November 19, 2008
New MIT Center Will Explore New Forms of Storytelling (Including Holographic Ones)
The Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced yesterday that it had signed a contract with a budding film-and-television studio to create the Center for Future Storytelling.
The center is supported by a $25-million research contract with Plymouth Rock Studios, which is planning to open production facilities near MIT in 2010 — and which bills its studios as “Hollywood East.” The contract calls for three MIT professors and several graduate and undergraduate students to collaborate with employees from the studio. The center began its initial activity this week.
“We had a lunch yesterday to start brainstorming about this and about three-fourths of the graduate students in the Media Lab showed up,” said V. Michael Bove Jr., a principal research scientist at the lab who is a co-director of the center, in an interview today. “We’re looking at all forms of storytelling in a hyperconnected, socially connected world.”
The Media Lab has worked on high-tech storytelling before. An “interactive cinema” research group operated for years, dissolving in 2004. “But I don’t think we’ve done anything at this scale and with this intensity before” on the topic, said Mr. Bove.
What kinds of projects will the center work on? Mr. Bove said one possibility would be developing interactive films that know details about the viewer — such as whether he or she has seen it before — and that can change accordingly. He also suggested that the center could develop content for holographic-TV technology that some Media Lab researchers are working on.
Holographic television won’t be ready for prime time for a while, but it is coming, says Mr. Bove. “I can’t say when it’s going to be in your living room. It’s not 50 years from now — it’s a lot sooner than that.” —Jeffrey R. Young
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wow, looking forward to my new hologram of a television set!
— feliz molina Nov 19, 07:09 PM #
Good bye flat screen 52’‘ tv
— Bob Streater III Nov 20, 09:19 AM #