Marius Igitangaza Ngabo is a dedicated Master’s Student in Landscape Architecture at Ball State University, with a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture from the University of Rwanda (2021). His diverse project experience showcases his creativity, resilience, and commitment to learning. Captivated by landscape architecture during his undergraduate studies, Marius envisions incorporating design and planning expertise to transform natural environments. He is driven by a passion for enhancing people’s experiences in outdoor spaces, focusing on how design enhances feelings, perceptions, and mental health. By connecting natural and human systems, he strives to develop solutions that benefit people, wildlife, and the environment as a whole.
Natalie Yates is an Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture at Ball State University. Her scholarly work is situated at the intersection of representation and analysis of landscape systems. Her research focuses on dynamic landscape illustration and simulation, sensing methods in design process (including DIY sensing technologies, UAVs [drones], and GIS), post-industrial landscape remediation, and urban agriculture. Natalie teaches design studios, design communication, time-based media/technology methodologies, and UAS technologies.
Natalie is Ball State University’s 2020-2021 University Design Research Fellow for Exhibit Columbus. Her design research proposal and installation entitled “Calibrate” will open during Exhibit Columbus in Fall 2021. Additionally, Natalie is president of the Board of Directors of Farmished, a local non-profit for promoting a thriving local sustainable food system. Farmished is currently transforming a former machine foundry site in south Muncie into an Urban Agriculture Training Farm.
Natalie has published research at the Association for Computer Aided Design in Architecture (ACADIA) national conference and co-authored the book Modeling the Environment: Techniques and Tools for the 3D Illustration of Dynamic Landscapes (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2012).
Kristin Barry is an assistant professor of Architecture at Ball State where she teaches courses in architecture history and theory. She was previously an Instructor at Penn State University, where she taught graduate courses in architectural history/theory, and survey courses in ancient art history and architecture. After receiving her Bachelor of Science in Architecture from the University of Cincinnati, Kristin began working as an archaeological architect, and has worked in Greece, France, Israel, Egypt, and Turkey to document and interpret historical sites for a modern audience. Following her Master of Architecture from the University of Cincinnati, she was on the 2008 Masterplanning team at the Archaeological Site of Ancient Troy in Turkey working to redesign the tourism site to accommodate modern needs. Her research and publication explore how architecture and design in particular describe and interpret ancient remains, as well as change or affect historical understanding at some of the most popular archaeological sites in the world. Kristin is currently the site architect at the Hierakonpolis excavation in Egypt and volunteers with the PUP Global Heritage Consortium.
Dr. Michael Rhoades is a multimedia artist and researcher. He joined the IDIA Lab team in August of 2019 where his role is that of a digital audio researcher creating generative algorithmic systems and configuring venues intended for multi-channel diffusion and stereoscopic projection.
In the spring of 2018 Michael received a BFA in Creative Technologies from the School of Visual Arts at Virginia Tech. Continuing there, in the summer of 2018 he began pursuing an interdisciplinary PhD in Computer Science, Musical Art, and Visual Art, which he completed in the fall of 2020.
The foci of his practice-based research reside in the areas of holograms, holophons, and supercomputing each contributing toward the production of novel visual music compositions and the development leading edge theoretical perspectives. After completing his graduate coursework at Virginia Tech, Michael returned to Indiana to be closer to family where he continues his research and creative practice remotely.
As a digital animator, painter, filmmaker, composer, computer scientist, theorist, and researcher, Michael’s multi-faceted artistic and academic endeavors continue to expand in an ever-broadening scope as the creative impulse inspires and requires. Examples of his music, visual art, visual music, and of his philosophical and technical writing are located at http://www.perceptionfactory.com.
Kevin is an Ohio Valley archaeologist with a primary research interest in the Late Prehistoric period (ca. AD 1000 – 1600) of the Middle Ohio Valley, particularly how humans interact with the environment. He has published collections based research, results of fieldwork, and theoretical models for the Middle Woodland (ca. 50 BC – AD 400) and Late Prehistoric periods. Other research interests include evolutionary approaches to human behavior, siteless survey and regional analysis, paleoenvironments, and systematics. Kevin also has an interest in public education and has regularly given presentation to grade school and high school classes about archaeology and science.
Recent Publications:
Hart, John P. and Kevin C. Nolan 2015 Comment on Cook and Comstock’s “Evaluating the Old Wood Problem in a Temperate Climate: A Fort Ancient Case Study”. American Antiquity 80(3):610-612.
Nolan, Kevin C., Samantha Blatt, Paul Sciulli, and Christine K. Thompson 2015 A Late Woodland Red Ochre Burial Cache in Madison County, Ohio. Manuscript accepted for North American Archaeologist 36(3).
Nolan, Kevin C. and Brian G. Redmond 2015 Geochemical and Geophysical Prospecting at Three Multicomponent Sites in the Southwestern Lake Erie Basin: A Pilot Study. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 2:94-105. DOI: 10.1016/j.jasrep.2015.01.002
Nolan, Kevin C. and Paul Scull 2014 Rejoinder to Sciulli and Purcell: Two Late Prehistoric Dogs from the Reinhardt Site (33PI880), Pickaway County, Ohio. Pennsylvania Archaeologist 84(2):65-73.
Nolan, Kevin C. 2014 Prehistoric Landscape Exploitation Strategies Through Time in Central Ohio: A GIS Analysis. Journal of Ohio Archaeology 3:12-37.
Nolan, Kevin C. 2014 Prospecting for Prehistoric Gardens: Results of a Pilot Study. Short Report accepted for Archaeological Prospection 21(2):147-154. DOI: 10.1002/arp.1465.
Nolan, Kevin C. and Robert A. Cook 2012 A Method for Multiple Cost Surface Evaluation of a Model of Fort Ancient Interaction. Manuscript prepared for Least Cost Analysis of Socionatural Landscapes: Archaeological Case Studies, edited by DA White, and S Surface-Evans, pp 67-93, plate 5. University of Utah Press.
Roos, Christopher I. and Kevin C. Nolan 2012 Phosphates, Plowzones, and Plazas: A Minimally Invasive Approach to Infer Settlement Structure of Plowed Village Sites in the Midwestern USA. Journal of Archaeological Science39(1):23-32, doi:10.1016/j.jas.2011.06.033.
Nolan, Kevin C. and Robert A. Cook 2011 A Critique of Late Prehistoric Systematics in the Middle Ohio Valley. North American Archaeologist 32(4):293-325.
Nolan, Kevin C. 2011 Distributional Survey of a Fort Ancient Village in Pickaway County, Ohio: Summary of 2007 Reinhardt Site Survey. Midcontinental Journal of Archaeology 36(1):105-130.
Nolan, Kevin C. and Steven P. Howard 2010 Using Evolutionary Archaeology and Evolutionary Ecology to Explain Cultural Elaboration: The Case of Middle Ohio Valley Woodland Period Ceremonial Subsistence. North American Archaeology 31(2):119-154.
Nolan, Kevin C. and Robert A. Cook 2010 Volatile Climate Conditions Cahokia: Comment on Benson, Pauketat and Cook 2009. American Antiquity 75(4):978-983.
Nolan, Kevin C. and Robert A. Cook 2010 An Evolutionary Model of Social Change in the Middle Ohio Valley: Was Social Complexity Impossible During the Late Woodland but Mandatory During the Late Prehistoric? Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 29:62-79; doi:10.1016/j.jaa.2009.10.004.
Douglas Seefeldt is digital historian with teaching and research interests that focus on the intersections of history and memory in the American West. He arrived at Clemson University in the fall of 2020 after spending eight years in the Department of History at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, where he was founding Research Director of the Digital Scholarship Lab from the fall of 2016 through the spring of 2020, a 2014-15 Fellow at the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University where he participated in the Workshop on Multimedia History and Literature: New Directions in Scholarly Design, and an Emerging Media Fellow with the BSU Center for Media Design from 2012-14.
James Connolly is Professor of History and Director of the Center for Middletown Studies at Ball State University.. He is the author of An Elusive Unity: Urban Democracy and Machine Politics in Industrializing America (Cornell University Press) and The Triumph of Ethnic Progressivism: Urban Political Culture in Boston , 1900-1925 (Harvard University Press). He also edited After the Factory: Reinventing America’s Industrial Small Cities (Lexington Books) and has published numerous articles and essays in edited volumes and journals such as Social Science History, theJournal of Urban History, and the Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. Connolly’s research focuses on American urban, political, and ethnic history in the 1870-1930 period. He is currently at work on “What Middletown Read,” a study of print culture and urban life at the turn of the twentieth century, in collaboration with Frank Felsenstein.
3D Modeller and Animator Adam graduated from Ball State with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2012, then returned to pursue his Master’s of Fine Arts in Animation the following year. After two years with IDIA Lab as a graduate assistant, Adam continued his time with the team as staff starting in 2014. As a 3D generalist, Adam’s skillset primarily includes modelling, texturing, lighting, rendering, and compositing. In addition to his 3D work, Adam is also a 107 certified sUAS/drone pilot and spends his free time travelling the country to compete in professional-level drone racing competitions.
Neil earned his B.S. in the Digital Media Arts program at Huntington University in Huntington, IN. During his years there, he studied various traditional animation techniques, computer animation, and computer graphics while also working on several freelance projects and showcasing his films in Huntington’s annual media showcase. Following his graduation in the summer of 2008, he joined the IDIA at Ball State as a virtual worlds 3D modeler and animator.
Jeff Berg is a user experience expert at IBM Interactive. Jeff has more than 10 years of social computing development experience with expertise in rich internet application programming, community strategy, usability, user experience, 2d design, 3d content creation, and emerging technology adoption. Jeff focuses on community relations projects which use internet technologies to augment museum and cultural spaces. His interaction development experience includes MoMA New York, The Egyptian Museum in Cairo, The Palace Museum Beijing (The Forbidden City), The Smithsonian National Museum Of African American History and Culture and more.
Jeff has leveraged his rich interaction design experience on commercial projects which include Zula Patrol (the children’s television show), Circuit City, Aviva, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Epcot, Volvo, LL Bean, Steelcase and PNC Bank.
As a consultant Jeff has built interface prototypes and design concepts for McDonalds, Mazda, Coca Cola, American Signature, Discover, Exelon, Sears and more.
Jeff collaborated as a primary author of Beginning ActionScript 2 textbook in 2005 through Wiley Wrox publishing. After graduating from The Massachusetts College of Art in the mid nineties he spent some time painting in Ireland and Boston MA. Jeff has created immersive artworks using 3d spaces in virtual worlds at Princeton University, University of Southern California The University of Kentucky, Linden Labs, and Ball State University.
Bernard Frischer is a leading scholar in the application of digital technologies to humanities research and education. Frischer has overseen many significant projects, including virtual recreations of sites such as the city of Rome in the time of the emperor Constantine the Great. The works of Frischer and his institute have received international acclaim and have been featured on the Discovery Channel, the RAI, German Public Radio, the BBC, in Newsweek, Scientific American, Business Week, Computer Graphics World, Forbes, the New York Times and many other magazines and newspapers around the world (see www.frischerconsulting.com/rome_reborn/press.php#media_coverage). His Rome model was featured at SIGGRAPH 2008, held in August 2008 in the Los Angeles Convention Center.
Professor Frischer is the author or co-author of six printed books, three e-books and many articles on virtual heritage and on the Classical world and its survival. He is also the editor-in-chief of the Digital Roman Forum web site (http://dlib.etc.ucla.edu/projects/Forum ), which was honored in 2008 by being included on the list of EDSITEMENT, the list of educationally-approved websites selected by the National Endowment for the Humanities. He taught Classics at UCLA from 1976 to 2004. Since then he has been Professor of Art History and Classics at the University of Virginia, where he is also the Director of The Virtual World Heritage Laboratory. He has been a guest professor at the University of Pennsylvania (1993), the University of Bologna (1994), Beijing Normal University (2009), and held the post of Professor-in-Charge of the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome (2001-02). He was a Senior Fellow in the Zukunftskolleg of the University of Konstanz during the 2010-11 academic year.
Frischer’s research career reflects his interest in interdisciplinary approaches, and has included studies in the literature, philosophy, art history and archeology of Greece and Rome. He is the author of several books, including Shifting Paradigms: New Approaches to Horace’s Ars Poetica, and The Sculpted Word: Epicureanism and Philosophical Recruitment. Frischer directed the excavations ofHorace’s Villa, a project sponsored by the American Academy in Rome and the Archeological Superintendency for Lazio of the Italian Ministry of Culture. The findings of this work were the subject of a two-volume report, Horace’s Villa Project 1997-2003 (Oxford: 2007), of which Frischer was editor-in-chief. He is founder and director of the Rome Reborn Project, an international initiative based at the University of Virginia, UCLA, and the Politecnico di Milano (for details, see www.romereborn.virginia.edu). The goal of the project is to create 3D digital models illustrating the urban development of ancient Rome from the first settlements in the late Bronze Age (ca. 1,000 BCE) to the early Middle Ages (ca. 550 CE). Rome Reborn 1.0 was premiered by Rome’s Mayor Walter Veltroni at an international press conference Frischer organized in June, 2007. It was published in Google Earth in 2008. Rome Reborn 2.0 was the featured project at SIGGRAPH 2008, the leading industry and scientific conference held in the field of Computer Graphics. His current research includes a new 3D digital model of Hadrian’s Villa (Tivoli, Italy). He is also principal investigator of SAVE (Serving and Archiving Virtual Environments), a project sponsored by the National Science Foundation to create a database of 3D digital models of cultural heritage sites, monuments, and landscapes. Over the course of his career, Frischer has raised over $5 million in support of his various research projects.
Frischer received his B.A. (Wesleyan University, 1971) and Ph.D. (Heidelberg, 1975) degrees summa cum laude and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa (1970), a Fellow of the Michigan Society of Fellows, a Fellow (1974-76) and Resident (1996) of the American Academy in Rome, and he has won research fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies (1981, 1996) and the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (1997). From 1996 to 2003 he directed the excavations of Horace’s Villa sponsored by the American Academy in Rome, and from 1996 to 2004 he was founding director of the UCLA Cultural Virtual Reality Laboratory. The lab was one of the first in the world to use 3D computer modeling to reconstruct cultural heritage sites. In 2005 Bernard Frischer was given the Pioneer Award of the International Society on Virtual Systems and Multimedia. In 2009, he was the recipient of the Tartessus Prize of the Spanish Society for Virtual Archaeology. In 2010 he won a Senior Prize Fellowship from the Zukunftskolleg at the University of Konstanz.
3D Modeller and Animator Trevor Danehy graduated from Ball State with a Bachelor of Fine Arts specializing in 3d animation in 2007. Trevor’s primary skillsets are with high detail 3d modeling and texturing with programs like Pixologic Zbrush and Adobe Substance Painter. Trevor also developed methods of quick optimization of photogrammetry model generation. Also as a 3d generalist, he uses Autodesk Maya to glue all these processes together. Trevor has knowledge of every aspect of 3d, anywhere from sculpting and retopology, to high definition rendering workflow.
John Fillwalk is an internationally recognized artist and practitioner of virtual reality and interactive environments. He serves as the Senior Director of the Institute for Digital Intermedia Arts [IDIA Lab] at Ball State University. IDIA Lab is a virtual and augmented reality design studio exploring the intersections of art, science and technology. The lab was founded through a 40-million-dollar grant from Eli Lilly Endowment’s Digital Media Initiative. He has served as president of the Hans Breder Foundation – an international organization to promote the preservation, collection and exhibition of pioneering digital artworks. He has numerous grants, awards, fellowships, publications and presentations.
His artworks have been exhibited internationally in festivals, galleries, museums, and other venues including several SIGGRAPHs, CYNETart, Synthése, 404 Festival, Dutch Design Week, Boston Cyberarts, Virtual Broad Art Museum, ISEA, ASCI, Vidéoformes, Indian Institute of Technology, History Channel, New York Hall of Science, Laval Virtual, Beecher Center for Digital Art and the Beijing Science and Technology Museum.
