Author: IDIA Lab

U Museum Ostwall in Dortmund, Germany opened its doors to a 7000 person reception.  The museum is the largest in Germany. Our International Intermedia Art Archive through the Hans Breder Foundation (J. Fillwalk, President) will open at this museum in Spring 2011 http://bit.ly/aDvNwu & http://bit.ly/dAXjvL

IDIA had a conference call with Avatar Reality in Hawaii with their CEO, President, CTO, and CFO on IDIA development in Blue Mars. Avatar Reality president, Jim Sink is presenting IDIA simulation work (which will be launched on November 15^th, 2010) to the Smithsonian Museum this week.

As a follow-up to last week’s conference with IDIA Research Fellow Jeff Berg, IBM, John Fillwalk and IDIA Immersion Seminar students were invited to present our Microsoft Surface interface project to a 10 member IBM Interactive team made up of designers and programmers based in Chicago. Provost’s Immersive Learning Grant funded the pursuing commercialization of this product.

MIT Press. John Fillwalk work, Final Wisdom I exhibited in SIGGRAPH in Los Angeles last month is published in Leonardo: The International Society for the Arts, Science and Technology article published by The MIT Press. http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/leonardo/summary/v043/43.4.fillwalk.html

Partnering with CAP, IDIA modeling and animation staff will be undergoing a training in March on the new FARO 3D and Gexcel Laser scanner and Gexcel software.

John Fillwalk and Jesse Allison present to the Ohio Learning Network, UCit Instructional & Research Computing at University of Cincinnati on their Blackboard / Second Life Building Block Project.

More Information: http://www.oln.org/emerging_technologies/second_life.php

Between Two Worlds:Virtuality in Arts and Teaching

John Fillwalk, Ball State University
Jesse Allison, Ball State University

Abstract

Virtual worlds provide a platform in which to construct compelling experiences not possible within the material and temporal constraints of the physical world. The virtual realm has the potential to be united and engaged by physicality–informing and transforming the audience’s experience of exhibition in a profoundly transformative nature. The Institute for Digital Intermedia Arts at Ball State University has been incorporating mixed-reality approaches into museum exhibitions, musical performances, installation art, and interface over the last several years. This paper documents specific explorations of the opportunities of the Second Life environment for mixed-reality experiences–analyzing approaches to bridging the worlds such as media streaming, client-side interaction, an external web server communication hub, as well as opportunities for human/computer interaction.

More Information: http://aisel.aisnet.org/mg2009/6

Blackboard Greenhouse Project for Virtual Worlds: The IDIA Second Life/Blackboard Building Block Project
BbWorld ’09
7/15/2009 12:00 PM – 12:45 PM
National Harbor 2

Theme
Expanding and Improving Online Learning, Strategic Initiatives

Special Topics
Featured Speaker(s), Openness and Extending Blackboard Software

Speakers
John Fillwalk, Director of the Institute for Digital Intermedia Arts, Ball State University
Session Description
Ball State University’s Institute for Digital Intermedia Arts (IDIA) has produced a bridging toolset, linking the multi-user virtual environment of Second Life with Blackboard Learn – providing a unified, secure and fluid hybrid learning experience. This project is funded by the Blackboard Greenhouse Grant for Virtual Worlds and has produced an open-source Building Block.

IDIA at Ball State University (BSU) created a virtual and web-based software toolset to manage, administrate and facilitate any hybrid Second Life / Blackboard Learn instructional experience. These Blackboard Building Blocks and Second Life scripts were specifically developed for a “hands-on” cinematography course taught with a complete set of virtualized filmmaking equipment. This pilot course also served as a prototype for Blackboard courses from any discipline that uses Second Life – especially in the delivery of studio, laboratory or other hands-on modes of learning – extending the modes of typical distance-learning offerings. The pairing of Blackboard technology augments Second Life as is not designed with course management tools to operate effective self-contained distance instruction.

Join us for a discussion of these tools, released by IDIA, which have resulted in the public availability of Blackboard Building Blocks that facilitate automated communication between Blackboard Learn and Second Life, and more generally, the conceptual template for using Blackboard Learn to manage virtual world creation, access, and activity in Second Life.For more information-http://www.nmc.org/files/ACUTA_Article_SecondLife.pdfhttp://www.bsu.edu/news/article/0,1370,-1019-61661,00.html

http://campustechnology.com/articles/2008/03/bsus-entry-into-second-life-is-grounded-in-emerging-media-expertise.aspx

http://campustechnology.com/articles/2008/08/2008-campus-technology-innovators-virtual-world-learning.aspx

http://www.acuta.org/wcm/acuta/pdf/iea2010_brochure.pdf

http://www.blackboard.com/Company/Media-Center/Press-Releases/Archive.aspx?releaseid=1109469

More Information: http://www.bbworld.com/2009/bbworld/content.asp?id=1487

Blue Mars is a free to play massively multiplayer virtual world featuring stunning graphics, realistic characters, and endless social bonding activities. The Blue Mars virtual world is made up of an expanding set of independently operated cities that feature unique themes, activities, and attractions such as shopping, avatar customization, unique personal spaces, and games like dancing, racing, and golf. Cites on Blue Mars are tied together with a unified login system, persistent global Avatar ID, and platform wide participation based reward system.

More Information: http://www.bluemarsdev.com/

Andy Beane has formed a large summer class with many students with different academic majors and skill sets to come together and make a finished animated short. IDIA’s Trevor Danehy assisted the class in creating their workflow pipeline with the integration of motion capture. The class, which named themselves ‘Third Floor Studios (on account that most of the work takes place on the third floor of the Arts and Journalism  building), wanted to use motion capture to assist them in animating characters due to the rather small amount of time the summer session allots for them. Motion capture is the process of recording a live person’s physical movements and transferring them to data that can be applied to an animated character. Ball State’s Biomechanics Laboratory provided the motion capture facilities and equipment to capture the actor’s movements. Trevor Danehy helped line the workflow in binding the tracking point data to an animated character’s digital skeleton, using programs such as Autodesk Maya and Motionbuilder. A concentration on keeping the software pipeline as minimal as possible is pivotal to creating an animated short in a set timeframe.

The Hans Breder Foundation Board of Directors meeting took place in Chicago on May 16th at the Drake Hotel. Board member John Fillwalk attended the annual meeting and planned activities for the upcoming year – including an exchange with the University of Dortmund.

More Information: http://www.artnet.com/artist/162854/hans-breder.html

Members of the IDIA spent the afternoon testing Ball State’s Shafer Tower in order to connect it to the virtual worlds.  The testing is in preparation for an upcoming outdoor event allowing people to perform the Carillon bells via Second Life.

John Fillwalk and Jesse Allison will exhibit their hybrid reality artwork, Traversal for Boston during the The Boston Cyberarts Festival. The festival is the first and largest collaboration of new media artists working in North America.

More Information: http://bostoncyberarts.org/

Ball State University has won yet another real-life national honor for one of its Second Life initiatives.

The Institute for Digital Intermedia Arts (IDIA) has earned a 2009 Institutional Excellence in Information Communications Technology Award from ACUTA, the Association for Information Communications Technology Professionals in Higher Education.

The organization will formally present the honor to John Fillwalk, IDIAA director and associate professor of electronic art, at its annual conference April 19-22 in Atlanta. The award recognizes IDIAA for its Aesthetic Camera filmmaking course and integrated Blackboard custom software, offered through the online world of Second Life.

The course teaches cinematography techniques and allows students to gain hands-on experience with equipment and resources that might not ordinarily be available to them. Within the virtual studio, they can check out cameras, dollies, light systems and more to create their own original movies. They can also film using avatars in costume in a wide variety of virtual set locations.

“Ball State’s Aesthetic Camera is a superb example of the type of innovation that ACUTA’s Institutional Excellence Award is designed to recognize,” said Walt Magnussen, ACUTA’s immediate past president and awards committee chairman. “This blending of virtual learning and distance education leverages the best of both the IT and the telecommunications disciplines.”

When first launched, the Aesthetic Camera course received Blackboard Inc.’s inaugural Greenhouse Grant for Virtual Worlds for its work linking the interactive technology of Second Life and Blackboard, which produces Web-based, course management software. The award cited the innovative combination, which allows Ball State to extend virtualized studio and laboratory experiences to an online distance education audience.

The course’s equipment has been virtualized and scripted, which means that it is quite similar to its real-world counterparts, Fillwalk said.

“Preparing our students for a changing world through immersive learning opportunities is a top priority for Ball State,” he said. “The IDIAA is leveraging Ball State’s success in emerging media and creating innovative media art and design experiences for our students in both real and virtual environs.”

The Aesthetic Camera and other opportunities available at the IDIAA are part of Ball State’s Emerging Media Initiative, a planned $17.7 million investment to accelerate economic benefits to Indiana with media-savvy human capital.

More Information: www.acuta.org

Michael Pounds, Jesse Allison and John Fillwalk will exhibit an interactive installation completed with assistance from students in the DFAB institute. For a complete schedule and more information about the event, visit http://seamus.sweetwater.com.

The students of the 2009 spring seminar at the Virginia Ball Center launched their interactive children’s exhibit at the Minnetrisa Center on April 17th. The exhibit is designed for elementary children to gain a better understanding of honeybees and the significant role they have in our world. Through the Human Computer Interface lab sponsored by the IDIA, students were able to design and implement the interactive aspects of the exhibit which will remain at Minnetrista through August.

More Information: http://bsu.edu/youmeandthebee/You,%20Me%20%26%20the%20Bee/Homepage.html

TechPoint Releases Nominees for 2009 Mira Awards Presented by BKD

Record Number of Entries Proves Challenging for Independent Judging Panel

Winners and Finalists for the 2009 Mira Awards presented by BKD will be revealed on May 16, at the awards gala, but TechPoint has released the names of 83 companies, schools and individuals from around the state nominated in 11 different competitive categories.

According to TechPoint President and CEO Jim Jay, the Mira Awards planning committee received more nominations this year than in any other year since the program’s inception 10 years ago.

Three independent panels of judges made up of business and community leaders were tasked with evaluating the 83 nominations in 11 different categories. The finalists and winners will be revealed at the 2009 TechPoint Mira Awards Gala presented by BKD on May 16, which will be held at The Westin Hotel in downtown Indianapolis.

Mira Award

The 2009 Design Communication Conference was held in Atlanta, Georgia from March 25-28th.  This years conference theme is ‘Bridging Communication’ and featured a paper presentation from Antonieta Anguio titled “Collaborating in a Virtual Multiuser Environment: The Virtual Design Studio Populates Second Life.”  The presentation included the project Las Americas.

More Information: http://designcomm.org/DCA08/IndexDCA2009.htm

Muncie/Delaware Robotics PhyXTGears Team 1720 was given the Autodesk Visualization Award March 20 during the FIRST Robotics Regional Competition at Purdue University for an animated film they created. For those who wish to see the winning Animation video:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RD-gbbC1kCc

Each year, Autodesk, Inc. recognizes excellence in student animation that “clearly and creatively illustrates the spirit of the FIRST Robotics.” FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) is an organization affiliated with NASA, that inspires and motivates high school students to become interested and involved in science and technology. FIRST robotics competitions are held annually on the regional and national level.

PhyXTGears produced a 30 second animated film for the FIRST theme “Using Biomimicry for Sustainability”, which promoted the benefits of “Gecko Tape.” Don’t go looking for it at the local hardware store.  “The gecko-based non-chemical adhesive is currently being developed at several universities,” said Eric Jiang, one of the team members who worked on the animation project. Other members of the group include Jackson Eflin, Emily Kao, Morgan Moncada, and Shelby Smith, led by mentor Andy Beane(IDIAA Faculty Fellow), of BSU’s Department of Art.  This was the 2nd Autodesk Visualization Award for Team 1720 in the team’s 4 year tenure.

Last weekend, March 20-21 was PhyXTGears’ first official competition of the new year. Thirty-five teams from Indiana, Illinois, Ohio and Kentucky gathered at Purdue to play in the 2009 game challenge called “Lunacy”, in honor of the 40th anniversary of NASA’s success of landing a man on the moon.

Of the 35 teams present, at the end of the qualifying matches, Muncie’s own ranked #1!  Teams play best 2 out of 3 for the Elimination rounds. The third and final match was a close game. When time ran out, the two alliances were tied at 60 points each. A break was taken while the judges recounted the points. After several minutes wait, the official score was announced, 60 to 62. PhyXTGears lost the 3rd match by only 2 points. You can’t get much closer than that!  Team 1720 ranked #7 overall after the Elimination rounds.

Links:
Robotics Team Homepage
Ball Bearings Story: A Well Oiled Machine

More Information: http://muncierobots.iweb.bsu.edu/gallery/2009/Boilermaker.html

LoVid is the New York based interdisciplinary artist duo Tali Hinkis and Kyle Lapidus. Their work includes live video installation, sculptures, digital prints, patchworks, media projects, performances, and video recording. They combine many opposing elements, contrasting hard electronics and soft patchworks; handmade items and machine produced objects; and analog and digital. LoVid has performed, exhibited, and lectured at The Museum of Modern Art, Neuberger Museum, PS1, The Butler Institute of American Art Evolution Festival (UK), The Kitchen, Kansas City Art Institute, Chicago Art Institute, The New Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Institute of Contemporary Art London among many others. LoVid has been part of the artist in residence program at Eyebeam, Harvestworks, iEAR, Alfred University, and Stevens Institute of Technology, has has received grants and awards from Experimental TV Center, NYSCA, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and the Greenwall Foundation.

More Information: www.lovid.org

The IDIA Seminar has begun work on a project that involves the Ball State Museum of Art. The project will focus on scanning various sculptures and virtually recreating their original settings.

February 25th

Interior screens:
Bounding Box
Jesse Allison, Interactive design
John Fillwalk, Visual design

Bounding Box is a live, digitally processed installation designed to be driven by public interaction and incorporates live video from the interior of the BSU Indianapolis Center. Participants’ movements in the local environment manipulate the virtual water and cause the moving box to move within the frame. You can literally play the piece by positioning your body in front of the four screens. The more vigorous the movement, the more turbulent the liquid becomes.

Exterior screens:
The Tempus Series:
Oriens I, II, III;  Meridian IV, V, VI;  Nox VII, VIII, IX

Jesse Allison, Interactive design
John Fillwalk, Visual design

The Tempus Series transforms viewers’ gestures into flowing movements of nine compositions –movement, colors, textures, and forms dynamically shift amongst passages in the series. Camera tracking follows live motion in front of the street-side display, allowing for the direct influence of the composition by passers-by and traffic. This large series of works rotates through three sets of passages during the morning, afternoon and evening hours.

John Fillwalk presented recent IDIA research in virtual worlds at the 2009 Mardi Gras Conference. Fillwalk and Allison, together with the IDIA, have been exploring hybrid-reality approaches to their work in pedagogy, performance, installation, and interface over the last several years at BSU. They have incorporated approaches to bridging worlds in such applications as streaming media, external webserver communications, and human-computer interaction.

The LSU Center for Computation & Technology , in cooperation with the LSU Arts, Visualization, Advanced Technologies and Research (AVATAR) Initiative , is hosting the 16th annual Mardi Gras Conference, February 19-21, 2009, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The Mardi Gras conferences take place annually, concentrating each year on a different computational theme of current relevance. This year’s theme will be: “Virtual Worlds: New Realms for Culture, Creativity, Commerce, Computation and Communication.” As always, the conference concludes with an afternoon trip to New Orleans for one of the city’s largest Mardi Gras parades, Endymion.

Although the concept of virtual worlds has deep roots within the world of networked computing, it is only within the past few years that virtual worlds have captured the imagination of so many in such diverse fields as art, music, business, philosophy, psychology, sociology and mass communication. Moreover, there have been very few events that have tried to organize a broad interdisciplinary perspective around virtual worlds, their adoption by various constituencies, and their use by artists, musicians, historians, designers, educators, archivists, computer scientists, gamers, businesses and entrepreneurs.

The 2009 Mardi Gras Conference will bring together individuals working in this broad area in an attempt to foster information exchange, enable community building and project future trends across the multitude of disciplines that have engaged this technology. This event can be seen as a follow-on to the Emory University workshop in February 2008 on “Virtual Worlds and New Realities in Commerce, Politics, and Society.” The 2009 Mardi Gras Conference will feature workshops on the various technologies, panels, posters and papers in addition to several invited keynote speakers.

More Information: http://www.mardigrasconference.org/

The online interactive software program Second Life has become an emerging place of architecture research that ranges from a practice tool to an open-ended exploration of design context and expression. Especially in architecture schools, its immersive 3D environments allow users to conceptualize and design a space quickly, thus opening it up for investigation by other users, which allows designers to see how it will be used and how people will circulate through it.

Vasquez de Velasco and his students have been using Second Life to design a hotel and surge hospital with the Las Americas Network. Proving Second Life’s ability to obliterate geographic distances, Las Americas is composed of students from Ball State and from 30 architecture schools across Latin America. Ball State’s Institute for Digital Intermedia Arts and Animation (IDIAA) helped to execute Las Americas design ideas, while BSA Lifestructures, an Indianapolis firm with a robust health-care practice, reviewed and evaluated students’ work.

More Information: http://info.aia.org/aiarchitect/thisweek09/0220/0220d_secondlife.cfm

High school robotics teams from all over Indiana have been invited to participate in the 2nd annual practice scrimmage Sunday, Feb. 15, from 1 – 5 p.m. at the Ball Gym, Ball State University, to see how well their robots will perform during national competitions later this year. This event is hosted by PhyXTGears, Muncie’s Robotics Team #1720, comprised of high school students from Delaware County. The public is invited to attend the event, parking is free. For directions, visit www.bsu.edu/map/quad4/.  A science and technology program, PhyXTGears is part of an international program called FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology). FIRST (www.usfirst.org) is an organization affiliated with NASA, that inspires and motivates high school students to become interested and involved in science and technology. FIRST robotics competitions are held annually on the regional and national level.

The 2009 game challenge is called “Lunacy”, in honor of the 40th anniversary of NASA’s success of landing a man on the moon. Each team has six weeks to design and build a working robot that can function autonomously and by remote control. This year, game pieces called “orbit balls” will be designated at moon rocks, empty cells and super cells. Two three-team robot alliances have to collect and score points by putting orbit balls into trailers attached to the opposing teams robots. What makes this game even more challenging is that it is played on a low-friction floor, forcing teams to contend with the laws of physics.
Muncie/Delaware FIRST Robotics is a non-profit 501c(3) community-based organization designed to enhance science, math, engineering and technology using an immersive, integrated, problem-solving teaching method. It is run completely by volunteers, and funded by grants, donations and sponsorship. Visit www.muncierobotics.org for more information about the Muncie FIRST robotics team.

More Information: www.muncierobotics.org

John Fillwalk and Jesse Allison’s virtual artwork was prominently incorporated into the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs’ publication Understanding Islam through Virtual Worlds. After a year of research spanning four continents and interviews with dozens of people across the virtual world of the Internet, Carnegie Fellows Rita J. King and Joshua S. Fouts have released their findings from the project at a press conference on January 29^th at 6PM.

The report will include a trilogy of deliverables, including formal public diplomacy policy recommendations for the Obama Administration; a broadcast-quality short machinima documentary; and a graphic book chronicling the people, places and findings of the project.

On Friday, January 30 we will hold a discussion in the virtual world of Second Life and via Twitter to discuss and release the findings. More information about that will be posted later. For those who cannot attend the live event, all of our reports will be downloadable via the web.

More Information: http://dancinginkproductions.com/?page_id=80

MUNCIE, Ind. – For the second year in a row, Ball State students from the Institute for Digital Intermedia Arts (IDIA) Immersion Seminar in Virtual Worlds won the Student Award of Excellence for three interactive digital art projects at the 2008 International Digital Media Arts Association Conference Nov. 6-8 in Savannah, GA. Awards were given to students for projects that involved the Muncie Children’s Museum, Second Life and network visualization software.

Giovanni Rozzi and David Schultz, from the College of Fine Arts, were the class representatives at the conference. Rozzi accepted the award for the design of an interactive exhibit on the senses, which will be installed at the Muncie Children’s Museum. This project was produced in the Human Computer Interface in the Arts, through Music Technology and IDIAA and was funded by the Enhanced Provost Immersion Initiative. The class used radio-frequency identification technology (RFID) to create an exhibit for the museum that enabled children to interact with a display that identifies the senses of taste, smell, sight, sound and touch.

Senior, Jake Baxter, also from the College of Fine Arts, won an award for his work on the Ball State University virtual campus in Second Life, a 3D virtual world.

Graduate student David Schultz won an award for his work using JAVA-based software to examine the activity of any data network, using the information to then create visual, sonic and data representations. For instance, the Office of Information Technology could use this process to visualize all activity across its advanced wireless network.

“What is really evident is the innovation of design in media, and the deep level of understanding of technology that students at Ball State receive,” said John Fillwalk, Director of IDIAA.

The IDIAA recruits students from across campus for their immersion seminar, engaging them in interdisciplinary, collaborative, and new media projects. Fillwalk said as Ball State University’s reputation in emerging media is growing, the recruitment of talented students choosing to pursue advanced emerging media research and studios are finding their way to these innovative opportunities the university has created through the Digital Exchange Grant.

More Information: www.idmaa.org

On Tuesday, Dec 2nd, WISH TV will be premiering a story featuring the IDIA and its use of Second Life in the Las Americas project. The project was a collaboration with the College of Architecture and Planning as well as over 100 students from 10 countries from around the world. The story will premier during the 11pm news.

On Saturday October 11th, Jesse Allison and members of the IDIA will be performing at the Society of Composers Inc. Student Nation Convention. The performance will be held in Sursa Hall at 8pm and will feature the piece ‘Traversal’ for organ, computer and Second Life.

Traversal for Organ, Computer, and Second Life Traversal is a composition exploring connectivity between worlds. As the name implies, it is a temporary link between the live organ in Sursa Hall and the virtual world of Second Life. “Physical” actions and events in the virtual realm compose the work in real time, and the end product being a physical and aural realization of virtual performance. Jesse Allison – Composer/Programmer John Fillwalk – 3d modeling Nick Johnson – Performer Jake Baxter – Performer

The Music Technology department will be hosting an electronic music concert, EM|One, on Tuesday, September 23rd at 8:00pm in Sursa Hall. The concert will feature members of the IDIAA performing music remotely through Second Life for a live audience located in Sursa Hall.

Displaced Resonance, an interactive sound installation developed by IDIA Faculty Fellow, Dr. Mike Pounds, will be shown at Mitchell Place Studio during the Downtown Muncie Arts Walk. The Arts Walk will be on Thursday, April 3 and runs from 5-8 PM.

A press conference took place within Second Life presenting the virtual film studios and campus developed as part of IDIA’s Online Mediated Curriculum Project. The presentation was on Thursday, March 20th at 10 AM and was attended by President Jo Ann M. Gora and other BSU Administrators.

IDIA’s Online Mediated Curriculum Project has recently been awarded a $25,000 grant by Blackboard, Inc. The Greenhouse Grant for Virtual Worlds was awarded to IDIA for its virtual film studio within in the realm of Second Life. The grant was awarded due to the project’s adaptive release features between Blackboard and Second Life.

For more information visit this link: http://www.blackboard.com/company/press/release.aspx?id=1109469