SHAPE – Situating Hybrid Assemblies in Public Environments (Completed Project)

“SHAPE – Situating Hybrid Assemblies in Public Environments” is an EU funded research project within the European initiative “The Disappearing Computer”. A team of researchers at the University of Limerick’s Interaction Design Centre is collaborating with European partners from the Royal Institute of Technology (Stockholm, Sweden), King’s College London and the University of Nottingham (UK) in the development of the Project. SHAPE is devoted to developing and evaluating assemblies of hybrid, mixed reality artefacts in public places. Hybrid artefacts exhibit physical and digital features and can exist in both physical and digital worlds. They combine interactive visual and sonic material with physically present manipulable devices. Hybrid artefacts can combine to form room-sized assemblies that provide groups of people with a rich sensory experience of a large-scale mixed reality. These assemblies can be deployed in public spaces such as museums and exploratoria as new kinds of engaging and educational social experience. The Consortium of partners combines social and computer science expertise and is concerned to motivate innovation through studies of people’s activity in public places and techniques of participatory design. Researchers at the IDC have a major role in studying human interaction within public environments, analysing the context (in particular, museums and exploratoria), envisioning user-scenarios and educational contents for the media, proposing a framework for the exploration and development of technology, and evaluating it against a set of requirements. ‘Living exhibitions’ , where results are shown direct to the public, were held at selected European museums which have agreed to participate. The Hunt Museum in Limerick hosted the final Project Exhibition, “Re-Tracing the Past” in June 2003.

Duration: 1 January, 2001 -> 1 June, 2004

Webpage: www.shape-dc.org

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Main contacts in IDC:

e: liam.bannon@ul.ie
e: mikael.fernstrom@ul.ie
e: luigina.ciolfi@ul.ie

List of IDC-based members: