Arvid Engström

Mobile collaborative live video mixing

We report on design research investigating a possible combination of mobile collaborative live video production and V Jing. In an attempt to better understand future forms of collaborative live media production, we study how VJs produce and mix visuals live. In the practice of producing visuals through interaction with both music and visitors, VJing embodies interesting properties that could inform the design of emerging mobile services. As a first step to examine a generation of new applications, we tease out some characteristics of VJ production and live performance. We then decide on the requirements both for how visitors could capture and transmit live video using their mobile phones and how this new medium could be integrated within VJ aesthetics and interaction. Finally, we present the SwarmCam application, which has been implemented to investigate these requirements.

Lean collaboration through video gestures: co-ordinating the production of live televised sport

This paper examines the work and interactions between camera operators and a vision mixer during an ice hockey match, and presents an interaction analysis using video data. We analyze video-mediated indexical gestures in the collaborative production of live sport on television between distributed team members. The findings demonstrate how video forms the topic, resource and product of collabora-tion: whilst it shapes the nature of the work (editing), it is simultaneously also the primary resource for supporting mutual orientation and negotiating shot transitions between remote participants (co-ordination), as well as its end prod-uct (broadcast). Our analysis of current professional activi-ties is used to develop implications for the design of future services for live collaborative video production.

Panoramic video: design challenges and implications for content interaction

In this paper we explore viewing and interaction in an emerging type of interactive TV, where viewers are presented with panoramic ultrahigh-definition video combined with extensive interactive control over view selection. Instead of delivering only what will be consumed, emerging TV services offer high-resolution panoramic video to the viewers, enabling them to more freely explore the broadcast content by selecting regions of interest and navigating within the larger panoramic image. However, as we open up the television space both in field of view and in terms of the freedom given to viewers, new interactional challenges emerge. We have done user studies on two systems for interacting with panoramic high-resolution video, one based on the tablet interaction and other on the gesture interaction. Our findings revealed a number of design challenges concerning properties specific to panoramic video. Based on findings from the user studies and the identified design challenges, we have compiled a set of the design recommendations on how to support interactive viewing of panoramic content.

Temporal hybridity: Mixing live video footage with instant replay in real time

In this paper we explore the production of streaming media that involves live and recorded content. To examine this, we report on how the production practices and process are conducted through an empirical study of the production of live television, involving the use of live and non-live media under highly time critical conditions. In explaining how this process is managed both as an individual and collective activity, we develop the concept of temporal hybridity to explain the properties of these kinds of production system and show how temporally separated media are used, understood and coordinated. Our analysis is examined in the light of recent developments in computing technology and we present some design implications to support amateur video production.

Mobile video literacy: negotiating the use of a new visual technology

In this article, we examine the practice of learning to produce video using a new visual technology. Drawing upon a design intervention at a science centre, where a group of teenagers tried a new prototype technology for live mobile video editing, we show how the participants struggle with both the content and the form of producing videos, i.e., what to display and how to do it in a comprehensible manner. We investigate the ways in which video literacy practices are negotiated as ongoing accomplishments and explore the communicative and material resources relied upon by participants as they create videos. Our results show that the technology is instrumental in this achievement and that as participants begin to master the prototype, they start to focus more on the narrative aspects of communicating the storyline of a science centre exhibit. The participants are explicitly concerned with such issues as how to create a comprehensible storyline for an assumed audience, what camera angles to use, how to cut and other aspects of the production of a video. We consider these observed activities to be candidate steps in an emerging mobile video literacy trajectory that involves developing a capacity to document and argue by means of this specific medium.

The mobile vision mixer: a mobile network based live video broadcasting system in your mobile phone

Mobile broadcasting services, allowing people to stream live video from their cameraphones to viewers online, are becoming widely used as tools for user-generated content. The next generation of these services enables collaboration in teams of camera operators and a director producing an edited broadcast. This paper contributes to this research area by exploring the possibility for the director to join the camera team on location, performing mixing and broadcasting on a mobile device. The Mobile Vision Mixer prototype embodies a technical solution for connecting four camera streams and displaying them in a mixer interface for the director to select from, under the bandwidth constraints of mobile networks. Based on field trials with amateur users, we discuss technical challenges as well as advantages of enabling the director to be present on location, in visual proximity of the camera team.

Data and the City

We consider how data is produced and used in cities. We draw on our experiences working with city authorities, along with twenty interviews across four cities to understand the role that data plays in city government. Following the development and deployment of innovative data-driven technology projects in the cities, we look in particular at collaborations around open and crowdsourced data, issues with the politicisation of data, and problems in innovating within the highly regulated public sphere. We discuss what this means for cities, citizens, innovators, and for visions of big data in the smart city as a whole.

Watching the footwork: second screen interaction at a dance and music performance

Interactive mobile technologies have become part of audience experiences of live performances in terms of both general media sharing and specific (sometimes official) extra content. At the same time, high bandwidth affords streaming of live events to mobile devices. We take advantage of these technologies in our high resolution, panoramic image video stream and study a scenario of audience members viewing the very same live event they are watching on a tablet. The video stream on the tablet is navigational and enables audience members to pan and zoom in the real-time video feed. We studied audience interaction and impressions in three performances of a dance and music show and found distinct uses of the second screen video stream. We emphasize that despite initial reluctance, the observed utilization of the technology opened up for new potential practices. Our study shows how working with perceived conflict in technology can still open up design space for interactive technologies.

Video interaction: a research agenda

The topic of this special issue is the broadened use of video and the need to articulate a research agenda that addresses its new opportunities and challenges. This agenda, which we argue should be labelled ‘‘video interaction,’’ is influenced by both emerging practices and technical developments. In the widest sense, we refer to video interaction as a research area concerned with emerging technologies and social practices in an increasingly flattened hierarchy between, on the one hand, what used to be a well-defined group of production professionals, and on the other hand, the masses of passive viewers of the same media. This transition happens at the same time as video traffic has become the bulk of data communication on the Internet [2]. The same shift is now happening in mobile data. Cisco reports that mobile video traffic exceeded 50 % for the first time in 2012. They predict that the numbers for video will continue to increase dramatically. In 5 years, the amount of mobile video data is projected to increase 16-fold, ending up at over two-thirds of the entire data traffic [12]. Obviously, downloading and streaming of movies and TV series are the big drivers in this development, but there are a number of other things happening that warrant a new approach to understanding interaction with video content, beyond the notion of the user as a viewer in the traditional sense. The practices surrounding moving image technology are now transcending consumption of traditional media, and becoming integrated with other interactive services and social media [2]. In this massive growth of video online, there are a number of parallel trends regarding how video is consumed, produced, shared, and interacted with that we argue require a re-conceptualisation of the area. In the following, we will map out the changed use of video and then analyze its opportunities and challenges, and explain the need for a coherent research approach to video interaction. In particular, the trends we want to align are a shift to user-generated video content and to mobile technology, as well as a continuation of the trend of increased interaction in viewing (iTV). First, new ways of producing video content has emerged, enabled by the availability of cheap production tools and high bandwidth communication networks. It emerged with the use of both analogue and digital video cameras for consumers, and continued with video recording facilities on mobile phones [30]. The cost and effort of sharing and distributing the content have also diminished with the expansion of the fixed Internet. Live video production is now on the verge of the same kind of democratization of means of production and broader adoption by nonprofessional users. Through highly visible examples such as live broadcasts from the Arabic Spring and other news events around the world, as well as more mundane practices of broadcasting from university lectures and local events, live video has shown potential for communicating and sharing experiences with remote viewers. Second, we see an expansion of services that utilize mobile technology in a broad sense, and that are catering to O. Juhlin G. Zoric (&) A. Engstrom Stockholm, Sweden e-mail: goga@mobilelifecentre.org

Interweaving place and story in a location-based audio drama

This paper presents a qualitative study of an interactive audio drama facilitated by a location-based application. The investigation focuses on an accessible experience, a play in which the audience members simply trigger new scenes of the audio drama as they walk to predefined city areas. The findings draw attention to the role of the mobile technology in facilitating this particular artistic experience. Furthermore, they illustrate the various levels at which creative imagination and open interpretation emerge as audience members seek to make sense of the interrelations between the locative media experienced and elements of the places inhabited during the audio narrative. In concluding the article, designing for loose coupling between mobile media and physical places is suggested as a strategy to enable people’s engagement in meaningful experience through the use of various location-based services.