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INFORMATION EXCHANGE
UC DARNet Annual System-Wide Gathering
Friday/Saturday, March 3 & 4, 2006
E|DA, Kinross North, UC Los Angeles |
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Faculty research presentations
Friday, March 3
10:15 - 10:30 am
Introduction by Victoria Vesna
Watch the video (real media)
10:30 – 12:30 pm
COMPUTER GAMES ======= Session moderated by:
Greg Niemeyer, UCB
Greg Niemeyer, UC DARNet Executive
Board Member
UCB Departments of Art Practice and Film Studies
Executive Director Art, Technology and Culture Studio
Interaction and Interactivity
We are what we do, and yet the terms with which we discuss our interactions
with other people, things, machines, and with ourselves are very broad,
blurry, and even misleading. Niemeyer will demonstrate different types
of interactions during his lecture and attempt to distinguish basic modes
of interaction: A) with an object B) with self C) with one other D) with
a few others E) with many others and F) with machines.
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/2006/02/08_games.shtml
Watch the video (real media)
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Sheldon Brown
UCSD Visual Arts Director, CRCA and the Experimental Game Lab
"Experimental Game Lab"
Brown has been working with interactive 3D computer graphic environments
for 15 years. Currently, this field is being technologically and socially
developed through the popularity of computer games. His current project
is the creation of computer graphic suburban environment whose various
elements are derived from overt algorithmic processes. To create this,
Brown is leading a small team in developing a custom game engine, along
with toolsets that integrate computer vision and algorithmic design.
http://www.crca.ucsd.edu/sheldon/
http://crca.ucsd.edu/sheldon/scalable/
http://crca.ucsd.edu/sheldon/expgamelab/index.html
Watch the video (real media)
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Robert Nideffer
UCI Departments of Studio Art and Informatics
Co-Director, Arts Computation Engineering [ACE] Program
Director, Game Culture & Technology Lab
"Gaming in Heterogeneous Networks"
Heterogeneous networking is focused on getting things talking to each
other that usually don't. Three projects worth mentioning that fall within
this domain:
1. unexceptional.net - a multimodal, pervasive, location-aware 'net-centric'
game.
2. 'Collaboration Infrastructures for Game Culture and Technology'
3. 'DinoSphere' - a collaboration with the Santa Ana Discovery Science
http://ucgamelab.net
Watch the video (real media)
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Warren Sack, UC DARNet Executive
Board Member
UCSC Film & Digital Media, and Digital Arts New Media (DANM)
"\Ag`o*nis"tics\" \Ag`o*nis"tics\, n. The science
of athletic combats, or contests in public games. The images and actions
used as metaphors by Chantal Mouffe and other theorists of "agonistic
democracy" can be instantiated, literally, as interactive, graphical
objects and dynamics. This “literal" instantiation is an online,
computer game that can be played by posting messages to a public, online
discussion forum.
Social Computing Lab: http://hybrid.ucsc.edu/SocialComputingLab/
Agonistics: http://artport.whitney.org/gatepages/artists/sack/
Watch the video (real media)
1:45 – 3:30 pm
Computing & Communities ======= Session
moderated by: Sharon Daniel, UCSC
Sharon Daniel, UC DARNet Executive
Board and Steering Committee Member
UCSC Film & Digital Media and DANM
"Palabras:" Palabras combines the tactics of DIY technology
and the philosophy of participatory culture. In a series of workshops
at cultural centers in two impoverished shantytowns in Buenos Aires participants
used cheap disposable digital video cameras to document their daily lives.
The disposable cameras were transformed into re-usable cameras, using
instructions and free software found on a DIY technology website. A custom-built-web
application allowed workshop participants to edit, tag and publish their
video online. The workshop focused on strategies for collective self-representation.
The software was designed to allow participants to discover relationships
and make connections among their personal stories. Through these workshops,
communities not traditionally thought of as scholarly or academic, produced
and interpreted knowledge using media and information technologies designed
for their use.
Watch the video (real media)
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Brian Goldfarb, UC DARNet Executive
Board and Steering Committee member
UCSD Department of Communication
"Global Tourette:" Global Tourette is a digital documentary,
web-based media exchange and public health intervention project in multiple
formats: a documentary video; youth media production workshops; and a
web-accessed media database linking participants in youth media workshops,
and representing their digital media work. The project examines the range
and mix of experiences with and understandings of Tourette’s syndrome
among people with Tourette’s and their family members and, secondarily,
among professional caregivers and researchers in psychiatry, neurology,
and education in the U.S., Argentina, Mexico and other contexts internationally.
Research URLs: http://www.globaltourette.net
and http://communication.ucsd.edu/goldfarb
Watch the video (real media)
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Antoinette LaFarge
UCI Studio Art
"Demotic:" Demotic is a mixed-reality performance work about
American Memory-a single character played by many performers whose voices
are woven together into a complex texture of language, sound, and music.
It treats the Internet as a creative commons that affords a distributed
conversation that is simultaneously play, exchange, and enactment. It
exemplifies a cultural shift from the creation of ownable objects to immersion
in an exchange medium. To this end, the project explores three creative
areas in particular: live improvisation between real-space actors and
telematic agents; digital layering and processing of language; and customized
programming of virtual environments and speech synthesis to create a mutable
soundscape that both draws on and feeds back into the digital vernacular.
http://yin.arts.uci.edu/~players/demotic/index.html
Watch the video (real media)
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Margaret Morse
UCSC Film and Digital Media and DANM
"Trivial Abyss:" Research in progress on smell in digital culture.
This research paper presents smell as a medium in digital culture and
discusses sources of resistance to research on olfaction that are alluded
to in the title. It then turns to several examples of olfactory digital
environments and olfactory art to consider
what can be learned from the production of public smells in art and commerce.
A framework for further research on metaphorical and experimental work
in olfaction is offered for comment. Artists are
invited to collaborate by presenting their own work in olfactory art for
inclusion in this research; the participation of artists employing other
unusual perceptual registers would also be valuable to this ad hoc research
community.
Watch the video (real media)
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Fabian Wagmister, UC DARNet
Executive Board Member
UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television
Director, Hypermedia Lab
Co-Director, Center for Research in Engineering, Media and Performance
[REMAP]
"Cultural Civic Computing"
Watch the video (real media)
Saturday, March 4
10:15 - 10:30 am
Introduction by Victoria Vesna
Watch the video (real media)
10:30 – 1:30 pm
Art | Science ======= Session moderated
by UC DARNet director, Victoria Vesna, UCLA
Victoria Vesna, UC DARNet Executive
Board and Steering Committee Member
UCLA Design | Media Arts
Director UCLA Art|Science Center and UC DARNet
Jim Gimzewski
UCLA Chemistry and Biochemistry
Executive Member of the California Nanosystems Institute (CNSI)
Water, Waves and frequencies of Life and Death
In this talk, we will present our latest collaborative work where we continue
to explore scientific, spiritual and artistic concepts loosely inspired
by the concepts of ‘nothingness’ and wave particle duality.
Using nanotechnology research where instruments are utilized to explore
movement and audio of living cells and the metamorphosis of the Monarch
butterfly, we explore the importance of the 'inaudible' using sound frequencies
in relation to pollution, mental, physical and environmental. We use water
as a primary conduit of transmission of frequencies and projections in
Waterbowls: moon, drop, sound, oil, which will premiere at the Beijing
new media festival this June. Our goal is to create an experiental project
that uses dynamic aesthetics and sounds derived from wave properties of
water and light. Philosophically we are interested in exploring the connection
of our global crisis with water to our collective state of mind. We also
connect to the practical work pursues by the Water Technology Research
center at UCLA.
Watch the video (real media)
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Bowen Chung
UCLA Media, Medicine and Communities
Henri Lucas
UCLA Design|Media Arts
The Katrina Project
Development of a communication system for the survivors, focused on raising
awareness around mental health. Working with a range of regional community
organizations, including: Ecumenical Congress of
Black Churches, LA County Department for Mental Health, UCLA RAND center
for Media and Medicine for Communities and Healthy African American Families.
http://artsci.ucla.edu/katrina.html
Watch the video (real media)
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Elliot Anderson
UCSC Art: Electronic Media & Digital Arts New Media (DANM)
"UnNatural Selection"
Collaborative project with DANM graduate students: Tyler Freedman, Adam
Jerugim, James Khazar, Cynthia Payne, Nichole Smith, no.e (Jennifer) Parker,
and Alan Tollefson.
The 21st Century presents us with expanded capability developed by science
and technology to create new forms of life through genetic modification.
We feel it is important to examine this new capability in alternative
and unexpected ways as a method to create discourse on the potentials
of this new power. By recognizing this future and commenting on its science
and culture, we hope to develop a critical and ethical response to what
seems to be the inevitability of these technologies. In our field of research,
we choose to explore transgenic plants – plants, crafted through
gene splicing, often combining animal with plant genes. Where do we place
these plant/animal hybrids in the taxonomy of life? We answer this question
by creating another kingdom that functions in the geno-liminal space between
animal and plant. Our research explores this kingdom and its structures
by creating new plant forms.
URL: http://danm.ucsc.edu/web/PreliminaryDANM250APage
Watch the video (real media)
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Beatriz da Costa, UC DARNet Executive
Board and Steering Committee Member
UCI Studio Art, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Associate Director, Arts Computation Engineering Graduate Program
Tau-Mu Yi
UCI Department of Development and Cell Biology Center for Complex Biological
Systems
"Blue Dishes and Public Breathing: Experiments in Air Pollution Biosensing"
Da Costa/Yi will present their current investigation into possibilities
for the development of low cost personal air pollution monitoring devices.
Rather than building electronic circuitry and expensive calibration systems,
da Costa/Yi look at living organisms as a source of inspiration and subject
of study. How could carbon monoxide "sensing" in bacteria be
used to indicate current CO levels in the air? Could the same be done
for NO? Carbon Monoxide and Nitrogen Oxides are among the best street-level
air pollution indicators. Da Costa/Yi are currently experimenting with
bacteria and yeast cells which change color upon exposure to Carbon Monoxide
and Nitric Oxide. However, the future goal is to develop a modified strain
of Arabidopsis (plant), which will behave in a similar manner. As a new
form of house or garden plant, this organism would change color and make
current air pollution levels visible to walkers-by and household members.
Watch the video (real media)
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Shlomo Dubnov
UCSD Department of Music
Research Abstract: Account of recent advances in Style research
It is increasingly important today to model aspects of "how"
things are done (rather a "what" is done), the implied rather
than direct meaning and find formulations that exhibit sensitivity to
manner rather than subject matter when art is digitally represented or
generated. This includes formal models of art that include grammar, syntactical
models and statistical (so called machine-learning) approaches, where
the choice of rules or regularities (and deviations) also represents the
artist's instantiation of personal or collective (cultural) stylistic
ideals. Templates (such as note sequences or abstract drawings) can be
used to build statistical models that are capable of generating new variations
that are stylistically consistent with the original examples. The talk
will also report on a forthcoming book that is co-edited by experts from
language, game and music fields.
Watch
the video (real media)
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Marko Peljhan
UCSB Department of Art and the Media Arts and Technology program
THE INTERPOLAR TRANSNATIONAL ART AND SCIENCE CONSORTIUM - MAKROLAB mark
VII and LADOMIR ANTARCTIC BASE systems 2007-2017
The I-TASC is an international consortium of artistic, cultural and scientific
organizations from all continents, joining up to develop and operate two
polar art and science stations starting within the framework of the International
Polar Year 2007-2008. Research and development opportunities include work
in the architecture, design, habitability, biospherics, materials, sensors,
unmanned systems, networks, data display-aggregation-distribution systems,
communications, intelligent systems and responsive environments fields.
The projects are being run on the consortium level and include work with
the Inuit nation of the Canadian Arctic starting in 2006 and field work
in the Arctic and the Antarctic from 2007 on.
http://www.ipy.org/development/eoi/proposal-details.php?id=417
Watch
the video (real media)
2:30 – 4 pm
Database Aesthetics ======= Session moderated
by George LeGrady, UCSB
George Legrady, UC DARNet Executive
Board & Steering Committee Member, UCSB Media, Art and Technology
program
Rama Hoetzlein, Media Arts & Technology program.
"Making Visible the Invisible" Visualizing the Collective Data
Space: The Library As Data Exchange Center, a public arts commission for
the Seattle Central Library. “Making Visible the Invisible”
is a commission for the Rem Koolhaas designed Seattle Public Library,
featuring the visualization of the circulation of books-by-the-hour for
the next ten years. The installation consists of six large LCD panels
located on a glass wall horizontally behind the librarians’ main
information desk in the Mixing Chamber, a large open 19,500-square-foot
space dedicated to information retrieval and public-accessible computer
research. The visualizations consist of real-time animations generated
by custom designed software, using processed data, based on the circulation
of books and media being checked out of the library.
http://www.mat.ucsb.edu/~g.legrady/glWeb/Projects/spl/spl.html
Watch
the video (real media)
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Amy Alexander, UCSD Visual Arts
Vincent Rabaud, UCSD Computer Science and Engineering
SVEN: Surveillance Video Entertainment Network (aka "AI to the People")
Research Abstract: SVEN: Surveillance Video Entertainment Network (aka
"AI to the People") is an autonomous system comprised of a camera,
a monitor, and two computers that can be set up in public places - especially
in situations where a CCTV monitor might be expected. The real-time software
consists of a custom computer vision application that tracks pedestrians
and detects their characteristics, and a video processing application
that receives this information and uses it to generate music-video-like
visuals from the live camera feed. The resulting video and audio are displayed
on a monitor in the public space, interrupting the standard security-camera-type
display each time a potential rock star is detected.
http://deprogramming.us/ai
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Lev Manovich
UCSD, Visual Arts
CALAB (Cultural Analysis Lab)
The new CALAB (Cultural Analysis Lab) is currently being developed by
Lev Manovich (UCSD, Visual Arts), Jordan Crandall (UCSD, Visual Arts),
Noah Wardrip-Fruin (UCSD, Communication), and Ph.D. students working in
new media at UCSD. The Lab aims to develop new approaches for the production
and analysis of culture that draw on methods from digital arts, computer
science, social science, and humanities. The Lab is housed in new Calit2
research institute on the UCSD campus.
CALAB will collaborate with anybody who shares its vision, to be presented
in my talk. Manovich will also briefly summarize and present the table
of contents of two news books he expects to complete by the end of 2006:
Info-Aesthetics and Expanded Image.
http://www.manovich.net/TEXTS_07.HTM
http://research.calit2.net/calab/
(dummary site at the moment)
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