Director Emeritus, EVL Distinguished Professor of Computer Science

Thomas A. DeFanti

Director Emeritus, EVL Professor Emeritus, School of Art &amp; Design Senior Research Scientist, Softech (STRC)

Daniel J. Sandin

MFA Graduate, 2000

Josephine Anstey

Director Emeritus, EVL Professor, Computer Science

Jason Leigh

MFA Graduate, 2006

Melissa Golter

MFA Graduate, 2003

Marientina Gotsis

PhD Graduate, 2017 MS Graduate, 2002

Michael Lewis

Ya Lu Lin

PhD Graduate, 2001

Dave Pape

MS Graduate, 1997,  PhD Graduate, 2003

Kyoung Shin Park

Tim Portlock

MFA Graduate, 2001

Samroeng Thongrong

MS &amp; MFA Graduate, 1997 (CS &amp; EV)

Maria Roussou

Former Undergraduate REU, Web Development

Elisa Green

Former MFA Candidate

Mark Akgulian

Corbin Frame

Romeu Bessa

MFA Graduate, 2008

Steve Cady

MFA Graduate, 2010

Andrew Oleksiuk

MFA Graduate, 2010 MS Graduate, 2008

Arunan Rabindran

Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) students and faculty presented a research paper on the NICE project as part of the SIGGRAPH Educator&rsquo;s Program. As a separate event, the NICE project video was shown in the SIGGRAPH &rsquo;97 Computer Animation Festival&rsquo;s Screening Room, and was included in the SIGGRAPH Video Review. NICE is a networked learning environment for children. 

EVL students presented two Art &amp; Design Sketches in the Moving: Agency for Virtual Spaces section: 
&ldquo;Using Video to Create Avatars in Virtual Reality&rdquo; - Joe Insley 
&ldquo;Metaphors&rdquo; - MDolinsky 

Jim Costigan presented a course entitled, &ldquo;Computer Animation Using Digital Video&rdquo;. 

The Multi-Mega Book in the CAVE, a joint project between EVL and F.A.B.R.I.CATORS showed in the Electric Garden venue on an ImmersaDesk system.

SIGGRAPH &rsquo;97 Participation

Mediartech 1998 Digital Renaissance Show featured Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) virtual reality applications showcased on an ImmersaDesk. Dan Sandin and Dave Pape represented EVL and exhibited the following works on site in Florence.
<ul>
<li>&ldquo;Poverty Island&rdquo; - Dan Sandin</li>
<li>&ldquo;The Multi Mega Book in the CAVE&rdquo; - a F.A.B.R.I.CATORS / EVL collaboration</li>
<li>&ldquo;Mitologies&rdquo; - an EVL project</li>
</ul>

Mediartech 98

EVL&rsquo;s participation in SIGGRAPH 98 included virtual reality demonstrations using an ImmersaDesk2 in the &ldquo;Guerilla VR&rdquo; venue at the Digital Pavilions (Emerging Technologies) and a roving ImmersaDesk3 throughout the Conference venues. 

Four of the art and education VR applications were networked between the two IDesks; &ldquo;Dimension World&rdquo;, &ldquo;Interiors&rdquo;, &ldquo;The Round Earth Project&rdquo; and &ldquo;The Thing Growing&rdquo;. 

Three applications were stand-alone; &ldquo;Grid&rdquo;, &ldquo;Las Meninas&rdquo; and &ldquo;Mitologies&rdquo;. 

The pieces showed a variety of methods for creating interactive VR work. 

EVLers also took part in the following events:
<ul>
<li>Dan Sandin had two works in the Pioneers Art Show as part of the SIGGRAPH 25th Anniversary celebration. He also participated in the Digital Campfire session, which was an open forum discussion about historic computer graphics events and people.</li>
<li>Dave Pape&rsquo;s video of Crayoland was selected for screening in the Computer Animation Festival.</li>
<li>Gary Lindahl presented a sketch, &ldquo;Optimizing Stereo Formats for Projection-based VR&rdquo;.</li>
<li>Hisham Bizri also presented a sketch, &ldquo;Las Meninas: The Articulation of Vision&rdquo;, as well as the inclusion of two slides &ldquo;Mitologies: A Church After Leonardo da Vinci&rdquo; and &ldquo;Las Meninas: Seeing and Being Seen&rdquo;.</li>
<li>Josephine Anstey chaired a Gallery Talk on Interactive Installation.</li>
</ul> 

Maxine Brown was awarded the first SIGGRAPH outstanding service award for unselfish dedication and exceptional volunteer contributions. As she was unable to attend, EVL graduate students and alumni accepted the award on her behalf.

EVLers at SIGGRAPH 98

EVL, in collaboration with UIC&rsquo;s English Department and the Advanced Technology Center at the University of Missouri, hosted a reception and &ldquo;Virtual Harlem&rdquo; CAVE&reg; demos for MOBE 2000 conference attendees (Marketing Opportunities in Black Entertainment). 

Tele-Collaborative Virtual Harlem is a virtual reality application designed to supplement African American literature courses at the University of Missouri-Columbia and the University of Illinois at Chicago. 

The application gives students a &ldquo;portal&rdquo; to the Harlem Renaissance that began in the 1920&rsquo;s. This virtual environment allows students to walk through the streets of Harlem, and hear a sampling of the music written and popularized during the period. The application also allows students from around the world to meet and interact in the same virtual space. 

Future phases will allow students to enter buildings, peer through windows, eavesdrop on conversations and interact with historical characters. 

Virtual Harlem was developed in part by University of Missouri&rsquo;s Bryan Carter; Carter is a MOBE &ldquo;Influencers and Innovators&rdquo; award recipient for 2000.

Virtual Harlem CAVE&reg; Demonstration MOBE 2000

Josephine Anstey and Dave Pape represented EVL at the Mediartech 99 Conference. 

&ldquo;The Thing Growing&rdquo;, a virtual, interactive narrative developed by Josephine Anstey with Dave Pape, Joseph Alexander, Samroeng Thongrong, and Muhammad Ali Khan was exhibited. 

&ldquo;Las Meninas&rdquo;, an virtual educational exploration of the painting by Diego Velasquez was also displayed. This work was created by Hisham Bizri, Andy Johnson and Christina Vasilakis.

Mediartech 99

Josephine Anstey and Dave Pape presented a research paper, &ldquo;Building a VR Narrative&rdquo; at the Photonics West / SPIE 2000 Conference. 

The Thing Growing virtual reality application / project was used as an example of VR narrative work.

Electronic Imaging 2000; The Engineering Reality of Virtual Reality

The International Grid (iGrid) 2000 exhibit, jointly sponsored and organized by the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), the Office of the Vice President for Information Technology at Indiana University (IU), University of Tokyo and Keio University, provided global connectivity to collaborators from Canada, Germany, Greece, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, USA and the CERN institute. 

iGrid 2000 was composed of 24 application demonstrations requiring high-speed networks, with emphasis on distributed computing, tele-immersion, large datasets, remote instrumentation, collaboration, cultural heritage, digital video, streaming media and high-definition television. An additional 3 proposals represented video teleconferencing enhancements. 

EVL and IU, members of NCSA&rsquo;s National Computational Science Alliance partnership, are working to advance the development of the International Technology Grid. The Grid is a prototype 21st century computational and information infrastructure, integrating high-performance computers, visualization environments, remote instruments, and massive databases via high-speed networks to support advanced applications. iGrid 2000 was a direct outgrowth of these efforts.

The International Grid (iGrid) 2000

EVLers presented two VR art applications in the Ars Electronica (AEC) CAVE for the InfoWar Festival:
<ul>
<li>&ldquo;Mitologies&rdquo; (H. Bizri, M. Roussou, A. Cruz, D. Pape, J. Alexander, T. Imai, A. Millman)</li>
<li>&ldquo;The Thing Growing&rdquo; (J. Anstey, D. Pape, J. Alexander, M. Ali Khan, S. Thongrong)</li>
</ul>

EVLers at Ars Electronic Festival &rsquo;98

Josephine Anstey&rsquo;s MFA Thesis show, The Thing Growing, takes place March 2000. The Thing Growing is a Virtual Reality Fiction in which the user is one of the main protagonists and interacts with a computer-controlled character. The experience will be presented on a number of virtual reality devices (CAVEs and ImmersaDesks) located at the University of Illinois at Chicago, EVL facilities. 

Opening and Reception: 842 West Taylor, Rm 2068, 6-10 pm Thursday - March 9th, 2000 

Show also running on Friday March 10th during the day 10-6pm 

Reservations recommended:call Michelle at 312 996 3002

Still from The Thing Growing

The Thing Growing MFA Show

Josephine Anstey and Dave Pape represented EVL at the IEEE Virtual Reality 2000 Conference with their presentation of the paper, &ldquo;The Thing Growing: Autonomous Characters in Virtual Reality Interactive Fiction&rdquo;.

The Thing

IEEE Virtual Reality 2000

EVLers exhibit their virtual reality artwork at Tokyo&rsquo;s NTT InterCommunication Center for the month of July. The opening and related symposiums begin June 22nd; symposium presenters include Daniel Sandin, Jason Leigh, and Dave Pape discussing the future directions of virtual reality technology, artwork, and applications. 

The exhibition includes the following works: 

&ldquo;Blue Window Pane II&rdquo; - Margaret Dolinsky 
Collaborators: 
Margaret Dolinsky, Edward Dambik 
Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana 

Markus Greunz 
University of St. Gallen, Switzerland 

Carlos Orrego 
Bigheart.net, Canada 

Joe Reitzer 
University of Illinois at Chicago 

&ldquo;TeleImmersive Learning Environments&rdquo; - Andrew Johnson 
Collaborators: 
Andrew Johnson, Jason Leigh, Tom Moher, Yalu Lin, Mike Lewis, Brenda Silva 
EVL / UIC 

&ldquo;The Thing Growing&rdquo; - Josephine Anstey 
Collaborators: 
Josephine Anstey 
Media Study SUNY at Buffalo 

Dave Pape 
EVL / UIC 

&ldquo;Uzume&rdquo; - Petra Gemeinboeck 
Collaborators: 
Petra Gemeinboeck 
EVL / UIC 

Roland Blach 
Virtual Environments, Fraunhofer Institute Stuttgart, Germany 

Nicolaj Kirisits, composer of interactive audio environment, Vienna, Austria 

&ldquo;Virtual Harlem&rdquo; - Bryan Carter, Jason Leigh 
Collaborators: 
Bryan Carter, Bill Plummer, Blake Lewis, Thaddeus Parkinson 
Advanced Technology Center, University of Missouri 

Jason Leigh, A Kyoung Park, Tim Portlock, Dave Pape 
EVL / UIC 

James Sosnoski, Jennifer Brody, James Fletcher, James Hall 
English Dept., University of Illinois at Chicago 

&ldquo;Landscapes: Les Fleurs du Mal&rdquo; - Joseph Tremonti 
Collaborators: 
Joseph Tremonti 
EVL / UIC 

&ldquo;Infinite Studio&rdquo; - Todd Margolis 
Collaborators: 
Todd Margolis 
EVL / UIC

Les Fluers du Mal

NTT Learning Systems Corporation Exhibition at ICC

iGrid 2000, the International Grid, demonstrates how the power of today&rsquo;s research networks enables access to remote computing resources, distribution of digital media, and collaboration with distant colleagues. 

The concept of connecting geographically distant computing resources and people seamlessly, efficiently and routinely over high-performance networks is itself a major research topic, as computer scientists and application scientists worldwide prototype the 21st-century advanced computational infrastructure, or &lsquo;grid&rsquo;. 

iGrid highlights both the achievements in grid architecture development, and the advancements it enables in science, engineering, cultural heritage, art and architecture, media communications and distance education. 

iGrid features 24 applications from 14 regions Canada, CERN, Germany, Greece, Japan, Korea, Mexico, The Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, United Kingdom and the United States with emphasis on tele-immersion, large datasets, distributed computing, remote instrumentation, collaboration, human / computer interfaces, streaming media, digital video and high-definition television. 

Applications are presented on impressive display technologies: the CAVE&trade; virtual-reality theater developed by the University of Illinois at Chicago, the Super-High Definition movie system from NTT Network Innovation Laboratory, and the Access Grid presentation environment developed by Argonne National Laboratory. Two ImmersaDesks&trade; as well as plasma displays also showcase applications in virtual-reality (stereoscopic) or large-screen (monoscopic) mode. 

iGrid is connected to the JGN, the WIDE Project Network (in cooperation with NTT, TTNet and PNJC), APAN and the APAN / TransPAC (100 Mbps) link to STAR TAP&#8480; - the international, interconnection point in Chicago, Illinois.

Blue Window Pane II

iGrid2000 Empowering Global Research Community Networking

During the summer of 2002, the Electronic Visualization Laboratory and the University of Paris adapted &ldquo;The Multi Mega Book&rdquo; Virtual Reality Renaissance Environment for display using a RAVE VR system. (The RAVE consists of two - 2 meter rear-projection screens, a &lsquo;wand&rsquo; for virtual navigation, as well as free hand control using gesture recognition techniques developed by colleagues at the University of Paris.) The Multi Mega Book database also required significant modification to adapt to the RAVE display environment. 

The completed RAVE-version of The Multi Mega Book project was displayed October 2002 at the CITE DES SCIENCES (the Villette), Paris, &ldquo;F&ecirc;te de la Science&rdquo; to &ldquo;rave&rdquo; reviews by exhibition attendees and participants. 

The presentation was coordinated by Professor Patrick Bourdot, a leader of the Gesture and Image Group, Human-Machine Communication Department and Virtual Environment, University of Paris Sud, and made possible by the generous support of the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) initiative.

Multi Mega Book Adapted for Display in RAVE VR System

The Museum of Science and Industry has acquired a GeoWall, due in part to the efforts of Assistant Professor of Computer Science Andrew Johnson and Professor of Communication James Sosnoski. It is currently exhibiting the Virtual Harlem application as part of their annual Black Creativity celebration, now open through March 2. 

The MSI anticipates up to 75,000 people will attend this year&rsquo;s special exhibit. 

The Virtual Harlem Project (VHp) is a collaborative learning network whose purpose is to study the Harlem Renaissance, an important period in African American literary history, through the construction of a virtual reality scenario that represents Harlem, New York, as it existed between the 1920-30s. Virtual Harlem is a learning environment in which students studying the Harlem Renaissance can experience the historical context of its literature. 

The project was originally conceived in 1998 by Bryan Carter at Central Missouri State University and the first prototype was initiated in collaboration with Bill Plummer at the Advanced Technology Center at the University of Missouri. 

In August of 1999, the University ofIllinois at Chicago contributed to the VHp by translating the Harlem experience to a fully immersive environment - the CAVE. Since then Virtual Harlem has been an experimental testbed for a diverse group of educators and researchers.

Virtual Harlem Exhibited at the Museum of Science &amp; Industry

EVL participated in a remote VR exhibition in St. Petersburg, Russia, held in conjunction with the city&rsquo;s 300th anniversary celebration. &ldquo;The Key to Saint Petersburg&rdquo; is an interactive, networked VR application developed by the Interactive Institute in Ume&aring;, Sweden using YG - an advanced scripting language for tele-immersive or shared virtual reality environments developed at EVL by Dave Pape. 

EVL MFA Student Helen-Nicole Kostis collaborated from EVL and served as the technical lead for the event. Other networked participants included University of Ume&aring;s Interactive Institute; Center for Parallel Computers at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden; VR Media Lab at the Aahlborg University, Denmark, and Department of Media Study at University at Buffalo, SUNY.

Avatars from the St.Petersburg Demo

The Key to Saint Petersburg Demo

Thread:CyberCulture 

The Academic Computing Department at Columbia College is pleased to announce Steve Jones, social historian, and editor of _Digital Formations_ and _New Media Cultures_, will present a lecture entitled &ldquo;Internet Research and Everyday Life&rdquo; as part of the Department of Academic Computing&rsquo;s Thread:Print:Online:Salon show, Friday, May 2, 2003, at 5:30pm at <a href="http://www.colum.edu/">Columbia College</a>. The presentation will address matters of community connectedness and belonging as they pertain to social relations online and offline. The most recent findings from the Pew Internet and American Life Project will be presented. Help us welcome this distinguished speaker, concurrent with the Salon:On.Line:Print party and art exhibition taking place on our floor that evening. 

Steve Jones is author / editor of numerous books, including _Doing Internet Research_, _CyberSociety_, _Virtual Culture_, and _Pop Music and the Press_. He is editor-in-chief of _The Encyclopedia of New Media_. A social historian of communication technology, his books have earned him critical acclaim and interviews for stories in Time, the New York Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Newsweek and numerous other newspapers and magazines. Jones serves as Senior Research Fellow for the Pew Internet &amp; American Life Project and is co-founder of the Association of Internet Researchers, serving as its president from 1999 to 2003. 

Date: Friday, May 2, 2003 
Time: 5:30 - 6:30pm 
Location: Academic Computing, 4th Floor, 623 S. Wabash 

This lecture is part of the Department of Academic Computing&rsquo;s Thread:Print:On.Line:Salon art exhibition, Friday, May 2, 2003.

Steve Jones Lectures at Columbia College

The Electronic Visualization Lab&rsquo;s Fall 2003 MFA AD508 Seminar Series meets every Wednesday from 2:00 - 4:00pm. The series begins with presentations of work by first and second year MFA, EVL students and concludes with a group project. This semester&rsquo;s seminar series is moderated by <a href="http://www.evl.uic.edu/drew/">Drew Browning</a>. 

Please check <a href="http://www.evl.uic.edu/seminar/index.php3">Seminar Page</a> for exact location of the weekly meeting.

MFA AD508 Seminar Series

After a worthwhile experience full of intriguing guest artist lectures and discussions on new media in today&rsquo;s art world during the Fall AD508 seminar series, we are definitely excited to see what unravels this Spring! Please join us on Wednesdays as Franz Fischnaller leads us to even more heated conversations and introduces us to a new array of art connoisseurs around the world.

Franz Fischnaller

Spring AD 508 - Another Great Semester Ahead!

The Center for VR in the Arts presents innovative works in virtual reality, video, animation, and digital sculpture done by the Electronic Visualization students of the University of Illinois at Chicago. 

The show will take place on May 7, 6:00 - 10:00pm. 

Center for VR in the Arts 
UIC Art &amp; Architecture Building, 3rd Floor 
845 W. Harrison St.

EV Work

Electronic Visualization Exhibit

CityCluster will be exhibited at the first <a href="http://e-agora.palacakropolis.cz/program.htm">e-AGORA</a> Workshop, &ldquo;Shared Virtual Environments for Theatre&rdquo; at the Conference Center of Prague, Prague, CZ, October 25 - 31. 

CityCluster was selected as a subsidiary project by ALTERNE (Alternative Realities in Networked Environments) consortium, whose research and development is funded by the European Commission. CityCluster is an exemplary project for influencing the development of the electronic arts and the virtual storytelling, and is considered a significant enhancement to ALTERNE project platforms available to the European public, students and artist in the contemporary and digital art field. 

Professor Franz Fischnaller will also lecture at the <a href="http://www.praguecollege.cz/article.php">Academy of Fine Arts in Prague</a>, October 26 on new media, technology and the impact on the arts, &ldquo;The Arts and Electronic Media (Exploring New Forms for Art Making)&rdquo;. 

e-AGORA is organized by the Centre of Independent Culture PALAC AKROPOLIS, in cooperation with CIANT - International Centre for Art and New Technologies - in the framework of the cultural project supported by European Commission - CULTURE 2000 programme.

CityCluster Showcased in Prague

Foley-Rice Cadillac / Oldsmobile loft 
644 W. Madison Street 
Friday, November 12, 7:30 - 11:00pm 

EVLers, Helen-Nicole Kostis and Tina Shah will be participating at this year&rsquo;s Artful Object event, A Night of Art at Studio 74 held by the Oak Park Area Arts Council. Tina is donating a piece titled Indian, a digital print representing racial identity issues and Helen-Nicole&rsquo;s piece, titled natural phenomena iii, is a 3D render about the common, the ordinary and its beauty. 

It it was 30 years ago in 1974 that New York&rsquo;s &ldquo;Studio 54&rdquo; was the most famous nightclub in America. It was also the year the Oak Park Area Arts Council was established. The Foley-Rice Cadillac / Oldsmobile loft will be transformed into the place to SEE fabulous art, and BE SEEN by over 100 participating artists and those who support the arts in our community. The silent auction will include ceramics, jewelry, paintings, sculpture and more. 

The Arts Council holds Artful Object each year to raise money for two of its largest programs: ArtsFunds, the Council&rsquo;s granting program, and the Oak Park Area Arts Council Fine Arts Scholarship program to benefit college bound student artists who live in the tri-village area of Oak Park, Forest Park and River Forest. 

Tickets are $60 each for members of the Oak Park Area Arts Council and $75 each for non-members. Tickets will be $80 at the door or purchased after 11/5/04.

A Night of Art at Studio 74

Seung Kang presents his virtual reality artwork &ldquo;Instant Karma&rdquo; in the Electronic Visualization Laboratory CAVE, Friday, January 28, 2005. 

Opening reception will be held from 6:00 - 9:00pm at 842 West Taylor Street (Engineering Research Facility Building), Room 2068.

Instant Karma

EVL alumnus and Assistant Professor in the Department of Media Study of the University at Buffalo, Dave Pape collaborated with artist Jackie Matisse on &ldquo;Art Flying In &amp; Out of Space&rdquo;,now on exhibit at <a href="http://www.zonechelsea.org">ZONE: Chelsea Center for the Arts</a>, through June 24, 2005. The piece appears along with other Jackie Matisse works spanning 20 years, including her famous hand-made kites and kite tails, mobiles, collages, assemblages, and graphic works. Also on exhibit are video presentations of her collaborative projects, including &ldquo;Tailing a Dream&rdquo; with composer David Tudor and film maker Molly Davies. 

Matisse&rsquo;s &ldquo;Kites Flying In &amp; Out of Space&rdquo; was originally developed in collaboration with NCSA, EVL / UIC, and Virginia Tech as a CAVE application for iGrid2002 in Amsterdam. It explored the physical properties of flying kites in virtual reality whose movements were driven by the bandwidth usage of several collaborative applications running over high-speed networks. 

Matisse&rsquo;s &ldquo;Art Flying In &amp; Out of Space&rdquo; is a flat-screen, interactive stereoscopic installation, which continues her experimental work in supercomputing and virtual reality. 

The exhibition will open with a reception for the artist on Thursday, May 26th, from 6:00pm - 8:00pm Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10:00am - 5:00pm. 

To learn more about this exhibition please contact the gallery at (212) 255 2177 or by email: info @ zonechelsea.org

Jackie Matisse: New Art Volant

Chip shows his portfolio work. Most of this is from his undergrad thesis. 

Mark presents some work done during his previous semester(s) at UIC using his website for that purpose. He also shows a proposed project to be produced during this next semester and possibly into the following one as well.

New MFA Student Presentations

Kapil presents his degree project Titled: &ldquo;Virtual Dyaneshwari&rdquo; in which he explored spiritualism using Virtual Reality as a medium. Kapil also shows work that was done during his bachelors course. 

HyeYun presents her portfolio which includes oriental painting and games done with Flash.

Annette Barbier will show examples of her most recent interactive works and talk about the development of her work over the past 25 years. Barbier has made interactive work, media performance, and videotapes since the 1970&rsquo;s. Her themes range from personal narrative to abstractions of the natural world. 

Annette Barbier is a media artist whose roots are in sculpture and video and who is currently exploring the expressive possibilities of new media: computer animation, virtual interactive worlds, and electronic installation. 

Recent exhibitions include showings of Home, a VRML world at the Betty Rymer Gallery at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 12/02 - 2/03; ISEA, Paris, 12/2000, and FILE, Sao Paolo, Brazil, exhibition of a VR version of Home in the CAVE environment at the Ars Electronica festival / center in Linz, Austria in 9/01; installations at Women in the Director s Chair 3/98; Home Invasion, a website, at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, 4/97 - 5/97. 

Barbier is Director of the Center for Art and Technology and an Associate Professor at Northwestern University. Selected video work is distributed by the Video Data Bank. She received a Master of Fine Arts degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1977. 

Relevant URL: 
<a href="http://www.unreal-estates.com">www.unreal-estates.com</a>

Forced Perspective, 1984

Presentation by Annette Barbier

Presentation Structure: 
1.) Ellen Sandor: Introduction to (art)n, tour of gallery 
2.) Keith Miller: Technical demo of phscologram process 
3.) AI: Introduction to AI, discussion of AI projects 
4.) AI: Demo of Special Treatment (work in progress) 
5.) Keith Miller: Demo of thesis (work in progress, time permitting) 

Related URLs: 
<a href="http://www.artn.com">www.artn.com</a> 
<a href="http://www.appliedinteractives.com">www.appliedinteractives.com</a> 

(art)n 
(art)n was formed by Ellen Sandor in 1983 with her peers from The School of the Art Institute. The original group included sculptors, a fashion photographer, holographers and video artists, and continued to evolve over the past 20 years to include digital artists. The (art)n group has also collaborated with scientists from the Scripps Research Institute, NASA, the U.S. Army, as well as animators, architects, painters, virtual reality pioneers and the Chicago Imagists. The PHSCologram term, coined in 1983 by Ellen Sandor, is an acronym for photography, holography, sculpture and computer graphics (pronounced skol-o-gram). The PHSCologram medium inspired new ideas in multimedia circles, and influenced three decades of (art)n&rsquo;s collaborative portfolio, unsurpassed for its prolific range of content and innovation in digital photography. 

Applied Interactives 
Applied Interactives is a collaborative group of artists and technologists dedicated to the development and use of interactive and immersive technologies as an accessible and affordable creative visualization medium. We are a resource for virtual reality hardware systems and applications development and a source of education regarding these technologies within the community. Applied Interactives was founded in 2001 to fulfill the desire to propogate virtual reality and interactive mediums and technologies out of the lab and into the spaces of the gallery and museums and the hands of individual artists. Additionally, Applied Interactives hopes to better facilitate their use by individuals, institutions and businesses by being uniquely qualified to offer solutions which address technologies, applications, training and content at the same time.

Field Trip to art(n)

Franz Fischnaller is scheduled to hold a lecture about VR and Architecture and speak about his projects related to architecture. The lecture is part of the School of Architecture&rsquo;s new initiative called Wednesdays @ One, which hopes to expand and enrich the relationships with the professional community, with colleagues from diverse disciplines, and with projects of note in the Chicago area. 

PART I 
1.) Why Virtual Reality is an intelligent tool for architecture and design. 

2.) New concepts and challenges in architecture: How digital media and Virtual Reality can be incorporated in architectonic structures and buildings? 
<ul>
<li>Designing high tech intelligent multi-purpose buildings</li>
<li>Incorporating and integrating digital media and high-end technology into design and architecture</li>
<li>Exploring new forms in design and architecture</li>
<li>Implementing innovative technological expressive forms</li>
<li>Overlapping functionality and fantasy in its highest expression with a new system of living and interacting with the impossible</li>
<li>Examples: &ldquo;Cyber Space Theme Park&rdquo;, &ldquo;Stargate Hotel&rdquo;, &ldquo;Space Entertainment Center&rdquo;, &ldquo;Space Atrium Hotel&rdquo;, Space Hotel, designed by Franz Fischnaller</li>
</ul> 

PART II
3.) Presentation of Virtual Reality applications in the new VR facility of the Art Department.

CityCluster

Franz Fischnaller Lectures on VR and Architecture

Architect and interactive media artist, born in Vienna, Austria, Petra has received her master&rsquo;s degree in architecture from the University of Stuttgart, Germany, and has completed her Master of Fine Arts at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory, University of Illinois at Chicago, IL, USA. In her virtual environments Petra explores the issues of presence and identity formation in relation to computer controlled systems. Her works have been exhibited internationally at venues such as the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Ars Electronica Center in Linz, Austria, the Siggraph 2002 art gallery in San Antonio, TX, and the InterCommunication Center in Tokyo, Japan and have been featured in magazines such as &ldquo;Archis&rdquo; and &ldquo;Computer Graphics World&rdquo;. Petra is a lecturer in Media Practice and Theory at the University of Sussex. Petra teaches a postgraduate (MA) course in Political Economy of the New Media and a postgraduate (MA) option in Science, Technology, and Culture. In addition she has a university teaching position for &ldquo;Reactive Architecture&rdquo; at the Vienna University of Technology. 

Topics Petra will cover: 
<ul>
<li>Experience as a student in EVL: How and what was useful for her while in the MFA program at EVL</li>
<li>Goals and accomplishments since graduating</li>
<li>Major difficulties, if there were any, that she has faced in the professional world and eventually how she overcame these difficulites</li>
<li>Critical analysis of the path that goes from being a &ldquo;student&rdquo; to becoming an active professional in the &ldquo;real&rdquo; world</li>
<li>Petra&rsquo;s virtual reality art works and research projects: Concepts, motivations, goals, production process, and implementation</li>
<li>Difficulties in exposing her digital work in museum, galleries, and cultural institutions</li>
<li>Position of the contemporary museums and galleries in Europe toward Electronic Art</li>
<li>Opinions about the actual market tendency for Digital / Electronic Art</li>
</ul>

Netmeeting with Petra Gemeinboeck - EVL MFA Alumni

Director of the ARS Electronica Center - Museum of the Future, Linz, Austria; Graduate of the Institute for Telecommunication Engineering and Electronics in Graz. Since 1990, he has been working as an independent artist. In 1991, he founded X-Space, a team for the realization of interdisciplinary projects. In this framework numerous installations and performance projects have been carried out in the field of interaction, robotics and telecommunication. Stocker was also responsible for the concept of various radio and network projects and the organization of the worldwide radio and network project horizontal radio. 1992/93 he was responsible for the program of &ldquo;Steirische Kulturinitiative&rdquo;. Since 1995 Stocker has been the artistic director of the Ars Electronica Festival and the managing director of the ARS Electronica Center Linz. 

Ars Electronica 
The continuity Ars Electronica has displayed since 1979 has made it into an internationally unique platform for media art consisting of four divisions: 
<ul>
<li>Ars Electronica - Festival for Art, Technology, and Society</li>
<li>Prix Ars Electronica - International Competition for Cyberarts</li>
<li>Ars Electronica Center - Museum of the Future</li>
<li>Ars Electronica Futurelab - Laboratory for Future Innovations</li>
</ul> 

An interdisciplinary approach and the open encounter of international experts from the arts and sciences with a highly diversified audience characterize Ars Electronica. 

Ars Electronica Festival - Festival for Art, Technology, and Society 
Once a year, Linz is the center of computer culture. The Ars Electronica Festival, established in 1979 to provide an open meeting-place for artists and researchers, has since developed into a world-famous forum for the arts, technology, and society. From the beginning, Ars Electronica has been characterized by its accessibility and its rejection of artificial frontiers. Jointly with the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF) Upper Austria Regional Studio, it organizes symposiums, exhibitions, concerts, events, and a wealth of arts projects, and puts the latest trends and developments in the field of digital media on public display. 

Prix Ars Electronica - International Competition for Cyberarts 
Since 1987 the Prix Ars Electronica is an interdisciplinary platform for all who use the computer as a universal design medium in their artistic endeavour. It has been awarded annually by the Ars Electronica Center and the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF) Upper Austrian Studio in the framework of the Ars Electronica Festival, and is one of the most important prizes for the application of creativeness and the pioneering spirit in the field of digital media. The competition is divided into four categories: Net Vision / Net Excellence, Interactive Art, Computer Animation / Visual Effects, and Digital Music. A record 2,714 submissions from 85 countries in 2003 have further enhanced the Prix Ars Electronica&rsquo;s reputation as the internationally representative competition honoring outstanding work in the cyberarts. With an annual prize of more than 100.000, - Euro, it is the biggest award for computer art in the world. 

Ars Electronica Center - Museum of the Future 
Since 1996, permanent exhibition areas on five levels of the Ars Electronica Center have been showcasing creative technologies and the innovative ideas of the 21st century to enable visitors to get acquainted with the technology of the future, gain hands-on experience with it and customize it to their needs, and interactively learn in a way that is fun, user-friendly, and designed with all visitors in mind, no matter what their level of computer experience. The facility&rsquo;s hardware and software, its presentation and seminar rooms, as well as the know-how of its staff make it a fascinating interface for art, business and research. Robotic planting and watering in the TeleGarden or a fantastic journey through virtual worlds in the CAVE are just a couple of the possibilities in store for visitors. 

Ars Electronica Futurelab - Laboratory for Future Innovations 
Strongly committed to an interdisciplinary approach, the Ars Electronica Futurelab was created in 1996 and carries out R&amp;D projects that call for state-of-the-art design and highly innovative thinking. Since its very inception, Ars Electronica&rsquo;s focus has been on the tension and interplay at the nexus of art, technology and society. Formulating and implementing the future manifestations of this interaction is the chosen mission of the Ars Electronica Futurelab. 

Topics 
<ul>
<li>Gerfried Stocker: The passage from being an artist to becoming a curator and director of a museum</li>
<li>Electronic-net-art&hellip; Virtual Reality art&hellip; Necessary ingredients of a &ldquo;quality&rdquo; piece?</li>
<li>Vision of The Ars Electronica Center toward networking and Virtual Reality Art.</li>
<li>What type of Virtual Art, does the Ars Electronica Center exhibit&hellip; and why?</li>
<li>What is for you a visionary artist in the electronic field?</li>
<li>In your opinion what is the most ultimate innovative tendencies in the art field at present?</li>
<li>What is the borderline between art, science technology if there is any? What do you consider art and what is technology / science?</li>
<li>Concept and vision of Ars Electronic Festival 2004</li>
<li>What opportunities for exhibits your organization can provide to artists working with Virtual Reality</li>
</ul>

Netmeeting with Artistic Director of the ARS Electronica Center

Interactive virtual reality designer, researcher, producer, and educator, engaged in combining innovative technology with education and culture. For four years (1998-2002) Maria Roussou directed the Virtual Reality Department at the Foundation of the Hellenic World, a cultural heritage institution based in Athens, Greece, where she was responsible for the virtual reality infrastructure, programs, research, and design of the overall visitor experience. During her extensive work with the CAVE&reg; at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory in Chicago, she earned her M.S. and MFA degrees from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She focused on the design, application, and evaluation of virtual and digital media environments for education and the representation of cultural information. Maria has collaborated with artists (e.g. with Muntadas as a Production Coordinator for the File Room) and many museums, including contemporary art museums such as the Walker Art Center, to design and create interactive art education material for the Internet. Her projects and collaborations have been featured internationally, she has been a regular member of the program and organizing committees of numerous exhibitions and conferences, has lectured extensively, and has served as Expert Evaluator to the European 
Commission FP5 &amp; FP6 IST Programmes. She is currently pursuing a PhD in VR / HCI at the University of London (UCL). Maria has work experience in Greece and the USA and is a member of ACM, IEEE, ICOM, AAM, and AACE. 

Topics: 
<ul>
<li>Experience as a student at EVL: How and what was useful for you while studying at UIC?</li>
<li>Goals and accomplishments since you concluded your studies: What have you done and what are you doing now?</li>
<li>Major difficulties, if there were any, faced in the professional world and how were they overcome?</li>
<li>Critical analysis of the path: From being a &ldquo;student&rdquo; to becoming an active professional in the &ldquo;real&rdquo; world</li>
<li>The most interesting and challenging work completed as an artist, and what was learned?</li>
<li>What do you advise to an artist who is working in VR? What are the most important things for an artist to know &ldquo;before&rdquo; and &ldquo;after&rdquo; they get involved in Virtual productions?</li>
<li>Can a VR artist (not professional computer graphics programmers) be completely autonomous / independent as a producer or will programmers and software developers always be needed?</li>
<li>About your virtual reality art works and research projects: Concepts, motivations, goals, production process, and implementation</li>
</ul>

Netmeeting with Maria Roussou

Born in Sweden, Bino and Cool have been working together since 1998 as Artists In Residence at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) with visualization art, science, and education applications in the CAVE virtual reality system. 

Bino and Cool are artists and have worked with CAVE systems since 1996 and with the VR Cube at the Royal Institute of Technology since 1998. They are the creators of the VR art pieces Yggdrasil, Giza, and the museum VR-reconstruction, Vouni. 

Topics: 
<ul>
<li>Virtual Vouni, the museum of the future. Virtual Vouni is a shared distributed public CAVE VR wall installation. A full scale totally immersed virtual experience from the palace VOUNI and its surroundings and 3D-scanned objects. The project tackles the difficult question regarding the right to museum collections (who owns the past?) and about retrieving cultural heritage to the country of origin. The museum had a vision to reconstruct the ancient Cypriote palace Vouni that was destroyed in 380 B.C. The project will develop distributed Virtual Reality via Internet between museums for shared collections between different countries. It has been a successful 
collaboration between VR-artists Bino and Cool and archeologists at the Mediterranean Museum in Stockholm.</li>
<li>Cave art works and applications</li>
</ul>

Bino and Cool

Presentation by Bino and Cool

Poliana Tassini presents the comparative analysis traced in Angela Ndalianis&rsquo; book &ldquo;Neo-Baroque Aesthetics and Contemporary Entertainment&rdquo; between the baroque aesthetics from the 17th century and the neo-baroque era in the Contemporary Entertainment of 20th / 21st centuries. According to Ndalianis, &ldquo;the neo-baroque shares a baroque delight in spectacle and sensory experiences, a spectacle that, in our time, often relies upon computer technology.&rdquo; Using examples from video-games, CGI movies and theme-park attractions in VR, we will understand how the contemporary entertainment media reflect the new &ldquo;neo-baroque logic&rdquo; as a result of the technological advancements of our time.

Pietro da Cortona&rsquo;s Divine Providence

Parallels between Baroque Art and Neo-Baroque Aesthetics in Contemporary Entertainment

Pat Badani is an inter-media artist working with new and existing technologies and their discourses. Her works embrace net.art, performative situations, photography, video, installation and cultural research to examine notions of place, cities, communication and global processes. In 2002 she received a major Canada Council Media Arts Research Grant to develop an international project involving the convergence of culture and technology in 6 world cities. 

She has participated in more than 100 interventions, exhibitions and screenings in galleries, museums and contemporary art-centers in the Americas, Europe, and Asia. She has been awarded 14 individual artist grants for her projects, and her works form part of public and private collections. 

Badani is a Canadian artist of Italian descent, born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Having lived in 7 countries in the Americas and Europe, she now lives in Chicago and in Montreal. She has taught and given lectures in Canada, Mexico, France and the USA, and is currently Assistant Professor of Integrated Media at Illinois State University. 

On Wednesday Pat Badani will discuss her project in progress: &ldquo;Where are you from&rdquo;, currently in its second phase of development. The work, for which she received a Canada Council Media Arts Research Grant, explores the convergence of technological and social space in six urban centers in the Americas and Europe in order to capture and disseminate cultural information. Badani will sketch a genealogy of media practices that are a backdrop for the project, and speculate on how the archived material can be reprocessed for the production of knowledge through methods of visualization and interactivity.

Where Are You From?

Presentation by Pat Badani

Josephine Lipuma presents an overview of the OUTVIDEO :: International video_art festival in public spaces, Ekaterinburg, Russia, May 5 - June 5, 2004. 

The idea of the festival was to integrate contemporary video art into the public spaces of Ekaterinburg, Russia. The festival public screenings happened on outdoor video screens on the network of &ldquo;IgRek Cinema&rdquo; company, where 10 city screens were located in the most busy spots. The video art works were shown during one month each day in the pauses between commercial blocks, altogether around 240 screenings per day. This presentation is about the documentation of the festival. I will present the festival dvd, and we will get an overview of the international works which were juried in the international competion. My work, eternal joy: no words, was chosen to be in the permanent collection of the NATIONAL CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY ART Ekaterinburg, Russia with all the other works which I will present at the seminar.

OUTVIDEO :: International video_art festival

Josephine Lipuma talks about eternal joy: no words in a Public Space

Drew Browning and collaborator Annette Barbier have individual works in a site specific venue associated with the conference called VIBE: Video in the Built Environment. V.I.B.E. is an artist-led project that explores the impact of media in the built environment through curated site-specific interventions, presentations and published documentation. 

Browning&rsquo;s video piece, &ldquo;Homeland Insecurity&rdquo;, will show in the windows of 600 S. Michigan, as will Barbier&rsquo;s &ldquo;Homeland Security Advice&rdquo;. Both these pieces are responses to the current threatening climate we all live in. VIBE is collaborating with Cornerhouse Gallery in Manchester, UK to exchange video collections and screen them in public venues in Chicago, Manchester and Liverpool U.K. 

Also part of VIBE are several experimental outdoor works showing at the intersection of 11th Avenue and Wabash. These pieces will only be up on August 2nd, 8:30 - 10:00pm, when Browning will be showing, &ldquo;Preserving Disorder&rdquo;, an interactive sidewalk projection, recalling the images and dynamics of the summer of &rsquo;68 in Chicago. Barbier will also have an outdoor projected piece called, &ldquo;Escape&rdquo;, on a building in the same area. 

VIBE SUMMER05::02-14 August 2005 Chicago-US, Liverpool-UK, Manchester-UK 
<a href="http://v1b3.com/">v1b3.com</a> 

Drew Browning and Annette Barbier will be talking about their work in this show on Aug. 5, at Columbia College, as part of the ()pen node Chicago new media discussion group. <a href="http://open-node.com">open-node.com</a> 

()PEN NODE August meeting: 
Friday, Aug. 5, Glass Curtain Gallery, Columbia College, 11th and Wabash (SW corner) 

Work will be available to view until 6:30, we will then adjourn to another room in the building. Work on view includes that of Mat Rappaport, Drew Browning and Annette Barbier. Conrad Gleber will also participate with discussion of VIBE (video in the built environment), on exhibit Aug. 2, 8:30 - 10:00pm, in and around 11th and Wabash as well as in the windows of 624 S. Michigan.

Homeland Insecurity

VIBE: Video in the Built Environment

Milan, September 2005 
MULTIMEGA BOOK IN THE CAVE&reg;. &ldquo;The shift from the printed+book&hellip; to the electronic text+digital skin&rdquo; by Franz Fischnaller will be on exhibit at the Building Virtual Rome: World Expo of Ancient Rome in Market of Trajan, Rome, Italy, 15th September -15th November, 2005. 

Building Virtual Rome&hellip; World Expo of Ancient Rome 
The Building Virtual Rome: World Expo of Ancient Rome is the first exhibition dedicated to offering the general public, academic institutions, and professional entities a global view on developments in three-dimensional stereoscopic content based on the Roman Empire and the ancient city of Rome. The Roman Empire and Ancient Rome will be on show using cutting-edge virtual technology solutions, from virtual reality theatre systems and portable onsite computer devices for archaeological sites. 

MULTIMEGA BOOK IN THE CAVE&hellip; The Multi Mega Book in the CAVE&reg; [MMB], is an interactive virtual-reality journey through some of the most revolutionary moments of the human experience in media, technology, science, architecture, and art from the Renaissance through the Electronic Age. The user creatively interacts with and experiences the shift between two revolutionary moments in the history of communication, and consequently, the history of humankind: 15th-century printed communication and 21st-century electronic communication. Focusing on the shift from the printed book to the electronic text / digital skin, each page of the MMB brings forth a unique aspect of the diverse history of human communication through interactive means. CAVE&reg; [MMB] hosts two major virtual-reality environments: one intended to correspond to the Renaissance and the other intended to correspond to the Electronic Age. MMB provides the interactive visitor with free exploration of the various dimensions of both centuries. CAVE&reg; [MMB] is the winner of the Foreign Title Award in the Theater and Exhibition Section - Multimedia Grand Prix&rsquo;97, Japan. It is on permanent exhibit in the CAVE Ars Electronica Center, Museum of the Future, Linz / Austria. 

NAVIGATON AND INTERACTION&hellip; Navigation and the interaction with the MMB in the CAVE&reg; is often surprising, designed to draw the user from the Renaissance to the Information Age. It allows for the exploration of different modes of communication and demonstrates the differences between each era&rsquo;s combinations of mathematics, innovation, art, and cutting edge technology in communications. In the virtual-reality environment of the Renaissance, one of the interactive and navigable scenes is the &ldquo;Ideal City,&rdquo; articulated by works of architecture such us the Santa Maria della Grazie, the Santa Maria del Fiore, the Cupola di Brunelesschi, the Uffizi, the Piazza Innocenti, the Palazzo Pitti, the Laurenziana and works of art by artists such as Michelangelo, Alberti, Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, and Brunneleschi. In our real, physical world, these buildings and pieces are found in Rome, Florence, and Milan. In the virtual world created by the MMB, all of these works are found in one unique city environment rich in symmetry, color, and depth.THE LAST SUPPER INTERACTIVE. The user may investigate, in close detail, Leonardo&rsquo;s masterpiece, The Last Supper. Usually limited to viewing the painting from a distance of six meters, the MMB visitor may use the application to observe it from a very close viewpoint. This interactive journey into the masterpiece is a powerful tool to understand the relationship between the real architecture of the refettorio and the painted architecture by Leonardo. In addition, the computer programs construct the homogeneous coordinate representation of the painted space, perform linear transformation in the perspective space, and produce the final projection on the visualization plane, in Cartesian coordinates, of the three dimensional scene imagined by Leonardo. Similarly, the user can also visit and interact in a functional way with Gutenberg&rsquo;s printing press. Additionally, the [MMB] visitor is able to travel through a cyber tunnel leading the way into the CD City, a cyber city that visualizes the movement of 21st-century digital and networked information. 

NEM: THE INTERACIVE GUIDE TO THE MMB&hellip; NEM is an interactive guide to the MMB. NEM is a guide structured according to the primary geometric forms of the triangle, cube, and sphere. These forms shift to create a column or a character. In the Renaissance city, NEM appears first as an &ldquo;info-point&rdquo; column. When a visitor approaches, a &ldquo;humanoid&rdquo; figure opens up, establishing an interactive relationship with the forms, which will act as guides through the environment. In the CD City, NEM is a &ldquo;network agent.&rdquo; No longer guiding the visitor from place to place but acting as a node for sending and receiving information, NEM&rsquo;s shape and behavior changes in relation to the epoch. In the Renaissance environment, both guide and visitor must move their bodies in order to reach the original source of information. In the CD City, where the information is mainly digitalized, NEM exists as a &ldquo;high speed carrier&rdquo;, bringing information to the user who is not required to travel to its physical source. However, as the digital interchange flows around the CD City, the visitor is encouraged to travel, and to interact with, any of several NEM network agents. 

INTERACTIVE PLATFORM&hellip; Designed primarily to run in the CAVE&reg;, a multi-person, room-sized, virtual-reality system at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory of the University of Illinois at Chicago, the MMB is capable of running on a number of different VR platforms, including the Immersa-Desk and simpler graphics workstations. The CAVE&reg; is a room, measuring ten cubic feet, with screens for walls. High-resolution stereoscopic images are rear-projected onto the walls and the floor and viewed with lightweight LCD stereo glasses to mediate the stereoscopic imagery. Attached to the glasses is a location sensor. As the viewer moves within the confines of the CAVE&reg;, the correct perspective and stereo projection of the environment are updated allowing the user to walk around or through virtual objects. The CAVE&rsquo;s room-sized structure allows for multiple users to move around freely, both physically and virtually. The users interact with the environment using &ldquo;the wand,&rdquo; a simple tracked-input device containing a joystick and 3 buttons. It is used to navigate the virtual world and to manipulate virtual objects within that world. 

SPONSORSHIPS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 
The following organizations provided systems, assistance and support: 

VRCO&hellip; Visualize Your World VRCO develops, sells, and supports a spectrum of software products and interactive 3D visualization solutions that enhance the visual perception of complex data, including device driver middleware, development toolkits, and end-user applications. 

BARCO&hellip; A world leader in professional markets, BARCO which offers display and visualization solutions Barco provided for a Barco Gemini SXGA+ for the presentation of the MMB. 

ITALTECH SOLUTIONS Spa&hellip; ITALTECH is one of the leading system integrators in Italy thanks to over than 10 years of experience in selling, installing, training and supporting a wide range of solutions for 3D which includes : content creation, motion capture, virtual sets, industrial design, visualization rooms and immersive virtual reality. Italtech serves more than 1000 customers in Automotive, Design, Entertainment, Film &amp; Video, Research, and Education fields. 

SPECIAL THANKS FOR THE TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE TO: 
Bruno Arina. Technical Director ITALTECH SOLUTIONS 
Sangyoon Lee. MFA candidate, Electronic Visualization Lab, University of Illinois at Chicago, USA 

CREDITS 
MULTI MEGA BOOK IN THE CAVE, The shift from the printed book to the electronic text / digital skin Author: Franz Fischnaller 

Project Manager: Franz Fischnaller 
Producer: F.A.B.R.I.CATORS, Milano, Italy 
&copy; Copyright 1998 F.A.B.R.I.CATORS - Franz Fischnaller 

External collaboration 
Software development: Dave Pape 
Technical assistance: Dave Pape, Josephine Anstey, Tomoko Imai: Electronic Visualisation Lab (EVL), The University of Illinois at Chicago, USA. 
Paola Trapani, Universit&agrave; degli studi di Milano, Italy 
Sound: Gios&egrave; Casalotto, Italy 
Last Supper conceptual advisor: Daniele Marini, Universit&agrave; degli studi di Milano, Italy; 
A Segment of the application at the Ars Electronica Future Lab within the Research &amp; Residence Program

The Multi Mega Book in the CAVE&reg;

Multimega Book In The Cave&reg; Building Virtual Rome, World Expo of Ancient Rome

The International Grid (iGrid) collaborative event showcases ongoing global collaborations in middleware development and applications research that require high-performance multi-gigabit networks. The iGrids are organized every two or three years by institutions, organizations, consortia and National Research &amp; Education Networks who also participate in the Global Lambda Integrated Facility. 

The numerous press releases, articles, and related documentation chronicle applications, technologies, symposia, and general iGrid 2005 successes at <a href="http://www.igrid2005.org/media/press.html">www.igrid2005.org/media/press.html</a>

iGrid 2005 &amp; GLIF Meeting a Tremendous Success

<a href="http://www.fabricat.com/CITYCL_WEB2003/CITYCLUSTER.html">CityCluster &ldquo;From the Renaissance to the Gigabits Networking Age&rdquo;</a> A Virtual Reality &amp; High Speed Networking Project by Prof. Franz Fischnaller, will be on exhibit at the section &ldquo;Retrox 3D&rdquo; Projections Rooms in M&Aacute;LAGA, ARTE Y TECNOLOG&Iacute;A 2006, International Exhibit on Art and Technology (M.A.R.T.E. 06), Malaga, Spain. 

The Event will take place from 7th to 25th, February 2006 at Palacio Episcopal, Museo Picasso, Teatro Cervantes, Teatro C&aacute;novas and ETSI [Ingenieros T y Inform&aacute;tica]. The section &ldquo;Retrox 3D&rdquo; Projections Rooms dedicate to electronic art, virtual reality applications and interactive installation will take place at Palacio Episcopal from 14th to 19th. CITYCLUSTER will be on exhibit in the section &ldquo;Retrox 3D&rdquo; Projections Rooms from 10:00am - 9:00pm. Prof. Franz Fischnaller, will hold a conference at Palacio Episcopal on Saturday 18th at 5pm. 

M.A.R.T.E.06 focus on New Technology, Internet, Electronic Art, multimedia cinema, 3D animation, electronic music, games, video and digital graphics. The event is articulated by conferences, workshops, special presentations, concerts, and exhibit of the work and research of selected international artist and creators related to disciplines such as: experimental electronic music, interactive installation, 3D animations, digital art, robotics and the juxtaposition of communication, science and new technology. 

M.A.R.T.E.06 is promoted and organized by the Ministry of Culture of Andaluc&iacute;a. 
Chief Coordinator: Jos&eacute; Antonio Chac&oacute;n 
Curators: Pedro Pinzolas, Jes&uacute;s Gonzalo 
Production: Lukas Graber

CityCluster at Malaga Arte y Technologia 2006 (M.A.R.T.E.06)

EVL alumna, Maria Roussou (MFA, MS 1997) is among the keynote speakers at the Conference on Cultural Heritage and New Media, Hong Kong, March 13-15, 2006, co-hosted by the University of Hong Kong and the Center for New Media at UC Berkeley. The new heritage forum focuses upon the theme - Beyond verisimilitude; interpretation of cultural heritage through new media. 

Over the past decade digital or new media have augmented traditional methods of cultural heritage management; computer modeling and visualization have been used to create virtual reconstructions and databases, yet there are many open issues in addressing how best to capture the complexities and essence of cultural heritage and the society that created or used the sites. 

Maria Roussou is an interactive virtual reality designer, researcher, producer, and educator, engaged in combining innovative technology with education and culture. She is founder and co-director of <a href="http://www.makebelieve.gr/">makebelieve</a>, an experience design and consulting company. 

Previously, for four years (1998-2002) she directed the Virtual Reality Department at the Foundation of the Hellenic World (FHW), a cultural heritage institution based in Athens, Greece. At FHW she established the Department in the Fall of 1998 and was responsible for setting up the VR exhibits &amp; infrastructure, and managing the research, design and development of the VR programs and the overall visitor experiences. 

Previously, from 1993 to 1997 during her extensive work with the CAVE&reg; at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory in Chicago, she focused on the design, application, and evaluation of virtual and digital media environments for education and the representation of cultural information. She has also collaborated with many museums, including contemporary art museums such as the Walker Art Center, to design and create interactive art education material for the Internet. Her projects and collaborations have been featured internationally, she has been a regular member of the program and organizing committees of numerous exhibitions and conferences, has lectured extensively, and has served as Expert Evaluator to the European Commission FP5 &amp; FP6 IST Programmes. She is also on the Board of Trustees of the Institute for the Visualization of History, Massachusetts, USA, on the International Advisory Board of the Child Art Foundation, Washington DC and on the Editorial Board of the ACM Computers in Entertainment journal. 

Maria teaches the New Technologies &amp; Museums course at the interdisciplinary Master of Arts program in Museum Studies of the University of Athens. She is currently completing a PhD in VR / HCI at the University of London (UCL).

Maria in FHW Cultural Heritage Exhibit &ldquo;Shared Miletus&rdquo;

Maria Roussou Keynote Speaker at Cultural Heritage and New Media Conference

* All of the information contained below, along with more in-depth information on the event, is also avaliable on the iGrid 2005 website, which can be accessed by clicking the link above. 

iGrid 2005, the 4th community-driven biennial International Grid event, is a coordinated effort to accelerate the use of multi-10Gb international and national networks, to advance scientific research, and to educate decision makers, academicians and industry researchers on the benefits of these hybrid networks. This year, iGrid showcases more than four-dozen real-time application demonstrations from 20 countries, as well as a symposium with 25 lectures, panels and master classes on the applications, middleware, and underlying cyberinfrastructure. 

The emergence of a global LambdaGrid cyberinfrastructure is leading e-science from a bandwidth-constrained to a bandwidth-rich world. In this new LambdaGrid architecture, it&rsquo;s possible to access scientific data anywhere in the world over optical networks with almost the same immediacy as if the data were stored on a local hard disk! We see at iGrid a few pioneering researchers who are showing us how this transformed cyberinfrastructure allows them to carry out a new level of science and discovery, using persistent high-performance collaboration on a planetary scale that allows global teams to interactively obtain, analyze, and share vast amounts of distributed data. 

Global Lambda Integrated Facility / <a href="http://www.glif.is">www.glif.is</a> 

GLIF, the Global Lambda Integrated Facility, is an international virtual organization that supports persistent data-intensive scientific research and middleware development on LambdaGrids. 

The GLIF community shares a common vision of building a new grid-computing paradigm to support this decade&rsquo;s most demanding e-science applications. In this paradigm, the central architectural element is optical networks, not computers, which use multiple wavelengths of light (lambdas) on single optical fibers to create supernetworks. The GLIF infrastructure is evolving into a world-scale LambdaGrid laboratory for application and middleware development, where applications rely on dynamically configured networks based on optical wavelengths with known and knowable characteristics, including scheduling, bandwidth and latency guarantees. 

Calit2 / <a href="http://www.calit2.net/index.php">www.calit2.net/index.php</a> 

Calit2 (California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology) on the campus of the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) in La Jolla, California will host iGrid 2005. The iGrid Workshop and subsequent GLIF Meeting will be among the first major events to utilize Calit2&rsquo;s newly erected facilities through use of its vast resources - advanced networking, visualization and technology environments and cyberinfrastructure. 

The numerous press releases, articles and related documentation chronicle applications, technologies, symposia and general iGrid 2005 successes at <a href="http://www.igrid2005.org/media/press.html">www.igrid2005.org/media/press.html</a>

iGrid 2005 brochure

iGRID 2005 :: The Global Lambda Integrated Facility (GLIF)

EVL alumna and fouder of makebelieve design &amp; consulting, Maria Roussou&rsquo;s (MFA &amp; MS 1997) proudly announces the opening of the new Museum of Industrial Olive Oil Production, which is housed in a traditional olive oil production plant on the island of Lesvos in Greece. The Museum will be inaugurated on September 15, 2006 by the President of the Hellenic Republic, Mr. Karolos Papoulias. 

makebelieve design &amp; consulting has designed and developed the digital exhibits for the new Museum, creating a series of digital productions which incorporate the 3D digital reconstruction of the fascinating industrial-era machinery. Most notably, the film &ldquo;From water to water&rdquo; includes the accurate 3D modeling of the steam engine, with animation that illustrates the process of energy production; the film &ldquo;From olives to olive oil&rdquo; includes accurate 3D reconstructions of the olive presses and their pumps, with animation illustrating the grinding, compression, and separation process for olive oil production. The productions are projected on multiple screens alongside the exhibits and on various informational panels throughout the exhibition spaces. 

makebelieve has also designed and developed interactive exhibits for visitors of all ages, which are installed in the Museum&rsquo;s educational rooms. The educational game &ldquo;Oil the &lsquo;wheels&rsquo; of the communal engine&rdquo; allows young visitors to construct the engines used for producing olive oil and learn about the process in an engaging and challenging way.

3D digital reconstructions and interactive exhibits at the Museum of Industrial Olive Oil Production, Greece

Still from film FROM WATER TO WATER

Makebelieve Design &amp; Consulting Designs New Museum Interactive Exhibits

In today&rsquo;s world you are surrounded by an influx of images that suggest who you should be physically and mentally. Everyday whether you are watching T.V., a movie, or reading a magazine you are constantly being subjected to characters that you either identify with or don&rsquo;t. 

Tina Shah will present an analysis that deals with identity building through playing video games. The presentation will start with a brief overview of Jacques Lacan&rsquo;s mirror stage concept and a paper by Laura Mulvey that discusses the topic of image and self-image found in Hollywood cinema. 

The discussion will then lead to the influence that film has on video games and draw comparisons between the audience-film and player-game relationships and the role video games could potentially play in the identification process.

Virtual Identities Presentation

Virtual Identities

EVLers participate at the IS&amp;T / SPIE 19th Annual Symposium: Electronic Imaging / Science and Technology with the following paper presentations: 
<ul>
<li>Monday, January 29, 2007 
SESSION 1 Stereoscopic Display Applications 
&ldquo;Evolution of the Varrier&trade; autostereoscopic VR display: 2001-2007&rdquo;, T. Peterka, R. L. Kooima, J. I. Girado, J. Ge, D. J. Sandin, T. A. DeFanti </li>
<li>Wednesday, January 31, 2007 
SESSION 14 Virtual Environments: The Experience 
&ldquo;Passing excellence&rdquo;, D. Tsoupikova 

&ldquo;CytoViz: an artistic mapping of network measurements as living organisms in a VR application&rdquo;, B. A. Lopez Silva, L. Renambot 

&ldquo;Skin: an interactive hyperstereoscopic electro installatio&rdquo;, H. N. Kostis, R. L. Kooima, J. Kannenberg</li>
</ul>

Varrier Presentation PPTs

Sandin Showing Varrier Display Screen

IS&amp;T / SPIE International Symposium 2007

The Gender and Women&rsquo;s Studies Department has named EVL REU Elisa Green as the recipient of the 2006 Mary B. Bialas Award. 

The Mary B. Bialas Award is a scholarship awarded annually to a student who has participated in the Gender and Women&rsquo;s Studies program. Applicants should have demonstrated a commitment to women and/or children&rsquo;s issues and actively worked to improve the lives of women and children. 

Green received the award for her activism and work on women&rsquo;s and children&rsquo;s issues in a non-western context. During the previous year she has been an intern with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Ankara, Turkey. As a focal point member of the Gender and Children&rsquo;s Team (GCT) she was actively involved in policy issues that concerned the protection of refugee women and children.

Elisa Green with friends near Diyarbakir, Turkey

EVL REU Receives Bialas Award

Daria Tsoupikova and Alex Hill presented VR art installation <a href="http://www.evl.uic.edu/core.php?mod=4&amp;type=2&amp;indi=299">Rutopia 2</a> at the SIGGRAPH 2007 Art Gallery on August 4-6th at the state-of-the-art facilities of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) and the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts (CRCA) at the University of California, San Diego. 

SIGGRAPH 2007, the 34th International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques gathered computer graphics and interactive technology professionals from six continents to present industry&rsquo;s most respected technical and creative programs focusing on research, science, art, animation, gaming, interactivity, education, and the web at the San Diego Convention Center. 

Rutopia 2 is a virtual reality (VR) art project built for the C-wall VR system. It explores the aesthetics of virtual art in relation to traditional Russian folk arts and crafts such as wood sculpture, toys and the decorative painting styles of Palekh, Khokhloma, and Dymkovo. 

Rutopia 2 aesthetics are based on the generalized outlines, principles of composition, bright colors and simplified shapes inspired by these styles. The project describes a magic garden with interactive sculptural trees. It was conceived as a virtual environment linked to a matrix of several other unique virtual environments that together create a shared network community. A series of 3D modular sculptural trees, each consisting of dozens of rectangular screens, appear in the main environment and serve as portals to the other linked environments. 

The animation of these dynamic tiled trees is an attempt to break through the static flatness of the contemporary tiled-display grids, architectural facades, and surfaces into the perpetually changing 3D sculptural forms of the ubiquitous public network. Users can &ldquo;grow&rdquo; three trees in the island world by moving within the proximity of each tree. Each tree appears as a rapid sequence of flipping and rotating rectangular screens expanding out and upward. 

Once all the trees are fully grown, their screens turn into windows and the island changes from monochrome to color. Each window shows the view of the remote environment connected to it. Just as we can look through a window and see the outside, the user can look through each of the screens to see remote worlds consisting of imagery found in traditional Russian fairytales and folk art. By moving his or her head completely through one of the virtual screens, the user enters the connected environments. 

The project implementation utilized OpenGL Performer, Maya, CAVElib, the Bergen spatialized sound server and the recent improvements and advanced rendering techniques in Ygdrasil.

The Rutopia 2 installation at SIGGRAPH 2007

Rutopia 2 Presentation at SIGGRAPH 2007

Daria Tsoupikova presented her paper entitled Passing Excellence, The Virtual Reality and Art Visualization of The Kizhi Ensemble to the 21st annual CIPA Symposium. The paper describes the research and development of a virtual reality visualization project <a href="http://www.evl.uic.edu/core.php?mod=4&amp;type=2&amp;indi=325">Passing Excellence</a> about the world famous architectural ensemble &ldquo;Kizhi&rdquo;. 

The 21st CIPA Symposium is a forum for sharing views, experiences and discussing proposals for the best practice, ideal technical tools, and optimum attitude in order to manage, document, and preserve the diverse cultural heritage of mankind. 

This paper describes the development of an artistic visualization project that restores the architectural history of the world famous wood church and architectural museum, Kizhi. Kizhi is the architectural complex located on an island in Lake Onega in northern Karelia, Russia. The Church of Transfiguration, the Church of Intersession and the Belfry form the central part of the complex. The churches were built in harmony with the surrounding landscape and contain a priceless collection of icons and relics of Russian heritage. This historically important site is included in the List of Most Endangered Sites of the World Monuments Watch protected by World Heritage List of UNESCO. This project aims to restore the original architecture of Kizhi museum and to visualize the architectural changes of the museum area over the last 300 years. The visualization is being developed based on high resolution photographs, video surveys, textural data obtained during the initial visit of the site and resources from the Kizhi State Open-Air Museum archives. The project strives to capitalize on the advances of computer graphics technology and stereoscopic high-resolution display technology to advance the development of historical restoration in an artistic direction.

presentation flier for CIPA event

Passing Excellence Presented at the 21st Cultural Heritage Symposium

Virtual Reality Art as a Medium of Research and Exploration by Helen-Nicole Kostis and Development of the Interactive Art Visualization of the Kizhi Ensemble by Daria Tsoupikova were presented at the first Chicago Midwest chapter of the <a href="http://www.spie.org">SPIE Conference</a>. 

Helen-Nicole Kostis participated in the organization committee of the first SPIE conference chapter in the Midwest area and Daria Tsoupikova served on the advisory board of the conference. The conference featured speakers from Northwestern University, University of Illinois at Chicago, Kent State University, University of Notre Dame, and the University of Wisconsin at Madison. 

Helen-Nicole Kostis presented the production, research and development of Skin, a real-time interactive hyperstereoscopic high-definition audiovisual installation that visualizes a dialogue between physical and digital senses of touch. 

The installation employs a screen onto which hyperstereo skin-related video imagery is projected. Physical gestures of the participating audience are translated into accentuated and non-literal digital deformations of the projected imagery. The installation is displayed on a C-Wall system and is developed on Electro, an open source cross-platform application development environment. The hyperstereoscopic imagery was shot in a studio space using two High-Definition video cameras. 

Daria Tsoupikova presented the Interactive Art Visualization of the Kizhi Ensemble, a visualization research project centered on the world famous architectural ensemble Kizhi. 

The project capitalizes on the current research of the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) in the field of interactive stereoscopic computer graphics, devices and frameworks, high-resolution tiled graphic displays, and network distributed collaborative technologies. It is being created using an application development environment, Electro, designed for use on both cluster-driven tiled displays and desktop systems. The project is being developed in collaboration with Robert Kooima, inventor of Electro and a computer scientist at EVL.

SPIE logo

Presentations at the first SPIE Midwest / Chicago Conference

EV assistant professor, Daria Tsoupikova presented Aesthetics as a Medium at the ISEA 2008, The International Symposium on Electronic Art held at the Singapore Management University, Singapore between July 25th and August 3rd 2008. 

Since its inception in 1988, ISEA has been known as the world&rsquo;s premier media arts event for the critical discussion, and a showcase of creative productions applying new technologies in interactive and digital media. Held biannually in various cities throughout the world, this symposium consists of three aspects of peer reviewed conference, internationally juried exhibition and various in-conjunction and partner events. ISEA brings together artists, theorists, historians, curators and researchers of media arts from around the world to jointly explore the most urgent and exciting questions in the field. 

Aesthetics as a Medium presents how the aesthetics of a networked virtual environment can be orchestrated to control the communicative power of a project, maximize sense of immersion and ultimately &ldquo;presence&rdquo; in the virtual world. It explores the relationship between traditional and digital aesthetics based on the virtual reality art project Rutopia 2, which is inspired by Russian folk arts and crafts (e.g wood sculptures, toys and the decorative painting styles of Palekh, Khokhloma, and Dymkovo.) The visuals are translated into digital forms through generalized outlines, crisp emphasized details, bright colors and ornamental patterns. Rutopia 2 these aesthetic principles to investigate how visual style can affect intuitive navigation, perception, and emotional experience of the user in virtual reality.

Aesthetics as a Medium

Presentation at ISEA 2008

ISEA 2008 Presentation

EVL Associate Professor, Daria Tsoupikova in collaboration with EVL PhD alumni, Robert Kooima, Louisiana State University exhibit Passing Place for Games at SIGGRAPH 2009, New Orleans, LA. As part of the &ldquo;Information Aesthetics Showcase,&rdquo; Passing Place for Games visualizes a detailed reconstruction of Kizhi, a world-famous Russian heritage site, developed using the latest concepts in real-time graphics, including complex illumination with dynamic-irradiance environment mapping, shadow mapping, and complex materials with normal and gloss mapping. 

The S2009 Information Aesthetics venue features media rich works that combine technical and artistic disciplines, where new media artists join scientific visualization, informatics, and medical imaging specialists to create purposive, predictive, and creative representations of information.

Reconstruction of Kizhi Still

SIGGRAPH 2009 Information Aesthetics Showcase

GUEST SPEAKER: Scott Rettberg 
Wednesday, April 18, 2012 
11AM 

Scott Rettberg, Associate Professor and the Director of the Digital Culture Research Group from the University of Bergen, Norway, will present: &ldquo;Visualizing Electronic Literature: Potential Research Applications in the ELMCIP Electronic Literature Knowledge Base.&rdquo; The <a href="http://www.uib.no/rg/digitalculture">Digital Culture Research Group at UiB</a> is a very active multicultural unit combining researchers from various art and humanities disciplines who share an interest in studying how technology and culture interact. 

Visualizing Electronic Literature: Potential Research Applications in the ELMCIP Electronic Literature Knowledge Base 
<a href="http://elmcip.net/knowledgebase">The ELMCIP Knowledge Base of Electronic Literature</a> is an open-access research database, documenting information about creative authors, works of electronic literature, critical writing that references those works, publishers, organizations, events, and teaching resources about e-lit. The Knowledge Base is intended to document the field of electronic literature not only as series of distinct objects to be understood in isolation from each other, but as a field of practice in which the activities of writers, the activities of scholars, publications, performances, and exhibitions are all seen in relation to each other. With this in mind, the Knowledge Base has been developed as a platform in which cross-referencing is key. When a record of a critical article is documented in the KB, all of the works it references are noted, and cross-references then automatically appear on the record for the work itself. Similarly, cross-references are made to every other type of record it touches - when a work by a particular author is entered, a reference automatically appears on that author&rsquo;s page, likewise for a publisher. The Knowledge Base is a contributory project, being built collectively. It offers authors, critics, and teachers of electronic literature an opportunity to document and share their work, and make it visible and usable to others in the field. Because the Knowledge Base is semantically structured and outputs records in RDF format, it also makes works entered it more visible in machine-readable and processable ways to search engines such as Google and to other scholarly databases. Because the idea of relationships between actors and objects is so central to the model around which the Knowledge Base is constructed, and because it captures so much information about those relationships, the potential of using information visualization to open up new avenues of research, particularly of the kind that Franco Morretti describes as &ldquo;distant reading&rdquo;, is rich. This presentation will focus on the ways that the UiB Electronic Literature Research Group is beginning to explore those avenues, and will seek advice and input from researchers at EVL on ways to enhance our research in this direction.

Scott Rettberg

Visualizing Electronic Literature: Potential Research Applications in the ELMCIP Electronic Literature Knowledge Base

EDITOR&rsquo;S NOTE: The &ldquo;UIC Alumni Magazine&rdquo; Winter 2012 publication features a review of some of the leading innovations UIC forged in the past 30 years. The article cites the 1982 merger of the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle and the University of Illinois Medical Center as creating a new paradigm, one facilitating the free flow of research from faculty to physicians, researchers to end users, and back again. 
 
While the UIC Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) began innovating long before that - it was founded on interdisciplinary collaboration between the sciences and arts in 1973 - the article goes on to recognize one of EVL&rsquo;s major achievements in the past 30 years: &ldquo;UIC has played a critical role in virtual reality development. Its CAVE automatic virtual environment is used to analyze everything from molecules to car designs.&rdquo; 

Here is an excerpt from the article: 

The issue was comfort, or rather, the lack of it. To enter the virtual world of the early 1990s, users first had to don cumbersome helmets. Along with his colleagues, Thomas A. DeFanti, director emeritus of UIC&rsquo;s Electronic Visualization Laboratory, &ldquo;decided to turn the problem inside out,&rdquo; recalls current EVL Director Jason Leigh phd &rsquo;98 eng, then a Ph.D. student in the College of Engineering&rsquo;s Computer Science Department. &ldquo;Rather than project images through head gear, we decided to project them on walls.&rdquo; The resulting CAVE automatic virtual environment, essentially a room-sized cube within a larger room, directed projectors at several walls to create an experience akin to &ldquo;visiting the Grand Canyon rather than looking at a photo of it,&rdquo; says Leigh, adding that CAVE&rsquo;s eyewear not only proved lighter, but more immersive. &ldquo;Earlier eyewear tended to block peripheral vision,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;Ours didn&rsquo;t.&rdquo; When it debuted in 1992, its impact was immediate. Users could see images that appeared to float on air. They could walk around an image and view it from different vantage points. Then came General Motors, which wanted to design cars with it. &ldquo;You could simulate the experience of sitting in a car, how it felt with a larger dashboard, then a smaller one, or a more prominent steering wheel, then a less prominent one,&rdquo; says Leigh. In October 2012, EVL launched CAVE2, which combines virtual reality and scalable-resolution display walls at a resolution matching that of human acuity. 

To read the entire article, see the link to the PDF (right).

UIC Alumni Magazine article

Professor Andy Johnson provides background about EVL to UIC prospective students using EVL&rsquo;s Cyber-Commons.

Discoveries Channeled: Celebrating 30 Years of UIC

In this paper we discuss issues involved in creating art and cultural heritage projects in Virtual Reality with particular reference to one interactive narrative, &ldquo;The Thing Growing&rdquo;. In the first section we will briefly discuss the potential of VR as a medium for the production of art and the interpretation of culture. In the second section we describe &ldquo;The Thing Growing&rdquo; project. In the third section we discuss building an interactive narrative in VR using XP, an authoring system we designed to simplify the process of producing projects in VR. In the fourth section we will discuss some issues involved in presenting art and cultural heritage projects in VR.

A Tracked User Dancing

Building a VR Narrative

As part of the iGrid Research Demonstration at INET 2000, we created two Virtual Cultural Heritage environments - &ldquo;Virtual Harlem&rdquo; and &ldquo;Shared Miletus&rdquo;. The purpose of these applications was to explore possibilities in using the combination of high-speed international networks and virtual reality (VR) displays for cultural heritage education. Our ultimate goal is to enable the construction of tele-immersive museums and classes. 

In this paper we present an overview of the infrastructure used for these applications, and some details of their construction.

The Delfinio at Miletus

Virtual Heritage at iGrid 2000

Shared Miletus is a networked Virtual Cultural Heritage application first demonstrated at the INET 2000 conference. 

In this application we sought to explore new tools and techniques, ones that could be useful to create a networked virtual environment, which takes the place of a traditional museum. 

This paper describes the software used to build the environment, and the virtual tools created specifically to support remote, international visitors to the exhibition.

Miletus in the ReaCTor

Shared Miletus: Towards a Networked Virtual History Museum

In all of us we have stored away memories and experiences that can be conjured up with the slightest trigger. A personal encounter of mine consists of frequent flashbacks to my native country, India. There are numerous occasions when I&rsquo;ll hear a car with a bad engine drive by and immediately recall my days in Gujarat riding in a rikshaw, or more specifically, when I see a certain shade of red on a woman&rsquo;s lips, I&rsquo;m brought back to my cousin&rsquo;s wedding day and the lipstick she wore that matched so perfectly with her sari. In cognitive psychology terms, this type of auditory and visual processing contributes to a type of memory called Episodic, the recollection of events that include time, place, and associated emotions. 

Cue is a systems-based artwork representing the visual processing experienced during moments of recollection. By designing an algorithm to track color relationships between my database of video diaries from India and images captured real time in the exhibition space, a unique perspective is created on visual stimuli that cue our past.

This paper describes the development of an artistic visualization project that restores the architectural history of the world famous wood churches and architectural museum, Kizhi. 

Kizhi is the architectural complex located on an island in Lake Onega in northern Karelia, Russia. The Church of Transfiguration, the Church of Intersession and the Belfry form the central part of the complex. 

The churches were built in harmony with the surrounding landscape and contain a priceless collection of icons and relics of Russian heritage. This historically important site is included in the List of Most Endangered Sites of the World Monuments Watch protected by World Heritage List of UNESCO. 

This project aims to restore the original architecture of Kizhi museum and to visualize the architectural changes of the museum area over the last 300 years. The visualization is being developed based on high resolution photographs, video surveys, textural data obtained during the initial visit of the site and resources from the Kizhi State Open-Air Museum archives. 

The project strives to capitalize on the advances of computer graphics technology and stereoscopic high-resolution display technology to advance the development of historical restoration in an artistic direction.

Figure 8. The 3-D model of the Belfry. Perspective view

Passing Excellence, The Interactive Art Visualization Of the Kizhi Ensemble

Virtual reality, telepresence, haptic devices, advanced networks and surround sound offer greater means to visualize the complexity of the world and create new conceptions of reality and identity. These new conceptions expand traditional aesthetic principles of art making into other dimensions in depth and time requiring new aesthetic principles. 

This text describes the relationship between traditional and digital aesthetics in the virtual reality art project Rutopia 2 built for the CAVE&trade; and C-Wall virtual environments. The project explores the aesthetics of virtual art in relation to traditional Russian folk arts and crafts such as wood sculpture, toys and the decorative painting styles of Palekh, Khokhloma, and Dymkovo. Their crisp easily recognizable style of expression is characterised by generalized outlines, crisp emphasized details, bright colours, subjects, materials, and forms. Rutopia 2 generalizes those aesthetic principles and transmits their culture into virtual reality. The project studies how the aesthetics can affect the intuitive navigation, perception, and emotional experience of the user inside the virtual environment. Computer graphics techniques used for the real-time development of virtual artwork study how colors and shapes can influence and lead the navigation and interaction of the user in the virtual environment. The research of user&rsquo;s perception and emotional experience gained from immersion and interaction with aesthetics of the virtual environment teaches that aesthetics can induce and control emotional responses. The aesthetics of the virtual environment can be orchestrated to control the communicative power of the project, maximize a sense of immersion and ultimately &ldquo;presence&rdquo; in the virtual world.

Still frame from Rutopia 2

A virtual rendition (VRML) of Korean sites will allow visitors to explore these national treasures from Kyoungju City. Along the way visitors may ring the temple bell, or cast lots to ask their future of the I Ching, or Book of Changes. At each of the four sites, a Korean myth is told by text and the interactive animations.

Temple

A Glimpse of Ancient Korea

&ldquo;The File Room&rdquo; is an illustrated archive of cases of cultural censorship, conceived by artist Antonio Muntadas, and produced by Randolph Street Gallery (a non-profit artist run center in Chicago, IL, 1979-1998). 

It was presented as a public interactive installation at the Chicago Cultural Center (May - Sept., 1994) and continues to exist as a WWW project housed at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Maria Roussos served as Production Coordinator for &ldquo;The File Room&rdquo; project and continues to maintain the WWW version. Roussos designed and implemented the archive in early 1994 and then customized it for the public art installation at the Cultural Center, which was visited by approximately 80,000 people in a period of 4 months. 

&ldquo;The File Room&rdquo; has since been seen as a physical installation in Lyon (1995), Paris (1996), Barcelona (1996), and Hamburg (1996). Presentations on the project have been made at Ars Electronica &rsquo;95 (Linz), ISEA &rsquo;95 (Montreal), Medienbiennale &rsquo;94 (Leipzig) and other venues. The internet version continues to receive approximately 8000 accesses per day.

File Room Archive

The File Room

This project involved a collaboration between historians, artists and computer scientists to create a virtual cultural and artistic exhibit of the Mogoa Grottoes of Dunhuang. Dunhuang, one of western China&rsquo;s ancient cultural sites, is considered the gateway to the well-known Silk Road - the East-West trade route between Asia and Europe. 

The Mogoa Grottoes are located in the Gobi desert. It consists of 492 caves with murals covering 25,000 square meters (approx. 269,097 square feet), wall fresco paintings, and more than 3000 painted sculptures. These caves span a period of one thousand years, from the forth century to fourteen century. Each cave and each mural has its own story. 

The 3-D models of the Grottoes have been accurately created using data from researchers at Northwestern University. These models have been imported into <a href='http://www.evl.uic.edu/cavern/cavernsoft/limbo.html'>LIMBO</a> as a quick collaborative evaluation and brainstorming tool. This piece was the first collaborative, virtual exhibit of a historic site in the world - demonstrated at Supercomputing 1998 in Orlando Florida.

Silk Road Cave Interior

The Silk Road Cave Shrines

&ldquo;Shared Miletus&rdquo; is a cultural heritage demonstration which takes visitors on a shared virtual voyage through the ancient Greek city of Miletus as it existed 2000 years ago. 

The Foundation for the Hellenic World has modeled the city of Miletus for display on the ImmersaDesk and ReaCTOR virtual reality system at their museum. The existing application allows visitors to fly through the city and see it as it existed in antiquity. The application is being extended to also demonstrate possibilities for networking of virtual museum environments. 

The most basic feature will be the sharing of the environment - people at distant sites in the same virtual environment; these people could all be visitors, or one or more could be experts serving as guides for the others. Beyond this, it is planned to add pre-recorded guides which are stored at one site and can be called upon by any visitors to lead them through the city and explain it, rather than requiring a human guide at all times. The guides will also be able to support multiple languages and levels of expertise for the visitors. Current language support is planned for English and Greek. 

&ldquo;Shared Miletus&rdquo; premiered at the iGrid 2000 exhibit, INET &rsquo;2000 held in Yokahama, Japan.

Shared Miletus

EVL is working with <a href='http://www.cmsu.edu/'>Central Missouri State University</a>, the <a href='http://iatservices.missouri.edu/techknowledge/03-2001/cmom.html'>University of Missouri</a> and the <a href='http://www.arizona.edu/'>University of Arizona</a> on the Virtual Harlem project, a collaborative learning initiative whose purpose is to study the New York Harlem Renaissance through the construction of a collaborative virtual-reality scenario that represents Harlem as it existed in the 1920s and 30s. Advanced networking technologies will be applied to the Virtual Harlem project and its integration into African-American Studies classes at the University of Illinois at Chicago and partner institutions. 

The Virtual Harlem project has attracted considerable attention in African-American communities in New York, Chicago and other sites. Bryan Carter, the researcher who initiated the project as a complement to undergraduate courses in the Harlem Renaissance, was given an award by the MOBE (Marketing Opportunities for Black Entrepreneurs) group; Virtual Harlem was a special feature of their annual conference held in Chicago in 2000. EVL receives numerous requests for demonstrations of Virtual Harlem from local schools and community centers. More than half of the people building Virtual Harlem are African Americans, including programmers. The project has been embraced by the Head of the UIC African-American Studies Department, whose faculty members have served as instructors in Harlem Renaissance courses using Virtual Harlem. Indeed, several African-American high-school science students who were introduced to Virtual Harlem have worked at EVL to learn the programming skills required to build models. 

UIC artists, humanists and computer scientists are beginning to convert the Virtual Harlem project from a compelling demonstration to a dynamic visual history database for research. We are adding a set of analytical tools that parallel Geographical Information Systems (GIS) by visualizing the full history of the neighborhood, incorporating census data, real estate data, investment / reinvestment data, and crime and health data, in addition to the cultural information that helps to give the data meaning. The model for this project is work done at the Nathalie P. Voorhees Center, the Great Cities Institute and the Data Visualization Lab in the College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and at the Center for New Media and the Computer Science Department at Columbia University in New York. 

Users will be able to retrieve and cache data from a variety of sources, incorporating it into the Virtual Harlem model, as it relates to courses on urban planning, policy, cultural or historical studies. The data resides in several places: the Schomburg Museum, the Harlem School of the Arts at Columbia University, the Harlem Chamber of Commerce, the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce, The New York Public Library System, the Paul Robeson collection at Rutgers, the James Van Der Zee collection at the Studio Museum of Harlem, Library of Congress, US Census data, The New York Times, and The Amsterdam News (a major African-American newspaper published in Harlem). 

Virtual Harlem will become a repository of data about urban development that will enable government planners as well as students to anticipate (and see) the impact of changes in urban neighborhood environments as never before.

Users Explore Virtual Harlem

Virtual Harlem

The objective of the Virtual Bronzeville Project is to create a virtual model of the history of Bronzeville, Chicago. This model will illustrate Bronzeville&rsquo;s complex social, political, economic, and cultural systems. By using virtual environments, animations, interviews, and GIS data, users will be able to explore this historic area.

Cultural Heritage

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