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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

IDIA will be presenting an interactive 3D game developed by students participating in its Immersion Seminar this Thursday, February 7 at Mitchell Place Studios during the Downtown Muncie Arts Walk. Works created by animation and electronic arts students will be showcased as well. The Arts Walk runs from 5-8 on the first Thursday of each month.

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.

Students participating in IDIA’s Immersion Seminar were named as a winner for an Award of Excellence at the International Digital Media and Arts Association (iDMAa) 2007 National Conference. The award included a $250 cash prize and was presented to only two groups out of the twelve universities participating in the conference’s student showcase. The International Digital Media & Arts Association hosted the Ideas 07: Beyond Boundaries conference in Philadelphia on November 7-11. The project allows the user to manipulate a digital world with wireless objects. Through the use of Radio Frequency Identification Devices (RFID), the virtual world can detect the presence of real-world objects and use them to manipulate its own attributes. In the case of this project, physical cubes link the user with virtual cubes within the system and allow the user to call up media such as video and sound. The system uses the software Quest 3D for real-time VR rendering and interactive animation, and MaxMSP for harvesting and inputting RFID data. Additionally, users can navigate the 3D virtual world with the use of a trackball. The project will be on display at the BSU Mitchel Place Studio December 6 during the downtown Artswalk.

Idylls, a video and music composition directed by IDIA Director, John Fillwalk, was recently named the Best Short Film of the 2007 Harvest Moon Film Festival. Idylls, created in collaboration with composer Joseph Harckanko, is an impressionistic montage, looking to the traveling Midwestern carnival as a transformative environment. Harvest Moon is a film festival showcasing the works of Midwestern filmmakers and/or works focusing on the Midwest.

IDIA Faculty Fellow, Jesse Allison, is currently developing an interactive art installation for the Great Ideas Competition. This installation will be displayed in the Arts Garden of Circle Centre Mall in downtown Indianapolis.