Mixed Reality Productions of the Future

Augmented and Mixed Reality has been used in a variety of applications within the scientific and industrial communities, and edutainment (education through entertainment) and interactive installations in public spaces. However, the great potential of these technologies has very rarely been explored within a broadcasting context. BBC is developing the creative concepts and prototype production tools that would innovate broadcast production and enhance audience experience, based on and extending state-of-the-art research in Mixed Reality. This paper presents preliminary results from the introduction of AR technologies in a public service entertainment organization, such as the BBC, and then focuses on the production tools and interactive productions developed. The paper also summarizes technical issues that would allow use of this approach in multiple environments, such as in studios, classrooms and in the home

Making it real: exploring the potential of Augmented Reality for teaching primary school science

The use of Augmented Reality (AR) in formal education could prove a key component in future learning environments that are richly populated with a blend of hardware and software applications. However, relatively little is known about the potential of this technology to support teaching and learning with groups of young children in the classroom. Analysis of teacher-child dialogue in a comparative study between use of an AR virtual mirror interface and more traditional science teaching methods for 10-year-old children, revealed that the children using AR were less engaged than those using traditional resources. We suggest four design requirements that need to be considered if AR is to be successfully adopted into classroom practice. These requirements are: flexible content that teachers can adapt to the needs of their children, guided exploration so learning opportunities can be maximised, in a limited time, and attention to the needs of institutional and curricular requirements

Using ARToolkit to prototype future entertainment scenarios

This paper described the integration of the ARToolKit with the Reachin Core Technology API. The result is a system capable of providing a coherent mix of real world video, computer haptics and computer graphics. A key feature is that new applications can be rapidly developed. Ultimately, this system is used to support rich object based collaboration between face-to-face and remote participants

Case studies in application of augmented reality in future media production

In this application-based poster, we describe three case studies about potential applications of augmented reality (AR) in the broadcasting and entertainment industry. The poster covers the potential impact on BBC’s principal objectives to ‘entertain, educate and inform ’ in a variety of environments such as broadcast studios, classrooms and in the home. 1

Bureaucratic Speech: Language Choice and Democratic Identity in the Taipei Bureaucracy

This article illuminates the social nature of bureaucratic practice. Analyzing the everyday speech of bureaucrats in a polyglossic society reveals both their intensely interactive conduct and their recognition that the government they comprise is itself a participant in a social world of institutions and values. My ethnography shows how Taipei city government administrators mobilize ideologies associated with Taiwan’s two primary languages, and stereotypes associated with bureaucracy, to undermine both. Instead, they present themselves as a post-ethnonational and post-bureaucratic avant garde of their new democracy. In doing so, they draw on local values and tropes of legitimation, which place a premium on the personalistic relations and social imbrications of government actors — relations that democracy, for all its potential to spawn dangerous chaos, is seen to facilitate. They represent their government employer not by claiming a superordinate status for it, but by situating it as one participant within a complex of institutions, networks, and values. In illuminating both the internally and the externally social nature of government bureaucracy, I highlight the creative and progressive possibilities hidden within the drab government office