[Art_beyond_sight_theory_and_research] Imagine Cup, Kurzweil-NFB Reader, Black Sun, art sculpture park

[Lisa Yayla]

Hi,
2 articles from Microsofts Imagine Cup, one from Brasil and one from 
India. And an article about the exciting Kurzweil-NFB Reader from NFB. 
Movie review of "Black Sun", and article about art sculpture park.
Regards,
Lisa


Imagine, Gates, maps

http://www.hindu.com/2006/07/03/stories/2006070303511300.htm
http://news.com.com/Students+dream+up+tech+help+for+health+care/2100-11393_3-6089190.html

http://www.ifctv.com/ifc/insiderNews?CAT0=5827&NID=17108&CLR=orange&BCLR=FF6600

http://www.nj.com/living/times/index.ssf?/base/entertainment-0/115120834052690.xml&coll=5
http://www.gizmag.co.uk/go/5792/

Indians' sonic map impresses Gates
Redmond: Watching a demonstration of visionary software ideas that can 
transform health care at his Redmond headquarters, Microsoft Chairman 
Bill Gates was sufficiently impressed by the concept of a sonic map 
presented by an Indian student team to help the blind, to ask the 
accessibility group of Microsoft to take a look at it.

"I have never seen something like this," he said, when Deepak Jagdish, a 
student of the Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and 
Communication Technology (DA-IICT), Gandhinagar, explained to him the 
navigation and processing system that he and his team members were now 
perfecting to improve the quality of life of visually impaired people.

The DA-IICT team, made up of Deepak, Rahul Sawhney, Shreyas Nangia and 
Mohit Gupta, has been working on the sonic map, which it calls `Sonique' 
or `Dhwani, for the Imagine Cup 2006 competition hosted by Microsoft. 
Their software design can potentially help visually impaired people 
"see" the environment around them, complete with objects in a spatial 
sense.

Snapshot of surroundings


The system, inspired by echolocation used by bats, is designed to emit 
ultrasonic impulses generated by proximity sensors that have a minimum 
range of five metres and process the signals to create a `sonic 
snapshot' of the surroundings.

Where there is no object, there is no feedback. Positive signals 
bouncing off objects are conveyed via blue tooth technology to a mobile 
device and translated in real time into sound frequencies. These results 
are available to the blind person through headphones connected to the 
mobile.

The Indian students' entry is among those short-listed for the global 
Imagine Cup finals to be held in August in Agra, also involving over 70 
teams in different categories. The results will be announced in Delhi.

Accessing the mouse


Among the promising spin-offs from the project is the opportunity for 
blind people to use the computer mouse. This can be achieved by giving 
the monitor screen `grid' values that translate into sound. The 
variation in sound is evident when the mouse is moved vertically and 
horizontally. "The goal is to build an all-in-one explorer for the 
blind, which will help them access all programmes from a centralised 
navigation system on the screen," explains Deepak, who was the sole 
representative for his team at Redmond.

Other members of the team could not make it to the presentation for Mr. 
Gates in the U.S. for various reasons. Besides the Microsoft Chairman, 
Mr. Sanjay Parthasarathy, corporate vice-president, and Mr. Joe Wilson, 
group product manager, both from the developer and platform evangelism 
group of Microsoft and other senior executives also witnessed the demo.

The Imagine Cup this year saw about 68,000 students register worldwide 
with a tally of 11,000 competing in the event. The finalists vie for 
$125,000 in prize money in the multi-category competition that 
encourages talented young programmers showcase their ideas using 
Microsoft programming platforms.

Other teams


The Indian entry is built on the .Net compact framework for software 
modules to connect to a central server and the Windows Mobile 5.0 for 
the Sonique application.

Other teams that demonstrated their ideas to the Microsoft Chairman were 
from the United Kingdom, the U.S., Germany, Japan and South Korea.

"Amazingly, the world still has a shortage of great engineers who write 
software. You would think we are overwhelmed with great people because 
we get to do the most fun work in the world, but somehow a lot of people 
still don't recognise that. So your opportunity is very strong because 
the need for your kind of skills certainly exceeds the supply," Mr. 
Gates told the students, reminding them that Microsoft has a "huge R and 
D culture" and an allocation of $6 billion a year for the activity.

Tablet PCs


Giving an example of an idea flowing from that vision, he talked of 
tablet PCs for students that would connect wirelessly to the Internet 
and eliminate the need for textbooks.

Speaking about the Indian team's experience in producing a Sonique 
prototype, Deepak Jagdish said there was a two to three week delay in 
importing some pieces of hardware, such as the digital compass.

"We are improving the accuracy of the device all the time in 
consultation with the National Association for the Blind, Ahmedabad, and 
others. We hope to be ready 15 days before the finals," he added 
optimistically.

2006 The Hindu





http://www.news.com/

Students dream up tech for health care

By Ina Fried
http://news.com.com/Students+dream+up+tech+for+health+care/2100-11393_3-6089190.html 


Story last modified Thu Jun 29 04:57:30 PDT 2006



Inspired by his blind grandfather, Ivan Cordeiro Cardim has been working 
to develop a better way for the visually impaired to find their way 
through unfamiliar surroundings.
His system, developed over the past eight months with a small team of 
fellow Brazilian college students, combines GPS technology with a set of 
wristbands to alert the user when it is time to turn.

"It works like a map for blind people," Cardim said in a telephone 
interview. "Through vibrating wristbands, they are given directions."


On Wednesday, the team got a chance to show their idea to Microsoft 
Chairman Bill Gates, and to present him with a Brazilian soccer jersey. 
Gates tried on the wristbands and inquired how the team had got them so 
small.

Cardim's team is a finalist in Microsoft's Imagine Cup, a 4-year-old 
invention contest that will be judged in August in Delhi, India. About 
65,000 people were involved in this year's entries, and about 300 are 
representing their countries in the finals. Microsoft invited a handful 
of the finalists to show their projects to Gates on Wednesday.

All of the projects have to use Microsoft technology in some way and 
have to relate to health, this year's theme.

An Indian team showed Gates a different approach for helping the blind 
navigate, and aims to replicate the kind of echolocation that bats use 
to find their way. Among the other projects Gates checked out were an 
exercise-monitoring program from South Korea that uses a motion detector 
to measure the effectiveness of exercise, and another from a Japanese 
team whose medical information management software is designed to reduce 
medical errors.

Big ideas
For Microsoft, the Imagine Cup is a way to encourage young people to 
pursue technology careers and to use its technology.

"It's sort of the DNA of Microsoft--young people with big ideas," said 
Joe Wilson, Microsoft's director of academic initiatives. "We want to 
continue to inspire that."

Plus, the students all use Microsoft technology. The Brazilian project, 
for example, used Windows' speech-recognition programming interfaces, 
the MapPoint mapping service and Visual Studio developer tools to help 
visually impaired users get where they want to go. The wristbands use 
GPS technology and Bluetooth wireless to communicate with a nearby cell 
phone or Pocket PC that can process a spoken destination request.

Cardim said he walked away very impressed with the Microsoft founder.

"He cares about what we are doing," Cardim said, noting that Gates 
already gets plenty of attention. "He is stepping down from Microsoft in 
a couple of years just to do social and charitable work."

And while Microsoft is giving plenty of money to the Imagine Cup 
winners--a total of $125,000 in cash prizes--Cardim said his interest is 
in making his project a reality.

"We're not just doing this for the competition, and we're not doing it 
for the money either," he said. "We'd love to see our project working, 
and there is no better way to do that than to get it to our users."

If the Brazilian team can make it to the final six, they stand a good 
chance. The top half-dozen teams will be flown by British telephone 
giant BT to England and given an opportunity to try and land business 
backing for their ideas.

Several past Imagine Cup finalists have commercialized their entries, 
including a Greek team that finished in second place last year with 
Sign2Talk, a combination of software and hardware that translates sign 
language to spoken words and vice versa. The inventors recently raised 
about 600,000 euros ($753,218) from the Greek government and private 
investors.

"They are going to start a whole company," Microsoft's Wilson said.



excerpt article FESTIVAL: Top 5 Reasons to go to the Newport Film Festival
Gary Tarn's Best Doc Award-winning "Black Sun" in which artist and 
filmmaker Hugues de Montalembert tells his own story of being blinded 
during a mugging and learning to live and travel and create art as a 
blind man;




article

Special program helps blind get feel of art at sculpture park
Sunday, June 25, 2006
BY BRENT JOHNSON
Baseemah Shakir rubbed her hands over the brown marble rabbit, trying to 
guess what she was feeling.

"This must be the ear," she said with a sense of wonder.

Shakir then came to a conclu sion that made her giggle.

"He's a fat one," she said, smiling.

Shakir hasn't had many chances to make such a discovery since losing her 
sight five years ago. Though she always enjoyed visiting art museums, 
many galleries won't allow her to touch the exhibits.

That, however, wasn't a problem on a recent Saturday, when Shakir and 66 
other blind or visually impaired people were given the opportunity to 
discover plump rab bits and other awe-inspiring sensa tions at Grounds 
for Sculpture in Hamilton.

The museum and outdoor sculpture park allowed the visitors to touch a 
number of the pieces on display in an event to promote Braille literacy.

The event -- a joint venture between Grounds for Sculpture and the New 
Jersey Library for the Blind and Handicapped -- served as a kickoff to a 
permanent tour the museum will now offer to visually impaired patrons.

"You don't know how frustrating it is to go through a museum and have 
everything say, 'Please Do Not Touch,' " says Holly Westefeld, who, like 
Shakir, traveled from Egg Harbor on a bus to attend the event. "This is 
wonderful."

The museum has offered similar tours before, but never on this level, 
said Brooke Barrie, director and curator of Grounds for Sculpture. 
Patrons can now call ahead to schedule one of two tours -- each with 12 
sculptures picked specifically for their distinct textures, materials 
and designs.

The museum hired a mobility instructor to map out the tours and train 
the guides who will give them. The tour also will include Braille 
handouts with information about the pieces.

The project began in November, when Venetia V. Demson, then the director 
of the New Jersey Library for the Blind and Handicapped, approached 
Grounds for Sculpture in hopes of working together to develop art 
literacy among the area's visually impaired community. Coincidentally, 
the museum had been thinking of something similar.

"We had wanted to develop special tours for the blind and visually 
impaired and they wanted to extend their outreach to the arts," Barrie 
says. "So it was really kind of a perfect marriage for the two 
organizations to get together."

Vito J. DeSantis, executive di rector of the state Department of Human 
Services Commission for the Blind and Visually Impaired, stressed that a 
project like this is important on two levels: first, to show visually 
impaired people that they can enjoy the arts; and, second, to show 
others that visually impaired people aren't limited in what they can do.

"With alternative ways or techniques, they can enjoy and participate in 
the same activities as do sighted people," DeSantis says. "And you can't 
give that message often enough because, by extension, then other 
opportunities become possible."

Those in attendance at the special Saturday event proved DeSan tis' 
message as they ran their hands over the sculptures, giddily telling 
their friends and family what they were touching.

"It's wood, I think," Westefeld said, crouching down to the ground as 
she felt the bottom of a giant wooden sculpture of two horns. "I'm not 
sure what to make of that one. I have no idea."

At a nearby workshop where patrons got to touch sculpting tools and 
materials, Suzanne Woolpert encouraged her son, Brian, to explore the 
items laid out on the table.

"This is a hammer -- like Daddy uses," she said to the 7-year-old, who 
promptly picked up the tool and banged it on the table.

"My son is very interested in art and this is a new art form for him," 
says Woolpert, who is also visually impaired. "So this is very new and 
exciting to him."

Soon, Brian was rubbing a piece of sandpaper across the side of a block 
of white marble.

"I got a whole side flat," the first-grader said.

As Brian exemplified, a project like this can also do wonders for 
visually impaired children.

"It's part of a blind person being in the world, like everyone else," 
says Carol Castellano, president of Parents of Blind Children New 
Jersey. "So if a blind child is exposed to a literacy medium, like 
Braille; and independence medium, like the cane; and art and literature 
and movies -- everything that every other kid is exposed to -- then you 
get a well-rounded, normal person that's integrated into the community 
and views him- or herself as just like everyone else."

As the visitors filtered through the museum lobby, eager to reach for 
the next sculpture, Demson proudly beamed at the project she helped 
bring to life.

"This museum is one of New Jersey's treasures," she said, "and I think 
it's very important that people know about it in (the blind) community 
because it's sculptural art and they have the opportunity to put their 
hands on it and get a sensory description in their minds -- let their 
imaginations understand what a piece of sculpture looks like."

And even if patrons like Westefeld couldn't quite figure out what they 
were touching all the time, they still came away with a few new 
discoveries.

"Did you see the rabbit?" Westefeld said, walking away from the wooden 
sculpture that confused her. "The rabbit was really cute."


article

The Talking Camera - new handheld electronic reader will change the 
lives of millions

June 27, 2006 There are 174 million visually impaired people in the 
world, accounting for approximately 2.6 percent of the population, with 
around 0.6% being completely blind. We can hardly imagine how overjoyed 
these people will be to hear of a groundbreaking new device that has 
been announced by the United States National Federation of the Blind 
(NFB) - the Kurzweil-NFB Reader. The handheld machine was developed by 
NFB and renowned inventor Ray Kurzweil, and enables users to take 
pictures of and read most printed materials. Users hold the device over 
any print document (such as a letter, bill, restaurant menu, airline 
ticket, business card, or office memo) and in seconds they hear the 
contents of the printed document read to them in a clear synthetic 
voice. Combining a state-of-the-art digital camera with a powerful 
personal data assistant, the Reader puts the best available 
character-recognition software together with text-to-speech conversion 
technology in a single handheld device. "The world of the printed word 
is about to be opened to the blind in a way it has never been before,” 
said NFB President Marc Maurer. No other device in the history of 
technology for the blind and visually impaired has provided quicker 
access to more information. Readers go on sale July 1 for US$3,495. 
Download a brochure here. The invention will once again focus public 
attention on the inventive mind of Ray Kurzweil which has made 
significant contributions to human knowledge in the areas of optical 
character recognition, music synthesis, virtual reality, and artificial 
intelligence – read about his remarkable career here.


“The NFB promotes a positive attitude towards blindness,” said Maurer, 
“and this Reader will make blind and visually impaired people 
dramatically more independent.”

“The result will be better performance at work, at school, at home, and 
everywhere else we go. This Reader substantially improves the quality of 
life for the growing number of blind and visually impaired people."

The Reader offers people quick access to information, is portable, and 
can store thousands of printed pages with easily obtainable extra 
memory. Also users can transfer files to their desktop and laptop 
computers or to their Braille notetakers in minutes. The Reader has a 
headphone jack as well, so users do not have to disturb others in close 
proximity.

The National Federation of the Blind helped fund the development and 
production of the Reader and helped plan and design its user interface. 
As many as 500 NFB Pioneers across the country have piloted the Reader 
during the beta-testing process and these users have been absolutely 
thrilled with the capabilities of the Reader.

Gary Wunder, a computer programmer analyst with the University of 
Missouri Hospitals and Clinics in Columbia, Missouri, said: "This little 
machine has completely changed my awareness about the print around me 
and has given me access that I never dreamed possible before. It is 
amazing to go to a public event and actually read the program, to go to 
a work meeting and be able to read the handout which someone has 
forgotten to send to me in advance. What a thrill it is to take a 
business card and get the information from it quickly enough to remember 
why I took the card in the first place. For the first time in my life I 
looked at the magazines in the seat pocket of a commercial airliner, and 
reading a restaurant menu is awesome."


The Reader is the result of a joint venture between the NFB and Ray 
Kurzweil, chief executive officer of K-NFB Reading Technology, Inc. 
Kurzweil, who has been dubbed the Thomas Edison of the 21st century, is 
an inventor, entrepreneur, author, and futurist. Kurzweil was the chief 
developer of the first omni-font optical character-recognition 
technology, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the 
first CCD flatbed scanner, the first text-to-speech synthesizer, the 
first music synthesizer capable of recreating the grand piano and other 
orchestral instruments, and the first commercially marketed, 
large-vocabulary speech recognition engine. In 1999, Kurzweil received 
the National Medal of Technology, the nation's highest honor in 
technology, from President Clinton in a White House ceremony.

The Kurzweil-NFB Reader costs about the same as many flat screen 
televisions today, with an expected retail price of US$3,495, and yet 
has the power to revolutionize a person's life. Sales will be handled by 
Kurzweil Educational Systems, Inc., based in Bedford, Massachusetts, and 
its national distribution channel of dealers. The Reader's convenient 
size, simple design, and powerful technology deliver unprecedented 
access to printed matter. After several minutes of practice, users can 
begin accessing a wealth of print information in ways they never have 
before.

James Gashel, NFB's Executive Director for Strategic Initiatives, said: 
"Every year 75,000 more people will become blind or visually impaired in 
this country. As America's aging population soars over the next few 
decades, so too will the incidence of visual impairment and blindness. 
The Reader will help not only blind individuals, but older Americans who 
wish to stay independent and age with dignity."



The National Federation of the Blind helped fund the development and 
production of the Reader and helped plan and design its user interface. 
As many as 500 NFB Pioneers across the country have piloted the Reader 
during the beta-testing process and these users have been absolutely 
thrilled with the capabilities of the Reader.

Gary Wunder, a computer programmer analyst with the University of 
Missouri Hospitals and Clinics in Columbia, Missouri, said: "This little 
machine has completely changed my awareness about the print around me 
and has given me access that I never dreamed possible before. It is 
amazing to go to a public event and actually read the program, to go to 
a work meeting and be able to read the handout which someone has 
forgotten to send to me in advance. What a thrill it is to take a 
business card and get the information from it quickly enough to remember 
why I took the card in the first place. For the first time in my life I 
looked at the magazines in the seat pocket of a commercial airliner, and 
reading a restaurant menu is awesome."


The Reader is the result of a joint venture between the NFB and Ray 
Kurzweil, chief executive officer of K-NFB Reading Technology, Inc. 
Kurzweil, who has been dubbed the Thomas Edison of the 21st century, is 
an inventor, entrepreneur, author, and futurist. Kurzweil was the chief 
developer of the first omni-font optical character-recognition 
technology, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, the 
first CCD flatbed scanner, the first text-to-speech synthesizer, the 
first music synthesizer capable of recreating the grand piano and other 
orchestral instruments, and the first commercially marketed, 
large-vocabulary speech recognition engine. In 1999, Kurzweil received 
the National Medal of Technology, the nation's highest honor in 
technology, from President Clinton in a White House ceremony.

The Kurzweil-NFB Reader costs about the same as many flat screen 
televisions today, with an expected retail price of US$3,495, and yet 
has the power to revolutionize a person's life. Sales will be handled by 
Kurzweil Educational Systems, Inc., based in Bedford, Massachusetts, and 
its national distribution channel of dealers. The Reader's convenient 
size, simple design, and powerful technology deliver unprecedented 
access to printed matter. After several minutes of practice, users can 
begin accessing a wealth of print information in ways they never have 
before.

James Gashel, NFB's Executive Director for Strategic Initiatives, said: 
"Every year 75,000 more people will become blind or visually impaired in 
this country. As America's aging population soars over the next few 
decades, so too will the incidence of visual impairment and blindness. 
The Reader will help not only blind individuals, but older Americans who 
wish to stay independent and age with dignity."