Telepresence Cisco - Meeting

Connected Streets Sketch

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Telepresence

A computer-generated environment consisting of interactive simulations and computer graphics in which a human being experiences being present in a remote location.
The role of the artist in interactive art is not to encode messages unidirectionally but to define the parameters of the open-ended context in which experiences will unfold... An art that addresses the cultural, material and philosophical conditions of our time must manifest itself with the means of our time. Some of the alternatives for this new aesthetic are real-time interactive installations, robotics and telecommunication events. Seen together these possibilities define a zone of intersection that can be precisely termed "telepresence art." - Eduardo Kac

Telepresence Art

Graham Smith

Biography
For over 25 years Graham Smith has been creating artworks using robotic, virtual reality, photographic and telepresence media and has exhibited his work internationally. Current projects include an interactive video mural of the Berlin Wall called “INTERSECTION”, a telepresence robot exhibition for the European Capital of Culture project in Essen, Germany in 2010 called "THE THIRD EYE" and a 3 year research project with Ryerson University to develop a way to simulate the affect of sound in movies for deaf people using a combination of non audio sensory inputs called the "Emoti-chair". He has worked as an artist and educator with prominent institutions including the McLuhan Program at the University of Toronto, InterAccess, WAAG Society, and V2/Dutch Electronic Art Festival. He is a co-founder of the German art collective Cybercity Ruhr and is working to realize his long term art project "LIBERATION" which will simulate the weightless sensation of seeing the earth from orbit.

Porject Description - The Connected Streets

Our aim on this project is to connecting completely two different societies or cultures. While everyone living their own daily life or routine, we would like people to see how the life goes on around the world. What are differences or similarities? How people have fun or go to work everyday. So through this project, we would like to add people a different point of view and a world vision. Imagine a man in Istanbul walking on the sideway and right next to him a man in New York running for to catch the bus and many more examples like this... We want to create this by using improved high-tech "tele-presence" technics. Of course ours will only be a demo of this technic. Creating a huge panel on the sideway of along a commonly used street like always crowded 7/24. This billboard is going to be a massive screen which has high-definition cameras placed inside and same panel to a different country's major city like Istanbul and New York. So people will be observing and sort of living together in these two cities.

History

The first commercially successful telepresence company, Teleport (which was later changed to TeleSuite), was founded in 1993 by David Allen and Harold Williams.^[10] The original intent was to develop a system that could allow families to interact across great distances without the hassle or costliness of flying. The first systems (which they called TeleSuites) looked more like something out of an upper class home rather than a conference room in an office suite (which are what most systems are used for today).

Hilton Hotels had originally made a deal with them to begin installing them in their hotels throughout the United States and other countries, but usage was low. The idea lost momentum and Hilton eventually backed out. They later began to focus on business oriented telepresence systems. Shareholders eventually held enough stock to take over the company, which ultimately led to its collapse. David Allen purchased all of the assets of TeleSuite and then called the new company Destiny Conferencing.

Although they survived, the idea did not truly catch on until other mega-corporations jumped onboard such as HP, and Cisco released similar systems around the mid 2000s.^[11]

An important research project in telepresence began in 1990. Headquartered at the University of Toronto, the Ontario Telepresence Project "was a three year, $4.8 million pre-competitive research project whose mandate was to design and field trial advanced media space systems in a variety of workplaces in order to gain insights into key sociological and engineering issues. The OTP, which ended December, 1994, was part of the International Telepresence Project which linked Ontario researchers to counterparts in four European nations. The Project’s major sponsor was the Province of Ontario through two of its Centres of Excellence -- the Information Technology Research Centre (ITRC) and the Telecommunications Research Institute of Ontario (TRIO)." (quoting from the project's final report ^[12]) The Project was an interdisciplinary effort involving social sciences and engineering.

Telepresence reaching Zeitgeist in 2008. New telepresence user discussion platforms (bulletin boards) such as Telepresence Forum and Telepresence Club have appeared in the later months of 2007 and continue into 2008 behind the industry push by mega-corporations such as Cisco, HP, Polycom, Nortel and Tandberg to heighten public awareness of telepresence and its benefits. Breaking telepresence industry news and article RSS feeds have gone from non-existent just a few years ago to mainstream on Internet websites such as Telepresence Today and Telepresence Report, all adding to the Zeitgeist of telepresence for 2008 and beyond.