QRator wins the The Museums & Heritage Award for Innovation

QRator, the Museum focused ‘Internet of Things/Smart Places’ project developed jointly with us here at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, UCL Digital Humanities and UCL Museums, with funding from the UCL Public Engagement Unit , has won The Museums & Heritage Award for Innovation.  Known as ‘The Oscars’ of the museums world we are honoured to of won, to have a museum brave enough to trust and openly engage with the public via innovative software and devices (iPads) while taking on ideas based around the Internet of Things made all the difference.

QRator is a collaborative project between the UCL Centre for Digital Humanities (UCLDH), UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA), and UCL Museums and Collections, to develop new kinds of content, co-curated by the public, museum curators, and academic researchers, to enhance museum interpretation, community engagement and establish new connections to museum exhibit content. It is supported by the UCL Public Engagement Unit under the Beacons for Public Engagement programme – funded by the UK funding councils, Research Councils UK and the Wellcome Trust.

The project is powered by Tales of Things technology developed at UCL’s Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis, which has created a method for cataloguing physical objects online which could make museums and galleries a more interactive experience. QRATOR takes the technology a step further bringing the opportunity to move the discussion of objects direct to the museum label and onto a digital collaborative interpretation label, users’ mobile phones, and online allowing the creation of a sustainable, world-leading model for two-way public interaction in museum spaces.

Notable thanks go to Steven Gray of CASA, Claire Ross of Digital Humanities, Jack Ashby and Mark Carnall of the Grant Museum of Zoology. With the support of Prof. Claire Warwick and Dr Melissa Terras of Digital Humanities and Sally MacDonald, Director of UCL Museums  it goes to show what can be achieved via cross disciplinary research and a drive to just go and do it. Thanks also goes to Susannah Chan from UCL Museums and Public Engagement for inventing the mounts for the iPads and Emma-Louise Nichols and Simon Jackson from the Grant Museum who moderate the content day in and day out.

Finally thanks to the UCL side of the TalesofThings team -  Dr Ralph Barthel and Dr Martin De Jode for working behind the scenes and putting the technology in place. TalesofThings is funded by the Digital Economy Research Councils UK.

Other museums shortlisted in the category were

Glasgow Life: Riverside Museum

Pin Point Visualisation Ltd: Exhibita Pro

The Public Catalogue Foundsation: Your Painting

Victoria and Albert Museum: Five Truths

You can find our more from http://www.qrator.org see also the post from UCL Museums on the award and a write up over at DigitalNerdosaurous.

New Paper: An Internet of Old Things as an Augmented Memory System

Spinger have published, in Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, a paper by Ralph Barthel, Kerstin Leder Mackley, Andrew Hudson-Smith, Angelina Karpovich, Martin de Jode and Chris Speed based around our TOTeM/Internet of Things work. Entitled, An Internet of Old Things as an Augmented Memory System, the full abstract and download link are below:


Abstract


The interdisciplinary Tales of Things and electronic Memory (TOTeM) project investigates new contexts for augmenting things with stories in the emerging culture of the Internet of Things (IoT). Tales of Things is a tagging system which, based on two-dimensional barcodes (also called Quick Response or QR codes) and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology, enables the capturing and sharing of object stories and the physical linking to objects via read and writable tags.

Within the context of our study, it has functioned as a technology probe which we employed with the aim to stimulate discussion and identify desire lines that point to novel design opportunities for the engagement with personal and social memories linked to everyday objects. In this paper, we discuss results from fieldwork with different community groups in the course of which seemingly any object could form the basis of a meaningful story and act as entry point into rich inherent ‘networks of meaning’. Such networks of meaning are often solely accessible for the owner of an object and are at risk of getting lost as time goes by. 


We discuss the different discourses that are inherent in these object stories and provide avenues for making these memories and meaning networks accessible and shareable. This paper critically reflects on Tales of Things as an example of an augmented memory system and discusses possible wider implications for the design of related systems.


http://www.springerlink.com/content/v8405w81p2j35451/

Introducing QRator - iPad and Web Based Living Labels for Museums

QRator is a collaborative project between the UCL Centre for Digital Humanities (UCLDH), UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA), and UCL Museums and Collections, to develop new kinds of content, co-curated by the public, museum curators, and academic researchers, to enhance museum interpretation, community engagement and establish new connections to museum exhibit content.

The interactive system is designed to be non intrusive while enabling members of the pubic to simply type in their thoughts and interpretation of museum objects and click ‘send’. Their interpretation become part of the objects history and ultimately the display itself via the interactive label system to allow the display of comments and information directly next to the artefacts.

The project is powered by Tales of Things technology which has developed a method for cataloguing physical objects online and capture memories and stories via the Internet of Things. QRator takes the technology a step further bringing the opportunity to move the discussion of objects direct to the museum label and onto a digital collaborative interpretation label, users’ mobile phones, and online allowing the creation of a sustainable, world-leading model for two-way public interaction in museum spaces.


At its heart QRator is an iPad/iPhone and web based system that allows everyone to be a curator and share their views on an exhibition. Visitors can examine an object before leaving their thoughts via an iPad to create a digital, ‘living’ label that subsequent visitors can read and respond to.

By downloading a free application to an iPhone or android phone, visitors are able to see rolling updates to the digital label after they leave the museum, or via twitter. Participants are also able to take part in the conversation online via the QRator site with comments appearing live within the museum.

Content currently covers two museums at UCL; The Grant Museum of Zoology and The Petrie Museum of Egyptology. he Grant Museum of Zoology is one of the oldest natural history collections in England, dating back to 1827. The collection comprises over 68,000 skeletal, taxidermy and wet specimens, covering the whole of the animal kingdom. Many of the species are now endangered or extinct including the Tasmanian tiger or thylacine, the quagga and the dodo. The Grant Museum is the only remaining university zoology museum in London.

The Museum will offer a continual programme of ‘Current Questions’ for visitors to engage in. UCL is taking the opportunity to rethink what a university museum can be; a place not simply for a passive experience but for conversation – a cultural laboratory for the meeting of minds. Positioning the Museum as a place of experimentation, dialogue and debate.

You can join the conversation by visiting either the Petrie or Grant Museum or by simply heading over to http://www.qrator.org all comments appear live on the iPad screens in the Museum and on Tales of Things.

Wired Big Ideas for 2011: Chatitecture - Talking Buildings

We are pleased to say that in at number 24 of Wired Magazines 'Big Ideas for 2011' is Chatitecture, part of the Tales of Things project. Over the past 8 months a group of us have been developing technology to allow buildings to 'talk', to communicate their history, their architecture and the stories of people passing through.

Its simple to do, just sign up with Tales of Things, upload a image of your building of choice (under 2mb) and add a story. Your building will then go live and your be able to add it to the architecture group. If you want you can also print out a QRCode that you can stick to the building allowing anyone to scan the code and add to the story/history of the building via the free iPhone/Android apps.

Your building will also be able to 'Tweet' everytime it is scanned or a new comment/story added, it will also become part of the 'World of Things' map - a place to view all the objects added so far to the site.

The project team are working on ways to make the objects more location aware and aware of near by objects, it could be interesting over the next few months to see how this develops.


You can start tagging anything and everything via talesofthings.com

Things Talking to Things: The Internet of Things

The Tales of Things project is located within the emerging technical and cultural phenomenon known as ‘The Internet of Things’. The term is attributed to the Auto-ID research group at MIT in 1999, and was explored in depth by the International Telecommunication Union who published a report bearing the same name at the United Nations net summit in 2005. The term, ‘Internet of things’, refers to the technical and cultural shift that is anticipated as society moves towards a ubiquitous form of computing in which every device is ‘on’, and every device is connected in some way to the Internet.

TalesofThings.com allows any object to be given its own webpage and ability to tweet, i.e. it allows any 'thing' to become connected. As such we have built an 'Arduino Thing' that welcomes all new objects joining the Internet of Things with a 'Hi' in Morse Code - the movie below reveals all:

Every time anyone adds an object to talesofthings our unit starts its morse code welcome, in a small way its a step towards things talking to things. Sure its not Skynet, an artificially intelligent system which became self-aware and revolted against its creators but we are working on our own protocols behind the scenes to take this further so all the objects are aware of the other objects.

Thanks go to Martin de Jode of the TOTeM team - via the TOTeM Blog.

Head over to TalesofThings.com to add your own object.

Remote Space: The Weather Ceiling

Bringing the characteristics of a remote physical space to a new interior location is something we will talking about over the coming months with regards the 'Internet of Things'. As such, we really like the 'Weather Ceiling' undulating landscape brings a bit of the outdoors inside:



The network of sensors translate the exterior conditions to a dynamic interior experience. The behavior is semi-autonomous, like cellular automata, creating unpredictable patterns that change over time.

The Cloud is an interactive installation by Dominik Zausinger, Sofia Georgakopoulou, Edyta Augustynowicz and Jeannette Kuo - part of the MAS course at www.mas.caad.arch.ethz.ch.

Tag Architecture - A Call for Images and Stories of Buildings

You may of noticed that we recently launched our project 'TalesofThings', a site that tags any media to any object using QRcodes or rfid tags. We have just pushed an update that introduces 'groups' so all objects of interest can be viewed in one place. As all things urban are close to our heart, one of the first groups is 'Architecture' and we would like you to add your own building with a story.

Its simple to do, just sign up, upload a image of your building of choice (under 2mb) and add a story. Your building will then go live and your be able to add it to the architecture group. If you want you can also print out a QRCode that you can stick to the building allowing anyone to scan the code and add to the story/history of the building via the free iPhone/Android apps.

Your building will also be able to 'Tweet' everytime it is scanned or a new comment/story added, it will also become part of the 'World of Things' map - a place to view all the objects added so far to the site.

We are working on ways to make the objects more location aware and aware of near by objects, it could be interesting over the next few months to see how this develops. We look forward to seeing some of your buildings on the site and will sort out some sort of prize for the best stories...

You can start tagging anything and everything via talesofthings.com

Tales of the City: QRCodes, Architecture and Wired

The London Festival of Architecture is underway and via the project Tales of the City we have been capturing people’s memories of Shoreditch and playing them back them back via small readable and writeable QR codes and RFID tags. Tales of the City extends the TalesofThings project into the urban realm with the architecture of the city able to replay memories and its history and its just made Wired...

As Wired states: The project has been tagging architecture for a few months. In one location in Chalk Farm, a wall that used to feature a piece from Banksy that has a tag that lets scanners see what the work looked like. The BBC's Broadcasting House has also been covered in tags. In one Oxfam shop in Manchester, the project used RFID tags and QR codes to allow objects to be tagged with the memories of those who donated them.

Tales of the City starts off with a pre-placed tag at the historic heart of Shoreditch, St Leonard's Church. From there you will be able to spot tags (QR codes) on Shoreditch High Street which you can add your own stories to, contributing to the growing network of tagged architecture.

This will enable people to form a personalised tour of London’s contemporary history through architecture. If you have an iPhone or an Android handset be sure to download our free app - talesofthings to enable you to leave comments on the QR codes, or create your own codes to put on your favourite buildings.

In order to take part simply download our free “talesofthings” app for your iPhone or Android and when you spot a code on a building scan the code to add your own memory such as what the building used to be, why it is important to you or perhaps it is simply a building you hate.

If you don’t have a smartphone you can still take part by visiting our website www.youtotem/talesofthecity where you can clip on the map and add comments to buildings which have been tagged.

Tales of the City is part of 'TOTeM' - a collaborative research project run by Edinburgh College of Art, Brunel University, University College London, University of Dundee and University of Salford. This project aims to find a new way of preserving social history – through people’s memories. People will be able to preserve their family/community history by “tagging” (labelling) their personal objects via our website www.talesofthings.com. Users will be able to attach memories to their objects in the form of video, text or audio, this will enable future generations to have a greater understanding of the object’s past. TOTeM will carry out its research initially through case studies with different community groups who are not included in a written history of our time but their experiences and memories are just as valuable.

Its simple to tag architecture and objects with memories - you simply upload a photo, give it a story and print a QRCode:


Trailer for Tales of Things from digitalurban on Vimeo.

The project aims to offer a new way for people to place more value on their own objects in an increasingly disposable economy. As more importance is placed on the objects that are already parts of people’s lives it is hoped that family or friends may find new uses for old objects and encourage people to think twice before throwing something away.

If your in Shoreditch be sure to look out for the QRCodes, of course its not limited to Shoreditch, you can tag anything and everything with stories via http://www.talesofthings.com

Tales of the City – Tagging Shoreditch and Beyond

Via the project talesofthings.com we have been capturing people’s memories of objects and playing them back via small readable and writeable QR codes and RFID tags. As part of the London Festival of Architecture 2010, Tales of the City extends the concept into the urban realm with the architecture of the city able to replay memories and its history.

The project will enable participants to add their own tales to buildings and view stories that other people have left. The project has been tagging architecture since its launch in April 2010, most notably Broadcasting House in Portland Place and a wall in Chalk Farm which when scanned replays how the wall used to look with a Banksy Stencil in place.

Tales of the City starts off with a pre-placed tag at the historic heart of Shoreditch, St Leonard's Church. From there you will be able to spot tags (QR codes) on Shoreditch High Street which you can add your own stories to, contributing to the growing network of tagged architecture.

This will enable people to form a personalised tour of London’s contemporary history through architecture. If you have an iPhone or an Android handset be sure to download our free app - talesofthings to enable you to leave comments on the QR codes, or create your own codes to put on your favourite buildings.

You can become a follower of the project over at the London Festival of Architecture page.

We will have more on Tales of the City next week...

How to Add Anything to the Internet of Things: Creating the Geography of Everything

Every object in existence can be tagged with any media, linked to tell a story, to recount its memories in a read/write environment and tweet when its interacted with.





Its a concept that takes a bit of time to take in, for example a wall in Camden Town, London, tweeted me last week when someone replayed its memories of having a Banksy painted on it. That wall is part of the Internet of Things via the project TalesofThings.

The best part is, its incredibly easy to add objects. You simply sign up at talesofthings.com and then take click on 'add a thing'. This takes you to a form where you give your object a name, for a example 'Andy's Mug' or 'BBC Broadcasting House' are some of things we have added so far. You then type in a short story, or tale, linked to that object and upload a photograph to the site.

Everything has a location so we are creating a 'Geography of Everything', a brave claim perhaps but one that develops a new a new kind of geography, the geography of things. Simply click on the map to set a location, your object will now become part of the 'World of Things' map.

Thats it, your object will now become part of the Internet of Things and will be able to tweet, have new stories/tales added as its passed on, sold or interacted with. It is all part of a Social Web of Things or SWOT as its known.

Each thing created gets assigned a unique 'qrcode' which can be attached to your object. For example, we have attached a qrcode to our office here in CASA which visitors scan using our free iPhone app. This 'virtual guest book' allows our office to recall the story of CASA and the people that pass through our doors. You can print out your codes via the site and attach them to anything.

Any media can be added to you object, the clip below provides a glimpse of the system running via our recent link up with Oxfam via Future Everything, complete with the iPhone RFID reader:





Anything, anywhere can be tagged with any media, do take a look at the beta version of TalesofThings, we are very proud of the work and as the Ericsson Labs blog noted, this is really part of the social web of things, it will be trillions of tags around in a couple of years...

RememberMe: Future Everything and the Internet of Things

Have you ever wanted to know the story behind the things you buy? Who owned the object from that charity shop and what about its history, the memories associated with it and why is it now for sale?

In association with Oxfam and part of the Manchester Future Everything Festival (12th-15th May) we are putting the history back into objects with the Art Project: RememberMe.

At the Oxford Road branch of Oxfam in Manchester, TOTeM (Tales of Things and Electronic Memory) will be attaching stories to the things that people leave behind, and allow new owners to access them.

The Oxfam Shop is appealing for donations of all shapes and sizes that can be tagged with memories as part of the in-store exhibition. Oxfam manager Emma Cooney has asked people to “Help us be part of this exciting project. Anyone who wants to share their memories of the things they donate to the shop is welcome to take part. It’s entirely voluntary, but maybe a once treasured object you no longer want has a story that can be passed on to its new owner".

The advent of digital tagging technology means that every new object in the future will be tagged and logged in a database accruing logistical information such as temperatures, prices, owners and transportation. The exhibition RememberMe introduces an opportunity to build an Internet of Old Things based upon stories not data. By attaching a barcode loaded with memories about the clothes and artefacts that visitors donate to the Whitworth Park branch of Oxfam, things will gain a social and cultural value.

Using scanners, delegates of Future Everything and the general public will be able to listen to memories and buy objects that come tagged with their very own story. We will have more on the 'scanners' soon - think iPhone RFID reader / Bluetooth Android device and with full details on how to make them yourself....

The RememberMe artwork is a collaborative project between TOTeM and Oxfam in Manchester which will be showcased at the Future Everything Festival (12-15 May 2010). During the time leading up to Future Everything (FE), a research assistant will be based in the shop and will ask people who drop things off to tell a brief story about one of the objects into a microphone: where they acquired it, what memories it brings back and any associated stories.

With their permission, this audio clip will be linked to an RFID tag and QR code. During the event, all items that have been tagged with a story will then join the shop’s stock. Visitors to the shop, including conference delegates will be invited to use our bespoke RFID readers, or their own smart phone to browse artefacts that are displayed amongst the many thousands of other objects.

Labels will highlight the RememberMe objects and once triggered, speakers located in the shop will replay the story, evoking ghosts of the past. Once tagged the objects are in the public domain for purchase by other members of the community, our iPhone apps will allow them to access the story for years to come.

You can tag your own objects, or indeed everything and anything via http://www.talesofthings.com complete with its own free iPhone app, Android is coming soon. We do have a tendency to get fired up over such things, but really this one is going to be good - http://www.talesofthings.com

Making 'Objects' Tweet

You may of noticed that we recently launched our project 'TalesofThings', a site that tags any media to any object using qrcodes or rfid tags:



Once tagged each object basically gets its own webpage allowing comments to be placed, new media added such as YouTube clips, Audioboo, Vimeo etc and new tales tagged to the codes.

An interesting take on this is that once these tags are placed in the wild and scanned with the free iPhone app they become read/writable and therefore location aware. As such any object you tag with the site can 'Tweet' each time it is scanned. If you tag a landmark for example, each time that tag is read you can get a tweet that says 'Hey, I've just been scanned'. Once scanned new tales or comments can be added to that tag, creating a social network of 'things' and 'locations'.

We are working on ways to make the objects more location aware and aware of near by objects, it could be interesting over the next few months to see how this develops. You can see all the things added to far on the 'world of things map':

You can start tagging anything and everything via talesofthings.com

Tales of Things Goes Live - Its a Memory Thing

April 16th, 11.42 am and the research project born 18 months ago 'Tales of Things' goes live, documented as the site is all about memories and attaching media to objects via qrcodes and rfid:





Tales of Things is part of a research project called TOTeM that will explore social memory in the emerging culture of the Internet of Things. Researchers from across the UK have provided this site as a platform for users to add stories to their own treasured objects and to connect to other people who share similar experiences. This will enable future generations to have a greater understanding of the object’s past and offers a new way of preserving social history.

Content will depend on real people’s stories which can be geo-located through an on-line map of the world where participants can track their object even if they have passed it on. The object will also be able to update previous owners on its progress through a live Twitter feed which will be unique to each object entered into the system.

The project will offer a new way for people to place more value on their own objects in an increasingly disposable economy. As more importance is placed on the objects that are already parts of people’s lives it is hoped that family or friends may find new uses for old objects and encourage people to think twice before throwing something away.

The Tales of Things site is located within the emerging technical and cultural phenomenon known as ‘The Internet of Things’. The term is attributed to the Auto-ID research group at MIT in 1999, and was explored in depth by the International Telecommunication Union who published a report bearing the same name at the United Nations net summit in 2005. The term, ‘Internet of things’, refers to the technical and cultural shift that is anticipated as society moves towards a ubiquitous form of computing in which every device is ‘on’, and every device is connected in some way to the Internet. The specific reference to ‘things’ refers to the concept that every new object manufactured will also be able to part of this extended Internet, because they will have been tagged and indexed by the manufacturer during production. It is also envisaged that consumers will have the ability to ‘read’ the tags through the use of mobile ‘readers’ and use the information connected to the object, to inform their purchase, use and disposal of an object.
 

The implications for the Internet of Things upon production and consumption are tremendous, and will transform the way in which people shop, store and share products. The analogue bar code that has for so long been a dumb encrypted reference to a shop’s inventory system, will be superseded by an open platform in which every object manufactured will be able to be tracked from cradle to grave, through manufacturer to distributor, to potentially every single person who comes into contact with it following its purchase. Further still, every object that comes close to another object, and is within range of a reader, could also be logged on a database and used to find correlations between owners and applications. In a world that has relied upon a linear chain of supply and demand between manufacturer and consumer via high street shop, the Internet of Things has the potential to transform how we will treat objects, care about their origin and use them to find other objects.

If every new object is within reach of a reader, everything is searchable and findable, subsequently the shopping experience may never be the same, and the concept of throwing away objects may become a thing of the past as other people find new uses for old things.

TOTeM is funded through a £1.39 million research grant from the Digital Economy Research Councils UK. The project is a collaboration between Brunel University, Edinburgh College of Art, University College London, University of Dundee and the University of Salford.


You can download the press release from here

QR Code / RFID / Any Media - The TalesofThings Trailer

With the code being worked on as we type around the desks of CASA and digital urban, and with preparations going on around the partner institutions of Brunel, Dundee, Edinburgh College of Art and Salford University - Tales of Things enters beta in just a few days:



Any object, any media, geolocated with the ability to read/write - what will you tag? Going to FutureEverything? TalesofThings are there as a featured artist.

TalesofThings - its a memory thing, you can follow developments on Twitter...

Tales of Things - April 2010

We are proud to announce that the 'Internet of Things' project we have been itching to blog about is set to launch mid April. The project is funded out of a digital economy sandpit with the technology developed by ourselves here at CASA, UCL and led by Edinburgh College of Arts, working with Brunel, Dundee and Salford Universities.

Termed 'Tales of Things' it is a possible game changer, cant say much more than that at the moment but if you want updates and to be first in when we launch, follow us on twitter - http://twitter.com/TalesofThings.

Just imagine every object holding a read/write memory and linking it to everything else. We will be talking about the project with a lecture entitled the 'Geography of Everything' at the free CASA Conference in London, April 13th. There are still a few places left so register soon if you want to hear about the project.

More soon - you can also follow the digitalurban feed on twitter.

Connected to Everything: Else Mobile (The Time Has Come)

Overlaying data driven graphics is a neat yet relatively quick and effective way communicate a sense of connectivity - as the clip below demonstrates. The advert was created for Else Mobile Phones as half viral campaign, half official website content and commissioned by The Visionaire Group in LA. 'The Time Has Come' acts as an intro for the new mobile device. The entire campaign was shot on location in downtown LA and California:

Else Mobile (The Time Has Come) from Rob Chiu on Vimeo.

We are becoming increasing connected - soon there will be a way to connect every object to the internet and every object to everything else. More on that in the coming months, we would like to say more but sadly we are not allowed to, simply watch this space, work is going on in our lab as we type...