The event will take place on Saturday, Sept. 24, 2011 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Markham Convergence Centre, 7271 Warden Ave., in Markham, ON.

Please see the for more information聽or .听

For more information or partnering opportunities, please contact Brigitte Sharpe, Communications & Events Programing Manager at ventureLAB: bsharpe@venturelab.ca or by phone: 905-248-2735.

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The event will take place Jan. 13, from 2:30 to 5pm, on the聽5th Floor of the Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL)聽Building, Keele campus. In addition, there will be some short remarks at 3:30pm in 5084 TEL Building, at the south end of the hallway. Refreshments will be served.

The open house will showcase faculty- and student-led research projects, along with short presentations by researchers.

The LaMarsh Centre conducts interdisciplinary research in health, education, relationships and development of infants, children, adolescents, emerging adults and families. Its particular focus is on the health and well-being of Canada鈥檚 youth, preventing youth violence and promoting positive development. The aim is to foster a centre of learning, productivity and exchange for new and senior scholars and to create a critical mass of related research activity.

The YIHR takes a determinants approach to health research with sub-areas including diversity and health, health equity and social justice, health and the environment, health law and ethics, health care and health governance. YIHR draws together a range of social, biomedical, environmental and behavioural scientists, as well as researchers from business, law, education and the physical sciences, bridging the divide between the sciences and social sciences to deliver real-world solutions.

The houses the largest university-based survey centre in Canada, conducting major surveys on population health, education, gender, the environment and voting behaviour. It conducts more than 25 survey research projects annually, as well as a range of qualitative research, including focus group studies. ISR staff complete all stages of the survey research process from questionnaire design, sample selection and data collection to the preparation of machine-readable data files, statistical analysis and report writing.

Republished courtesy of YFile鈥� 91亚色鈥檚 daily e-bulletin.

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The Augmented Reality Lab in the Faculty of Fine Arts opens its doors to the 91亚色 community March 10 for interactive demonstrations of augmented reality (AR) and GPS locative media research projects in development. From 11am to 3pm, visitors will have the opportunity to experience projections on FogScreen, immersive virtual environments and other innovative applications for AR technology.

Directed by film Professor Caitlin Fisher, Canada Research Chair in Digital Culture, 91亚色's is at the forefront in working with both established and emerging technologies. As part of the , it is dedicated to producing innovative research methods, interfaces and content that challenge cinematic and literary conventions and aim to enhance how people interact with their physical environment and with each other.

Left: Caitlin Fisher

The lab offers artists and designers the opportunity to explore new screen technologies, approaches and techniques through production and theoretical study of this emerging medium. Lab participants work interactively and across disciplinary boundaries, particularly film and computer science.

A wide variety of projects will be on display at the open house.

Handheld City is an online streaming experience developed by the AR Lab for the city of Toronto鈥檚 virtual museum project, which launched March 6 (Toronto鈥檚 176th birthday). Using AR as a storytelling device, the researchers organized and animated the digital objects in the museum collection and created an interesting way to interact with the objects and access the accompanying text.

Right: Handheld City was developed for Toronto's virtual museum project

The Amazing Cinemagician is an interactive "rfid" (radio frequency identification聽鈥� like a barcode) video project for the FogScreen by Helen Papagiannis, a PhD student in communication & culture. Digitized film clips by cinematic special effects pioneer Georges M茅li猫s are tied to a series of rfid objects that the viewer can scan to access the video.

Papagiannis made major waves in AR circles last fall with her presentation at the International聽Symposium for Mixed and Augmented Reality聽in Florida. A leading AR news blog, , dubbed her 鈥渢he new ARtist in charge,鈥� awarded her its Most Beautiful Demo award and put her on its top聽10 list of forces currently shaping the industry.

CommCult master's student Justin Stephenson showcases a new "procedural animation" (a form of computer animation generated in real-time) using Quartz Composer.

Master of Fine Arts聽film student Simone Rapisarda presents the ladybike test project: the first film to come out of the lab using the Ladybug camera. This spherical digital video unit comprises multiple cameras and records more than 80 per cent聽of the full sphere. Rapisarda鈥檚 video, filmed with the camera set in a bicycle basket, shows the scenery approaching, speeding by and receding simultaneously.

Above: An image from Simone Rapisarda's ladybike test project

Also experimenting with the Ladybug camera is graduate film student Cameron聽Woykin, who has created a time-based video installation using footage of himself shot inside the lab. Edited into a spherical image, the video shows multiple views of the researcher as he moves around the space.

Right: The Ladybug camera in action

Wormholes is another experiment in spherical storytelling, created by Fisher and Andrew Roth, the lab鈥檚 technology manager.听Using the lab鈥檚 Intersense IS900 Inertial/Sonic Tracking "virtual reality" grid, participants wearing a聽virtual reality headset can literally get inside and explore simultaneous realities through spherical video clips shot by Fisher and Roth on various locations on campus.

Several projects use SnapdragonAR software, an innovative "drag and drop" AR interface developed in the lab in collaboration with computer vision researchers Andrei Rotenstein and Mikhail Sizintsev,聽PhD candidates in computer science,聽and Dr. Mark Fiala.听Snapdragon allows people without computer programming skills to easily build AR experiences. This software is now available for sale through Future Stories, a spin-off company 91亚色鈥檚 AR Lab established to provide participants with the option of commercializing their lab developments.

The Snapdragon projects created in the lab by graduate students include Papagiannis' sound toy wonder turner; Boaz Berri鈥檚 Neighbours, which fills an image of an apartment complex with videos of life inside the building; Carter Bruce, Anne Koizumi and Claudia Sicondolfo鈥檚 The Underground Cave, which animates a model of an underground space; and a work-in-progress by Evelyn Tchakarov.听Fisher will also be showing an AR tabletop theatre piece called Circle which was presented for the first time last December as part of the Digital Arts聽& Culture conference at the .听Wallace Edwards, a Governor General's Literary Award-winning children鈥檚 book illustrator, will show some recent experiments with AR illustrations that come to life in your hands.

Above: A collection of images from the Snapdragon projects created in the lab by graduate students

Another computer program developed in-house is an iPhone GPS聽video-caching application created by Roth and Rotenstein. Akin to a technological Easter egg hunt, when the application is running, the iPhone will display a digital surprise 鈥� in this case a film clip聽鈥� when it is physically located at a predetermined GPS coordinate. CommCult聽master's student Magda Olszanowski's Suivez Moi was built using the GPS software. An outdoor demo of her project is available now by appointment (call 416-736-2100 ext. 21077), but the lab hopes these locative film experiences will be available for download through the Apple app store in the near future.

Republished courtesy of YFile 鈥� 91亚色鈥檚 daily e-bulletin.

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