Scott Fisher is the Professor and Founding Chair of the
Interactive Media
Interactive media normally refers to products and services on digital computer-based systems which respond to the user's actions by presenting content such as text, moving image, animation, video and audio. Since its early conception, various fo ...
Division in the
USC School of Cinematic Arts at the
University of Southern California, and Director of the Mobile and Environmental Media Lab there. He is an artist and technologist who has worked extensively on
virtual reality, including pioneering work at
NASA, Atari Research Labs,
MIT
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...
's Architecture Machine Group (now the
MIT Media Lab) and
Keio University.
Early life
Scott S. Fisher was born in 1951 at
Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania
Bryn Mawr, pronounced ,
from Welsh for big hill, is a census-designated place (CDP) located across three townships: Radnor Township and Haverford Township in Delaware County, and Lower Merion Township in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. It ...
, near
Philadelphia. He was educated at
MIT
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...
, receiving a Master of Science degree in Media Technology in 1981. His thesis advisor there was
Nicholas Negroponte
Nicholas Negroponte (born December 1, 1943) is a Greek American architect. He is the founder and chairman Emeritus of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab, and also founded the One Laptop per Child Association (OLPC). Negroponte ...
. There he participated in the creation of the
Aspen Movie Map
The Aspen Movie Map was a revolutionary hypermedia system developed at MIT by a team working with Andrew Lippman in 1978 with funding from ARPA.
Features
The Aspen Movie Map enabled the user to take a virtual tour through the city of Aspen, Colo ...
.
Career
Much of Fisher's career has focused on expanding the technologies and creative potentials of virtual reality. Between 1985 and 1990, he was founding Director of the Virtual Environment Workstation Project (VIEW) at NASA's
Ames Research Center
The Ames Research Center (ARC), also known as NASA Ames, is a major NASA research center at Moffett Federal Airfield in California's Silicon Valley. It was founded in 1939 as the second National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) labor ...
. They attempted to develop a simulator to enable space station maintenance rehearsal. The gloves and goggles often associated with
virtual reality were developed there, along with the dataglove, head-coupled displays and 3D audio.
In 1989, with
Brenda Laurel
Brenda Laurel (born 1950) is an American interaction designer, video game designer, and researcher. She is an advocate for diversity and inclusiveness in video games, a "pioneer in developing virtual reality", a public speaker, and an academic. ...
, Fisher founded
Telepresence Research, a company specializing in first-person media, virtual reality and remote presence research and development. Fisher,
Joseph M. Rosen and
Phil S. Green developed a robotic system called the
Green SRI telepresence surgical system. Fisher and
Joseph M. Rosen developed a virtual environment system for viewing and manipulating a model of the human leg.
Fisher was Project
Professor
Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...
in the Graduate School of Media and Governance at
Keio University. There he led a project to allow users to author and view
location-based data superimposed over the physical world, a progenitor of what is now termed
augmented reality
Augmented reality (AR) is an interactive experience that combines the real world and computer-generated content. The content can span multiple sensory modalities, including visual, auditory, haptic, somatosensory and olfactory. AR can be def ...
.
In 2001, Fisher moved to the
University of Southern California to spearhead their new
Interactive Media Division within the
School of Cinematic Arts. There, he established the division's research initiatives in the mediums of immersive, mobile and
video games. He chaired the division from its founding through 2011.
Personal life
Fisher lives in Southern California with his wife,
Mizuko Ito, a cultural
anthropologist
An anthropologist is a person engaged in the practice of anthropology. Anthropology is the study of aspects of humans within past and present societies. Social anthropology, cultural anthropology and philosophical anthropology study the norms and v ...
studying media technology, and their two children.
In addition to his other interests, he harbors a fascination with
stereoscopy
Stereoscopy (also called stereoscopics, or stereo imaging) is a technique for creating or enhancing the illusion of depth in an image by means of stereopsis for binocular vision. The word ''stereoscopy'' derives . Any stereoscopic image is ...
and
3D imaging
In computer vision and computer graphics, 3D reconstruction is the process of capturing the shape and appearance of real objects.
This process can be accomplished either by active or passive methods. If the model is allowed to change its shape i ...
, as well as
Jamaican music
The music of Jamaica includes Jamaican folk music and many popular genres, such as mento, ska, rocksteady, reggae, dub music, dancehall, reggae fusion and related styles.
Reggae is especially popular through the international fame of Bob Marley. ...
.
Selected publications
Papers and conference proceedings
O'Reilly Emerging Technologies Conference(2004).
by Glen Fraser and Scott S. Fisher in ''ACM SIGGRAPH Newsletter'' v.32, no.3 1998.
*"An Authoring Tool Kit for Mixed Reality Experiences" in ''International Workshop on Entertainment Computing'' (2002),
*"Micro Archiving and Interactive Virtual Insect Exhibit" in ''Stereoscopic Displays and Virtual Reality Systems IX'' (2002),
*"Environmental Media: Linking Virtual Environments to the Real World" in ''Creative Digital Media: Its Impact on the New Century'' (2001),
*"Environmental Media: Accessing Virtual Representations of Real-Time Sensor Data and Site-specific Annotations Embedded in Physical Environments" in ''Proc. of the Seventh Int'l Conf. on Virtual Systems and Multimedia, Berkeley'' (2001).
*Fisher, Scott S. "Virtual Environments: Personal Simulations & Telepresence." ''In Virtual Reality: Theory, Practice and Promise'', S. Helsel and J.Roth, ed., Meckler Publishing, 1991.
*Fisher, Scott S. "Virtual Interface Environments." In ''The Art of Human-Computer Interface Design'', B. Laurel, ed., Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1990.
*Fisher, S. "Telepresence Master Glove Controller for Dexterous Robotic End-Effectors," ''Advances in Intelligent Robotics Systems'', D.P.Casasent, Editor, Proc. SPIE 726, (1986).
PIE Cambridge Symposium on Optical and Optoelectronic Engineering, 26–31 October 1986. Cambridge, Massachusetts.*Fisher, S. S., McGreevy, M., Humphries, J., Robinett, W., "Virtual Environment Display System", ''ACM 1986 Workshop on 3D Interactive Graphics'', Chapel Hill, North Carolina, October 23–24, 1986.
*Fisher, Scott S. "Virtual Interface Environment," ''IEEE/AIAA 7th Digital Avionics Systems Conference'', Fort Worth, Texas, October 13–16, 1986.
*Fisher, S. ''Viewpoint Dependent Imaging: An interactive stereoscopic display''. Masters Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts. October, 1981.
Media appearances
* Cyberpunk (1990)
Cyberpunk
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References
External links
Official page
at the USC Annenberg Center.
Scott Fisher Personal/Professional Site
at Telepresence.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fisher, Scott
Year of birth missing (living people)
Living people
Virtual reality pioneers
University of Southern California faculty
MIT Media Lab people