Repertoire Remix: Q&A with Tod Machover and Tae Kim
Tod Machover and members of his group answered questions submitted during the Repertoire Remix event, and here they answer a few more for which they didn’t have time during the broadcast.
Question: Amazing! I am just missing Scarlatti...any chance? :-) more ›
MirrorFugue
Grad student Xiao Xiao (Tangible Media) recently presented a talk about interactive music, featuring a performance on her project MirrorFugue, at both TEDxBoston and the Aspen Ideas Festival.
Tuning Social Networks to Gain the Wisdom of the Crowd
As we engage more with social networking sites, there is always the danger of a “group think” mentality–when people follow a group consensus rather than critically evaluate information; make decisions without guidance from the social network; or follow “gurus” who provide them with bad information. So how do we avoid these errors and maximize the “wisdom of the crowd”? more ›
Slam Force Net Makes Its Debut
The Slam Dunk competition at the NBA All Star game (Feb. 25 at 8pm Eastern on TNT) will feature the Media Lab's Slam Force basketball net, which measures the energy of a dunk.
Courtesy of Turner Sports
Commercial Version of the MIT Media Lab CityCar Unveiled in Brussels
A full-scale version of the stackable, electric CityCar, created by researchers at the MIT Media Lab and commercialized by a consortium of automotive suppliers in the Basque region of Spain, was unveiled at the European Union Commission headquarters on January 24, 2012. more ›
Trillion-Frame-per-Second Video
MIT researchers have created a new imaging system that can acquire visual data at a rate of one trillion exposures per second. That’s fast enough to produce a slow-motion video of a burst of light traveling the length of a one-liter bottle, bouncing off the cap and reflecting back to the bottle’s bottom.
Media Lab postdoc Andreas Velten, one of the system’s developers, calls it the “ultimate” in slow motion: “There’s nothing in the universe that looks fast to this camera,” he says. more ›
Minecraft.Print(): Making the Virtual Real
Minecraft is a video game focused on creativity and building. Players build constructions out of textured cubes in a 3D world–everything from a hut, to a train station, to a fully functional computer. Why can't we take those virtual creations, and bring them into the real world? Minecraft.Print() is our attempt to do so by creating a bridge between Minecraft and the real world, via 3D printers. A Minecraft player defines a 3D space to be printed, after which the software extracts the object, structure, or other creation from the virtual space and creates 3D-printable version. more ›
Death and the Powers: US Premiere March 18
Death and the Powers is a new opera by composer Tod Machover and developed at the MIT Media Lab, in collaboration with the American Repertory Theater and Chicago Opera Theater. It is a one-act, full evening work that tells the story of Simon Powers, a successful and powerful businessman and inventor, who wants to go beyond the bounds of humanity. Reaching the end of his life, Powers faces the question of his legacy: “When I die, what remains? What will I leave behind? What can I control? more ›
Media Lab Work in MIT 150 Exhibition
The 25-year history of the Media Lab's cutting-edge research is represented by nine projects in the MIT Museum's exhibition celebrating the Institute's 150th anniversary.
- Tech Night at the Pops, MIT Alumni Association and Boston Pops, 1896 to present
- CityCar Electric Vehicle, Smart Cities Group, MIT Media Lab, 2006–Present
The Glass Infrastructure
This project builds an open, social information window into the Media Lab using 30 touch-sensitive screens strategically placed throughout the Media Lab complex. The experience of using these screens is optimized for guests and visitors who collaboratively explore and uncover the people, ideas, and connections behind the research of the Lab. The system also makes suggestions about who to meet, where they may be, and what projects and people—represented as "charms"—one ought to collect, trade, and share. more ›
NETRA
MIT Media Lab researchers have created a quick, simple, and inexpensive way to use mobile phones to measure refractive errors of the eye, including nearsightedness, farsightedness, astigmatism, and age-related vision loss. Until now, these measurements have only been possible using specialized equipment operated by a trained professional. more ›
Merry Miser
Merry Miser is a mobile application that helps its users make better decisions about spending. The application uses the context provided by a user's location and financial history to provide personalized interventions when the user is near an opportunity to spend. The interventions, which are motivated by prior research in positive psychology, persuasive technology, and shopping psychology, consist of informational displays about context-relevant spending history, subjective assessments of past purchases, personal budgets, and savings goals.
Bokode: The Better Barcode
The ubiquitous barcodes found on product packaging provide information to the scanner at the checkout counter, but that's about all they do. Now, researchers at the Media Lab have come up with a new kind of very tiny barcode that could provide a variety of useful information to shoppers as they scan the shelves—and could even lead to new devices for classroom presentations, business meetings, videogames or motion-capture systems. more ›
