Posts

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Ideas | Mar 29, 2018

Capturing the Soundfield: Recording Ambisonics for VR

by J Kyle White-Sullivan

When building experiences in virtual reality we’re confronted with the challenge of mimicking how sounds hit us in the real world from all directions. One useful tool for us to attempt this mimicry is called a soundfield microphone. We tested one of these microphones to explore how audio plays into building immersive experiences for virtual reality. Approaching ambisonics with the soundfield microphone has become popular in development for VR particularly for 360 videos. With it,...

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Studio | Oscillations

Prototyping Spatial Audio for Movement Art

by Gabriel Caniglia |

One of Oscillations’ technical goals for this quarter’s Knight Lab Studio class was an exploration of spatial audio. Spatial audio is sound that exists in three dimensions. It is a perfect complement to 360 video, because sound sources can be localized to certain parts of the video. Oscillations is especially interested in using spatial audio to enhance the neuroscientific principles of audiovisual synchrony that they aim to emphasize in their productions. Existing work in spatial......

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Studio | Oscillations

Oscillations Audience Engagement Research Findings

by Ben Singer | , Harriet White , Joo-Young Lee

During the Winter 2018 quarter, the Oscillations Knight Lab team was tasked in exploring the question: what constitutes an engaging live movement arts performance for audiences? Oscillations’ Chief Technology Officer, Ilya Fomin, told the team at quarter’s start that the startup aims to create performing arts experiences that are “better than reality.” In response, our team spent the quarter seeking to understand what is reality with qualitative research. Three members of the team interviewed more......

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Studio | Automated Fact Checking

How to translate live-spoken human words into computer “truth”

by Carlos Belardi | , Joe Blackman | , David Caine | , Martin Johnson , Andrew Lapin | andrewlapin , Jennifer Liu |

Our Knight Lab team spent three months in Winter 2018 exploring how to combine various technologies to capture, interpret, and fact check live broadcasts from television news stations, using Amazon’s Alexa personal assistant device as a low-friction way to initiate the process. The ultimate goal was to build an Alexa skill that could be its own form of live, automated fact-checking: cross-referencing a statement from a politician or otherwise newsworthy figure against previously fact-checked statements......

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Studio | Oscillations

Comparing Motion Capture Techniques for Movement Art

by Khoa Truong | , Gabriel Caniglia |

With Oscillations’ connection to the movement arts, it made sense to experiment with existing motion capture technology to find accurate, consistent, and scalable ways to obtain three-dimensional motion data for purposes such as animation or machine learning to augment performances in virtual reality. An additional motivation to learn more about motion capture was connected to our early experiments with spatial audio (read more about them in our spatial audio blog post). Apart from using ambisonic......

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Studio | Crowdsourcing for Journalism

In Search of Best Practices for Journalistic Crowdsourcing

by Kira Furuichi | , Isabel Seidel |

We rely on journalists to tell our stories, tell us the stories of others, and provide to us unbiased and important news. Journalism is the cornerstone for holding public officials accountable, the truth transparent, and the public informed. Journalists and newsrooms play a unique and invaluable role, and the stories they tell have an impact like no other. The public—the crowd—however, are central in helping journalists create and transform stories. The crowd’s unique knowledge and......

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Team news | Oct 30, 2017

Northwestern is hiring a CS + Journalism professorWork with us at the intersection of media, technology and design.

by Rich Gordon

Are you interested in working with journalism and computer science students to build innovative media tools, products and apps? Would you like to teach the next generation of media innovators? Do you have a track record building technologies for journalists, publishers, storytellers or media consumers? Northwestern University is recruiting for an assistant or associate professor for computer science AND journalism, who will share an appointment in the Medill School of Journalism and the McCormick School...

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Lab projects | Sep 11, 2017

Introducing StorylineJSToday we're excited to release a new tool for storytellers.

by Joe Germuska | joegermuska

A screenshot of a StorylineJS instance StorylineJS makes it easy to tell the story behind a dataset, without the need for programming or data visualization expertise. Just upload your data to Google Sheets, add two columns, and fill in the story on the rows you want to highlight. Set a few configuration options and you have an annotated chart, ready to embed on your website. (And did we mention, it looks great on phones?) As...

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Events | Aug 30, 2017

Join us in October: NU hosts the Computation + Journalism 2017 symposium

by Rich Gordon

An exciting lineup of researchers, technologists and journalists will convene in October for Computation + Journalism Symposium 2017 at Northwestern University. Register now and book your hotel rooms for the event, which will take place on Friday, Oct. 13, and Saturday, Oct. 14 in Evanston, IL. Hotel room blocks near campus are filling up fast! Speakers will include: Ashwin Ram, who heads research and development for Amazon’s Alexa artificial intelligence (AI) agent, which powers the...

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Studio | Historical Census Data

Bringing Historical Data to Census ReporterA Visualization and Research Review

by Hailey Melville | haileykmelville

An Introduction Since Census Reporter’s launch in 2014, one of our most requested features has been the option to see historic census data. Journalists of all backgrounds have asked for a simplified way to get the long-term values they need from Census Reporter, whether it’s through our data section or directly from individual profile pages. Over the past few months I’ve been working to make that a reality. With invaluable feedback from many of you,......

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Studio | Photojournalism in 3D for VR and Beyond

The 4 Key Components to Photogrammetry CaptureLocation, stillness, camera settings and camera movement

by Henry Keyser | vrnalist , Theodore Chryssos | theo_at_medill , Jessica Buchleitner | 50womenproject

Whether you are in a controlled or uncontrolled environment, there are four key components for successful photogrammetry capture: location, stillness, camera settings and camera movement. Paying close attention to these will help reduce tiling, blurring and other issues when scanning photogrammetry objects. Location lighting, shadows, refraction and reflections Example in Photoscan of a model with far too many artifacts, or elements of their environment that intertwined with the model as the point cloud processed. During......

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Studio | Storytelling Layers on 360 Video

Stitching 360° Video

by Jake Daniels | JakeDanielsVII

For the time-being, footage filmed on most 360° cameras cannot be directly edited and uploaded for viewing immediately after capture. Different cameras have different methods of outputting footage, but usually each camera lens corresponds to a separate video file. These video files must be combined using “video stitching” software on a computer or phone before the video becomes one connected, viewable video. Garmin and other companies have recently demonstrated interest in creating cameras that stitch......

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Studio | Storytelling Layers on 360 Video

Publishing your 360° content

by Jake Daniels | JakeDanielsVII

Publishing can be confusing for aspiring 360° video storytellers. The lack of public information on platform viewership makes it nearly impossible to know where you can best reach your intended viewers, or even how much time and effort to devote to the creation of VR content. Numbers are hard to come by, but were more available in the beginning of 2016. At the time, most viewers encountered 360° video on Facebook. In February 2016, Facebook......

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Studio | Photojournalism in 3D for VR and Beyond

Photogrammetry Tools ReviewThe winner is clear, but expensive.

by Henry Keyser | vrnalist , Theodore Chryssos | theo_at_medill , Jessica Buchleitner | 50womenproject

Journalists know the maxim, “show, don’t tell” creating engaging stories. We spent ten weeks exploring tools for creating 3D photogrammetry models which can be used to show story subjects in an entirely new way. Here we present a rundown of what we learned. For any journalist interested in creating 3D photogrammetry models there are two key steps: capture and processing. The basic gist is this: a journalist shoots about 100 images during the capture process,......

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Studio | Photojournalism in 3D for VR and Beyond

Photogrammetry for JournalismDocumenting reality in 3D

by Henry Keyser | vrnalist , Theodore Chryssos | theo_at_medill , Jessica Buchleitner | 50womenproject

The ability to recreate an object in 3D to be viewed and handled in virtual reality seems like something you would read in a science fiction novel. In fact, as early as 1950, Ray Bradbury entertained the idea of a virtual reality nursery in “The Veldt” - his short story about two children who solve their anger with their parents by escaping to a simulated grassland. Photogrammetry is the science of deriving measurements from photographs.......

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