Just last week we completed an installation of a multitouch, multiuser table exhibit and two multitouch enabled kiosks for Vulcan Park and Museum in Birmingham, Alabama. The Birmingham Today exhibition space has floor-to-ceiling windows on one side and provides a dramatic view of the city. For exhibits, we worked closely with the museum and focused on exploring Birmingham and the surrounding region through interactive maps, panoramic images, and community-provided photography.

For our second multitouch table installation, we designed a mapping and photo mashup application. (Similar to the one we completed for our first table installation at the Don Harrington Discovery Center in Amarillo, Texas)  For Vulcan Park and Museum, we developed a multitouch panoramic viewing application that runs on two HP TouchSmart kiosks.

Like the touch table exhibit, these kiosks use NUI Snowflake software with custom Flash software which we developed.  The panoramic viewer allows for simple pinch gesture to zooming of a panoramic photograph that we took from a top the Vulcan Park statue.  Users can also flip (or flick) photographs in a photo viewer window that is connected to points of interest on the panoramic image. We designed and developed the stand and exhibit-case for the HP TouchSmart.  This platform provides a low-cost touch and  multiouch platform for computer exhibits.  There’s more about the panoramic viewer application in our portfolio.

Here are some photographs for the opening party for Birmingham Today.

Visitors interact with the interactive map and photographs of Birmingham.

You couldn’t tear some visitors away from the touch table.

The multitouch-enabled panoramic viewers were placed by the large windows in the gallery space allows visitors to explore the Birmingham Skyline.

Earlier this week, we installed our first multitouch table at the Don Harrington Discovery Center in Amarillo, Texas. The touch table is right in the entranceway to the museum near a large satellite photograph of Amarillo and its’ environs.

The table runs a custom mulituser, multitouch application we developed with the Don Harrington Discovery Center and Vulcan Park and Museum. This multitouch mashup application uses Flickr and Yahoo! Maps. There is more on the design and software development process on the Ideum portfolio. The video below shows some of the features found in the application.

The press came out to see the exhibit. The local newspaper and all three network news channels showed up. Below DHDC’s Executive Director, Joe Hastings got interviewed by the local press.

Our next installation is in two weeks in Birmingham, Alabama. We’re going be installing another table along with two multitouch enabled HP TouchSmart kiosks. As far as we know, this will be the first time multitouch technology has been used exclusively throughout a permanent exhibit space.

This weekend, I headed up to Chaco Culture National Historic Park on the summer solstice to see traditional dancers. The Friends of Native Cultures have been organizing the appearance of native dancers each solstice since 2000, and I’ve been lucky enough to be at four out of the last five (you can see photos from 2004, 2006, 2007, and there are lots more photos of Chaco Culture at the Traditions of the Sun Website.)

The dancers perform in the plaza of the great house of Pueblo Bonito. For those of you who’ve never been to Chaco Canyon, Pueblo Bonito is largest of all the great houses found in the park, with nearly six hundred rooms, and it was three stories in some parts. Pueblo Bonito was built around 1000 AD and was continually built on for a few hundred years afterward, until the Chacoans left the area in 13th Century. Pueblo Bonito is a truly dramatic setting and it is a very emotional experience for those who dance; Chaco is the home of their ancestors after all.

This year the group of dancers were from Acoma Pueblo (which is the oldest, continually inhabited community in the U.S.). Below are some photos from their two morning dances. There are a few more photographs, including high-resolution versions on the Ideum Flickr site.

Dancing in the Plaza.

Marking the start of summer.

The two youngest dancers hold beautiful Acoma pottery.

Two projects we helped design and develop have won awards at this year’s Museums and the Web Conference held in Montreal.

ExhibitFiles won the Best of the Web award in the museum professionals category. Congratulations to our partners the Association of Science-Technology Centers and Indepedent Exhibits, and to our advisors and the many members of the ExhibitFiles.

The American Image: The Photographs of John Collier Jr. won the Best of the Web award in the exhibition category which included over 40 nominees. Congratulations to everyone at the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology. The judges had great things to say about the project, you can view their comments on the conference forum.

You can learn more about the ExhibitFiles and The American Image in the Ideum portfolio.

The always interesting VRMag online magazine has a new issue out (#28). This issue contains amazing QuickTime VR panoramas of the closed area of Chernobyl (apparently no dose of radiation is too high in the pursuit of panoramic imagery!), along with some wonderful images of Havana, Cuba. This issue also has a republished version of my review of the Old Masters Gallery in Dresden, which first appeared in the ExhibitFiles. Along with the republished text, photographer Johnny Vaccaro has added some beautifully detailed full-screen panoramas of the Old Masters Gallery.

Earlier in the month, I had the opportunity to meet the VRMag Editorial Director Marco Trezzini in Lugano, Switzerland. (I taught a class at the University of Lugano as part of their TEC-CH Masters program.) It was great to finally have an opportunity to meet Marco and talk shop, as we’ve been in email contact for several years now. VRMag has covered our work since we got started back in 2000, along with the work of hundreds of other photographers and multimedia firms. VRMag and the VRWay site list dozens of feature stories and an extensive hotlist of panoramic images from around the world.

Update November 30th: BoingBoing (the #3 Blog in the world according to Technorati) has a post about VRMag, apparently John Gaeta “the Oscar-winning special effects guru behind The Matrix trilogy and the forthcoming Speed Racer film” has some very nice things to say about VRMag.