Wireless PDAs and camera phones are rapidly becoming ubiquitous. How could we invent new technology and forms to embrace the emerging mobile channel for visual story making and telling? The M-Views project explores the ideas, methods, and culture of mobile cinema, which is experienced in temporal and spatial narrative segments that can be delivered on context-aware mobile devices. Mobile cinema takes as its starting point the truism that "every story is a journey," and can communicate a narrative that includes character, situation, and changes to spectators who are moving through a physical environment. The construction of such a narrative is complex because the audience will become an active participant equipped with networked, low cost, and intelligent mobile devices.

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The M-Views media system has benn developed for creating and deploying mobile cinema. Designed around a generic messaging framework, the M-Views Presenter hosts a map agent that allows for location discovery on an 802.11b network. An advanced story scripting system and authoring tool (M-Studio) allows authors to develop space-time story relationships with visual and simulation feedback. Cinematic narrative examples offer alternate methods of engaging with audience participants. A critical aspect of the system is to explore techniques to augment intercreativity, narrative play, and collective co-constructed production with M-Views cameras amongst participants who may or may not know each other.

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We have assembled a small community of content developers who are creating mobile cinema stories. Through content development, we aim not only to understand the new paradigms of mobile cinema production and deployment, but also to answer critical technical, aesthetic, and methodological issues. For example, how can the M-Views system support participatory activities in which choice making is transparent and social exchange is maximized? How can a mobile cinema story engage the audience by leveraging ambient environment? How can mobile cinema story webs be developed, maintained, and evolved collectively? Three story prototypes (Another Alice, MIT in Pocket, and 15 Minutes) have been created.

Another Alice Trailer:
Dial up (7MB) or Broadband (50MB)

MIT in Pocket Trailer:
Dial up (7MB) or Broadband (50MB)

Visit the M-Views Community Forum

System Requirements:
M-Views Client requires Pocket PC 2002, 802.11 Wireless LAN, MiniStumbler, PocketTV media player
M-Views Server requires Apache Tomcat or compatible servlet container
M-Studio requires Java Runtime Environment, Windows Media Player, Internet Explorer