Wellington XR Meetup July Meeting

We are delighted to welcome you to the next Wellington XR Meetup July Meeting on Wednesday 28 July 2021. The event is free to attend. All are welcome to attend but please register first. We are excited to announce there will two amazing speakers: Miriam Ross and Karan Singh. We thank Beyond Studio (https://beyond.fun/) for hosting the event, Click Studios for sponsoring the event (http://www.clickstudios.co.nz/), and Victoria University of Wellington (https://ecs.wgtn.ac.nz/Groups/HCI/WebHome) for organizing the event.

This meetup is about XR which is AR, VR, MR technologies for all subject areas. Extended reality (XR) is a term referring to all real-and-virtual combined environments and human-machine interactions generated by computer technology and wearables. It includes representative forms such as augmented reality (AR), mixed reality (MR) and virtual reality (VR) and the areas overlapping. XR is a superset which includes the entire spectrum from "the complete real" to "the complete virtual" in the concept of reality–virtuality continuum. The meeting will also be Zoomed to other meetups throughout NZ notably Auckland and Christchurch.

Time: 1830-2000

Location: Beyond Studio, 45 Hania St (upstairs), Mt Victoria, Wellington

Snacks: pizza and drinks will be provided, thanks to sponsors Click Creative Tech Studios

Zoom Link (for people outside Wellington): https://vuw.zoom.us/my/wellingtonxr

Speakers:

#1 Dr Miriam Ross

Title: Creative Freedom to Experiment with VR

Abstract: Aotearoa has grown its VR capacity in recent years with exciting project across health, heritage, gaming, education and narrative media sectors. However, without significant structures in place for inquiry led VR funding, particularly in the arts, free-ranging experimentation is limited. I will discuss some of my recent VR projects within the context of how they were funded and how this aided and limited creative exploration.

Bio: Dr. Miriam Ross is a creative arts researcher who works with new digital cinema technologies to challenge expectations of how they should be used. Her experimental films and virtual reality works have been screened internationally. She has also published a range of books and articles on new cinematic technologies including 3D Cinema: Optical Illusions and Tactile Experiences (2015, Palgrave Macmillan).
https://miriamruthross.wordpress.com/

#2 Professor Karan Singh (University of Toronto, Canada)

Title: Expressive Facial Modeling and Animation

Abstract: Humans are hard-wired to see and interpret minute facial detail. The rich signals we extract from facial expressions imposes high expectations for computer generated facial imagery. This talk focuses on the science and art of expressive facial animation. Specifically aspects of facial anatomy biomechanics linguistics and perceptual psychology will be used to motivate and describe the construction of geometric face rigs and techniques for the animator-centric creation of emotion expression and speech animation from input images audio and video.
https://speakers.acm.org/lectures/11044

Bio: Karan Singh is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Toronto. He co-directs a globally reputed graphics and HCI lab DGP has over 100 peer-reviewed publications and has supervised over 40 MS/PhD theses. His research interests lie in interactive graphics spanning art and visual perception geometric design and fabrication character animation and anatomy and interaction techniques for mobile Augmented and Virtual Reality (AR/VR). He has been a technical lead for the Oscar award winning software Maya and was the R&D Director for the 2004 Oscar winning animated short Ryan. He has co-founded multiple companies including Arcestra (architectural design) JALI (facial animation) and JanusVR (Virtual Reality).
https://www.dgp.toronto.edu/~karan/