EVL Faculty Professor, School of Design

Daria Tsoupikova

Three UIC faculty members, including Professor Daria Tsoupikova and Assistant Professor Fabio Miranda from UIC&rsquo;s Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL), and the School of Design&rsquo;s Professor Sharon Oiga, can see their work on display nightly, as part of a larger-than-life public art installation downtown - <a href="https://artonthemart.com/chicago-design-through-the-decades/">Art on theMART</a>. 
The display referred to as Chicago Design Through the Decades is a journey through the last hundred years of the history of Chicago design and is based on the collection of the <a href="https://chicagodesignarchive.org/">Chicago Design Archive (CDA)</a>, a permanent online record of design in the city. The historical imagery is assembled using machine learning algorithms provided by Miranda, which is a tribute to Chicago as the home of neural networks. The final imagery is projected across the Chicago River onto the Merchandise Mart for a spectacular digital art experience. The display runs through December 30th nightly at 7:30 p.m. and 8 p.m. 
Stay tuned for the possibility of student collaboration on another Art on theMART display or similar public digital art project given the new undergraduate <a href="https://cs.uic.edu/undergraduate/cs-and-design/">CS + Design</a> major, which debuted Fall 2022. UIC is the only public university that currently offers this degree, and prospects are bright for students to participate in innovative digital art projects such as Chicago Design Through the Decades in the future. 
<a href="https://cs.uic.edu/news-stories/larger-than-life-cs-faculty-participate-in-public-art-project-in-downtown-chicago/">Read Andrea Poet&rsquo;s full article</a>.

UIC CS News Features &ldquo;Larger than life: CS faculty participate in public art project in downtown Chicago&rdquo;

&ldquo;Hummingbird&rdquo; is coming to the Chicago Children&rsquo;s Theater March 24-26th. Written by Jo Catell and developed by Daria Tsoupikova, Sai Priya Jyothula, Andrew Johnson, Arthur Nishimoto and Lance Long at EVL, this experience is described as collaborative Virtual Reality (VR) for tele-Immersive interactive theater. &ldquo;Hummingbird&rdquo; performances provide the opportunity for people to experience the show in two different ways: as a VR participant wearing a head-mounted display and interacting with the environment, or as an observer watching participants perform! 
A gutsy teen has to outsmart her mother&rsquo;s narcissistic boss and survive dangerous new technology in hummingbird: a live, immersive adventure that transforms theatrical storytelling utilizing cutting-edge, virtual reality technology1 
Free Performances: Fri 3/24 @ 6:30pm, Sat 3/25 @ 2:30pm & 4pm, Sun 3/26 @ 2:30pm & 4pm 
Recommended For Ages 10 & Up 
Run Time:50 minutes 
See the Chicago Children&rsquo;s Theater <a href="https://chicagochildrenstheatre.org/event/hummingbird/">web posting</a> for more information. 
&ldquo;Hummingbird&rdquo; performances are made possible with the support from the National Endowment for the Arts grant for art projects, Illinois Arts Council, Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL), and the University of Illinois Presidential Initiative to Celebrate the Impact of the Arts. 
See <a href="https://hummingbirdvr.com/"> https://hummingbirdvr.com/</a>

&ldquo;Hummingbird&rdquo; Performances Scheduled at the Chicago Children&rsquo;s Theater

Written and programmed for EVL&rsquo;s CAVE2 by UIC Masters of Design student Quentin Bu, &ldquo;Elegy&rdquo; is a highly experimental virtual reality work, merging the artist&rsquo;s original poetry and audio composition, graphic design, 3D typography and physical computing activated through participant movement and gestures. Created as Bu&rsquo;s Masters thesis - Elegy uniquely combines performance art with virtual reality. 
To escape, to free, to grow, to part, to forget, to recall, is to reorganize and make choices about what to let go of and what to hold on to, and it is to physically leave a place and move far away without knowing if you&rsquo;ll find a way back. 
Writing is my emotional conduit, for the moments when strong emotions have nowhere else to flow: whether it&rsquo;s journaling, composing bad poetry, scribbling on an airplane sickness bag, jotting down stream of consciousness, or repeating phrases in my head while wandering around unfamiliar streets. The Elegy is my poetic, perhaps futile attempt to consolidate and immortalize the transitory states of life. 
My design methods include object-making, working with restrictions, experimenting with technology, and exploring metaphors. An Elegy for the Departed is a culmination of my creative endeavors with the media to realize them. 
The Elegy is also a technological experiment. It is a performance using wearable technology to track body movements, connecting the physical body with a virtual digital metaphor for a body. What does typography in virtual reality spaces look like? How can I best use the technology I&rsquo;ve developed to effectively tell a story?

Elegy in EVL&rsquo;s CAVE2

An Elegy for the Departed - an Interactive Virtual Reality+Physical Computing Typographic Performance

Master of Design graduate student Quentin Bu presents her virtual reality performance piece &ldquo;An Elegy for the Departed - an Interactive Virtual Reality+Physical Computing Typographic Performance&rdquo; in EVL&rsquo;s CAVE2. 
Friday, May 5, 2023 
11:15 - 11:45 AM 
Room 2036 ERF 
Elegy is a highly experimental virtual reality work, merging the artist&rsquo;s original poetry and audio composition, graphic design, 3D typography and physical computing activated through participant movement and gestures. In the artist&rsquo;s own words &ldquo;The Elegy is my poetic, perhaps futile attempt to consolidate and immortalize the transitory states of life.&rdquo;

MDES Thesis Presentation &ldquo;The Elegy&rdquo;

A special screening of the Chicago Design Milestones 1920–2019 project will be exhibited on Monday, August 5 at 2pm at 150 Media Stream Chicago. The installation visualizes the evolution of Chicago design by its examination and presentation of historic characteristics of design works in the Chicago Design Archive (CDA) collection over the last 10 decades. 
Join us in congratulating EVL and Design professor Daria Tsoupikova and her colleagues on this seminal, creative work! 
August 5, 2024, 2pm 
150 N Riverside Plaza (lobby) 
Chicago, IL 60606 
Chicago Design Milestones was developed as a collaboration of CDA, the University of Illinois Chicago School of Design & Electronic Visualization Laboratory, and Columbia College Chicago. It is part of the ongoing research of this collaboration aiming to highlight the role of Chicago as a major national design center through the use of new technologies. 
150 Media Stream, the largest media screen (3,000+ sq ft) in Chicago, is comprised of 89 LED blades stretching 150 ft long and rising 22 ft high, located in the lobby of a downtown Chicago riverfront building. It is the only structure of its kind dedicated to showcasing Chicago artists, culture, and history alongside renowned and emerging artists from around the world. 
Links: 
<a href="https://150mediastream.com/about/">150MediaStream</a> 
<a href="https://chicagodesignarchive.org/essay/chicago-design-milestones">Chicago Design Milestones</a> 
<a href="https://150mediastream.com/archive/">MIlestones 150MediaStream Archive</a> 
Creators: 
Daria Tsoupikova (UIC), Sharon Oiga (UIC/CDA), Guy Villa Jr (CCC), Jack Weiss (CDA), Cheri Gearhart (CDA), Wayne Stuetzer (CDA), Krystofer Kim (NASA), Ali Khan (UIC) 
Grant funding support: 
Riverside/150 Media Stream, Columbia College Chicago, UIC College of Architecture, Design, and the Arts 
Curated by Yuge Zhou

Chicago Design Milestones 1920–2019 Showcased at 150 Media Stream

The first Creative Coding Community Workshop brought together a diverse group of Chicago public high school students ranging in age from 13 to 15 to introduce students to the basics of coding, interactive 3D, typography and game design. Hosted at the University of Illinois Chicago&rsquo;s (UIC), Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) and organized by professor Daria Tsoupikova, participating students productively conquered a steep learning curve to learn the basics of coding, - starting from ground zero to produce interactive Virtual Reality (VR) projects for a public exhibition – all within 2 weeks! Their projects investigated critical global concepts such as global warming, air and water pollution, migration, and mental health in immersive dimensions of Computer Science + Design. Several projects were featured in the CAVE2 Hybrid Reality Environment VR exhibition after the Workshop. The Workshop was a tremendous success and very well received by participants and organizers. 
Congratulations to all participants and good luck with your future pursuits in Computer Science and Design! 
Special thanks to <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/arthur-nishimoto-55a61047/">Arthur Nishimoto</a> and <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/farah-kamleh-aa8b41248/">Farah Kamleh</a>. 
<a href="https://youtu.be/8YZdeWj8uA4">See a video documenting the Workshop.</a> 
This Workshop was made possible through support from EVL and UIC.

Participant in CAVE2 Hybrid Reality Environment

UIC&rsquo;s First Creative Coding Community Workshop a Tremendous Success!

September 2023 marks the 50th anniversary of the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). EVL&rsquo;s introduction of the CAVE Automatic Virtual Environment in 1992, the first widely replicated, projection-based, walk-in, virtual-reality (VR) system in the world, put EVL at the forefront of collaborative, immersive data exploration and analytics. However, the journey did not begin then. Since its founding in 1973, EVL has been developing tools and techniques for real-time, interactive visualizations - pillars of VR. But EVL&rsquo;s culture is also relevant to its successes, as it has always been an interdisciplinary lab that fosters teamwork, where each person&rsquo;s expertise contributes to the development of the necessary tools, hardware, system software, applications, and human interface models to solve problems. Over the years, as multidisciplinary collaborations evolved and advanced scientific instruments and data resources were distributed globally, the need to access and share data and visualizations while working with colleagues, local and remote, synchronous and asynchronous, also became important fields of study. This paper is a retrospective of EVL&rsquo;s past 50 years that surveys the many networked, immersive, collaborative visualization and VR systems and applications it developed and deployed, as well as lessons learned and future plans. 
Article appears in the journal PRESENCE: Virtual and Augmented Reality, in the Special Issue on Immersive Visualization Laboratories - Past, Present and Future, edited by S. Su and W. Sherman, <a href="https://direct.mit.edu/pvar/issue/volume/33">https://direct.mit.edu/pvar/issue/volume/33</a>. 
Article copyrighted by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). 
DOI: <a href="https://doi.org/10.1162/pres_a_00421">https://doi.org/10.1162/pres_a_00421</a>

EVL faculty, students, and collaborators 1975.

Electronic Visualization Laboratory&rsquo;s 50th Anniversary Retrospective: Look to the Future, Build on the Past

EVL faculty and UIC Design Professor Daria Tsoupikova is featured in the Fall 2024 College Engineering RISE magazine issue. The article covers Daria&rsquo; collaboration with the Chicago Design Archive and Columbia College Chicago.   The project entitled &ldquo;Chicago Design Milestones 1920-2019&rdquo; focuses on design milestones in the city of Chicago from 1920-2019.  The media design installation features 3,200 examples of design work done in the city, and premiered on the 150 Media Stream screens in the lobby of 150 North Riverside Plaza on the Chicago River July 1, 2019.

Daria Tsoupikova Featured in Fall 2024 RISE

Hummingbird is an innovative, award-winning performance engaging participants in active storytelling that bridges live theater and collaborative interaction through virtual reality (VR). Hummingbird&rsquo;s story celebrates courage and coming of age through the eyes of a gutsy teen who must outsmart her mother&rsquo;s egotistic boss and survive a dangerous new technology in a live, immersive adventure. Developed at the University of Illinois Chicago by faculty and over 30 students from the departments of Computer Science and Design in partnership with professional theater producers, directors, actors, videographers and composers, this project advanced interdisciplinary collaboration, provided a unique learning environment and broadened the research experience for several cohorts of students. Over 500 people attended Hummingbird’s performances at the Tony Award-winning Goodman Theatre&rsquo;s New Stages Festival, Chicago Children&rsquo;s Theater and SIGGRAPH 2022 in Vancouver, Canada, with over 200 active VR participants. In each performance, five VR participants actively collaborate with each other and a lead actor within the VR adventure, contributing problem-solving, collaboration and teamwork, while a greater audience simultaneously follows the virtual performance aspects on a large video wall in real-time. Discussion sessions and audience evaluations followed each performance, informed the Hummingbird team on script, design and interactivity to improve future performances. Through qualitative analysis of audience experiences and insights from our collaboration, we discuss key considerations and design recommendations for integrating VR with live theater. Hummingbird demonstrates how VR can revolutionize theatrical storytelling by enabling traditional theater to narrate epic stories that were once considered too ambitious for traditional stage by extending live theater and making VR accessible to a broader audience. This project profit theater and interdisciplinary research institutions to increase opportunities for cross-disciplinary student education. 
CCS CONCEPTS: Computing methodologies; Computer Graphics; Graphics systems and interfaces; Virtual reality; Applied computing; Arts and humanities; Performing arts 
KEYWORDS Virtual reality, Storytelling, Theater, Multi-user, Performance, Interdisciplinary Collaboration, Design Process

VR participants interact in the Orchard scene while observers watch their interaction on the large screen.

Hummingbird: Live Theater Adventure Empowering Collaboration in Virtual Reality

September 2023 marked the 50th anniversary of the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL). This paper summarizes EVL&rsquo;s efforts in Visual Data Science, with a focus on the many networked, immersive, collaborative visualization and virtual reality (VR) systems and applications the Lab has developed and deployed, as
well as lessons learned and future plans. 
Index terms: Visualization, Virtual Reality, Visual Data Science, Collaboration

An EVL CAD Rendering of the DOCC Space

Immersive Analytics at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory

The Data Observation and Computation Collaboratory (DOCC, &rsquo;dock&rsquo;) is a visual data science instrument for University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) science and engineering research and research training. Many UIC researchers are part of multi-disciplinary teams investigating and contributing to solutions for societal issues, in such fields as biology, cybersecurity, healthcare, manufacturing, urban sustainability, and cyber-physical systems (e.g., autonomous cars). DOCC is a digital &rsquo;Project Room&rsquo; that enables domain scientists and computer scientists to collaborate on real-world problems by providing them with high-performance computing, high-resolution displays, and sophisticated Artificial Intelligence (AI), data analytic, data simulation, image processing, visualization, and virtual-reality software and services. 
Societal challenges can only be addressed by research teams, with each contributing expertise in complementary areas. DOCC&rsquo;s Intellectual Merit is two-fold: it provides onsite computing with adequate support, and it provides collaboration software services. With respect to the former, DOCC is a configurable computing environment that prioritizes real-time, interactive, collaborative, data-intensive applications, but can be scheduled off-hours for batch-mode processing. Users can execute codes faster, apply more sophisticated analytics to large-scale problems, gain greater insights, and open new avenues of research. With respect to the latter, DOCC&rsquo;s collaboration software lets researchers either sit around one of DOCC&rsquo;s large tables and display walls or video-teleconference in while simultaneously sharing and interacting with their data on the large displays – which remote viewers can access online. 
To encourage adoption and ensure Broader Impact, DOCC has a visual front end, enabling users to easily access familiar collaboration tools, scientific notebooks, AI workflows, and popular visualization software. Alternatively, users can add new AI models or create them from scratch. And because DOCC is connected to the UIC research network, data and/or computer codes can be ported to remote computer and cloud resources located on campus, regionally, nationally, or internationally. DOCC personnel can assist new users make their applications more robust, dynamic and configurable. DOCC can transform scientific research, data exploration and discovery, recruit and retain new faculty, make cyberinfrastructure more accessible to students, and help educate the next-generation workforce. UIC is a Minority Serving Institution, a Hispanic Serving Institution and an Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institution. 
DOCC and its associated data will remain active for at least three years after the completion of this project, as demand dictates. Software will be stored and archived via EVL&rsquo;s storage servers, as well as code repositories.

Research Infrastructure: MRI: Track 2 Acquisition of Data Observation and Computation Collaboratory (DOCC)

Virtual Reality Exhibition in the CAVE2 
Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) 
Friday, March 21 @3-5pm 
842 W Taylor Street, Room 2036 
Global challenges pose significant threats to humanity&rsquo;s future. However, design and virtual reality offer innovative strategies to address the United Nations&rsquo; 17 Sustainable Development Goals. This VR exhibition showcases immersive projects that explore the intersections of design, theater, creative coding, and VR to tackle complex global issues - from combating climate change and improving health to promoting equality and protecting our oceans and forests. 
This VR exhibition highlights immersive projects that explore the intersections of design, theater, creative coding, and VR to tackle complex global issues. Between 2021 and 2024, CS+DES student teams collaborated on inspiring VR projects focused on global challenges within a Creative Coding course, advancing these crucial objectives. These projects have the potential to contribute meaningfully to the Sustainable Development Goals, fostering innovative solutions and promoting positive global change. 
We hope you can join us! 
Daria Tsoupikova 
CS+DES Chair I Design 
Professor, School of Design

VR Design for Sustainable and Inclusive Futures

Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) alumna Anushka Anand received the 10-year Test of Time Award at the IEEE VIS 2025 conference this month. A &ldquo;Test of Time&rdquo; award is a highly-prestigious accolade given by academic and professional organizations to recognize published papers that have had a significant and lasting impact on their field. These awards honor research that has remained influential and useful long after its initial publication, often after a minimum of 10 years. Anushka Anand accepted the award. Here is the accolade: 
2015 (10-Years InfoVis ToT Award): 
Voyager: Exploratory Analysis via Faceted Browsing of Visualization Recommendations 
Kanit Wongsuphasawat, Dominik Moritz, Anushka Anand, Jock D. Mackinlay, Bill Howe, Jeffrey Heer 
<a href="https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7192728">10.1109/TVCG.2015.2467191</a> 
This work represents a major landmark in the development of visualization technology, transforming from human-led interactive visualization to a mixed-initiative approach, with which visualization plots are automatically generated as machine-led recommendations. In the paper, the authors presented not only the novel concept, but also the Voyager system for demonstrating the concept, including its architecture, algorithmic components, and visual design, together with a study for comparing it with another system. With the advancement of AI, the mixed-initiative approach is even more relevant today.

EVL alumna Anushka Anand received the 10-year Test of Time Award at IEEE VIS 2025

This year&rsquo;s Art of HPC showcase at the <ahref="https://sc25.supercomputing.org/">International Conference for High Performance Computing SC25</a>, brought together an inspiring community of artists, designers, and technologists exploring the intersections of creativity, high-performance computing, AI, and immersive media. The Art Gallery became a vibrant hub of curiosity and inspiration, where the audience could explore new possibilities at the intersection of art and cutting-edge computation. 
UIC Design and EVL Professor Daria Tsoupikova participated on the panel &ldquo;From Silicon to Surrealism: The Fusion of Art, AI, and HPC,&rdquo; moderated by Tomasz Bednarz with Amy Karle, Ruth West, and Mark Hereld. The discussion explored how large-scale computation is opening new frontiers in creative expression, from generative imagery to immersive storytelling, and how artistic inquiry, in turn, is reshaping our understanding of the purpose and potential of computing itself. 
The EVL Hummingbird VR Performance project, featured prominently in the exhibition, was displayed on giant displays across the show floor, in the Art Gallery, and in the poster ballroom. It was awe-inspiring for Tsoupikova to share this work, born from deep collaboration between theater artists, designers, and computer scientists, which was truly inspiring. 
This was Tsoupikova&rsquo;s first SC, &ldquo;I am deeply grateful to the Art of HPC Committee Joseph Insley, Francesca Samsel, Mark Hereld, India Gordon and Silvina Caino-Lores for championing and elevating artistic innovation at SC25. Their vision made this year&rsquo;s program groundbreaking.&rdquo; 
#SC25, #HPCignites 
<a href="https://sc25.supercomputing.org/program/art-of-hpc/">The Art of HPC</a> Where Creativity Meets HPC: 
Creativity has always been at the heart of innovation. It drives new perspectives, fuels artistic expression, and allows us to see beauty in unexpected places. By leveraging cutting-edge technology and resources, we can push the boundaries of both science and art. 
SC proudly presents Art of HPC, a showcase of the intersection between artistic creativity and high-performance computing. This comprehensive event featured a diverse array of exhibits, presentations, and activities throughout the conference. 
The Art of HPC Panel: 
High-performance computing and AI are sparking a thrilling new era in creativity and the arts. This dynamic panel brought together visionary artists and cutting-edge technologists to reveal how they harness the power of large-scale computation to craft works that dazzle the senses, resonate culturally, and often surprise us in delightful ways. From mesmerizing generative imagery to immersive, interactive experiences, the panelists demonstrated how HPC unlocks artistic possibilities at scales and resolutions previously unimaginable. 
But the excitement doesn&rsquo;t stop there - this is a two-way street. Artistic practices aren&rsquo;t just benefiting from big tech; they&rsquo;re reshaping how we think about computing itself, transforming its purpose from mere efficiency and scientific rigor to a wellspring of inspiration and expressive power. The panel provided an accessible and fascinating peek into a future where silicon and creativity join forces, co-designing bold new forms of culture and unlocking realms of imagination we&rsquo;ve yet to explore.

The Art of HPC Exhibition was a tremendous success at Supercomputing25!

UIC Design Professor and EVL faculty member Daria Tsoupikova presented her development and experience in producing the interdisciplinary, collaborative VR Live Theater performance Hummingbird at the 114th College Art Association Conference held in Chicago February 20, 2026. Tsoupikova presented at the session entitled &ldquo;Creativity, Collaboration, and Critique in the Age of AI and Immersive Technologies.&rdquo; This session examined how emerging technologies - from generative AI to virtual reality - are reshaping art and design education, practice, and theory. The presentations addressed the challenges and opportunities of teaching AI across the curriculum, rethinking artistic labor and aura in an era of machine collaboration, and creating interdisciplinary projects that blend performance, creative coding, and immersive media. Together, these talks highlighted how designers, educators and artists can engage critically with technology to expand creative expression, foster interdisciplinary collaboration, amplify student voices, and reimagine the future of studio-based learning. 
Tsoupikova&rsquo;s presentation &ldquo;Interdisciplinary Collaboration Developing VR and Live Theater Hummingbird Performances&rdquo; told the story of the collaboration, development and showcasing of Hummingbird, an award-winning, immersive virtual reality (VR) performance that merges live theater with interactive storytelling, fostering collaboration and active audience participation. Developed through an interdisciplinary partnership among computer scientists, designers, theater professionals, and over 30 students, the production explores innovative methodologies for VR theater. Tsoupikova&rsquo;s talk examines the collaborative processes, theoretical challenges, and technological advancements behind Hummingbird, which serves as a prototype for integrating VR with live performance. 
At its core, Hummingbird is a coming-of-age story that empowers participants by granting them agency within the narrative. Five audience members engage directly with a lead actor in a responsive, collaborative adventure, utilizing problem-solving, teamwork, and storytelling skills. The production has been performed at the Goodman Theatre, Chicago Children&rsquo;s Theater, and the Immersive Pavilion in Vancouver, reaching over 500 audience members. Through a qualitative analysis of audience experiences and collaboration findings, we identify key design considerations for interdisciplinary VR theater production. Our insights contribute to the development of collaborative systems that enhance live performance through VR, demonstrating how this medium can push the boundaries of traditional theater and make immersive storytelling more accessible. Hummingbird exemplifies the potential of VR to revolutionize theatrical narratives, offering a model for cross-disciplinary education and future partnerships between nonprofit theater and academic research.

Design Professor and EVL Faculty Daria Tsoupikova Presents &ldquo;Creativity, Collaboration, and Critique in the Age of AI and Immersive Technologies&rdquo; at CAA 114

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