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Advances in Augmented Reality
Founded and Directed by Caitlin Fisher, York’s Augmented Reality Lab (AR Lab) is dedicated to producing innovative expressive tools, research methods, interfaces and content that challenges cinematic and literary conventions and aim to enhance how people interact with their physical environment and with each other. The AR Lab's pioneering and most active phase was 2004-2014, coincident with Caitlin's Canada Research Chair in Digital Culture and Canada Foundation for Innovation funding specifically dedicated to the development of AR infrastructure, including the largest IS-900 tracking installation in a fine arts context anywhere in the world. At this time many of the activities of the AR Lab have been continued under the vision of the Immersive Storytelling Lab, but AR, VR and XR projects and grants continue to be developed by the Lab.
Situated in the School of the Arts, media, Performance and Design (formerly the Faculty of Fine Arts), the Augmented Reality Lab offers researchers the opportunity to explore new screen technologies, approaches and techniques through both production and theoretical study of this emerging medium. Historically, the lab has offered some of the most advanced technology available to practitioners in a fine arts context anywhere in the world. Researchers in the lab have produced international award-winning immersive AR pieces, interactive theatre, AR fiction and poetry for iPads and iPhones as well as AR installations and mobile media.
Students in the lab have undertaken research at the cutting edge of art/science collaborations and are often involved in international partnerships. Graduate trainees have presented work at Congress, published documentation of prototypes in arts/culture journals, participated in SIGGRAPH, ISEA, DAC, ISMAR, TEDx Dubai, ELO, MLA, HASTAC and SCMS, delivered keynote addresses internationally and launched software and publishing ventures. The AR Lab is part of the Ontario Augmented Reality Network and has collaborated with Georgia Tech, the Ontario Science Centre, TIFF/Nexus and Millenium3 Engineering among other
Over the years the AR Lab has been heavily involved in public outreach initiatives, often delivering hands-on workshops – to women in the gaming industry, to Women and Film and Television, for the Ontario Augmented Reality Association, to historians, schoolchildren and museum go-ers.
Some of our early equipment included:
- Intersense (IS 900) Motion Tracking System (6 DOF).
- NVIS nVisor ST – Optical See-through head-mounted display
- Custom Optical Marker Tracking libraries and software developed in collaboration with Dr. Mark Fiala
- Fogscreen
- the first Oculus Rift headsets
- Meta headsets
While the equipment has been updated with multiple grants, mostly accessed via the Immersive Storytelling Lab at this time, some of this early equipment remains available for researcher use, and is interesting for both historical and creative reasons. (Fogscreen, anyone?)
Established under the direction of Caitlin Fisher, the AR Lab at York University works with both established and emerging technologies to produce innovative research methods, interfaces and content that challenge cinematic and literary conventions and aim to enhance the ways in which people interact with their physical environment and with each other.
Lab participants work interactively and across disciplinary boundaries, particularly film and computer science.
Kari Bromley
Designer
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Kari Bromley
Designer
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Kari Bromley
Designer
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Kari Bromley
Designer
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Select Presentations & Installations 2004-2014
Invitation-only workshop bringing together researchers working at the intersection of augmented reality and history. Presented working paper titled “Augmented reality for historians digital tools and workflows”
“This two-day, invitation-only event is designed to further our understanding of the art, science, and business of communication in the twenty-first century and beyond. Top thinkers and practitioners from diverse fields gather to share ideas and experiences on everything from the new/old oral tradition to narrative in console games, from the biochemical impact of stories on the human brain to cutting-edge collaborative storytelling projects and many other hot topics.”
Critical Reviews in Molecular & Cell Biology 53: 99-114.(2018)
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Annual World Congress of Cultural & Creative IT Industries, Dalian, China, August 2012
&now: festival of innovative literature and art, Buffalo, November, 2009
Projects & Research-creation
- All
Early Work
Lab Early Work Previous Next Handheld City – 2010 Handheld City was an online streaming Read More
GPS Cinema
Projects: About Described by some users as “Geocaching for Stories”, GPS Cinema is a simple Read More
Mother Home Heaven
Projects: About Mother/Home/Heaven is a magic-mirror augmented reality installation that overlays digital assets—3D models, video, Read More
Timeline
The Ar Lab was the scene of many firsts: the most extensive AR theatre piece mounted internationally (Rebecca Rouse’s MA thesis piece, Woyzek), the first non-disclosure agreements for technical innovation in the Faculty of Fine Arts at York University, the first augmented reality poetry, the first VR novel for Oculus Rift, the first AR piece for Meta Headset, the first drag-and-drop easy AR creation software for artists (Snapdragon AR). My work and the work of my students in augmented reality over what is arguably that emerging technology’s most important decade (certainly with respect to content development) is widely cited and many partners and cognate labs have looked to us for leadership in infrastructure development, software development and storytelling.
AR Lab established 2004
with funding from the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the Canada Research Chairs program
Augmented House 2005
Lab Graduate researcher Helen Papagiannis - who would go on to be named one of the top ten forces shaping the AR industry - creates an AR house using moving image overlays and inspiring a decade of work.
Snapdragon AR 2007-2014
pioneering drag and drop-software for artists developed in the lab.
Lead interface development: Andrew Roth
Lead programmer: Andrei Rotenstein
Tracker library: Mark Fiala
Woyjek 2007
At the time of creation Rebecca Rouse’s MA thesis piece was the most extensive AR theatre piece mounted internationally. Using the is-900 trackers and the Designer's Augmented Reality Toolkit (DART) developed at Georgia Tech.
Andromeda 2008
Winner: Vinaròs Prize for Poetry for one of the world's first AR poems Selection: Electronic Literature Collection Volume 2
52 card psycho - 2008
A landmark work of cinematic AR created by graduate researcher Geoffrey Alan Rhodes
Cardamon of the Dead suite - Everyone at this Party is Dead 2010
Pioneering long-form novel for Oculus
Contact
Caitlin Fisher, Ph.D.
Professor and Chair, Cinema and Media Arts
Rm 222 Centre for Film and Television
School of the Arts, Media, Performance and Design
York University,
Toronto, Canada
M3J 1P3
Director, Immersive Storytelling Lab
@AMPD Cinespace Studio
Toronto, Ontario
416 736-2100 x22199
[email protected]