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The Crossing Project
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The Crossing: Distinction / Interactive Art

The Crossing exhibition, developed by a group of researchers around Ranjit Makkuni (IND) is a good example of how cultural content, such as Indian mythology, can be translated and made transparent through the application of novel and intuitive interfaces.

The exhibition The Crossing by Ranjit Makkuni – he developed the SmallTalk-80 Object Oriented programming language and the world's first Graphic User Interface – uses for example an Indian 'rickshaw' as interface which allows users to experience parts of Indian culture. This exhibition opens up new ways how to bring interface technology to education, edutainment and entertainment in a culturally grounded and customised fashion. This initiative is also especially valuable as it is within the context of an emerging technological nation that has especially important and fascinating cultural stories to tell. Whilst technology is self-evident in the business community in India, it may not probably have been used so effectively within the cultural domain before. In addition, the support and collaboration of the commercial partner in such an unlikely scenario should be applauded.

By combining state-of-the-art interface techniques with content-rich cultural experiences, The Crossing project thus engages the general public to create and enhance the collaborative learning experience in a museum setting. To juxtapose the purely artistic realisations of interaction design and to recognize and encourage the increasing influence of interactivity to the field of education, entertainment and edutainment in culturally diverse settings, we choose this work as a specially well-crafted example which can point into future directions were artistic, scientific and engineering applications can meet.

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4 comment(s)
Re: The Crossing: Distinction / Interactive Art (niki gomez / 2002/8/20 23:21:22)
Re: The Crossing: Distinction / Interactive Art (niki gomez / 2002/8/20 23:21:13)
Re: The Crossing: Distinction / Interactive Art (niki gomez / 2002/8/20 23:20:58)
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