CITRIS Collaborative Gallery Builder: Overview
The CITRIS Collaborative Gallery Builder is a system designed to allow researchers in the humanities
to interact with 3-dimensional artifacts and related digital content inside of a collaborative virtual environment.
The CITRIS Collaborative Gallery Builder creates digital galleries, which are simple virtual structures emulating real-life exhibitions and collections. Visitors find themselves in a virtual space composed of various rooms, with 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional artifacts and multimedia presented in the space. Each visitor is represented by an avatar which they can navigate through the 3D space.
The CITRIS Collaborative Gallery Builder, built on top of HP Labs' Croquet software,
allows for group collaboration and interaction within the virtual space.
That is, several people may have avatars present in the space at one time which can interact with each other,
and with the gallery itself.
Examples of interaction include discussion, annotation of artifacts, adding hyperlinks to artifacts,
as well as introducing new items into the gallery and modifying the layout of the gallery and contents.
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The system can be used in a traditional authoring mode, where one or more researchers curate the gallery,
creating a space for exploration by later visitors. It can also be used as a purely collaborative 3D wiki,
where everyone who visits is free to modify the space. In the second approach, curating itself becomes the learning experience.
The CITRIS Collaborative Gallery Builder has been developed in cooperation with HASTAC (Humanities, Art, Science and Technology: Advanced Collaboration), the UC Humanities Research Institute, the Stanford Humanities Lab, and the Stanford Library's Buckminster Fuller Archive. We have been using digital content from the Fuller Archive in addition to artifacts digitized at the UCB Tele-Immersion Lab. The Tele-Immersion Lab is currently using their 3D scanner to digitize collections of artifacts of historical and scientific value. We are also coordinating with the lab to integrate their fully immersive 3D-video-capture system.
The CITRIS Collaborative Gallery Builder creates digital galleries, which are simple virtual structures emulating real-life exhibitions and collections. Visitors find themselves in a virtual space composed of various rooms, with 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional artifacts and multimedia presented in the space. Each visitor is represented by an avatar which they can navigate through the 3D space.
The CITRIS Collaborative Gallery Builder, built on top of HP Labs' Croquet software,
allows for group collaboration and interaction within the virtual space.
That is, several people may have avatars present in the space at one time which can interact with each other,
and with the gallery itself.
Examples of interaction include discussion, annotation of artifacts, adding hyperlinks to artifacts,
as well as introducing new items into the gallery and modifying the layout of the gallery and contents.
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The system can be used in a traditional authoring mode, where one or more researchers curate the gallery,
creating a space for exploration by later visitors. It can also be used as a purely collaborative 3D wiki,
where everyone who visits is free to modify the space. In the second approach, curating itself becomes the learning experience.
The CITRIS Collaborative Gallery Builder has been developed in cooperation with HASTAC (Humanities, Art, Science and Technology: Advanced Collaboration), the UC Humanities Research Institute, the Stanford Humanities Lab, and the Stanford Library's Buckminster Fuller Archive. We have been using digital content from the Fuller Archive in addition to artifacts digitized at the UCB Tele-Immersion Lab. The Tele-Immersion Lab is currently using their 3D scanner to digitize collections of artifacts of historical and scientific value. We are also coordinating with the lab to integrate their fully immersive 3D-video-capture system.
Technical Contact: Bradford Wilson:
Program Director: Ruzena Bajcsy
Croquet: www.croquetproject.org
Credits:
The gallery was largely written and documented by Orion Elenzil,
with portions by Tao Starbow.
Very early assistance from Scott Wallace.
Tina Shyuan made the demonstration galleries.
Ruzena Bajscy of course with invaluable guidance and verve.
Brad Wilson is the current point-of-contact for using the Gallery,
and the Croquet team with much support.
Last Updated: December 11, 2006 - 1:51pm