In the past decade, we have seen a huge change in media and their relationship with bodies and space with tangible interfaces, augmented reality, and ambient Internet. The COSIMA project will explore the relationship between body, media, and space via new interfaces and tools for collaborative creation. The aim of COSIMA is to implement a platform for publishing and disseminating medias situated in space and time, combining several sensory modalities. These contents partner proprioception and perception, involving the entire body in their creation and reception phases. The principle of augmented reality combines a digital space with tangible space. The use of this kind of space makes it possible to edit collaborative situated medias. The COSIMA platform’s applications include artistic projects, innovative public services, events, and communication.
Implementation of an Accessible Platform
The principle objective of COSIMA is to democratize this new type of media via an accessible, generic, open, and interoperable platform. The project aims at the implementation of a platform that uses standard and open formats, enabling relationships with a variety of mobile technologies and existing systems. The platform will make it easier to carry out this type of experience at a lesser cost and in a more accessible manner for the general public (cultural institutions, public services, artists, etc.). Putting in place an environment of multimodal expression in tangible space requires a system made up of different components: client applications installed on mobile terminals connected to a network, a web service that offers an open API, a database server, and an administration interface for the contents.
Create new Participative Experiences
The creation of a platform also requires studying different uses and validation. For this, prototypes are developed at each stage of the project to test different scenarios and to collect and analyze the results to improve the platform. The COSIMA project therefore defines a context for experimentation according to different themes: the creation of visual and sound media associated with information about movement and movement to create maps or paths in augmented reality; situated media is shared in a social space for staging pervasive games or zones of public expression; dissemination of situated media in real-time to a community of users makes it possible to create mobs, performances, or large group experiences.
Supporting New Economic Models and the Development of Communities for the Creation and Dissemination of Digital Media
The combined development of Internet technology and mobile platforms defines new paradigms for the dissemination of medias. The COSIMA platform favors the surfacing and structuring of communities around these new media. The assessment and selection of an adapted economic model will be a part of its development.