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E N T E R T A I N M E N T C O M P U T I N G

C omputing continues to trans-form every aspect of culture,including the original forms oflocation-based entertainment:public libraries and museums.

The most obvious impact has been onlibraries, through national efforts suchas the Digital Library Federation(www.diglib.org). In addition, USlibraries receive more than $200 mil-lion a year from federal activities suchas the little-known Institute for Mu-seum and Library Services (www.imls.gov). Moreover, the regular controversyin the US over Internet restrictions andthe privacy of patrons in public librarieshighlights that these places now haveuses beyond book storage.

MUSEUMS GO DIGITALLess obvious has been the transfor-

mation of museums. Public museumsprovided an early form of edutainmentthat served as an intellectual diversionfor the masses. Today, the US’s 15,000public museums encompass a widerange of subjects, such as art, science,astronomy, music, and history. Yet,according to the RAND study FromCelluloid to Cyberspace: The MediaArts and the Changing Arts World(www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1552/), in the last 20 years museumshave faced heavy competition:

Both the nonprofit and commercialarts, for example, face increasing

competition for their audiences. Thischange is affecting the public’s incli-nation to participate in the arts aswell as what they consume and how.Helped by rising incomes, changinglifestyles, and a leisure industry com-mitted to providing attractive optionsto a growing market, Americanshave a wider array of leisure-timeoptions than ever before but less freetime to exercise those options.

Museums must not only competewith the more than 450 theme parks inthe US, but also with highly addictiveonline video games such as The SimsOnline and Everquest. Moore’s Lawwill only make this competition stiffer:The doubling of computing powerevery 18 months will let game devel-opers offer ever more affordable enter-tainment while giving consumers morechoices as to when, where, and howthey participate.

Yet despite such challenges, USmuseums have generally thrived in anincreasingly electronic environment.

According to Christopher Hawthornefrom the National Arts JournalismProgram, (www.najp.org/theatertranscripts/Research%20Panel%20EDITED.htm), attendance grew 30percent from 1982 to 1997 because

…museums have become publicspaces in this culture; they are places[where] we gather. We may meet afriend at a museum cafe or visit thegift shop in a museum without evenentering the museum, but in termsof earned income, the museum canstill benefit from that visit even if wedon’t buy a ticket. On the other end

of the spectrum, we may spend anentire day at a museum: eating, see-ing a film and then an exhibit, thenvisiting the gift shop on our way out.

Despite their continuing popularity,museums have generally lagged behindlibraries in technology use. For exam-ple, a 2002 study conducted by theInstitute for Museum and LibraryServices shows that only 62 percent ofmuseums have a Web site, versus 75percent of public libraries (www.imls.gov/reports/techreports/summary02.htm). Large museums are the excep-tion to this trend and have undertakenseveral initiatives that foreshadow howmuseums may evolve in the 21st cen-tury.

STAKING CLAIMS IN CYBERSPACEMuseums such as New York’s

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum arejust beginning to claim a permanentstake in cyberspace. Famous for itsmodern art collection, the Guggenheimestablished itself on the Web by com-

RevitalizingMuseums withDigital TechnologyMichael Macedonia, Georgia Tech Research Institute

Museums are using technologiessuch as interactive exhibits andaugmented reality to compete with their electronic-mediarivals.

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missioning original interactive artworkfor the Internet. Two new Internetworks commissioned in 2002—MarkNapier’s net.flag and John F. Simon, Jr.’sUnfolding Object—have entered themuseum’s permanent collection.

According to Guggenheim Founda-tion Director Thomas Krens, themuseum commissions Internet artworkin “recognition of the extraordinarypromise that new media, and theInternet in particular, holds for trans-forming the creation of and access tovisual culture. In less than a decadeonline art has become a major move-ment with a global audience. When welook at Internet art, we glimpse someof the new directions art may take inthe 21st century.”

At the Guggenheim Web site, JonIppolito, curator for these commis-sions, explores myths surroundingthe Internet and art collections.Ippolito’s Myth Number 10 holdsthat Internet art is a solitary experi-ence. Ippolito points out that, just likea brick-and-mortar museum, theInternet “is far more important as asocial mechanism” (www.guggenheim.org/exhibitions/virtual/).

VIRTUAL REALITY Last year, the Seattle Art Museum

held an exhibition of ancient Chineseart in which patrons participated in avirtual archeological dig. Battelle PacificNorthwest Laboratories and the Uni-versity of Washington Human InterfaceLab developed a simulation that let vis-itors interact with objects found in aChinese sacrificial burial plot.

The system uses a gesture-recogni-tion hardware- and software-immer-sive environment. Developed at PacificNorthwest, this Human InformationWorkspace lets visitors explore the vir-tual site by brushing away or diggingthrough dirt to find artifacts. Onceguests have exposed the site’s relics, theLab’s augmented-reality toolkit pro-jects their finds onto a screen for fur-ther interaction and analysis (www.seattleartmuseum.org/Exhibit/Archive/sichuan/plan/planTech.htm).

Audience participationThe Carnegie Museum of Natural

History and Carnegie Mellon Uni-versity’s Entertainment TechnologyCenter have developed a way to bringdinosaurs alive to large groups withtheir digital Earth Theater. Figure 1shows the theater, a partial-dome plan-etarium-style room that seats 68.Developed by Kerry Handron, the the-ater provides an immersive experiencefor museum visitors. The ETC group—led by Jesse Schell, former director ofVirtual Reality at Disney Imagineering—also created a five-minute interactiveshow for elementary school children(www.etc.cmu.edu/projects/hotlava/).

The show turns its young audienceinto active participants with different-colored lasers that act as virtual paint-brushes. Multiple cameras track thelaser light reflections and feed the datato the graphics program running theshow. Each laser color activates insequence, with 17 lasers turned on atthe same time. When a guest points alaser at an onscreen dinosaur, the light

dynamically creates a biobubble at thatposition via raycasting.

The scenario goes something likethis: We arrive at the first raptor’s loca-tion, at which point it is merely a pileof bones on the ground. Then thebones animate, moving upward toform a skeleton, which the yellowgroup then paints. When the raptor issufficiently painted, it comes alive witha froth of bubbles, via a particle-effectssystem, and the bare skeleton morphsinto one covered with skin. The raptorthen runs offscreen, and the cameramoves to a different location with anew set of raptor bones. The greengroup paints this raptor, it comes alive,then runs offscreen. The camera movesagain, and we repeat the process forthe blue and purple groups.

Augmented VRResearchers Miguel Encarnacao and

Oliver Bimber at the Fraunhofer Centerfor Research in Computer Graphicshave developed augmented-reality tech-niques that enable development of vir-

Lasersetup

Lithtechserver

Coolneon

Fiveclients

Earth Theater 210°Video camera

Extensiblehardware base

ET chair

PPARTO(Parallel port activated

remote technology object)

LANARTO(Laser and

neon activationrequired toggle

override)

Localnetwork

Laserserver

Figure 1. Earth Theater. A joint venture of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History andCarnegie Mellon University’s Entertainment Technology Center, the theater provides animmersive experience for visitors. Participants interact with the virtual environment to,for example, clothe simulated dinosaur bones in computer-generated soft tissues.

inform passengers of location-specificand location-triggered visual and audioroute information. The system alsogives geospatially referenced presenta-tions on Orlando’s history. As the busmoves about its route, the Global Posi-tioning System updates its location,which triggers a specific presentationdetailing the history of each locale(www.news.ucf.edu/FY2002-03/ 021009.html). UCF’s Chris Stapelton observesthat riders have enthusiastically em-braced the limited content available nowand are already eager for more.

I nstead of a place for philosophicalcontemplation, museums are ex-panding and redefining their role to

reach more people. Like their theme-park cousins, museums are just begin-ning to exploit the Internet, virtualreality, and mobile computing. �

Michael Macedonia is a senior scientist at the Georgia Tech Research Institute, Atlanta. Contact him atmacedonia@computer.org.

E n t e r t a i n m e n t C o m p u t i n g

tual showcases for museums. ARmerges the real world with the syn-thetic to give researchers perspectivesunavailable by other means. For exam-ple, they have used augmented realityto determine where powerful jaw mus-cles may have attached to the skull ofDeinonychus, a predatory dinosaur(Oliver Bimber et al., “Merging FossilSpecimens with Computer-GeneratedInformation,” Computer, Sept. 2002,pp. 25-30). Researchers hypothesizewhere muscle, skin, and other partswould fit, based upon observations ofclosely related modern animals, thenstore this information, along with a 3Dscan of the fossil, in a standard desktopcomputer.

The Virtual Showcase is a half-mirrored, conical chamber fitted withnumerous projectors and lighting con-trols, which functions as an environ-ment for holding fossil specimens thatcan then be augmented with 3D graph-ics. Standing outside the showcase andwearing special glasses, visitors controlthe lighting and project graphics onto

the fossils, immersing themselves in a3D illusion of saurian flesh envelopingfossilized bone.

Used to display a variety of ex-hibits, Virtual Showcases are beinginstalled in several European muse-ums, including the Technical Museumin Vienna and the Deutches Museumin Bonn, Germany (www.inigraphics.net/publications/topics/2002/issue3/3_02a04.pdf).

GOING MOBILEAnother frontier opening to muse-

ums will extend their influence intoareas that many people move throughdaily: mass transit lines. For example,the University of Central Florida, theLynx metropolitan bus system, theOrange County Regional History Cen-ter, the Mennello Museum of AmericanFolk Art, and the International Houseof Blues Foundation have teamed toprovide cultural history to Lynx riders.

Lynx buses already use ITEC Net-works global positioning satellites andwireless multimedia technology to

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