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UCSC Michael Dale dale<at>ucsc.edu and Abram Stern aphid<at>ucsc.edu, Digital Arts/New Media “Metavid: Meta-Enhanced Text Audio Video Interface for Democracy”. Many archives are built as bunkers, enclosing cultural history through their architecture (high walls, vaults), their lawyers (enforcement of copyright) and their technologies (Digital Rights Management). These measures are problematic enough when applied to any cultural material but are even more so when applied to governmental proceedings in the Public Domain. The principal mediators between the public and the re[-]presentation of their representatives are private institutions who often place business and outdated models of production/consumption above providing true access to these materials. Metavid is an active archive and and remediation engine, built to provide an open and democratic alternative to the status quo. Unlike the bunker model, Metavid is open to intervention by design: from our open source framework to our interface that enables user/participants to annotate and recontextualize footage. http://metavid.ucsc.edu/  video
UCI Lisa Tucker tuckerl<at>uci.edu, Studio Art “Food Forever” (In vitro cloning of organic produce) For the past year I have been working with Dr. Ronald Chiarello, PhD Organic Chemistry, to expand his initial research with worm microbes into a system of indoor farming, using in vitro cloning technology to grow organic produce taken from supermarkets. By converting lamps and furniture into incubators or growing rooms, we have transformed the typical living room into a literal “living room” of food crops. We are continuing to develop our indoor growing system by adding solar panels and greywater irrigation (laundry, shower and sink wastewater). Future plans also include crockpot biodiesel fuel production and an electric coffee maker bioreactor to grow organic fertilizer from the worm microbes. I am currently working on LambdaMOO to build a model of the system where guests and characters can grow their own safe, nutritious food. Through this art intervention my aim is to look at alternatives to how the public sees art and science, how they can participate by using scientific protocols to grow their own food, and to engage in a dialog regarding how biotechnology affects the food they eat. http://culturemedia.us/ video
UCSD Cristyn Magnus, Music “Interactive performance, algorithmic composition, games” I am currently working on a game piece for percussion and interactive computer. The performer is presented with an algorithmically generated score. He can choose to interpret the score in several ways; each way of interpreting the score is a move in the game. His playing is constrained not just by the notes written in the score, but by the moves he'd like to make. He is attempting to perform a task, and the computer is attempting to thwart him. He gets points when he is successful; the computer gets points when it thwarts him. As the computer gains points, it processes the performers sound more and more; as the performer gains points, he lessens the computer's processing ability. The score is generated algorithmically using a combination of nested markov processes that generate an initial collection of phrases, and a developmental algorithm that progressively develops and modifies material from earlier in the piece. The game itself is sonified and spatially projected. The form of the piece emerges from the interpretation of the score required to make moves in the game and the sonification of the game. the score (pdf) short paper (pdf) http://cmagnus.com/cmagnus/research.shtml video
UCLA Aaron Koblin akoblin<at>ucla.edu, Design | Media Arts “The Sheep Market” Amazon's Mechanical Turk is a system for harnessing the power of distributed human intelligence. Intended for corporate use, MTurk exploits the notion that certain tasks are simple for people and difficult for computers. The system represents an automated work force in which computer and human processing are intertwined. The individual workers remain alienated from the larger process they are contributing to, aware only of their simple task. This organizational format, typically implemented by corporations, tends to yield highly organized, efficient results for the purposes of targeted economic gain. The Sheep Market is a web-based art project which appropriates the MTurk system to implicate thousands of workers in the creation of a massive database of drawings. From one simple request, submitted to the MTurk system as a 'HIT' or Human Intelligence Task, workers create their version of “a sheep facing to the left” using simple drawing tools. The artist responsible for each drawing receives a payment of two cents for their labor. The specific technology and system being implemented by the Mechanical Turk is new, but the ideology of bureaucratized systematized human labor is quite aged and has been maturing rapidly since the industrial revolution. Writers such as Marx, Engels, and other social theorists have thoroughly discussed the alienating impact of massive distributed employment facilities. Within the inspiration for The Sheep Market is the urge to caste a light on the human role of creativity being expressed by workers in the system, while illustrating the massive and insignificant role each plays as part of a whole. http://www.thesheepmarket.com videoKrister Olsson krister<at>tree-axis.com, Design | Media Arts “1993-2005 and 8624 Olympic White” Between 1993 and 2005 over 350 women were found dead in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. The majority of the victims worked in maquiladoras, foreign-owned assembly plants near the U.S. border. The largest maquiladora employer in Ciudad Juarez is Delphi, a spin-off of General Motors. The gallery installation ³1993-2005 and 8624 Olympic White² is comprised of 13 servo motor-controlled Jacob¹s Ladders, one for each year from 1993 to 2005. Each ladder has as many panels as recorded murders of women in Ciudad Juarez for that year. The front of each panel is engraved with the age of one victim, the back painted with the stock General Motors color ³8624 Olympic White.² http://www.tree-axis.com/krister/ucla video John Houck, jdhouck<at>ucla.edu, Design | Media Arts “Installations and the parametric and generative in Architecture” John Houck is interested in the intersection of architecture and art. John will present several of his installations completed this year that deal with this intersection. In his work he attempts to advance new types of architecture while commenting on the current state of architecture. In addition, he will discuss his recent collaboration with Morphosis Architects and demonstrate the custom software and its various outputs that he developed while working there. The software facilitates the earliest stages of design conception as opposed to the more traditional uses of software. http://www.johnhouck.com/ video UCSB Anne-Marie Skriver Hansen and Will Wolcott “The Well” The Well is an experimental collaboration project between a software engineer and a digital media artist, where research is directed towards a scientific discourse in an artistic context. By unwrapping a natural phenomena such as water patterns that occur when sound runs through water, we created an installation situation, where the viewer can interact directly with the sound that generates water patterns by pulling in a rope. The unwrapped image of the water patterns is displayed around the viewer's head and the actual image of the water patterns is displayed on the floor, where the viewer pulls in the rope. By letting the viewer be surrounded by a scientific interpretation of a natural phenomena we intended to create an artistic expression, where the dynamics of the water patterns are interpreted. http://www.uweb.ucsb.edu/~annemarie_s_hansen/256web/Proj_Description.html http://www.mat.ucsb.edu/~g.legrady/academic/courses/06w256/projects/final/will-anne-marie/index.html video Graham Wakefield wakefield<at>mat.ucsb.edu, Lance Putnam ljputnam<at>umail.ucsb.edu, Dan Overholt dano<at>create.ucsb.edu, Hyunkyung Ji jiharu<at>umail.ucsb.edu “Towards the AlloSphere: Intensive Art, Immersive Worlds” We present an overview of graduate projects produced at the Media Arts & Technology program of UCSB, in the context of Transvergence, a concept devised by Marcos Novak. Transvergence is a creative interplay with intentions beyond cross-disciplinary discourse and practice towards the generation of viable new species of expression. We describe several instantiations of graduate projects exploring emergence as a pluri-modal artistic principle. A number of these projects will be demonstrated and discussed in more detail. Our work involves digital media of sound, image, virtual worlds and physical manifestations inspired by algorithmic explorations of dynamic, chaotic and generative systems. Secondly, we present a synergy of this work in the practical demonstration of the capabilities of the soon to be active CNSI AlloSphere, a 3-story high spherical space in which fully immersive, interactive, stereoscopic/pluriphonic virtual environments can be experienced. The AlloSphere is a place in which art and science contribute equally, where we can not only visualize or simulate what we know, but where we can rigorously entertain generative hypotheses of how worlds could be. To demonstrate the promise of the AlloSphere, we developed a 3-D stereographic and octophonic presentation of the enclosing building, containing a real-time interactive fusion of our projects as virtual projections within it. The world is navigated using a wireless interface developed at CREATE/MAT, housed within a rapid-prototyped object based upon a four-dimensional shape. Our work signifies the first step of ongoing research that is intended to design a general architecture for future artistic and scientific research in the AlloSphere itself. www.mat.ucsb.edu/allosphere
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