Research Statement

My research interests revolve around the development and use of new technology that makes media creation, sharing, and interaction more accessible. Of late, my focus has involved live streaming, often from mobile devices. These devices, with their ubiquity, always on, always with us, and always connected nature, have offered some of the most interesting possibilities.

My master’s thesis project from 2004, Interactive Tele-Journalism involved developing live streaming and chat software to run on a DIY mobile single board computer for the purpose of creating live interactive video reports from anywhere WiFi was available. Over the last 10 years, I have regularly redeveloped portions of this project to work on the latest available technology, most recently authoring an example live streaming application for Android.

In fact, most of my recent work takes the form of open source examples, libraries, publications, and teaching.

In 2005, I began teaching a course entitled Producing Participatory Media which introduced students to the tools, technologies, and use of audio and video on the web with podcasting, video blogging, and streaming and have continued to teach similar topics since then with courses on Mobile Media, Live Web, Live Experimental Interactive Television, and so on.

In support of my teaching and my personal work, I have published numerous open source software libraries ranging from WordPress plugins to support video publishing, to J2ME Libraries for media capture and more. In 2010, my first book, Pro Android Media, was published. The audience is programmers who are looking to create media capture and sharing applications on Android.

I have found that I do my best work when working in collaborations with artists or other technologists. Some of my most fulfilling work has been with Robert Whitman, an experimental theater artist whom I collaborated with in 2005 on a piece entitled Local Report which involved sending participants out into an local area to send almost live video reports and live audio reports of what they witness. In 2012 we worked on an updated version using the latest smartphones and participants world wide.

For the last few years, I have been working with a collective of programmers known as the Guardian Project on a few different open source apps which seek to enhance security and privacy for mobile phone users. The latest project, an open source secure news reader called Courier was released last year.

Previous to that, we worked with WITNESS performing research and development on a series of camera phone applications which seek to enhance privacy and security and could be used in sensitive situations. My involvement in that project resulted in the launch of an Android application called ObscuraCam which enables the stripping of metadata and disguising of faces in photographs.

In addition, I have a strong interest in both the convergence of traditional and new media as well as community media. Until recently, I served on the board of Manhattan Neighborhood Network, Manhattan’s Public Access station as Vice Chair with the primary mission of helping the organization utilize new technology and enabling it to remain relevant in the 21st century.

I believe that their is an inherent power in broadcast technology in focusing attention. The mass appeal of live events such as breaking news and sporting events are often best served with broadcast technology. The combination of new technologies with broadcast technology, perhaps in the form of live mobile phone video and broadcast television might offer some of the most compelling interactive experiences.

Lately, we have witnessed the ways in which these technologies can have a tremendous influence on society and shine a bright light on social justice issues from images transmitted around the world from the Arab Spring to video of recent incidents involving police in NYC.

Given all of this, I would like to continue my work on ways in which technology may be used to further democratize media creation and dissemination. Although I don’t know the form that this will take, I believe it should utilize widely accessible technologies such as phones and perhaps involve mass media such as television as a means to focus participation.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *