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Hilton Hotels had originally made a deal with them to begin installing them in their hotels throughout the United States and other countries, but usage was low.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.

Telepresence art

True Telepresence is a multidisciplinary art and science that foundationally integrates engineering, psychology, and the art of television broadcast.

A Soapopera for iMacs

In 1998, Diller and Scofidio created the "Refresh", an Internet-based art installation that juxtaposed a live web camera with recorded videos staged by professional actors. Each image was accompanied with a fictional narrative which made it difficult to distinguish which was the live web camera.

In 1993, Eduardo Kac and Ed Bennett created a telepresence installation "Ornitorrinco on the Moon", for the international telecommunication arts festival "Blurred Boundaries" (Entgrenzte Grenzen II). It was coordinated by Kulturdata, in Graz, Austria, and was connected around the world.

What it takes?

Telepresence refers to a set of technologies which allow a person to feel as if they were present, to give the appearance that they were present, or to have an effect, at a location other than their true location. Telepresence requires that the senses of the user, or users, are provided with such stimuli as to give the feeling of being in that other location.

Additionally, the user(s) may be given the ability to affect the remote location. In this case, the user's position, movements, actions, voice, etc. may be sensed, transmitted and duplicated in the remote location to bring about this effect. Therefore information may be travelling in both directions between the user and the remote location. Telepresence refers to a user interacting with another live, real place, and is distinct from virtual presence, where the user is given the impression of being in a simulated environment.

Source: Wikipedia

Isn’t Telepresence just VideoConferencing?

Although many organizations have tried legacy videoconferencing equipment, many business leaders are quickly realizing the superior benefits of Secure Telepresence services over legacy videoconference systems. Telepresence is the science of creating visual collaboration environments, networks, and strategies that create the illusion that people at the remote distant location are essentially present. No picture artifact. No sound delay. 100% Guaranteed call connection every conference.