Bell Laboratories unveils Web Site Gallery featuring new, cutting-edge collaborative Internet experiences.MURRAY HILL Murray Hill may refer to one of the following places:
Developed by Bell Labs' Multimedia Communications Research Department, the first exhibits in the Metaphorium are "Message in a Bottle" - a continuously changing seascape that allows visitors to place messages in bottles that randomly wash through the site - and "Subway Surface" - a Web representation of the New York City subway The New York City Subway is a rapid transit system owned by the City of New York and leased to the New York City Transit Authority , an affiliate of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and also known as MTA New York City Transit. that allows visitors to "ride" subway cars with others, and visit stops along the subway line's route. The Metaphorium complements Bell Labs' current collaborative multimedia projects and establishes a compelling experimental location for next-generation multimedia research for Lucent Technologies. Exhibits will be added regularly to the Metaphorium. "Browsing the Web can be a lonely experience," said Doree Seligmann, Member of Technical Staff in Bell Labs' Multimedia Communication Research Department, and executive producer of the Bell Labs Metaphorium. "It's important to let people know that they are not alone when they visit various Web sites, allowing them to interact, and even leave traces of themselves wherever they go, like footprints in the digital sand." The Multimedia Communication Research Department, headed by Sid Ahuja, is part of Bell Labs' Systems and Software Research Center, which has spearheaded multimedia communication for the last ten years. It developed the core technology behind many Bell Labs innovations; for example, this group's work in multimedia collaboration has led to MMCX MMCX Multimedia Communications Exchange (Lucent) MMCX Micro Miniature Coaxial MMCX Multi Media Communication Exchange , an award winning product of Lucent's Business Communication Systems Division (www.lucent.com/BusinessWorks/bw/mmcx.htm) and packet telephony Synonymous with IP telephony and voice over IP (VoIP), in which a digital voice stream is broken up into small chunks (packets) and transmitted over a packet-switched network. See IP telephony and packet switching. components from elemedia, a new venture of Lucent (www.lucent.com/elemedia). More recently the group has focused on multimedia applications and services on the Internet. "The Internet is a logical networking paradigm and inherently capable of supporting multimedia," said Ahuja. "We feel that multimedia communication over the Internet is a framework for people of all walks of life to interact in new and useful ways. We are collaborating with real users in a wide range of applications such as virtual classrooms, virtual theater and virtual movie studios." Bill Ninke, Director of Bell Labs' Systems and Software Research Center, and a pioneer in interactive graphical design, sees the Metaphorium as an essential part of Bell Labs' work in creating the next generation of the Internet. "Bell Labs' experiments in collaborative Web experiences have value in understanding the infrastructure that will need support: the servers and programs that allow for more sophisticated kinds of multimedia communication," said Ninke. "The Internet is still, conceptually, in the first wave of sharing. We share fixed pages on the Web today. In the coming wave, we will share experiences, socialize so·cial·ize v. so·cial·ized, so·cial·iz·ing, so·cial·iz·es v.tr. 1. To place under government or group ownership or control. 2. To make fit for companionship with others; make sociable. and have fun together with things like communal performances, bike trips to different locations via the Web, and shared `towns' where people with similar interests will reside. This work alludes to how people will use the communication and collaboration infrastructure which Lucent Technologies will provide." The Metaphorium leverages Bell Labs' long history in technological development for the arts (sound for motion pictures, long-distance television) and its key role in providing technologies central to the development of modern networking. One of the most famous collaborations of art and technology emanated from Bell Labs. Billy Kluver, a Bell Labs electronics engineer, founded Experiments in Art and Technology Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) was a non-profit organization established to promote collaborations between artists and engineers. It was officially launched in 1967 by the engineers Billy Klüver and Fred Waldhauer and artists Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Whitman who (E.A.T.) in 1956 with artist Robert Rauschenberg
Robert Milton Ernest Rauschenberg (b. October 22 1925 in Port Arthur, Texas) is an American artist who came to prominence in the 1950s transition from Abstract to promote the cooperation between art and technology. E.A.T., which also involved such art-world luminaries as Jasper Johns Noun 1. Jasper Johns - United States artist and proponent of pop art (born in 1930) Johns , John Cage Noun 1. John Cage - United States composer of avant-garde music (1912-1992) John Milton Cage Jr., Cage , and Jean Tinguely Jean Tinguely (22 May 1925 in Fribourg, Switzerland - 30 August, 1991 in Bern) was a Swiss painter and sculptor. He is best known for his sculptural machines or kinetic art, in the Dada tradition; known officially as metamechanics. , peaked in 1967 with a renowned exhibit at New York's Museum of Modern Art. The exhibit was the forerunner A family of ATM adapters from Marconi (formerly Fore Systems). See Marconi. of today's Cyberarts exhibitions. "All of the exhibits in the Bell Labs Metaphorium have a specific purpose and communicative value," said Seligmann. "Experimentation is key; we cannot develop these new technologies in a vacuum. We're doing these trials in a cutting-edge fashion to give ourselves better insights into what kinds of shared experiences work on the Web." Message in a Bottle Conceived by Cati Laporte and Seligmann, this exhibit features a virtual seascape with an algorithm that creates a constantly-changing site. Visitors find themselves on an island, experiencing weather changes, birds, and, every so often, a floating bottle, which they can retrieve. Visitors can throw messages into the virtual sea. Messages will be received by later visitors to the site. Reason for Site: "Message in a Bottle" explores incidental communication and the use of digital metaphors to provide shared experiences. Subway Surface Conceived by Laporte, Seligmann, and Alvaro Munoz, this exhibit features photographs taken outside subway stations. Visitors "ride" the New York City subway together. At each stop, new "riders" (visitors to the site) get onto the subway car, which fill up with anonymous representations of the other riders and can stop at any station to view the scene above. Reason for Site: "Subway Surface" experiments with new paradigms New Paradigm In the investing world, a totally new way of doing things that has a huge effect on business. Notes: The word "paradigm" is defined as a pattern or model, and it has been used in science to refer to a theoretical framework. for browsing and ways to compensate for Web browser The program that serves as your front end to the Web on the Internet. In order to view a site, you type its address (URL) into the browser's Location field; for example, www.computerlanguage.com, and the home page of that site is downloaded to you. download delays with engaging animations and experiences. Lucent Technologies -- formed as a result of AT&T's restructuring -- designs, builds and delivers a wide range of public and private networks, communications systems In telecommunication, a communications system is a collection of individual communications networks, transmission systems, relay stations, tributary stations, and data terminal equipment (DTE) usually capable of interconnection and interoperation to form an integrated whole. and software, consumer and business telephone systems and microelectronics components. Bell Laboratories is the research and development arm for the company. Lucent Technologies was formed as a result of AT&T's restructuring and became a fully independent company - separate from AT&T - on September 30, 1996. CONTACT: Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill Chris Pfaff Christopher Pfaff is better known as "Drama," on the hit MTV reality series Rob & Big. Pfaff, 20, is cousin to professional skateboarder Rob Dyrdek and brother to Scott Pfaff, a pro skateboarder as well. , 908/582-7571 908/582-4552 (fax) cpfaff@lucent.com WORLDWIDE WEB SITE: http://www.multimedia.bell-labs.com |
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