Traditionally, theatre hasn’t exactly been quick at adopting new technologies, but it now seems to be at the forefront of innovation. The Sydney Opera House is the most recent example of utilising visual augmented reality to enhance the experience of live symphonic performances. In this case, they used real-time audio reactive graphic projections that simultaneously canvassed the interior and exterior of the building (March 20th '11). 21 projectors, half a mile away from the building achieved the desired effect, though Vis Center Technology have produced on-stage projection screens that enable self-contained rapidly interchangeable background environments, without the downfall of shadows or space.



This means that digital technology; film and imagery can now be incorporated more easily onto sets, making productions appear more dramatic, engaging and realistic. 3D technology has dramatically changed the accessibility and versatility of opera performances, as seen within the Metropolitan Opera House ‘Siegfried’ production and Donizetti’s ‘Lucrezia Borgia’ at the English National Opera, which has now been 3D broadcasted across UK theatres.  In particular, Carmen at the Royal Opera House has introduced a completely new audience to the world of classical music, but what’s next?

‘Death and the Powers’, a groundbreaking new opera created by Tod Machover and the MIT Media Lab, fuse live singers with “disembodied performance” technology, giving it the reputation of the “Avatar of the Opera world”. This is nothing new for Machover, who is continually pushing the boundaries of technology, as seen within his other performances; ‘Valis’ (Pompidou Centre, Paris '87), ‘The Brain Opera’ and ‘Skeli’ (Lincoln Centre, NY). Yet, ‘Death and the Powers’ took his explorations further, fully embracing new technology through the adoption of geometric robots, animatronics and shape-shifting chandeliers, using music to bind the overall performance together.



An increasing number of companies are looking at online content as a way of interacting with the younger generation, allowing modern drama productions to escape the confines of a specific place and time. A move to digital content creates a new platform for audiences to access opera, both in the UK and internationally. It is now possible to enjoy highlights without leaving the house. With the average cost of a West End show at £35, digital content now allows full access to the arts for those on a lower income, with a greater means of engagement through short documentaries, apps, Facebook and Twitter.

Twitter is a surprising addition to the Opera scene and it has seen some success. ‘Such Tweet Sorrow’, based upon Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (The RSC and Mudlark) was designed to target a modern teen audience by creating interactive character profiles. Although this concept failed, the Royal Opera House capitalised on using Twitter within its production of ‘YourOpera’ and ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’. Here they asked the “Ballet Bag Ladies” to take over their account for the opening night, resulting in a strong following on top of its existing 15,000 followers.

Game-Play has utilised mobile technology and GPS to generate an interactive environment for live performances. ‘Fornight’ at the Proto-type Theatre in Bristol guided its audience around the city through text messages and emails in search of portals. These were RFID installations that played pieces of music when triggered, removing the traditional structure of existing performances.

The Norfolk and Norwich Festival ‘A Short Message’ performance by Tim Etchells’ allowed audiences to be projected into Etchells’ poetic yet psychedelic clown-infested world, by encouraging viewers to give over their mobile numbers so that they could be directly contacted throughout the performance. As a result, Etchells was able to invade the minds of the audience, manipulating their thoughts and retaining their concentration.

Naturally opera companies, including the Belfast Grand Opera House are adopting apps to showcase up-to-minute information regarding performances, synopses, images and video clips. Many are experimenting with apps during performances to access data, including sopranos’ biographies and translated subtitles. Hence, it is clear that opera has now recognised the need to capitalise in offline and online technology to match the desires of the younger generation.

During the past three months at ClustaLabs I have thoroughly researched into how the retail industry has being influenced by the development of technology, but it is now time to utilise this research into creating innovative solutions for brands.

Shoppers are increasingly becoming more tech-savvy, expending more from retailers in regards to customer experience and deliverables. Retailers need to embrace new technologies; otherwise they are faced with the prospect of being left behind. Across the high street, Brick and Mortar stores are beginning to shut down due to rising costs, the recession, e-commerce and advances such as downloadable music/books putting retailers like HMV out of business.

So what does the high street need to do to get customers through their doors? They need to embrace in the technological world. Some retailers are already starting to use technology in and outside of the store, such as JC Penney’s, Nordstrom’s, Forever 21, Ralph Lauren and Burberry. projection mapping on the exterior of buildings, live streaming of London Fashion Week and interactive bill-boards.

However, small incremental changes can be the key to success, such as ‘tweet-mirrors’ that are used in high street retailers like Pilot and New Look, contactless, RFID tagging, apps and QR tagging.

So what do I think will be in the future for retail? There are various speculations about what technologies will be used in the future of retail and fashion stores. Some will build upon technological solutions that are in-store now, like gesture based window shopping and Augmented Reality, but how is this really helping the consumer and does this mean that people will have to wander around wearing augmented reality glasses all day?

Microsoft Office Labs called “2019″, star men, women and children playing with what they think will be the next-generation of communication, collaboration and production technologies. This includes a “transparent wall” between two classrooms around the world, animated drawings, real-time conversation translations, surface displays, electronic boarding cards, transparent displays, mini projectors and electronic newspapers.



Some believe that there will be a future made of glass, from when you wake up in the morning and your TV tells you the news to special greetings displays in shops, phones, touch-screen bus shelters and even across oven surfaces.

Others believe like Microsoft that augmented reality will be the next big thing in retail e.g. when you go into a supermarket, your shopping list will be projected in front of your eyes. It will be able to guide you around the store and say when stock levels are low. It may even be used to develop an instant social networking solution, virtually bring up information about the person you are talking to including stats, likes and dislikes.

We know that in the future, personalisation will be fundamental to consumers. This means that the retail industry will change from business to consumer to consumer to business. As you walk into a store, everything should be personalised to that person. This may be digital displays that are aimed specifically at an individual, kiosks that suggest clothes for you, technology that recognises age, gender and needs, but remember this information is for all retailers, not just fashion.

Yet, this is all still speculation! It might be an accurate representation on what is coming out over the following couple of years, but more importantly is the ability to understand what is available now. Security and comfort is clearly the number one issue for consumers, hence do people really want to give their fingerprint every time they go shopping or swipe their phone to pay? Will people trust this?

Lastly, retailers need to realise that to increase their brand value and name, they first need to understand the customer and provide solutions to their in-store problems. Hence, retailers have to now concentrate on Queues, Time, Mess, Information Search and Customer Service. No-one has really done anything to tackle these areas yet, why?

The last area that I am concentrating on is how Touch technology is used in Fashion Retail, or should I say ‘non-touch’ as Kinect applications and Hygienic issues arise.

Touch surfaces are becoming increasingly popular in our everyday lives, including the Microsoft Surface 2.0, tablet PCs and Smartphone’s enabling consumers the opportunity to directly interact with brands.

Solitary shopping is being increasingly more obsolete, since touch screen technology enables consumers to link directly to their social networking sites, gaining immediate opinions from their friends and family at a touch of a button.

Nordstrom's BP Photobooth now allows girls the chance to take photos of themselves whilst trying on clothes. Why? Because girls often bring in camera phones into the dressing room to take snapshots of outfits that they have tried on to help with later purchasing decisions or just to update their Facebook profile picture.

Seventeen and J.C. Penny launched the virtual dressing room, incorporating augmented reality, motion capture, social media and e-commerce.  Fashion choices can now be made through mobile devices or webcam; hence if they like a product they can then buy it through the J.C. Penney website. With a simple wave of a hand, shoppers can now select, rate and share their top pictures with friends via Facebook or email, creative a much more engaging way in regards to online shopping.

The Tweet Mirror, as seen on Mary Portas show, has since become increasingly more popular within retail. It makes the overall shopping experience more enjoyable, interactive and social, merging the worlds between physical and digital.



Although touch has become increasingly popular, the future will be based upon the opposite; ‘non-touch’ screens.  The gesture based 24 hour window shopping has recently been developed, in which consumers can order products outside of store. Fraunhofer Institute even suspects that in the future, technology will be able to place through orders by recognising twitches and emotions from peoples’ faces. The interactive shop window uses infrared cameras that register the movements of a persons’ hand. The consumer simply points to the item of their choice that is shown in 3D, along with prices, colours and availability. Twisting the hand rotates the images on the screen. To buy, the customer then moves an arrow on the screen to a checkout icon, clicks on it and completes the purchase by placing a mobile phone against the glass. This gives a new form of interaction and brings people back onto the high street.

If you have any questions as to how non-touch screen applications will revolutionise the fashion retail industry, please feel free to email me at emily.clarke@clusta.com

A majority of people across the world live and breathe sports, not only do people watch the games, they talk about them. Following up from the blog Chris wrote about second screen, I thought to myself; why has sport not adopted second screen as of yet? I researched into how sports channels have used second screen and if broadcasters are going to combine second screen for the The Olympics 2012.
 
Football is one of the most viewed sports across England and people don’t just watch the match, they tweet about it, Facebook it, chat to friends about it and even have the Total Football App. This app shows statistics, the league board, analysis of each game, allowing friends to settle arguments with friends, as it provides information on bets and can help to create the perfect fantasy football team.

As this has such a massive potential, why haven’t broadcasters taken this on board? The BBC Sport has used Twitter and Flickr to enable viewers to upload photos during games and Twitter updates automatically, alongside blogs.  The Olympics is a massive event for the BBC and the digital media needs to be on par, hence second screen has great potential as it encourages people to upload photos and tweet immediately during the games.


 
This visualisation represents country codes (eg #aus) in the twitter search stream for #worldcup since June 12th (950,000 tweets). One second of animation = two hours of tweets whilst each orb size denotes relative frequency of country codes.

The BBC’s coverage of the Formula1 enabled consumers the chance to see the driver tracker, a map that highlighted the position of every driver in realtime. So in the Olympics, could the BBC stream to your laptop other snippets of live games, ensuring that viewers never miss out on the latest action? Maybe they could incorporate a twitter feed that portrays other viewers’ opinions about the events that are unfolding?
 
During the 2010 FIFA World Cup, fans wrote 2,940 tweets per second on June 14th 2010 in a thirty second period when there was a goal.  Many people reported that Twitter was down during the World Cup due to too many tweets. The Superbowl also had 4,064 tweets per second, but a large intake of these tweets were due to advertisements, so clearly sporting activities are fundamental to the successful of such social networking sites. This begs the question; will Twitter and other social networking sites be able to cope with the stress of the Olympics? And will they integrate second screen applications to improve the overall viewing experience of the games?

Recently, ClustaLabs was looking at the development of second screen applications in advertising, but will it also affect home entertainment. With the evolution of Boxee, a device that enables programmes and films to be found on the internet and then displayed on your TV, will TV become more socially interactive and if so, should it?

A fundamental feature of Boxee is the ability to send web videos and online TV shows direct to your Boxee from any internet browser, ready to watch when you are free. Socially, Boxee can be used to obtain recommendations from your friends on Facebook and Twitter, ensuring that users never miss out on sharing the latest gossip. This is all great news and will definitely take off, but isn’t the whole point of TV about sitting down and zoning out, disengaging with what is going on around you?

Avner Ronen (CEO of Boxee) recently stated that “The reality right now is that it is very hard to innovate on the big screen." This may explain the difficulty that 3D technology has experienced within the marketplace.

Over the last three years, 3D technology has taken a more formidable role within cinema, yet until recently, TV has been slow to adopt it. Arguably, users can now experience breathtaking realism from 3D movies within their own home, especially as Sony, Panasonic, Samsung, LG, Toshiba and Mitsubishi have all announced plans to launch 3D televisions within the next year. DreamWorks and Disney has also spotted the opportunity to release a range of 3D titles for home use, along with Sky who have announced the development of a new 3D TV channel for 2011, but is this what consumers want?



Existing 3D technology has received a mixed response from the general public. Many have experienced issues with vision including eye-strain & headaches and a large proportion wish for films to remain 2D, partly because they hate wearing the retro 3D glasses. With this in mind, will the film industry split into those pro and against 3D?

There are many opinions based around the future of TV. Westinghouse Digital  believe that more and more Americans will display multiple flat panels right next to each other to enable multitasking, viewing more than one piece of multimedia content at a time, including movies, photos, art and live sport. Maybe, but unless the prices of televisions decrease, remotes become more universal and that interaction is encouraged between the screens themselves, then this is looking more and more unlikely.

According to Comet, in less than ten years, spectacles and contact lenses will superimpose films and imagery onto the retina, instead of viewing through the TV. By 2020, they believe that people will have grown tired of 3D specs and change to contact lenses that can be worn throughout the whole day, coming into play when you watch films. A more extreme opinion is that these contact lenses will also enable viewers to physically feel the pain and emotion of characters, pushing the boundaries of augmented reality, especially in gaming.

Is this going too far? Will this lead to the death of the traditional TV?  Join us on Twitter: @clustalabs to discuss the debate.