CS 349 TUI Project Proposal
Team Members: Donna Yee, Ji-won Woo, Natasha Kellaway, Rebecca Spitzer
Problem: Shared Group Experience and Brainstorming
Theater rehearsal is an event that is pivotal to the production of a show. How can we make this process more efficient? How can we give groups of actors and production members with different purposes, interests, aesthetics, and skill levels a way to give feedback on rehearsals? How can we enrich the creative process of a developing a performance? Our goal is to enrich and to enable more efficient theatrical performance rehearsals.
The users of our interface are members of different groups that come together to build a theatrical performance: directors, actors, stage managers, costume designers, etc. The user group will not have to be tech savvy, because the application will be very accessible. It will utilize only the skills associated with touch applications (tapping, dragging, etc) and with note-taking. Regardless of age, users could be anyone in the performance arts; at its core, the TUI will take advantage of actions that are already practiced.
The interface will be comprised of four elements. The first is a video camera, installed in the space or placed in an audience seat to record the rehearsal. The second is a set of location RFID tags for the actors, recording the entrances and exits on the stage during rehearsal. The third is a set of tablets or computerized pens to be used by members of the team who are watching the rehearsal, recording notes, data, critiques, etc. The fourth is a Microsoft Surface, which will analyze the video and notes and then be used to view an annotated record of the rehearsal.
At the recording stage, the interface is simplistic for all users. They will not need to perform different actions than they normally would during a rehearsal. The video camera will record the performance. A wireless note-taking pen or tablet can be used by people watching the performance (e.g. the director) and will send notes to the Surface. The notes and video will be linked via the time that the note was taken, so that users can review the notes along with the video.
At the reviewing stage, users who wish to review video and notes will need to interact with the Surface. On the Surface, the video of the rehearsal will be displayed on a timeline, with notes and comments differentiated by color and shape. Users will be able to view rehearsals from different dates, view scene clips sorted by actor (using information provided by RFID tags), read comments directed towards a specific actor or from a specific person, and leave notes for themselves as to things to do or work on. The Surface will also offer information about which scenes have the most notes, analyzing which scenes need the most or least work.
Overall, the potentially difficult task of capturing, annotating, and analyzing the rehearsal process will be made more intuitive by an application that leverages the combination of actions required by a rehearsal (performance in a stage space and note taking) and gestural interfaces. Members of the theatrical performance team will be able to gain informative data about their rehearsal and progress without doing any extra work. Furthermore, a tangible approach involving ubiquitous computing will allow a more collaborative approach to reviewing rehearsals and foster discussion about the production, leading to a more enriching and efficient rehearsal process.
Related Work:
ButterflyNet by Klemmer: the proposed solution is different from ButterflyNet in that it will combine video recording and data (notes and comments) from different users, meaning it is a group sharing tool. It enables the users to each review the rehearsal, include comments, or read other’s critiques whenever they want.
D.Tools by Klemmer: Analyzing video taped file and adding information to the segments are similar however our solution will have more compacted data from different people.
Ferret: RFID Localization for Pervasive Multimedia. The Ferret project deals with specifying locations for RFID tagged objects. We may not be doing RFID localization with the precision of Ferret, but if we decide to use RFID tags to find locations of actors, as opposed to just their presence, the Ferret research will be very relevant.
Principles of Smart Home Control by Davidoff, Lee, Yiu, Zimmerman, and Dey. This paper discusses the problems with implementing ubiquitous computing in a multi-user environment; in the home, it is important to provide users with a flexible, adaptable environment that works for every member of the family. In the theater, it is also important to implement a flexible system that can be utilized by multiple users.
