The Partners
OpenPTrack is led by UCLA REMAP and Open Perception. Key collaborators include the University of Padova, Electroland and Indiana University Bloomington. Early adopters include the UCLA Interpretive Media Laboratory, California State Parks, UCLA Lab School and cheLA.
The Center for Research in Engineering, Media and Performance at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA REMAP) is a joint effort of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television (TFT) and UCLA Samueli School of Engineering. REMAP bridges the world-class faculty and students of TFT and Samueli to explore new enriching cultural forms and empowering social situations enabled by the thoughtful interweaving of engineering, the arts and community development. The Center provides a uniquely positioned creative environment that embraces and promotes people, projects and investigations that can have resonant, long-term impact on the relationships among culture and technology. REMAP builds on the experience of UCLA’s HyperMedia Studio, created by Professor Fabian Wagmister in 1997 to explore the unique creative expression enabled through the collaboration of media, the performing arts and engineering.
Open Perception was incorporated in California in April 2012 as a Nonprofit Public Benefit Corporation, created with the purpose of supporting the development, distribution, and adoption of open source software for 2D/3D processing of sensory data, with applications in research, education, and product development. An independent organization, Open Perception’s vision is to empower computers to perceive the 3D world around them. The company values the concepts of real-world compatibility, standards compliance, stability, performance, security, portability, usability, and relative use of understanding and modifying the code. Open Perception solutions are enabling researchers and engineers around the globe to focus less on reinventing the wheel, working on basic tools or algorithmic infrastructure, and spending more time on actual specific product development.
Electroland LLC was founded in 2001 by Principal Cameron McNall (an architect, sculptor and installation artist) and Partner Damon Seeley (a designer and technologist). The work of Electroland (installations throughout North America and abroad) has received wide notice for its conceptual strength and originality, and has been featured at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum Triennial in New York.
The University of Padova is one of Europe’s oldest and most prestigious seats of learning. Established in 1222, the University grew to become a home to figures who have changed the cultural and scientific history of humanity, including Copernicus and Galileo. Padova vaunts the world’s first university botanical garden and a permanent anatomical theatre, which was built by Girolamo Fabrici d’Acquapendente. William Harvey, famous for describing the circulation of blood, studied in Padova, as did Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia, who, in 1678, became the first woman in the world to be awarded a university degree. It is a multidisciplinary university that aims to provide its students with both professional training and a solid cultural background.
Founded in 1820, Indiana University Bloomington (IU) is the flagship campus of Indiana University’s eight campuses statewide. Innovation, creativity, and academic freedom are hallmarks of IU and its world-class contributions in research and the arts. For traditions like the world-famous Little 500 bicycle race and a commitment to emerging technologies, IU was named the “Hottest Big State School” in 2005 by Newsweek, America’s Hot Colleges. For technology infrastructure and support, the campus was named “most wired” among public universities by PC Magazine in 2006. U.S. News & World Report has recognized IU for outstanding freshman programs and residential learning communities, and Time magazine praised its commitment to freshmen when it named IU “College of the Year” in 2001.
The Interpretive Media Laboratory (IMLab) is an innovative partnership of UCLA and California State Parks that harnesses emerging technologies and cutting-edge research to create new ways for communities to use public space for discovery and interpretation of culture, history and nature; to engage civic processes that transform neighborhoods; to improve health and wellness; and to share their stories. Founded in 2011, IMLab emerged from the previous seven years of collaboration between California State Parks and UCLA REMAP, and focuses on Northeast Downtown Los Angeles, with the unique 32-acre Los Angeles State Historic Park as the hub of a “living laboratory.” IMLab employs participatory design to build physically interactive, multi-media experiences and location-based mobile applications that together aim to enable collective creativity and exploration of identity. This approach, Cultural Civic Computing, aspires to provide fun and thought-provoking ways to investigate critical issues in the environment and then translate the resulting new knowledge into collaborative, publicly exhibited creative work.
The mission of California State Parks (CSP) is to provide for the health, inspiration and education of the people of California by helping to preserve the state’s extraordinary biological diversity, protecting its most valued natural and cultural resources, and creating opportunities for high-quality outdoor recreation. CSP manages 280 park units, which contain the largest and most diverse natural and cultural heritage holdings of any state agency in the nation. State park units include underwater preserves, reserves, and parks; redwood, rhododendron, and wildlife reserves; state beaches, recreation areas, wilderness areas, and reservoirs; state historic parks, historic homes, Spanish era adobe buildings, including museums, visitor centers, cultural reserves, and preserves; as well as lighthouses, ghost towns, waterslides, conference centers, and off-highway vehicle parks.
Part of the UCLA Graduate School of Education & Information Studies, UCLA Lab School is for children ages 4-12. Founded in 1882 as the demonstration school of the California State Normal School at Los Angeles, it became the University Elementary School in 1929, the Corinne A. Seeds University Elementary School in 1982, and UCLA Lab School in 2009. UCLA Lab School encourages children’s natural love of learning while also helping them develop a disciplined approach to their work. At the same time, its classrooms and meeting spaces serve as a laboratory for exploring innovative ideas about teaching, learning, and child development. It shares the results of its studies through collaborations with educators from other schools, through conferences, workshops and site visits, and in print publications and other media. Through this mix of strategies, UCLA Lab School teaching practices and research outcomes have been widely shared with schools across the globe. UCLA Lab School is working on programs to strengthen and enhance teaching and learning in Pre-K to 8th. grade education. Among its major areas of focus is expanding educational opportunities for students and families in traditionally underserved communities.
cheLA (Centro Hipermediatico Experimental Latinoamericano) is a research center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, dedicated to experimenting with converging forms of art, science and technology, and investigating their significance to and impact on Latin American cultures. Founded by Fabian Wagmister in 2003, The Center is the successful result of an innovative collaboration between the UCLA Program On Digital Cultures, UCLA REMAP and Fundación ExACTa of Argentina.