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May 16, 2007

Brown students win grant for new MP3 technology

PROVIDENCE -- Brown University students Sebastian Gallese, Schuyler Maclay and Zachary McCune, have won up to a $30,000 grant from mtvu -- MTV's 24-hour network shown at colleges -- and Cisco System for creating an MP3 system named Osiris.

The students' technology takes the name of a musician and a song title that is playing and looks up lyrics from the song and visual images of the musician -- and presents them in a video while the tune plays. Currently, the technology uses images for the videos from Flickr, a photo-sharing Web site.

The students want Osiris to eventually work with YouTube, Wikipedia, The New York Times, and Google Maps, according to the news release. And they would like documents, images and videos on a person's own computer to create “the most mesmerizing graphics of any music."

The mtvU/Cisco grant will be used to hire programmers, create a Web site and server to host Osiris, and to buy computer hardware.

“We're excited about this project because it gives us a major platform to distribute new media art and to contribute to the culture of user-based Web applications,” McCune said in the news release. “We hope that Osiris can help reinform the way that people interact with their music in the digital age.”

Brown's team was one of several winners from universities who were surprised on camera with the news that they had won.It's all part of an initiative called Digital Incubator, developed ny mtvU and Cisco.

To see them get surprised, check out the footage, which will be part of a special episode on mtvU and mtvU.com. Or see it on demand and learn more about each program at http://www.mtvu.com/on_mtvu/digital_incubator.

The goal is for Digital Incubator to "represent the best and most innovative ideas received in response to a call for submissions issued last year -- an effort to find new media games, applications, programming or any kind of original content that would thrive in the digital world," according to the release.

The Brown University students' advisor on the porject was Mark Tribe, associate professor of modern culture and media.

-- projo.com staff writer Michael P. McKinney

Posted by Mike McKinney  at 5:22 AM | Permalink

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