of Arts and Humanities at The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) this fall will add a new area of study to its popular arts and technology degree program — emerging media and communications. Courses in the track will address evolving forms of media and communications, including web-based writing and content development, among other areas.

The new concentration, which is expected to enroll its first students this fall, will highlight such topics as social networks, blogging, podcasting, vodcasting, virtual worlds and games. Beyond introducing students to cutting-edge emerging media technologies and practices, the program will provide a foundation of collaborative skills, theoretical breadth, historical context and ethical sensitivity. The new area also will build on rhetoric, communications and creative writing resources, in addition to leveraging existing arts and technology expertise in Web development, computer imaging and design.

Students also will have the opportunity to publish and broadcast their own original works on a series of new UTD web sites and events, and through partnerships with local media.

The new program will provide a full sequence of undergraduate and graduate courses.  Lower division courses will emphasize writing and inquiry and introduce emerging media and upper division and graduate courses will focus on developing voice and on original productions.

Dr. Dennis Kratz, dean of the School of Arts and Humanities, called the emerging media offering “a strategic move by UTD to anticipate, and in fact influence, the future direction of higher education.”

Dean Terry, the arts and technology professor who will head the new area, said that in an era of continuous, ubiquitous, mobile communicating, a new generation of media developers will be in high demand.

 “Our students are already fusing creative and intellectual excellence with technological innovation and developing new territories in interactive and participatory media,” Terry said.  “This initiative aims to build on that base and create a new wave of next generation writers and content developers, and new media entrepreneurs and artists.”

Registration for fall classes began April 12.  For more information about the new concentration, visithttp://emac.utdallas.edu/, or contact Terry at dean.terry@utdallas.edu.