Enhanced TV Prototype: Celebrity Mole

Chetan Bagga, Zuley Clarke, Drew Cogswell, Engin Erdogan, Sumier Phalake, Alexander Ross

Celebrity Mole is a reality TV show that challenges a team of eight celebrities to complete challenges while trying to discover who among them is the "mole" -- the player secretly trying to sabotage the rest of the team. The interactive prototype is modelled on a convergence platform such as Microsoft Media Center, in which broadcast television is combined with the connectivity and participation of computer environments.

The prototype uses the digital affordances to enhance the viewers' experience by making them part of the game play. Viewers can excerpt scenes from the episode and store them in a clue vault for later review. They also can earn points by betting on challenges and later spend them on purchased clues, including sponsored versions which incorporate advertising into the interactive framework.

Love and Diane: An Interactive Timeline

Tom Banaszewski, Zuley Clarke, Drew Cogswell, Engin Erdogan, Sharon Haber, Jennifer Haskins, Karyn Lu, Zhiyu Wang

Love and Diane: An Interactive Timeline is a prototype of an interactive TV application, demonstrating how the art of film documentary can be enhanced and deepened through the affordances of digital media. It marks the second year of Georgia Tech's collaboration with PBS's POV series, winner of multiple Emmy and Peabody Awards. Love and Diane is the lead offering of POV's 2004 season. It depicts the highly charged relationship between a mother, Diane, and her daughter, Love, who seem trapped in a devastating cycle within the social welfare system. The Interactive Timeline presents a visual representation of key events in the lives of Love and Diane. Users can navigate the story both chronologically and thematically. The timeline highlights key moments in the family life, allowing viewers an overview of the intertwined stories of mother and daughter, and providing order and orientation for a complex chronology, and making clear the events that happened before we meet the family members. The viewer can also sort the film clips thematically, exploring the dramatic parallels in struggle and resilience, defeat and achievement, across four generations.

Biotech Hobbyist

Drawing inspiration from the "garage computing" movements of the 1970s, the Biotech Hobbyist collective aims to explore the social, cultural, and political aspects of biotechnology through a DIY, lo-tech approach. Biotech Hobbyist projects by various members involve plant cloning, tissue culturing, bio-patenting, and bioinformatics. My work for Biotech Hobbyist focuses on "biomedia": the intersection of biology and computers, or the intersection of genetic and computer codes. Projects range from bioinformatics software development to DNA computing.