Wishing Well (许愿池) by media artist John Fillwalk and IDIA Lab, is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) installation that was invited into the 5th Arts and Science International Exhibition and Symposium (TASIES 2019) at the National Museum of China in Beijing located on Tiananmen Square. The exhibition curated the work of international artists engaged in the pioneering use of AI in the creation of art-making. The Wishing Well installation creates an interactive environment where visitors’ spoken wishes shape the substance, meaning and character of the artwork – mediated through artificial intelligence.
Wishing Well ( 许愿池 ) engages both private and public spatial interactions in the creation of a simultaneously intimate and collective social experience. The tone of the wishes aggregated by the system is processed anonymously and delivered into this social sculpture via synthesized whispered voices, spoken in Mandarin. The pool of water in the bowl, or wishing well, is vibrated by a speaker placed underneath – creating a three-dimensional dynamic sound wave representation shaped by the sound of the actual wish. Virtual colored shapes are emitted based on the tonal analysis of each wish and are aggregated into an historical representation of previous wishes – launching skyward to become part of the larger collection of dreams.
John Fillwalk and the Institute for Digital Intermedia Arts (IDIA Lab) at Ball State University were commissioned to design and build a virtual museum artworks for the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum in East Lansing, MI. The physical Museum, was designed by architect Zaha Hadid and opened to the public in Fall 2012. Museum Director, Michael Rush commissioned Fillwalk and IDIA Lab to envision and create a dynamic program of artworks for the Virtual Broad Art Museum project (VBAM). Fillwalk and his collaborators created an immersive multi-user environment and four commissioned artworks using Unity 3D – experienced entirely within a web browser.
“Engaging visitors with innovators at the leading edge of art and technology, both here at MSU and around the globe, is key to the Broad Art Museum’s mission,” said founding director Michael Rush. “With the Virtual Broad Art Museum, we have an opportunity to embrace the tremendous creative and connective possibilities that exist in the digital world.”
The mixed world reception took place on Thursday, March 15th 2012 from 6:00 – 8:00 pm EST simultaneously on the campus of Michigan State University and in the VBAM virtual worlds.
Participants in con|FLUENCEcan create pathways based on reactions to both social and spatial relationships. There is a virtual response and persistence to interactions, as the routes are drawn and sculpted in the three-dimensional environment – forming nodes that are created via visitors’ proximity.
con|FLUENCE. John Fillwalk. 2012.
Survey for VBAM is an immersive landscape simulation using real time weather data from the location of the Broad Art Museum in East Lansing, Michigan. Representations of surveyor’s tape, flags, light, sky color, time of day, wind speed and even cloud density are driven by the actual physical weather forces – informing the virtual landscape.
Survey. John Fillwalk. 2012.
dis|PLACEis an interactive gesture-based performance that will be exhibited at the VBAM reception on the 15th of March. This installation links virtual space to physical reality in an exploration of agency and gesture. Employing a participant’s movement, the work can both navigate 3D space – as well as control direct interactions with the digital performers via a Microsoft Kinect™ sensor.
dis|PLACE. John Fillwalk. 2012.
Proxy is a performative, interactive and site-specific virtual installation where participants shape the evolution of a sculptural and sonic composition as a response to the Museum. Interactions are painted, sculpted and sonified within this collaborative and evolving environment. The work progresses to construct in itself relation to the Museum – eventually transforming as integrated structure – reflecting and becoming its environment.
Proxy. John Fillwalk. 2012.
Flickr™ Gettr for VBAM connects the social image web service of Flickr™ to the virtual Museum environment, allowing visitors to create a dynamic cloud of spatial imagery by entering a search term of their choice – providing tagged images from Flickr™ into the Museum environment. The search term is spoken by the software and tags from image cloud are revealed allowing for subsequent user transformations of the spatial imagery.
Flickr Gettr. John Fillwalk. 2012.
Credits
Proxy. John Fillwalk with Neil Zehr, Michael James Olson 2012
Survey for VBAM John Fillwalk with Neil Zehr, Keith Kothman, Charles Estell 2012
Flickr Gettr for VBAM John Fillwalk with Jesse Allison, Neil Zehr, Charles Estell 2012
con|FLUENCE John Fillwalk with Neil Zehr 2012
dis|PLACE (exhibited at the reception on the 15th of March as a live performance only) John Fillwalk with Neil Zehr, Jonathan Strong 2012
Michael Rush, Director of the Broad Museum of Art, MSU Adam Brown, Professor Intermedia and Electronic Art, MSU John Fillwalk, Director of the Institute for Digital Intermedia Arts [IDIA Lab], BSU Neil Zehr, IDIA Lab, BSU Charles Estell, IDIA Lab, BSU Michael James Olson, IDIA Lab, BSU Ina-Marie Henning, IDIA Lab, BSU Jonathan Strong, IDIA Lab, BSU Jesse Allison, LSU Keith Kothman, BSU Jonathan Ross, BSU Blake Boucher, BSU Michael Davidson, MSU Jayne Goedekke, MSU Kyle Gomboy, Reaction Grid Chris Hart, Reaction Grid
Ball State Univeristy’s IDIA Lab has been contracted by the US Department of the Interior to develop virtual visitor experiences for the Mesa Verde National Park. The park preserves and interprets the archeological heritage of the Ancestral Pueblo people who made it their home for over 700 years, from 600 to 1300 CE. Today, the park protects nearly 5,000 known archeological sites, including 600 cliff dwellings.
The application will bring to life well-known museum dioramas and locative walking tours of the park. Augmented reality and interactive 3D experiences will help tell the stories of the UNESCO World Heritage site – including the transformation of static elements of the historic dioramas with animated figures and interactive elements. The application will be available on both Google Play and AppStore in 2021.
IDIA Lab virtual celestial simulator and 3D interpretation of the Meridian of August in ancient Rome. Project commissioned by the Virtual World Heritage Laboratory at Indiana University, directed by Bernard Frischer.
Findings presented at the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Archeology in Rome
Thursday December 19th, 2013
A Digital Simulation of the Northern Campus Martius in the Age of Augustus. Preliminary Results of New Studies of the Relationship of the Obelisk, Meridian, and Ara Pacis of Augustus
by
Bernard Frischer, Department of Informatics, Indiana University
John Fillwalk, Director, Institute for Digital Intermedia Arts, Ball State University
Horology consultant: Paolo Alberi Auber, Italy Archeoastronomy consultant: Prof. Robert Hannah, University of Walkato, New Zealand Archeoastronomy consultant: David Dearborn, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, U
SA Data courtesy of NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Solar Dynamics Group: Horizons System
A Digital Simulation of the Northern Campus Martius in the Age of Augustus. Preliminary Results of New Studies of the Relationship of the Obelisk, Meridian, and Ara Pacis of Augustus
Bernard Frischer, Department of Informatics, Indiana University
John Fillwalk, Director, Institute for Digital Intermedia Arts, Ball State University
With generous support from the National Science Foundation (grant # IIS-1014956), we have recently been developing a digital simulation of the northern Campus Martius in the period 9 BCE to 40 CE.[1] Our motivation is to create a tool that makes it possible instantly to see the correct positions of the sun and its shadow at any time of day in this period of time so that the various controversies associated with the work of Edmund Buchner on the so-called “Horologium Augusti” can be approached in a new way. We have two main goals in creating the simulation. First, we want to see if Buchner’s and other scholars’ claims and interpretations about the relationship of the Augustan obelisk, the (hypothesized) horologium (which we now call the Meridian of Augustus, following the lead of Albèri Auber 2011-12), and the Ara Pacis can be verified or refuted. Secondly, we want to use the simulation as a support for an empirical survey all over the area of interest to see if it might even be possible, by broadening the field of inquiry in terms of time and space, to arrive at any new insights and discoveries. We are grateful for the opportunity to report on our findings here, and we begin by noting that these are preliminary and can be expected to be revised as our simulation is subjected to further testing and refinement. We concentrate here on the first goal of verification and refutation, reserving a report on the second goal to future publications.
We begin by observing that the use of digital simulations such as ours may still be novel in the field of Roman topography, but they have been used since the early 1950s in physics (Galison 1997:759) and then, increasingly, in other branches of physical and life science to model systems behavior, to speed up difficult computations, and reduce the opportunity for human error. The grounds for and limits of their validity have been usefully treated by Humphreys 2004; and their potential utility in archaeology was mooted by Frischer 2008. As Humphreys stated, “the enormous flexibility and precision of simulation methods provide an opportunity to implement Gedankenexperimente in contexts providing much greater precision than is possible with traditional mental implementations, and they are free from the psychological biases that can effect even simple thought experiments” (Humphreys 2004:115-116).
Of course, precision and valid results always depend on the reliability of the data represented in a simulation. For the all-important apparent size[2] and position of the sun in the sky dome of the simulation, we have relied on NASA’s Horizons System (http://science1.nasa.gov/planetary-science/planetary-science-data/horizons-system/). Among other things, this database takes into account the changes in the sun’s apparent course through the sky that arise from the earth’s wobble as it rotates, providing correct azimuthal information for any point on earth in any historical period, including the Augustan age.
We take as our point of departure the archaeological data and interpretation of the site given by Albèri Auber in this volume and in other publications, especially Albèri Auber 2011-12. We agree with him in the following essential points.
(a) The obelisk was used as the gnomon only for a meridian, not an horologium inscribed on a large pavement, for which no evidence has ever been found. Its purpose was scientific: as Albèri Auber 2012: 484-489 shows, it helped insure that tracking of leap years was correctly done through the observatio umbrarum (Pliny NH 2.35)
(b) There is only one phase for the obelisk-meridian: the Augustan phase. Buchner’s Flavian phase is a phantom based first on his reliance on Guarducci’s dating of the letters of the inscriptions found at 48 via Campo di Marzio to the first century CE (Buchner 1980: 362), a dating later withdrawn without comment (Buchner 1983: 505); and then on the brief report in Rakob 1987: 693- 94 that La Torre dated the ceramic fragments found in Buchner’s excavation to the Flavian period. However, La Torre has never published the pottery, nor did Rakob ever publish the stratigraphy, quota levels, and a plan showing the exact find spots. Until this evidence is produced and interpreted, we must suspend judgment. Our consultant on Greek epigraphy, Mika Kajava, will be writing a report on the dating of the lettering. Here we may quote his personal communication of August 1, 2013: “Considering the meridian inscriptions, in my view, it would be difficult to suggest a precise dating on the basis of paleography: an Augustan monumental text set up in a public place could look very similar to a Claudian or even a Flavian one. This is also because monumental writing tends to be conservative, and occasionally it is even archaizing. In the present case, one may also wonder if the fact that the texts were presumably modelled upon Greek precedents had some (extra) influence on the letter style.”
(c) The sub-phases of the project are: (i) the idea to bring an Egyptian obelisk to Rome as a manubial donation: presumably in 30 BCE after Augustus’ victory over at Alexandria and his annexation of Egypt; (ii) the vow of the Ara Pacis on July 4, 13 BCE; (iii) the dedication of the obelisk in 10 BCE,[3] presumably in conjunction with the twentieth anniversary of the victory at Alexandria;[4] (iv) the dedication of the Ara Pacis on January 30, 9 BCE; (v) the addition of the meridian at an indeterminate date during the reign of Augustus.[5]
(d) The height of the obelisk (including plinth, the bar between the pyramidion and the sphere, and the sphere itself) was 100 Roman feet. Haselberger (personal communication, October, 2013) stresses that this dimension is based on evidence that permits a range of possible heights varying by 3 to 6 feet depending on such factors as how we convert the Roman foot to meters, the unknown dimensions of the distanziatori (in the unlikely event such actually existed[6]), the height of the pole attaching the sphere to the pyramidion, and the diameter of the sphere itself. Albèri Auber takes a different tack: as a practicing gnomonologist himself, he stresses the practical advantages to his ancient Roman counterpart of working with the round number of 100 Roman feet and the useless complications that result if the height differed fractionally from it. Alberi Auber thinks that if 100 Roman feet is within Haselberger’s possible range of heights (and it is), and if the alternatives force us to work with dimensions such as (to make up some random examples) 101.33 or 103.75 Roman feet which would greatly complicate the ancient gnomonologist’s calculations of the length and subdivision into 360 degrees of the meridian, then, faute de mieux, 100 Roman feet is the obvious solution.[7] We agree. In a forthcoming publication, we give the GPS coordinates, dimensions, and bibliographical sources for our 3D models of the meridian, obelisk, and Ara Pacis (Frischer and Fillwalk 2013). In brief, we claim +/- 2 meter accuracy for the placement of the existing fragment of the meridian at via di Campo Marzio 48 and of the Ara Pacis. The position of the obelisk at piazza del Parlamento 3 was derived from its height and the shadow it cast in relation to the position of meridian fragment, as previous scholars have noted can be done (e.g., Heslin 2007:13). In the same publication, we also describe the technical specifications of the simulation. In brief, we authored the model in Maya and converted the 3D model of the northern Campus to the game engine Unity. We developed a plug-in which, as noted, utilizes azimuthal data from NASA’s Horizons System. In calculating where to position the sun and create a lighting solution for observations concerning the obelisk and its shadow, we used the geocoordinates of the obelisk; for those concerning the Ara Pacis, we used the geocoordinates of the Ara Pacis. Unity makes it possible to roam around the simulated landscape and to see the monuments from both freely chosen and preset points of view. For example when the “Ara Pacis View” is selected, movement is restricted to the hypothetical axial line from the center of the base of the obelisk to the Ara Pacis and beyond to the via Flaminia. The height of the camera is fixed at 1.58 m, the average height of the human eyes. In this way, in Ara Pacis View, it is not possible to deviate from a true axial position, and the sun (or its shadow) appears in a way that would have been visible to the ancient adult Roman.
Everything stated in section 3 explains the default settings for our simulation. But we have made an effort to build a certain flexibility into the simulation so that it can support different interpretations of the archaeological situation. Thus, even though the default setting does not display Buchner’s hypothesized pavement and horologium, we have included a software switch that can be thrown to illustrate where Buchner thinks this would have been positioned. Similarly, we have a slider that can lower the height of the obelisk in units of 1 mm to a depth of 2 meters. Pending additional funding, we plan to make all major components of the simulation equally flexible, so that, for example, one can also raise the obelisk up to 2 meters higher in increments of 1 mm; and one can move the center of the Ara Pacis in any direction by 2 meters in the same increments. In this way, we hope to create a flexible tool that supports assumption-free scientific research, allows adjustments to be made to improve accuracy, and is not limited to one particular reading of the archaeological record. In our view, the simulation ought ideally to serve the needs of archaeologists without itself becoming a new topic of debate.
On the basis of the default values, we have thus far addressed the following issues that bulked large in the articles published in JRA 2011: (1) Did the shadow of the obelisk travel all the way down the equinoctial line (whether real and inscribed, or purely hypothetical) to the center of the western façade of the Ara Pacis on September 23, Augustus’ birthday? (2) If the shadow hits the façade of the Ara Pacis, does it have salience? (3) Did the shadow of the obelisk point toward the Ara Pacis at some point every day of the year? (4) Is the Ara Pacis oriented, not toward the obelisk, but toward the rising sun on April 21 (Parilia)?
Before answering the first question, we note that our formulation of it reflects the “strong” reading of Buchner’s thesis about the relationship between the obelisk and Ara Pacis.[8] Like several scholars before him, Haselberger 2011:64 interpreted Buchner to mean only that the shadow progressed along the line, implicitly pointing toward the center of the western façade of the Ara Pacis, but did not necessarily reach the façade.[9] We call this the “weak” interpretation of Buchner. Our simulation can address both interpretations. Here we note that we dispute the weak interpretation and think Buchner did indicate that the shadow hit the façade. Even if Buchner never states this expressis verbis—just as he never says expressis verbis what scholars holding to the weak interpretation think that he says–what Buchner did write, taken in relation to his illustrations, leaves little doubt about what he meant. Buchner 1976: 347 does state, as Haselbeger relates, “am Geburtstag des Kaisers…wandert der Schatten von Morgen bis Abend etwa 150 m weit die schnur-gerade Aequinoktienline entlang genau zur Mitte der Ara Pacis….” The weak interpretation of these words is that Buchner knew that the shadow moved along the equinoctial line but did not reach the facade of the Ara Pacis; and therefore that Buchner’s phrase, “etwa 150 m,” referred simply to the inscribed equinoctial line on the (hypothesized) pavement of his horologium. Our view is that the scholars who think Buchner meant that the shadow hit the façade of the Ara Pacis are right because of the phrase “etwa 150 m.” What does this refer to? If one measures the equinoctial line of the horologium on Buchner’s figure 7 (p. 337), one finds[10] that 1 cm=20 m. One also finds that the length of the equinoctial line on the horologium (i.e., the solid line) is 7 cm=140 m. But Buchner said “etwa 150 m.” If one then measures his dotted line extending the solid equinoctial line to the middle of the facade of the Ara Pacis, one discovers the missing 10 m. For the weak interpretation to be right, Buchner would have to have written “etwa 140 m.” Moreover, advocates of the weak interpretation must also explain why Buchner accounts at p. 346 for a supposed architectural anomaly of the two entrances of the Ara Pacis by claiming that “die Aequinoktienlinie des Solarium geht durch die Ara hindurch, durchschneidet wie di Vorder- so auch die Rückfront….” And this, too, is clearly seen in his fig. 7 on p. 337. This latter point is, it seems to us, decisive evidence in favor of the strong interpretation. Buchner cannot simply mean that an imaginary equinoctial line can be extended from the end of the actual inscribed line through the west to the east entrance of the Ara Pacis. Such an imagined extension of a line would not require a physical entrance and exit point. Buchner must, rather, be loosely describing an actual physical event, namely the progress of the shadow along the (imagined) extension of the equinoctial line through the altar. Clearly it is the shadow that requires the two entrances, not the hypothetically extended line. At any rate, since the weak interpretation is often encountered in the scholarly literature,[11] we address it here as well as the strong interpretation.
To answer the first question as understood by the strong interpretation, the simulation suggests that it is true, as Buchner always claimed, that on September 23 the shadow of the obelisk progresses more or less down the (in our view hypothetical) equinoctial line in the zone that would be paved and inscribed with the horologium Buchner imagines. Since September 23 is not the actual date of the fall equinox in the Augustan age (which fell on the 25th of the month on the Julian calendar), the shadow actually fails to hit the line at the beginning of the second hour of the day; but for most of the second hour and all the other hours indicated on Buchner’s diagram of the horologium, the shadow does move along the line. However, the simulation also shows that, just at the crucial moment, when the shadow leaves that zone and approaches to ca. five meters of the center of the façade of the Ara Pacis, it veers off course (see figure 1).These are the facts, at least if the simulation is reliable. In our view the simulation refutes the strong interpretation of Buchner and also casts doubt on the validity of the weak interpretation. If, as Buchner thought, the whole point of the ensemble Obelisk-Ara Pacis is an alignment of the latter with the former precisely on Augustus’ birthday, then the fact that the shadow misses the mark just as it approaches closest to its alleged target (and in an area where they was probably pavement on which the shadow could clearly be seen,)[12] is an indication that Buchner’s thesis is wrong. The simulation shows that the shadow clips the lower south end of the façade of the Ara Pacis just before sunset, when it disappears. We also note here that both the strong and weak interpretations are also thrown into doubt if, as we assume from the absence of any archaeological support, Buchner’s hypothesized pavement with an inscribed equinoctial line never existed. Without such a line, the average observer unversed in the subtleties of astronomy and gnomonology would have had little reason to process the significance of what he was seeing. Buchner’s thesis requires that the observer who does realize what is happening as the shadow advances across the zone to the Ara Pacis have the patience to stand and watch for some, or, ideally, all of the nearly twelve hours of daylight on that date. This seems impractical and implausible. Another decisive point against Buchner’s thesis is the fact that the shadow from the obelisk does hit the center of the western façade of the Ara Pacis at sunset on several other dates of the year. At most, then, one can say that Buchner had the right idea but concentrated on the wrong date. After they have been independently verified, we will report in a separate publication on the dates when the shadow does fall on the center of the western façade at sunset. In this regard, we note Suetonius’ comment (Augustus 31) that Augustus named Sextilis and not his birth month September after himself when he became pontifex maximus “because in the former he had won his first consulship and his most brilliant victories.” Here we have a nice parallel for Augustus’ decision-making in conferring honors on himself: he was not unduly influenced by his birthday but took other factors into consideration. Apparently, the same thing was true of the design he commissioned for the alignment of the obelisk with the Ara Pacis. Finally, and this is the most decisive point against the Buchner thesis, the phasing outlined in section 3(c) makes purely coincidental any shadow effect involving the hypothesized horologium and the Ara Pacis since the Ara Pacis was designed and sited first, the obelisk second, and the horologium (or, as we would instead assert, following Albéri Auber, the meridian) was added as an afterthought.
Pollini 2012:210-216 reports on and illustrates (see, especially, p. 215, figure V.7e) a computer simulation that appears to confirm the strong version of Buchner’s thesis. We were naturally concerned about this result, which contradicts our own. Pollini and his modeler, N. Cipolla, kindly answered questions about their methods and software. We learned that Cipolla used formZ as his modeling package and for the lighting solution showing the shadow of the obelisk hitting the center of the western façade of the altar at 4:31 pm on September 23. As noted above in section 3, correct azimuthal, temporal and geospatial data are needed if the results of a simulation can have validity. Cipolla (personal communication, April 16, 2013) wrote that in creating a lighting solution for the shadow of the obelisk cast at 4:31 pm toward the western façade of the Ara Pacis, he used the built-in geocoordinates for Rome furnished by formZ. We determined that these coordinates are: 41 degrees, 54 minutes N, 12 degrees 30 minutes E. If we put these coordinates in Google Maps, we find that they yield an address near Stazione at via Giovanni Amendola 14-40, 00185 Rome. This location is ca. 2 km from where the obelisk was erected in antiquity. The spatial error is compounded by a temporal error. Cipolla also used formZ’s built-in time setting in his lighting solution. However, as a personal communication (dated April 30, 2013) from Paul Helm of the formZ Technical Support team states, “the formZ Sun Position is designed for current years, and [is] not intended for historical use.” The position of the sun in the sky is quite different today than it was in the period under discussion. Here, too, formZ’s built-in data have contributed to the different—and, we would claim, erroneous–results seen in the Pollini-Cipolla simulation.
Heslin 2007:14 writes that “the shadow of the obelisk would have pointed at the Ara Pacis every single afternoon of the year…” Hannah 2011:94 notes that this is mistaken and that “in mid-winter, for example, it is not possible for the afternoon sun to cast a shadow that will fall from the obelisk towards anywhere near the direction of the altar.” The simulation, with its ability to instantly make complex calculations, allows us to confirm Hannah’s point and make it more precise. On the following dates, the shadow from the obelisk does not point at all toward the Ara Pacis: October 30 to February 11.
Schütz 1990:450-453 questions whether the shadow of the sphere of the obelisk on the Ara Pacis would have had salience. Hannah 2011:91-93 disputes this on the basis of autopsy of the shadow cast by the cenotaph in Dunedin. The simulation also shows that Schütz’s concern was misplaced.
Schütz 2011:85 claims that the Ara Pacis is not aligned with the shadow of the setting sun from the obelisk, but is oriented precisely away from the obelisk toward the rising sun to the east on April 21, the Parilia festival. The simulation shows that there is no precise alignment at sunrise on April 21 (figure 2), but there is such an alignment on May 6, a date with no festival on the religious calendar or other connection to Augustus, his family, or Roman history. It is therefore doubtless accidental—a coincidental result of another date (or dates) determining the design of the obelisk-Ara Pacis ensemble.
Schütz’s attempt to orient the Ara Pacis toward the sun may, however, turn out to be another good idea which, like Buchner’s regarding the shadow, was simply misapplied. Let us recall the phasing of the project (section 3[c]): the design and construction of the Ara Pacis preceded the installation of the obelisk. When it was erected in Rome, the obelisk was rotated to be nearly parallel to the orientation of the Ara Pacis. This rotation has no impact on the obelisk’s functionality as a gnomon for the (still later) meridian: the obelisk’s shadow falls at the correct cross-hatchings on the meridian line whether or not the obelisk, like the meridian, is oriented N-S. But the obelisk’s rotation does have an important visual relevance for the relationship of the obelisk to the Ara Pacis: the obelisk, added after construction of the altar was already underway, was sited and disposed so as to be aesthetically compatible with the altar for someone viewing both on axis from the east (i.e., from the via Flaminia). Here, a different rotation of the obelisk would have been dysfunctional, i.e., aesthetically unpleasing. By looking eastward toward the sunrise from the eastern entrance of the Ara Pacis, Schütz ignores the (to us) indisputable visual and positional relationship between the obelisk and the altar.
The idea of seeing a relationship between the Ara Pacis and the sun—and not, as Buchner thought, the sun’s shadow—is quite interesting, and Schütz deserves credit for introducing it into the debate. All over the world, archaeoastronomers have found evidence of such built “solar markers” (cf., e.g., s.v. solstice markers in the Index of Kelly and Milone 2011: 606). Finding one at Rome would thus not be unprecedented. In this connection, we may note that the obelisk is expressly dedicated to the Sun god (see above n.2). We are currently using the simulation to study this possibility and have identified three candidate pairs of dates. We note that given the nature of the analemma pattern traced by the sun in the sky each year, we will always find at least two dates (equidistant from the solstices) when any such alignment will occur. And, given the fact that when the observer moves along the axial line of the Ara Pacis imaginarily extended across the via Flaminia, the date of the alignment changes, we are likely to find more than one pair of candidate dates.
If arbitrary results are to be avoided in deciding which date (or, if this is another case of Augustan polysemy, dates; cf. Galinsky 1992) determined the positioning of the obelisk with respect to the altar, one needs rules of inquiry, and we state the rules we think reasonable to apply in the hope that they draw comment before our final report is published. First, there are the visual rules. What we are looking for must fulfill these visual criteria: the observer must be standing on the via Flaminia on axis with the eastern entrance to the Ara Pacis and with his gaze directed so that he can see the top of the obelisk in the distance; the disk of the sun must be more or less tangent to the top of the obelisk; and the disk must be (at least approximately) centered on the obelisk and, of course, on the axis of the Ara Pacis (figure 3). We think that the via Flaminia is the right place to use for observation because from here one had a good view of the entire façade of the Ara Pacis and the top part of the obelisk; and it was much more heavily trafficked than the adjacent area between the road and the eastern entrance to the altar. We assume that the effect we are looking for was exoteric, not esoteric: it was intended to be noticed by the mass of Romans passing through the Campus Martius and not simply by a select few. Then there is the cultural rule that a date is significant if and only if it corresponds to a well-attested religious festival, a personal event in the life of Augustus and his family, or an event of historic importance to the Roman state. We are, of course, aware of the fact when the requirements for a significant alignment are met for the observer stationed on the via Flaminia looking on axis from the east, then at the same time an observer positioned to the west on the imaginary axial line between the obelisk and the Ara Pacis would see the obelisk’s shadow projected onto the axis of the western entrance to the altar (figure 4). Our analysis, then, is in a sense an ironic (and, let us hope, irenic) compromise between the approaches of Buchner (=obelisk’s shadow centered on the western façade of the Ara Pacis) and of Schütz (=sun seen aligned to the main axis of the altar). However, to effect the compromise, we had to find better dates, and we had to turn Schütz ‘s ancient observer around so that she could see both the Ara Pacis and the obelisk, something possible only at sunset, not sunrise. We hasten to add that our results did not come from consciously working out such a compromise in advance and applying it to the simulation, but from using the simulation with no preconceptions as simply a device for virtual empirical survey and observation.[13]
We conclude by expressing the hope that our simulation does not itself become a new topic of the debate (which already includes more than enough controversies!). To reduce the chances that this will happen, before we will release any of our new findings along the lines of the compromise just described we will have the underlying calculations independently checked. And before we freely post the simulation itself on the Internet (as is our intention to do as a support for teaching and research), we want to modify it as suggested above in section 4 so that it is flexible enough to accommodate the complete range of expert views about the archaeological record.
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Buchner, E., 1996b. “Ein Kanal für Obelisken. Neues vom Mausoleum des Augustus in Rom,”
AntW 27, 161-68.
Buchner, E., 1999. “Horologium Augusti,” in Via del Corso. Una strada lunga 2000 anni
(exh. cat., Rome) 159-63.
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Favro, D., 1996. The urban image of Augustan Rome (Cambridge).
Frischer, B., 2008. “From digital illustration to digital heuristics,” in Beyond Illustration: 2D and 3D Digital Technologies as Tools for Discovery in Archaeology, edited by Bernard Frischer and Anastasia Dakouri-Hild, BAR International Series 1805 (Oxford) v-xxiv.
Frischer, B.and J. Fillwalk, 2013. “ A Computer Simulation to Test the Buchner Thesis. The Relationship of the Ara Pacis and the Meridian in the Campus Martius, Rome,” Proceedings of Digital Heritage 2013, forthcoming.
Galinsky, K., 1992. “Venus, polysemy, and the Ara Pacis Augustae,” AJA 96, 457-75.
Galison, P., 1997. Image & logic. A material culture of microphysics (Chicago and London).
Hannah, R., 2009. Time in antiquity (London and New York).
Hannah, R., 2011. “The Horologium of Augustus as a sundial,” JRA 24, 87-95.
Haselberger, L., 2011. “A debate on the Horologium of Augustus: Controversy and clarifications,” JRA 24, 47-73.
Heslin, P. J., 2007. “Augustus, Domitian and the so-called Horologium Augusti,” JRS 97, 1-20.
Heslin, P. J., 2011. “The Augustus code: A response to L. Haselberger,” JRA 24,74-77.
Humphreys, P., 2004. Extending ourselves. Computational science, empiricism, and scientific method (Oxford and New York).
La Rocca, E., 1983. Ara Pacis Augstae in occasione del restauro della fronte orientale (Rome).
Liverani, P., 2006-7. “Templa duo nova Spei et Fortunae in Campo Marzio,” RendPontAcc 79, 291-314.
Rakob, F. 1987. “Die Urbanisierung des nördlichen Marsfeldes. Neue Forschungen im Areal des Horologium Augusti,” in L’Urbs. Espace urbain et histoire (CollEFR 98) 687-712.
Rehak, P, 2006. Imperium and cosmos. Augustus and the Northern Campus Martius, edited by John G. Younger (The University of Wisconsin Press, Madison).
Rodríguez-Almeida, E., 1980. “Il Campo Marzio settentrionale: solarium e pomerium,” RendAccPont 51-52, 195-212.
Rossini, O., 2006. Ara Pacis (Milan).
Schütz, M., 1990. “Zur Sonnenuhr des Augustus auf dem Marsfeld,” Gymnasium 97, 432-457.
Schütz, M., 2011. “The Horologium on the Campus Martius Reconsidered,” JRA 24, 78-86.
Torellli, M., 1992. “Topografia e iconologia. Arco di Portogallo, Ara Pacis, Ara Providentiae, Templum Solis,” Ostraka 1: 105-131.
Torelli, M., 1999. “Pax Augusta, Ara,” in LTUR 4 (Rome) 70-74.
Zanker, P., 1988. The Power of images in the age of Augustus (Ann Arbor).
Figures and Captions
Figure 1. At sunset on September 23, 1 CE, the shadow of the obelisk does not hit the middle of the western façade of the Ara Pacis as required by Buchner’s thesis but, as seen in this illustration, it only grazes the lower right side of the façade before continuing to the right (south) beyond the altar and soon disappearing after sunset. Source: Frischer-Fillwalk simulation.
Figure 2. Sunrise on April 21 (Parilia) of 1 CE seen from the eastern doorway of the Ara Pacis. According to Schütz 2011, 85 the Ara Pacis is oriented in such a way as to be on axis with the rising sun on this date. The doted red line gives the vertical axis and shows that Schütz’s theory is not confirmed by the simulation. Source: Frischer-Fillwalk simulation.
Figure 3. The Ara Pacis and upper part of the obelisk seen in “Ara Pacis View” from the via Flaminia in the Frischer-Fillwalk simulation. This striking effect appears to have occurred on several days of the year. Before releasing the dates and discussing their possible significance, we are having them independently verified. Source: Frischer-Fillwalk simulation.
Figure 4. The shadow of the obelisk projected onto the vertical axis of the western façade of the Ara Pacis seen in “Ara Pacis View” from a position along the axial line from the base of the obelisk to the center of the Ara Pacis, as seen in the Frischer-Fillwalk simulation. The dotted red line indicates the vertical axis, on which the shadow appears to be precisely centered. The date and time are the same as in figure 3. Source: Frischer-Fillwalk simulation.
[1] We are honored that Lothar Haselberger has invited us to contribute to this volume. We thank the National Science Foundation for the funding that made the Digital Meridian Project possible. We also thank Paolo Albèri Auber and Robert Hannah for their constant responsiveness to requests for information, help and collaboration. We are grateful to Nicholas Cipolla, David Dearborn, Karl Galinsky, Mika Kajava, Ann-Marie Lewis, Paolo Liverani, John Miller, John ollini, and Michael Schütz for answering questions and providing the information we requested. Franco Sgariglia kindly arranged our several visits to study the remains of the meridian found by E. Buchner under via di Campo Marzio 48. Needless to say, we are solely responsible for the data and interpretations presented in this report. Bernard Frischer wrote this report, was the principal investigator of the NSF grant, and is responsible for the archaeology behind the simulation; John Fillwalk edited the text of this report and is responsible for the creation of the digital simulation and related solar tracker plug-in.
[2] Ca. 1.0 degree at sunrise and sunset and 0 .5 degrees at other times of the day.
[3] The date is given by mention in the dedicatory inscription of Augustus’ holding of tribunician power for the fourteenth time (CIL VI.701 and 702; ILS 91).
[4] So J.-C. Grenier, LTUR 3 s.v. Obeliscus Augusti: Circus Maximus (Rome 1996) 355-356 at p. 356.
[5] In his contribution to the present volume, Albèri Auber rightly stresses that in NH 36.72 Pliny uses the word “addidit” twice in connection with the meridian and related sphere atop the obelisk: Ei, qui est in campo, divus Augustus addidit mirabilem usum ad deprendendas solis umbras dierumque ac noctium ita magnitudines, strato lapide ad longitudinem obelisci, cui par fieret umbra brumae confectae die sexta hora paulatimque per regulas, quae sunt ex aere inclusae, singulis diebus decresceret ac rursus augeresceret, digna cognitu res, ingenio Facundi Novi mathematici. is apici auratam pilam addidit, cuius vertice umbra colligeretur in se ipsam, alias enormiter iaculante apice, ratione, ut ferunt, a capite hominis intellecta. The meridian was a genial afterthought to a project already complete when the obelisk had been installed in the Campus Martius. On the basis of the fact that the obelisk is rotated by 15 degrees from N, the same point was made as early as 1750 by J. Stuart apud Bandini 1750: letter XIII, p. LXXIV.
[6] Schütz 1990:438 cogently notes in this connection that distanziatori are not seen on the relief of Antoninus and Faustina illustrating the obelisk.
[7] Albèri Auber 2011-12:467. Schütz 1990:442 may be right that for Buchner the choice of 100 Roman feet stemmed solely from “a fascination from round numbers,” but for Albèri Auber the decision was made for purely hard-headed, practical reasons. Moreover, Schütz does not reckon with the fact that there was a single, Augustan phase and that, according to Albèri Auber, the meridian was elevated by 60 cm on an embankment off the virgin soil (Buchner’s Flavian phase). So, in a sense, both Schütz and Albèri Auber can be right: the obelisk, including its base was higher off the virgin soil than 100 Roman feet; but since the meridian was also raised off the virgin soil—in Albèri Auber’s view, to offer some protection against the flooding of the Tiber (but, we would note, possibly because the quota level of the virgin soil was lower at the obelisk end of the meridian than at its northern limit; cf. Rodriguez-Almeida 1982:208) —then the effective height of the sphere of the obelisk off the pavement of the meridian was still 100 Roman feet.
[8] See, for example: Schütz 1990: 451; Favro 1996:130; Rehak 2006:83; Hannah and Magli 2011:506. In a rare lapsus memoriae, Torelli 1999:70, writes that the “shadow of the obelisk-gnomon touched the figure of Augustus represented on the frieze around the altar” (cf. also Torelli 1992:107). Torelli has rotated the Ara Pacis by 90 degrees. Correcting that error, we can add Torelli to the list of scholars holding to the strong interpretation of Buchner.
[9]Haselberger writes: “Buchner never speaks of the actual shadow reaching the Ara Pacis, but of the connection between Ara and Horlogium established through the equinoctial line.”
[10] At least on my photocopy, which may not be a perfect 1:1 reproduction; but the scale issue is irrelevant since it affects Buchner’s scale as well as his plan.
[11] E.g., La Rocca 1983:57, Zanker 1988:144, Rossini 2006:12.
[12] Pavement survives only on the south side of the Ara Pacis. See Haselberger 2011, 55.
[13] To confess the truth, the first author must admit to starting this project with the working assumption that Buchner’s thesis was more or less correct, as several generations of the students who have attended his lecture courses on Roman Topography at UCLA and the University of Virginia can attest.
Meet3D is a virtual collaboration space that brings people together to share, learn, and work – wherever they are. Private or public auditoriums, classrooms, conference halls or offices can be joined by any group or audience on demand. Meet3D was developed by the Institute for Digital Intermedia Arts at Ball State University to bring remote participants together in a common space and facilitate a sense of physical presence. The platform is available in both browser-based and executable versions.
The College of Architecture and Planning’s IDIA Lab creates technological innovation in the arts, sciences, and humanities. The Lab engages students, staff, scholars and clients in collaborative projects including 3D, virtual reality and mobile applications. This newsletter includes updates on current IDIA Lab projects including an augmented reality visitor experience application for Mesa Verde National Park, a publication on our Roman archeology celestial alignment research, a multiuser simulation for understand aspects of wellness in Amazon’s Lumberyard game engine, and a $3 million dollar NSF grant in which IDIA Lab was selected by Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Educational Testing Services and Indiana University to create simulations for elementary math and science classrooms.
While the COVID-19 pandemic has had a major effect on PK-12 classrooms, it has also affected opportunities for preservice teachers to gain practical teaching experience. Responding to this problem, School of Education faculty Meredith Park Rogers and Adam Maltese, along with Dionne Cross Francis of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, an affiliate faculty member of IU, have begun work on a project with collaborators from ETS, Towson University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where they will design and study an online suite of practice-based teaching activities intended to support mathematics and science preservice teachers in honing their skills for facilitating argumentation-focused discussions.
This project, funded by a grant for over $3 million from the National Science Foundation (Grant 2037983), will run from 2020-2023. ETS serves as the lead organization for the project, titled Online Practice Suite (OPS): Practice Spaces, Simulations and Virtual Reality Environments for Preservice Teachers to Learn to Facilitate Argumentation Discussions in Mathematics and Science.
The OPS consists of a coordinated set of online practice-based teaching activities that include game-based practice spaces, small-group avatar-based simulations, and a virtual reality classroom. The activities are designed to be complemented with targeted feedback and support from teacher educators.
With the COVID-19 pandemic increasingly pushing K-12 schools and universities across the nation to adopt online approaches, there is an immediate need for finding effective methods for preservice teachers to practice teaching even if traditional school-based teaching experiences are less available.
Even without pandemic-related restrictions, learning how to teach effectively demands that preservice teachers have robust, authentic and consistent opportunities to engage in the work of teaching—ideally across different contexts with diverse student populations and for varied purposes.
Over the next three years, the OPS research team will work with mathematics and science teacher educators to design, test, and refine the full suite of online practice-based teaching activities. Findings will be used to understand the mechanisms that support preservice teachers’ learning within and across the OPS activities and to document an emergent set of best practices for supporting preservice teachers’ improvement in this ambitious teaching practice over time. The OPS will be accompanied by support materials to help teacher educators use and integrate the activities into teacher education courses, including online and face-to-face learning contexts. Both elementary and middle/secondary school mathematics and science scenarios will be developed for the OPS.
The IU faculty will work with the Institute for Digital Intermedia Arts (IDIA Lab) at Ball State University to develop an immersive virtual reality environment that will situate teachers in learning to navigate a whole-class discussion with students. This aspect of the OPS is referred to as the Virtual Teacher Simulator (VTS). In these simulations, preservice teachers will move beyond the one-on-one and small-group interactions of the other two OPS activities and begin to put their skills together to teach a full classroom of virtual student avatars. Each preservice teacher will have the opportunity to move around the classroom and engage with the virtual student avatars just as though they were in a real classroom. Additionally, they will receive feedback from a mathematics or science teacher educator (i.e., coach) in order to continue to improve their practice.
As Park Rogers explains, “The VTS context especially affords preservice teachers multiple opportunities to rehearse their teaching within a short time span, without disrupting learning in a real classroom, all while receiving immediate and expert feedback from specialized mathematics and science teacher educators. Furthermore, incorporating real-time feedback and opportunities for multiple rehearsals, all within an immersive whole class context, will allow preservice teachers to take risks in their practice and try out novel pedagogical moves that they may not feel secure enough, or have opportunities, to try in an actual classroom.”
“We must find a way to continue to prepare high-quality math and science teachers through this pandemic and beyond,” says Park Rogers. “Through this collaboration, we hope to offer teacher educators and their preservice student teachers a solution to the current dilemma the global pandemic of COVID-19 has created, and also alternative or supplementary methods for targeting core teaching practices even when we are able to safely return to classrooms to work with real children.”
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant 2037983. The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily represent views of the National Science Foundation.
IDIA Lab has designed a virtual simulation of the villa of the Roman Emperor Hadrian, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site located outside of Rome in Tivoli, Italy. This project is being produced in collaboration with the Virtual World Heritage Laboratory (VWHL) at the University of Virginia (UVA), directed by Dr. Bernard Frischer and funded by the National Science Foundation. This large-scale recreation virtually interprets the entire villa complex in consultation with the world’s foremost villa scholars and educators. The project has been authored in the game engine of Unity as a live 3D multi-user online learning environment that allows students and visitors to immerse themselves in all aspects of the simulated villa.
The project will not only accurately recreate the villa buildings but also include a complete Roman avatar system, non-player characters with artificial intelligence, furniture, indigenous vegetation, dynamic atmospheric system and sophisticated user interface. The interface will not only provide learning, navigation, reporting and assessment opportunities but will also allow users to change the position of the sun to any date in 130 AD using data from the Horizons database at JPL NASA – testing theses of astro-alignments of architectural features during solstices and equinoxes. UVA students will be briefed on the culture and history of the villa as well as learn the virtual environment for five weeks prior to immersing themselves within it. The avatar system will allow for them to enter the world choosing class and gender – already being aware of the customs and behavior of the Roman aristocracy, soldier, slave or politician. This project will be delivered to VWHL at UVA in early March.
The Digital Hadrian’s Villa Project:
Virtual World Technology as an Aid to Finding Alignments between
Built and Celestial Features
Bernard Frischer1
John Fillwalk2
1Director, Virtual World Heritage Laboratory, University of Virginia
2Director, IDIA Lab, Ball State University
Hadrian’s Villa is the best known and best preserved of the imperial villas built in the hinterland of Rome by emperors such as Nero, Domitian, and Trajan during the first and second centuries CE. A World Heritage site, Hadrian’s Villa covers at least 120 hectares and consists of ca. 30 major building complexes. Hadrian built this government retreat about 20 miles east of Rome between 117, when he became emperor, and 138 CE, the year he died. The site has been explored since the 15th century and in recent decades has been the object of intense study, excavation, and conservation (for a survey of recent work, see Mari 2010).
From 2006 to 20011, with the generous support of the National Science Foundation[1] and a private sponsor, the Virtual World Heritage Laboratory created a 3D restoration model of the entire site authored in 3DS Max. From January to April 2012, Ball State University’s Institute for Digital Intermedia Arts (IDIA Lab) converted the 3D model to Unity 3D, a virtual world (VW) platform, so that it could be explored interactively, be populated by avatars of members of the imperial court, and could be published on the Internet along with a related 2D website that presents the documentation undergirding the 3D model.
The 3D restoration model and related VW were made in close collaboration with many of the scholars who have written the most recent studies on the villa.[2] Our goal was to ensure that all the main elements—from terrain, gardens, and buildings to furnishings and avatars—were evidence-based. Once finished, the was used in two research projects.
The first project was a NSF-sponsored study of the usefulness of VW technology in archaeological education and research. We used the virtual villa in undergraduate classes at Xavier University and the University of Virginia to investigate the thesis of two recent studies by project advisors Michael Ytterberg and Federica Chiappetta about how this enormous built space was used by six different groups of ancient Romans, ranging from the Emperor and Empress to normal citizens and slaves (Ytterberg 2005; Chiappetta 2008). Avatars representing these groups have been created and are being operated by undergraduate students as a Problem‐Based Learning (PBL) experience. They are observed by subject experts, who are using the data generated to test and, if necessary, refine the initial theses about how circulation through the villa was handled. The results are still being evaluated. Preliminary indications are that the data show that the combination of VW used in a PBL educational context is very effective in taking advantage of the known connection between between the hippocampus and long-term learning, especially when the information to be mastered is spatial (Kandel 2007).
The second project involved use of the VW for some new archaeoastronomical studies. Most of our advisors’ publications, like the older work by archaeologists that preceded them, have concentrated on archaeological documentation, restoration, formal, and functional analysis. The latest research by advisor De Franceschini and her collaborator Veneziano (2011) combined formal and functional analysis: it considered the alignment of certain important parts of the villa in relation to the sun’s apparent path through the sky on significant dates such as the solstices. In their recent book they showed how two features of the villa are aligned with the solar solstices: the Temple of Apollo in the Accademia; and the Roccabruna. We used the VW to extend their research to other areas of the villa, taking advantage of 3D technology to restore the sun to the right place in the sky and also to restore the damage to the architecture of the villa, as De Franceschini and Veneziano had independently suggested be done before they learned about our digital model of the villa.
The work of De Franceschini and Veneziano is innovative. Archaeastronomy has become an accepted field of study in recent decades, and a considerable amount of work has been done in Old and New World archaeology. In Roman archaeology, however, this approach is still rarely encountered. Significantly, one of the few compelling studies concerns the most famous Hadrianic building: the Pantheon in Rome. Hannah and Magli 2009 and Hannah 2011 have shown a number of solar alignments in the building, of which the most notable are the sun’s illumination of the entrance doorway at noon on April 21; and the view of sunset silhouetting the statue of Hadrian as Sun god on a four-horse chariot atop the Mausoleum of Hadrian as viewed from the middle of the Pantheon’s plaza at sunset on the summer solstice. Like the summer solstice, April 21 is also a significant date: on it occurred the annual festival in Rome known as the Parilia (re-named the Romaia by Hadrian),[3] which celebrated the founding of Rome.
De Franceschini and Veneziano pursued an observation of Mangurian and Ray (2008) to document an impressive example of solar alignment at Hadrian’s Villa involving the tower known as Roccabruna at the western end of the villa. Originally, a tower-like structure topped by a round temple, what remains today is the well-preserved, massive lower floor. The main entrance is located on the northwestern side to the right and gives access to a large circular hall covered by a dome. The dome is punctuated by an odd feature: five conduits that are wider on the outside than on the inside (figure 1).
What is the function of these unusual conduits? They have no known parallel in Roman architecture. After asking themselves this same question, on June 21st, 1988, the day of summer solstice, the American architects Robert Mangurian and Mary Ann Ray went to Roccabruna at sunset, and discovered the extraordinary light phenomena which occur there. At sunset the Sun enters through the main door illuminating the niche on the opposite side, something that happens during most of the summer days. But only in the days of the summer Solstice the Sun penetrates also into the conduit located above that door: its rays come out from the slot inside the dome projecting a rectangular light blade on the opposite side of the dome. In June 2009, De Franceschini verified the findings of Mangurian and Ray. However, they know that the apparent path of the Sun through the sky changes slightly each year, so that in the nearly 1880 years separating us from Hadrian, the precise effect of the alignment has been lost. As they noted, only a computer simulation can recreate the original experience of being in the lower sanctuary at Roccabruna at sunset on the summer solstice during the reign of Hadrian.
Once we had our 3D model of the site, we were able to obtain from NASA’s Horizons system[4] the correct azimuthal data for the year AD 130 and put the sun into the sky at sunset on the summer solstice. Following the lead of De Franceschini, who in the meantime had become a consultant to our project, we put into the niche one of the four statues of the Egyptian sky goddess Isis that were found at the Villa. De Franceschini chose Isis because first of all, there is no question there was a statue in this niche so we need to put something there; and the two flanking niches had candelabra, whose bases are preserved and are decorated with Isiac iconography. Moreover, Isis’ festival in Rome was on the summer solstice. So we scanned and digitally restored one of the several statues of Isis from the villa and put it into the central niche. Finally, for the dome, which we know from surviving paint was blue and therefore had the famous “dome of heaven” motif (Lehmann 1945), we followed De Franceschini in restoring a zodiac set up in such a way that the sign of Gemini is over the statue niche since the last day of Gemini is the summer solstice. Our zodiac is adapted from the great Sun God mosaic in the Rheinisches Landesmuseum in Bonn, which kindly gave us permission to use it.
As can be seen in figure 2, when we restored the sun in the right position in the sky dome for sunset on the summer solstice (June 21) of 130 CE in our 3DS Max model of Roccabruna, the sunlight coming through the main doorway illuminated the statue of Isis in the statue niche, and the light entering through the conduit lit up the sign of Gemini painted on the cupola. So we were able to confirm the Mangurian-Ray thesis.
The approach we have taken in our Roccabruna project is deductive: Mangurian and Ray noted the strange feature of the conduits punctuating the cupola of Roccabruna; they hypothesized a solar alignment. De Franceschini and Veneziano agreed and for various reasons we don’t need to go into today, they put a statue of Isis into the statue niche. We set up the conditions in which these hypotheses could be tested and were able to verify them.
But surely, if there is one such alignment at the villa of the same emperor who was responsible for the Pantheon, there may be others. But the villa is very big—covering over 100 hectares—and has 30 major building complexes, most larger than Roccabruna. Moreover, such alignments could just as easily involve astrological features such as the Moon and the planets. Faced with this level of complexity, the best methodological way forward in searching for new alignments is clearly inductive and empirical. This is one reason why we asked the Institute for Digital Intermedia Arts (IDIA Lab) of Ball State University to create a multi-user virtual world based in Unity 3D from our 3DS Max model.
The project of virtually interpreting a simulation on the scope and scale of Hadrian’s Villa was a daunting one – engaging layers of scholarly, technical and pedagogical challenges. The technical challenges were many – foremost to leverage the game engine of Unity 3D to become an effective multi-user avatar-based virtual world. An important factor was to create an environment that was straightforward and accessible via standard web browsers on both Mac and Windows and selected Unity 3D as the starting point for developing the platorm. We required specific back-end administration tools to handle the accounts and server side aspects of the project – for this we relied on Smart Fox Server as it manages Unity 3D quite well. Our team took an approach that bridged and integrated disparate technologies, creating a robust virtual world platform to immersively augment both instructional and PBL processes. VW features available to the learning community included text based communication, a live map showing current visitor positions, map based teleportation, managed voice channel, user selected avatar gestures, online users, paradata, photographs of the extant site, plan views, and integrated web links.
Key to the project was a varied system of avatars representing the imperial court, freemen, senators, scholars, soldiers, and slaves to the emperor. The avatar system provided several important functions testing recent scholarly interpretations of circulation throughout the villa and the use of various spaces for typical court activities – meals, imperial audiences, bathing, worship, etc. Upon entering the simulation, the choice of avatar would predicate how one’s social standing within the role-play of the world.
A gesture system was created via motion capture providing each user with a unique set of actions and gestural responses to engage social interactions – including greetings, bowing and gestures specific to rank and class. Communication was also a critical element in the modes of problem based learning engaged by the participants in the simulation. Specific technologies provided varied abilities such as public chat, private instant messaging and live multi-user voice channels.
A companion website was co-developed and integrated into the VW environment providing learners with visual assets such as photographs and panoramas of the current site, site plans, elevations, and video interviews with Villa scholars. We also developed three-dimensional turntables of the interpreted and reconstructed models, overview information on each of the major Villa features, bibliography and an expansive database of art attributed to the Villa site. This information can be directly accessed by learners directly from within the virtual world. The development team integrated the notion of paradata, introduced by the London Charter – making instantly transparent the scholarship and all underlying elements of the 3D model (from terrain to buildings, furnishing, costumes, and human behavior).
In support of new research theme on celestial alignments by consultants De Franceschini and Veneziano, a major goal for the project was to develop an accurate simulation for the position of the sun. The solar tracking, or virtual heliodon that we created as a response to this research, was envisioned as a simulation that would a bridge between the virtual environment and coordinates from an external database calculating solar positions. After investigating existing tools we decided to employ the Horizons database that was created by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory as an on-line solar system data computation service – tracking celestial bodies in ephemerides from 9999 BCE to 9999 CE. In implementing solar tracking for the Villa project in instances were we where we wanted to investigate potential significant solar alignments, we entered the latitude, longitude and altitudes of specific buildings from the Tivoli site to poll the Horizons data for the year 130 CE. The user was able to change the date, time of day, and quickly play the sun from specific moments via the user interface. The system was co-related to both the Julian and Gregorian calendars and contained presets for the vernal and autumnal equinoxes as well at the summer and winter solstices.
These tools allowed for the rapid discovery of potential alignment that might bear further investigation. The solar feature allows one to proceed empirically, in effect turning the clock back to 130 CE and running experiments in which the days and hours of the year are sped up by orders of magnitude so that one can in a very short time find candidate alignments not yet hypothesized by scholars working in the traditional way of Mangurian-Ray.
As developers, our goal was to create the solar tool and let students and scholars use it to undertake their own empirical research. Our team was not intending to engage in this research ourselves, yet in the process of working within the environment daily we quickly began to notice curious solar phenomena. In a bit of empirical study of the very first component of the site we installed in the simulation, the Antinoeion – or newly-discovered Temple of the Divine Antinous, we noticed an alignment of potential interest. The most likely alignment seemed at first glance to be along the main axis running from the entrance, through the obelisk in the central plaza to the statue niche at the end of the axis. We ran the days and hours of the year and found that the sun and shadow of the obelisk align at sunrise on July 20. We consulted with our expert on the Egyptian calendar in the Roman period, Professor Christian Leitz of the University of Tuebingen–and he confirmed that this date has religious significance. It is, in fact, the date of the Egyptian New Year, as the Romans of Hadrian’s age clearly knew (cf. the Roman writer Censorinus, who states that the Egyptian New Year’s Day fell on July 20 in the Julian Calendar in 139 CE, which was a heliacal rising of Sirius in Egypt).
In the process of developing and subsequently utilizing the simulation tools we created for astro-archeological research, our conclusions have been that virtual world technologies can indeed take the inquiry for significant built-celestial alignments to a new level of insight.
Bibliography
Chiappetta, F. 2008. I percorsi antichi di Villa Adriana (Rome).
De Franceschini, M. and G. Veneziano, 2011. Villa Adriana. Architettura celeste. Gli secreti degli solstizi (Rome).
Hannah, R. 2008. Time in Antiquity (London).
Hannah, R. 2011. “The Role of the Sun in the Pantheon’s Design and Meaning,” Numen 58: 486-513.
Kandel, E. 2007. In Search of Memory: The Emergency of a New Science of Mind (W. W. Norton, New York). Kindler edition.
Lehmann, K. “The Dome of Heaven,” Art Bulletin 27: 1-27.
Lugli, G. 1940. “La Roccabruna di Villa Adriana,” Palladio, 4: 257-274
Mangurian, R. and M.A. Ray. 2008. “Re-drawing Hadrian’s Villa,” Yale Architectural Journal, 113-116.
Mari, Z. 2010. “Villa Adriana. Recenti scoperte e stato della ricerca,” Ephemeris Napocensis 20: 7-37.
Ytterberg, M. 2005. “The Perambulations of Hadrian. A Walk through Hadrian’s Villa,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania.
Final Wisdom I is an interactive installation engaging viewers in a sensory exploration of temporal and spatialized poetry. Participants manipulate imagery, sound and language through their gesture, touch and proximity. The work is engaged through a framework of cameras and sensors that react to heat, position, and capacitance – presenting a shifting environment of reactive media and haptics. Final Wisdom I is the work of artists Hans Breder and John Fillwalk, poetry by critic Donald Kuspit, music by composers Carlos Cuellar Brown and Jesse Allison. This project is produced through the Institute for Digital Intermedia Arts at Ball State University in collaboration with the Institute for Digital Fabrication. Final Wisdom I was exhibited at the art gallery of SIGGRAPH 2010 in Los Angeles, CA. Special thanks to IDF/CAP students Matthew Wolak, Christopher Baile and Claire Matucheski, and Assistant Professor of Architecture Joshua Vermillion. http://www.i-m-a-d-e.org/
As an intermedia artist, John Fillwalk actively investigates emerging technologies that inform his work in a variety of media, including video installation, virtual art, and interactive forms. His perspective is rooted in the traditions of painting, cinematography, and sculpture, with a particular interest in spatialized works that can immerse and engage a viewer within an experi- ence. Fillwalk positions his work to act as both a threshold and mediator between tangible and implied space, creating a conduit for the transformative extension of experience, and to pursue the realization of forms, sounds and images that afford interaction at its most fundamental level. In working with technology, he values the synergy of collaboration and regularly works with other artists and scientists on projects that could not be realized otherwise. Electronic media extend the range of traditional processes by establishing a palette of time, motion, interactivity, and extensions of presence. The ephemeral qualities of electronic and intermedia works, by their very nature, are inherently transformative, and the significance of the tangible becomes fleeting, shifting emphasis away from the object and toward the experience.
John Fillwalk is Director of the Institute for Digital Intermedia Arts (IDIA Lab) at Ball State University, an interdisciplinary and collaborative hybrid studio. An intermedia artist and Associate Professor of Electronic Art, Fillwalk investigates media in video installation, hybrid reality and interactive forms. He received his MFA from the University of Iowa in Intermedia and Video Art, and has since received numerous grants, awards, commissions and fellowships.
Donald Kuspit is an art critic, author and professor of art history and philosophy at State University of New York at Stony Brook and lends his editorial expertise to several journals, including Art Criticism, Artforum, New Art Examiner, Sculpture and Centennial Review. Hans Breder was born in Herford, Germany, and trained as a painter in Hamburg, Germany. Attract- ed to the University of Iowa’s School of Art and Art History in 1966, Breder established the Intermedia Program. Carlos Cuellar Brown, a.k.a ccbrown, is a composer, instrumentalist and music producer. Formally trained as a classical pianist, Cuellar specialized in experimental music and intermedia with the late American maverick composer Kenneth Gaburo. Jesse Allison is the Virtual Worlds Research Specialist, IDIA, Assistant Professor of Music Technology, Ball State University. He is also President of Hardware Engineering with Electrotap, LLC, an innovative human-computer interface firm.
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
John Fillwalk, director of the Institute for Digital Intermedia Arts and senior director of the university’s Hybrid Design Technologies initiative, was interviewed for the History Channel’s “The Universe.” The episode, which aired 9 p.m. May 23, featured the IDIA Lab’s digital recreation of ancient Roman structures.
For the season finale of its popular program “The Universe,” the History Channel is shining a spotlight on the work of virtual artists from Ball State University.
The season finale episode of the documentary series, which aired May 23, explores how Roman emperors built ancient structures to align with movements of the sun. To confirm experts’ theories about the religious, political, and cultural significance behind these phenomena, the cable network enlisted the help of Ball State’s Institute for Digital Intermedia Arts (IDIA).
Through the use of 3-D computer animation, artists and designers from the IDIA Lab virtually recreated several monuments featured in the episode, along with accurately simulating the alignment of the sun. These structures include: the Pantheon, one of the best preserved buildings of ancient Rome; the Temple of Antinous, a complex that today lies in ruins within Hadrian’s Villa outside of Rome; and the Meridian of Augustus, a site containing an Egyptian obelisk brought to Rome for use as a giant sundial and calendar.
‘Getting things right’
The IDIA Lab digitally rebuilt ancient Roman structures to give viewers of the History Channel’s “The Universe” a vivid idea of what ruins looked like when they were inhabited.
James Grant Goldin, a writer and director for The History Channel, says IDIA’s animations were an essential part of the program’s second season finale. An earlier episode of “The Universe,” which aired in 2014, contracted with IDIA for animation of Stonehenge in a segment demonstrating how the prehistoric monument may have been used to track celestial movements.
This time around, the work of Ball State digital artists is featured throughout the Roman engineering episode.
“It’s an honor for us,” says John Fillwalk, director of IDIA and senior director of the university’s Hybrid Design Technologies initiative. “Ideally our relationship with the History Channel will continue long into the future.”
Goldin said the cable network is keen on employing the IDIA for future projects because Fillwalk and his team create beautifully rendered graphics backed by data and research.
“John was devoted to getting things right,” he said. ” Many of the theories we discuss in the show remain controversial, and in nonfiction TV it’s always a good idea to present such things with a qualifying phrase in the narration—an ‘if’ or a ‘maybe.’ But the IDIA Lab combined their own research with that of experts, and I’m very happy with the results.”
Gaming software transforms history
The Pantheon is one of the ancient structures the IDIA Lab developed 3-D renderings of for the History Channel’s “The Universe.”
Fillwalk has worked closely over the years with many prominent scholars of the ancient world, including Bernard Frischer, a Roman archeologist at Indiana University and Robert Hannah, dean of arts and social sciences from New Zealand’s University of Waikat, who advised on the archeo-astronomy of the project.
Hannah says he’s been astounded to see the way up-to-the-minute gaming software can bring to life the work of today’s historians and virtual archaeologists. “I’ve seen my son play games like ‘Halo,’ so I knew what was possible,” he said, “but I’d never seen it adapted to ancient world buildings.”
Phil Repp, Ball State’s vice president for information technology, says the relationship between the university and the cable network is a key example of how Ball State is distinguishing itself as leading world provider of emerging media content.
“For the History Channel to want the continued help of John and his staff speaks to the quality of what our lab can produce,” he said.
Goldin’s praise for the IDIA supports Repp’s theory. “Bringing the past to life is a very challenging task,” he said. “The renderings Ball State artists have created represent the most accurate possible picture of something that happened almost 2,000 years ago.”
A 3D simulation of an Apollo 11 landing was produced for International MoonBase Alliance and ImmersiveWorlds, LLC. by IDIA Lab.
About IMA
The International MoonBase Alliance (IMA) is an association comprised of leading scientists, educators, and entrepreneurs from space agencies and industries worldwide to advance the development and implementation of an international base on the Moon.
Our priority is to create an action plan that will culminate with the building of MoonBase prototypes on Earth, followed by a sustainable settlement on the Moon. Building on discussions and recommendations from the Lunar Exploration and Analysis Group (LEAG), the European Lunar Symposium, the International Space Development Conference, the NewSpace Symposium, the International Astronautical Congress (IAC), and other worldwide space forums, we intend to formulate an integrated strategy for establishing a proposed multinational lunar base.
Towards this goal, the IMA hosted a 2017 summit last October on Hawaiʻi’s Big Island and invited leading aerospace, engineering and space industry professionals for a series of conferences focusing on identifying essential resources and technological capabilities required to enable and sustain lunar-based operations. Through the promotion of international collaborations and public-private partnerships, we can reduce costs, enhance benefits, and accelerate timetables for lunar settlements.
Ball State University’s IDIA Lab is granted rights to Blue Mars virtual world technology from Avatar Reality http://bit.ly/BSU_BlueMars Ball State granted rights to develop $10 million Blue Mars virtual world technology (3/5/2012)
Ball State granted rights to develop $10 million Blue Mars virtual world technology (3/5/2012)
A digital laser scan of a centuries-old Buddha (above) and a simulation of the 1915 World’s Fair in San Francisco (below) are two examples of how Ball State has employed Blue Mars for cutting edge technology projects.
The future of virtual worlds has a new home at Ball State University, thanks to the generosity of Avatar Reality Inc., which granted the university rights to the multimillion-dollar 3-D virtual world platform, Blue Mars.
Blue Mars’ creator, Hawaii-based Avatar Reality, has provided expanded rights to the technology, valued at $10 million in research and development, to Ball State for 3-D simulation and research projects beyond the world of gaming.
“We are honored to have our institution selected to build upon the tremendous innovations within Avatar Reality’s Blue Mars platform,” said John Fillwalk, director of the Institute for Digital Intermedia Arts (IDIA) and senior director of Ball State’s Hybrid Design Technologies initiative. “This partnership between Avatar Reality and Ball State is an unprecedented gesture and a great distinction.”
Since 2009, Ball State’s IDIA has been a leading developer for Blue Mars, employing the virtual platform on projects such as digital laser scans of a centuries-old Buddha and the creation of the Virtual Middletown Project. The project, which ushers visitors via their computers into the world of the early 20th-century Ball Brothers Glass Manufacturing Co., is one example of the cultural heritage work possible with Blue Mars. Another is IDIA’s simulation of the 1915 World’s Fair in San Francisco.
“Avatar Reality designed in Blue Mars a next-generation 3-D platform that greatly advanced the graphic fidelity, functionality and scalability of virtual worlds — well beyond current standards,” Fillwalk said. “Its strategy connected social spaces across devices, from high-performance desktops to mobile phones. Our goal is to build upon both its technology and vision for the future of virtual worlds. “
Recognition speaks to reputation
Phil Repp, Ball State’s vice president for information technology, said the new agreement with Avatar Reality can be traced to Fillwalk’s commitment to advancing IDIA to the national level.
“The fact that other universities — and many of them of very high caliber — are working hard to gain expertise in hybrid worlds and that Ball State was identified as the university most likely to further develop this technology speaks volumes about our reputation, experience and abilities,” Repp said. “It’s an honor for Ball State and John to be singled out with this kind of recognition.”
Under Ball State’s terms of agreement with Avatar Reality, the university will begin to fully operate Blue Mars for noncommercial purposes, expand upon the source code, increase its research and academic initiatives, and enhance the community of Blue Mars. In addition, Ball State will deliver original content on Blue Mars as it has done in the past. Existing commercial activity will continue to be operated and supported by Avatar Reality, Inc.
“I am really excited about the future,” Repp said. “Through our division of Hybrid Design Technologies, Ball State will further our position as a national leader in hybrid worlds and their applications to mediated learning technologies. Our reputation in this discipline is such a perfect fit to our institutional history of innovation in teaching and learning.”
About Ball State: Located in Muncie, Ind., Ball State University is redefining education by providing relevant, immersive learning experiences that engage high-caliber students in intense interdisciplinary projects both in and out of the classroom. Its vibrant campus is home to about 22,000 undergraduate and graduate students from across the country and abroad. Learn more at www.bsu.edu.
About Blue Mars: Developed by Avatar Reality Inc., Blue Mars is a premium 3-D virtual world platform featuring unparalleled interactivity, fidelity, scalability and security, and it enables artists and developers to create and distribute interactive 3-D experiences to a global audience. Blue Mars launched in open beta in October 2009 and began selling virtual land to third party developers in January 2010. Blue Mars Mobile, an iOS app based on the content and technology from the virtual world, was introduced in February 2011.
The BSU College of Health and CAP’s IDIA Lab were honored with a national award for their collaborative virtual escape room project. The serious game, “The Case of the Kidnapped Healthcare Professionals: Virtual Escape Room” was selected to receive the 2023 Creativity in Practice and Education Award from the National Academies of Practice (NAP). BSU’s Lori Porter accepted the award on behalf of the project team Karrie Osborne, PhD, RN, Blair Mattern, John Fillwalk, IDIA staff and Katherine Berryhill for their work in developing the project.
Escape rooms employ innovative learning strategies such as problem-based immersive learning, role-play, and game principles to improve teamwork, communication and leadership. Nationally, health profession curricula are beginning to explore the use of escape room experiences as innovative pedagogy. Escape rooms challenge individuals to collaboratively explore new content, work as a team to discover clues, solve puzzles, and accomplish interactive tasks in a limited amount of time.
IDIA is designing an interactive virtual training simulator for Rutgers University’s School of Health Professions. The project immerses students within TeamSTEPPS, Team Strategies and Tools to Enhance Performance and Patient Safety. Developed by AHRQ, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, TeamSTEPPS is an interprofessional communication framework providing interdisciplinary collaboration and teamwork tools aimed at optimizing patient outcomes by improving communication among healthcare professionals. It is AHRQ’s signature curriculum to improve patient safety by training health care teams to communicate and practice effective teamwork. TeamSTEPPS trains staff in teamwork skills to lead medical teamwork improvement initiatives in an organization, from initial concept development through sustainment of positive changes
Students will learn best practice interprofessional communication strategies and apply them in lab-based scenarios in a single-player simulator created in the 3D game engine of Unity. The experience is designed with branched dialogue trees to provide decision making opportunities to assess learned concepts as they are applied to various healthcare scenarios. The project was recently presented at the National Academies of Practice (NAP) annual conference.
IDIA Lab – in collaboration with BSU Assistant Professor of Architecture, Kristin Barry – has designed the cultural heritage mobile application, Virtual Columbus Experience – allowing users to virtually tour the rich architectural history of Columbus, Indiana. This locative mobile app was produced with fellowship support of Ball State University’s Digital Scholarship Lab.
Though a relatively small city, Columbus has made itself a cradle of modern architecture, commissioning many buildings and public works since the middle of the 20th century. The number of landmark buildings and notable architects to have worked in the city has earned it the nickname “Athens on the Prairie.”
With data and artifacts gathered by Kristin Barry’s immersive class, users of the app can explore 3D models of key buildings commissioned over the years, survey timelines showing when architects were active or buildings were constructed, and meet Columbus’ famous architects – such as Eero Saarinen, I.M. Pei, and Harry Weese.
After its launch, Virtual Columbus Experience will seek further funding to expand the scope and depth of the project across the community.
Buffalo Bill Center of the West has contracted with IDIA Lab to create an augmented reality (AR) diorama of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show. Guests to the museum will be able to view the physical white model. While IDIA Lab’s previous Buffalo Bill project focused on his Muncie show, this iteration explores the Ambrose Park show in Brooklyn, NY.
Adam Kobitz
“Constructing the physical portion of the Buffalo Bill diorama through 3D printing and laser cutting processes presented us with several challenges, the first of which was recreating our existing models within CAD software (Autodesk Fusion 360) to ensure that they were designed with these techniques in mind. This modelling process is quite different from those employed on the AR side of the piece, and entails ensuring that the sizes, thicknesses, etc. of each element correlates with the parameters of our machines. Additionally, given the overall scale of the final product, many elements throughout the diorama had to be broken down into smaller components and reassembled by hand. After the models had been 3D printed or laser cut, each of the elements needed to be assembled with adhesives, their seams hidden with a filler substance, filed and sanded, and painted to achieve the final aesthetic.”
Trevor Danehy
“I identified several 19th century photos of William Cody, Iron Tail, and Nate Salsbury with in a timeframe of a few years. Using these photos I constructed a digital 3D model of them within programs like Zbrush and Maya. I also did extensive research of the 1884 Buffalo Bill Wild West show in Ambrose Park, Brooklyn- a long forgotten location that has been all but wiped from history. There are very few details of Ambrose Park aside from a few photographs from the late nineteenth century. The location was demolished in the early 20th century and the Brooklyn Navy Terminal was paved over it. I was able to confirm structures and locations of the Wild West show by cross referencing photographs that overlap the same locations. An interesting note is that we have an electrical layout map of the show in Ambrose park. When comparing photographs to the electrical map, while it does confirm the exact locations of electrical poles throughout the campus, the positions of major tents have changed, possibly due to weather or other circumstance. Many informative photographs came from Robert Bracklow, a professional photographer that was heavily active in the New York area at the time. Many other photographers can be seen in the Wild West show, but his archive survived over more than a century. It was his photographs that helped establish the location of the tents belonging to William Cody, Annie Oakley, and even John Burke’s cabin. They also helped piece together what parts of the exterior grandstand might have looked like.”
IDIA Lab has created a virtual gallery design system in partnership with virtual world creator Sinespace. Sinespace, a multi-user virtual world platform based in the UK, contacted IDIA to design this system for their new virtual environment. The Gallery Designer isan easy to use system to dynamically create gallery and museum exhibitions on the fly with any web hosted images – creating an exhibition with any images that can be connected to from the internet. Users can easily pick gallery styles (classical/modern), exterior settings, frame style, lighting, floosr, wall color and ceiling treatments – customizing an experience that is complementary to the exhibition theme. The gallery can then be easily published and host a virtual reception with visitors from around the globe.
IDIA Lab partnered with physicians at the Seattle Children’s Hospital to develop a virtual simulator to train staff in the case of various disasters.
The EVAC+ Virtual Disaster Simulator leverages virtual reality to train health care providers to react quickly and effectively to unexpected events that threaten patient safety. It was developed after pilot live simulations, user focus groups, surveys, and a successful pilot of the initial EVAC system. After the need for more communication opportunities and variations in disasters responses was identified in the pilot, EVAC+ was created. EVAC+ leverages the same ability to prepare patient equipment for an evacuation but with significantly more features allowing for interacting with hospital room, other staff, and family members. Upon entering the EVAC+ environment providers are oriented to the virtual space, including navigation, interacting with objects, and how to interact verbally with non-player characters.
Once they are comfortable with the space they can choose from a menu of disasters to experience, including earthquakes, fire, and an active shooter event. Each simulation has unique objectives around patient protection, equipment packing, and communication with other staff and families. Learners practice how they would provide a status update using the SBAR technique to their charge nurse, use closed loop communication, and respond to anxious family members.
Pre-determined safety behaviors, such as stopping and resolving a mission critical issue, are prompted and performance recorded for feedback. After each scenario the user is guided through a self-debriefing on how well they performed on key disaster and communication behaviors. Information on how they managed and packed medical equipment is presented along with evidence-based information on how experts would recommend managing equipment. Users can choose to repeat any scenario to practice or refine their responses and can explore the scenarios in any order.
The Unity3D environment is accessible on web-browsers and head-mounted VR systems. Amazon Web Services (AWS) supports voice communication and real-time analytics. The EVAC+ system fills a unique need for accessible, interactive, sustainable disaster training for healthcare providers.
Ball State’sApplied Anthropology Laboratories (AAL) and the Institute for Digital Intermedia Arts (IDIA Lab) are creating a web-based virtual world that interprets the earthworks in their era of construction. The project is led oy Kevin Nolan, director and senior archaeologist at AAL and project co-director John Fillwalk, senior director ofIDIA Lab.Interactive features will include accurate celestial alignments. The sky will be simulated with accurate celestial bodies using data from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to allow users to view the stars, planets, moon, and sun as they appeared 2000 years ago.
Already a National Historic Landmark, Ohio designated the Newark Earthworks as “the official prehistoric monument of the state” in 2006. Spread across four miles in what is now present-day Newark, Ohio, mounds and walls are constructed to record significant celestial alignments on the landscape, including the 18.6-year lunar cycle. The earthworks created community for the Hopewell People and provided sacred spaces for religious rituals and ceremonies related to their society. The Newark Earthworks comprise the largest set of geometric earthen enclosures in the world, built by the Hopewell People between A.D. 1 to A.D. 400 to serve a variety of cultural and spiritual purposes.
The project is a collaboration between Ball State and the Ohio History Connection, with support and partnership from several federally recognized American Indian tribes, including the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma and the Shawnee Tribe.
Apollo 11 VR is a first person experience of the interior of the 1969 Command Module. Explore the cockpit firsthand in an authentic model of the interior based on scans from the Smithsonian. This is the 50th anniversary of the historic landing where Buzz Aldrin and Neal Armstrong walked on the surface of the moon on a site name Tranquility Base.
The Spacecraft
The Apollo spacecraft had three parts: a command module (CM) with a cabin for the three astronauts, and the only part that returned to Earth; a service module (SM), which supported the command module with propulsion, electrical power, oxygen, and water; and a lunar module (LM) that had two stages – a descent stage for landing on the Moon, and an ascent stage to place the astronauts back into lunar orbit. The astronauts used Eagle’s ascent stage to lift off from the lunar surface and rejoin Collins in the command module. They jettisoned Eagle before they performed the maneuvers that propelled the ship out of the last of its 30 lunar orbits on a trajectory back to Earth. They returned to Earth and splashed down in the Pacific Ocean on July 24 after more than eight days in space.
Armstrong’s first step onto the lunar surface was broadcast on live TV to a worldwide audience. He described the event as “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
Wishing Well creates an environment where visitor’s interaction shapes the substance, meaning and character of the artwork – mediated through artificial intelligence. Upon engaging the installation, a participant speaks a wish into a pool of water that only they can hear. Their spoken wish is collected by an artificially intelligent set of software and hardware that begins to process the viewer’s hope. There is a technical document attached to the proposal that details the specific flow and technologies, but in essence, once each wish is recorded it is spoken back in a transformed in a poetic manner by text to speech synthesis in a whispering tone. The individual viewer privately hears this once – their wish then is processed to become part of a larger collection of all wishes which can be heard through synthesized voice through directional speakers. The tone of the collection of all wishes is analyzed and affects the processing of the spoken wishes, the ambient sound, and the color and brightness of the light produced above and below the pool.
Wishing Well engages both private and public spaces in the creation of a simultaneously intimate and collective social experience. The tone of the wishes aggregated by the system is processed anonymously and delivered into this social sculpture via synthesized whispered voice spoken in English. The water pool, or wishing well, is vibrated by a speaker underneath creating a three-dimensional dynamic sound wave image of the actual wish. Virtual lanterns will appear projected with each wish and will launch skyward to become part of the larger collection of dreams.
IBM Watson’s Speech to Text service accepts an audio file or stream as input and returns a transcription. This service will allow Wishing Well to analyze user speech for its tone and repeat it back using text-to-speech.
IBM Watson’s Tone Analyzer service accepts text as input and returns a tone analysis that detects analytical attitude, inhibition, confidence, hope, sadness and joy across a spectrum. This data will be used to drive the color and intensity of the light of Wishing Well based on the aggregate tone of the wishes.
Amazon AWS’ Polly output can be modified with SSML tags which can affect the timbre, loudness, and pace of the audio. Wishing Well will whisper wishes back to the wisher.
Cymatics and Spouting Bowls
Cymatics, from the Ancient Greek: κῦμα, signifying, “wave”, is a subset of modulation physics. Ordinarily the outside of a plate or vessel is vibrated, and areas of most extreme and least disturbance are made visible by animating fluid. Various patterns emerge dependent on the amplitude, frequency and shape of the vessel.
The device utilized can be direct, for example, the Chinese spouting bowl, in which copper handles are rubbed and cause the copper base components to vibrate – thus stimulating the water.
Standing vessels started in China. An early form called nao took the state of a stemmed flagon, mounted with edge upright, and hit outwardly with a mallet.
Wishing Well User Experience
The visitor steps into a zone and triggers a proximity sensor that begins recording.
The user speaks their wish into the microphone in the console.
The recording stops.
The audio is converted to text via the speech-to-text AI service.
The text is sent to the IBM Language Translator and then to Amazon Polly.
The Language Translator returns the text.
The text is sent to the Tone Analyzer.
The Tone Analyzer returns a tone analysis.
Tone is analysis is sent to Unity and Max to affect light color and sound.
The tone analysis drives visual and synthesized voice effects based on the mood of the wish.
The synthesized voice audio is played through a hyper-directional speaker using ultrasound directed toward the visitor so only they can hear privately. http://hypersound.com/pro/products/
Previous wishes are played at the same time through a randomly selected hyper-directional speaker surrounding the installation. Each visitors wish becomes part of the cloud of wishes and randomly plays anonymously through AI voice.
The installation goes into an idle / attract state in which visual and auditory effects are influenced by the combined tone of the currently saved wishes.
ATK (Audio Tool Kit) is a demo of ATK-Sharp, a procedural audio generation library. ATK contains four example sound scripts that developers can use as a reference to script their own custom sounds.
Using procedurally-generated audio instead of pre-made audio files has two main benefits:
1. Build file size can be reduced. Audio files can take up megabytes of disk space, while procedural audio is an order of magnitude smaller, typically only requiring kilobytes to store its script’s algorithm.
2. Procedural audio is flexible. Audio files are essentially baked. You may be able to change the pitch or speed of a file, but they could never match the sample-by-sample control you’ll have using procedural audio. Adding physics and logic as input, a given sound script may never produce the same output more than once.
Features
– WindAudio.cs demonstrates the very basics of what a developer will need to do to start scripting procedural audio using the library. – FireAudio.cs script showcases how the developer can combine noise generators and a modifier to create the hiss, crackle, and pop of a campfire. – ChimeAudio.cs exhibits how the developer can use physics as an input to the audio script. – CricketAudio.cs models the chirp pattern of an actual species of cricket, known as the fall field cricket, to demonstrate how far the concept of procedural audio can be taken.
Ball State University and the Technische Universität Dortmund have partnered in creating an international exchange program for students studying the design and technology of Intermedia artforms.
Ball State University and the Technische Universität Dortmund have partnered in creating an international exchange program for students studying the design and technology of Intermedia artforms. This program will provide opportunities for students and faculty engaged in experiential project-based approaches to the collaborative creation of new media art. The Hans Breder Foundation, which is a non-profit international Intermedia art organization, has contributed a significant body of historic artwork to the Museum Ostwall in Dortmund – the largest art museum in Germany. The archive will serve as a catalyst for research and production of Intermedia based projects initiated by the BSU and TU Dortmund exchange. John Fillwalk, also president of the Hans Breder Foundation, initiated the exchange program with the assistance of the Rinker Center for International Programs. He will be present at the formal signing ceremony on November 19th in Dortmund, Germany.
The Charles W. Brown Planetarium’s newest production, “Halloween: Celestial Origins” premiered the weekend of October 7th in collaborations with IDIA lab.
Learn the history of Halloween and how it fits into the seasons as a “cross-quarter day” during this new production. Explore the night sky and learn what planets, constellations, and stars will be out on Halloween. Created in collaboration with the Ball State University – Department of Physics and Astronomy, the Department of Anthropology, and IDIA Lab The Institute for Digital Intermedia Arts at Ball State University. More information at http://bsu.edu/planetarium.
Explore the solar system by touch and augmented reality. New app for iOS, Android and Oculus Rift designed by BSU’s IDIA Lab allows users to learn about our sun and planets – and their moons. Physical museum objects trigger augmented experiences of each planet, providing deeper context and understanding. View the moon’s orbits, examine each moon, the planet’s atmosphere and unique features such as Jupiter’s Great Red Spot. IDIA designed this augmented reality app as a prototype for the Boston Museum of Science Planetarium.
IDIA Lab’s Chris Harrison presented on the topic of photogrammetry at a workshop in İzmit, Turkey, the results of which have recently been published in Mimarlık | Tasarım Kültürü Dergisi (Architecture | Design Culture Magazine).
View the 3D Model
The workshop
The workshop was a collaboration between Ball State University’s College of Architecture and Planning (group led by Jonathan Spodek, FAIA), the Politecnico di Milano (group led by Prof. Elisabetta Rosina), and the host Kocaeli University (group led by Dr. Emre Kishali).
While the workshop focused broadly on theories of historic preservation in relation to the city of İzmit as a whole, Chris was invited to the workshop to present photogrammetry as a cheap, fast, and accessible method of site documentation and preservation. Chris led a team comprised of one student from each participating university and used the mosque and its grounds as a hands-on experience to teach various capture techniques.
While other documentation methods such as laser scanning exist, they require very expensive equipment that takes considerable training. Photogrammetry only requires a digital camera, which many people have on their cell phones these days. Using a free version of Autodesk’s browser-based ReMake, Chris and the students were able to capture and process the mosque interior and several smaller exterior details over the course of a few days.
Post processing
After returning from the workshop, we decided to further refine the model and optimize it for a virtual reality experience. Using a variety of softwares, the model was simplified so that it could be run as a live experience. This now enables visitors to experience a site located halfway across the world as if they were there.
Digital artists from Ball State’s IDIA Lab built their virtual simulation of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West with the Unity 3-D gaming platform along with custom software created by the lab.
Cowboys and Indians captivated the country when Buffalo Bill’s Wild West rolled through America in the late 1800s and early 1900s. More than a century later, Ball State digital artists have re-created the legendary showman’s outdoor exhibition.
Working with staff from the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, artists and designers from Ball State’s Institute for Digital Intermedia Arts (IDIA) have crafted a computer-generated world that authentically simulates the Wild West showdramatizing frontier life.
“The visual look and feel of the project is something we’re really proud of,” said John Fillwalk, IDIA director and senior director of the university’s Hybrid Design Technologies initiative.
Fillwalk collaborated on the project with Jeremy Johnston, curator of the center’s Buffalo Bill Museum, and Ball State historians James Connolly and Douglas Seefeldt.
As a senior digital editor of the Papers of William F. Cody, Seefeldt has worked closely with Johnston on several projects the National Endowment for the Humanities recently recognized as among the most significant it funded.
“When Doug introduced me to John, I was excited because all we had to visually represent the Wild West show at the Buffalo Bill Museum was this small architectural diorama,” said Johnston, who is also managing editor of the Papers of William F. Cody. “It gave our visitors an aerial overview of the show but lacked action.
“What the IDIA captured for us is the look and feel of the experience, right down to the sound effects of horses and the stage coach running through the arena.”
Buffalo Bill’s Muncie visit
IDIA-created augmented reality apps will feature objects in the museums’ collections, such as firearms.
The Virtual Buffalo Bill project offered a crossover research opportunity for Connolly, director of Ball State’s Center for Middletown Studies. The center is developing Virtual Middletown, a 3-D visualization of industrializing early 20th-century Muncie, and the Buffalo Bill simulation offered an opportunity to produce a module as part of that endeavor.
Connolly and Seefeldt provided Fillwalk with photographs and newspaper accounts of Buffalo Bill’s 1899 stop in Muncie. “He personified the Wild West for audiences in these small towns,” Connolly said.
Connolly’s and Seefeldt’s research, along with assets provided by the Buffalo Bill Center, allowed Fillwalk and his artists to create beautifully rendered graphics based on data and research, hallmarks that have distinguished IDIA’s work in emergent media design.
“The attack on the Deadwood Stage Coach is simulated down to representing John Y. Nelson, one of America’s original Mountain Men driving the coach,” Fillwalk explained. “And Cody himself—along with his wardrobe—was painstakingly researched and re-created. His appearance was based on specific clothing of Cody’s in the museum collection that we were allowed to photograph.”
Seefeldt said Fillwalk’s re-creations uniquely capture William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody.
“His show had it all—buffalos, the Pony Express, Annie Oakley, re-enactments of iconic events in the history of the West. He was one of the most famous people in the country, a celebrity of that era, and it’s a thrill to see the way John has brought him back to life.”
Ball State-Center of the West partnership continues
Located in Cody, Wyoming, the Buffalo Bill Center of the West includes the Buffalo Bill, Draper Natural History, Whitney Western Art, Plains Indian and Cody Firearms museums, along with the McCracken Research Library.
The Origins of Buffalo Bill
Born in 1846, William F. Cody rode for the Pony Express, served as a military scout and earned his moniker “Buffalo Bill” while hunting the animals for the Kansas Pacific Railroad work crews. Beginning in 1883, he became one of the world’s best showmen with the launch of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, which was staged for 30 years, touring America and Europe multiple times.
The IDIA Lab’s next project for the center will be a series of augmented reality apps featuring objects in each museum’s collection. By holding electronic devices over images like a grizzly bear or gun, users can learn more about them as 3-D models of the subjects pop up on screen.
“By using their phones or tablets, visitors can see museum exhibits come to life,” Fillwalk said. “All of our work is meant to give visitors a greater appreciation for these assets with the aid of our digital interpretations.”
Johnston said what he likes best about Fillwalk’s approach is the way “he puts technology in the users’ hands.”
“I’ve seen so many younger people walking through our museums with their heads down, glued to their iPhones and iPads. With John’s help, I’m excited that we’re taking something they’re so familiar with and using it in a way to get them to engage with our exhibits here.”
Funding for the Virtual Buffalo Bill project was provided by a grant from the Buffalo Bill Center for the West, which was matched by internal grant funding from Ball State.
Ball State University’s IDIA Lab https://idialab.org is developing a multiplayer virtual world that simulates Buffalo Bill Wild West Show. This digital history project is built in Unity 3D using custom software created by IDIA Lab and is being produced for the Buffalo Bill Center for the West in Cody, WY. Scholars include Douglas Seefeldt and James Connolly at Ball State University. http://centerofthewest.org
IDIA Lab sponsors regular hands-on workshops on a variety of new media arts approaches. These workshops are taught by IDIA faculty fellows, graduate assistants and staff. Please look below for upcoming and past offerings.
Video/Intermedia Workshops Spring 2011
ART 300A-001/ART 515 Maura Jasper
“Live Art”: Action, Participation, and the Everyday
Explore the foundations of Performance Art and “Live Art” practices and
Create your own works in response.
Fluxus, actions, happenings, and socially engaged art practices will be emphasized. Participation and interactivity through the use of YouTube, social networks, Skype, and live web TV will be encouraged, but not required in your work.
Mon/Wed Jan 10- Feb 4
4-6:45 PM The Photo Lighting Studio (AJ)
Artists discussed: Marina Abromovic, Valie Export, Allan Kaprow, Joseph
IDIA in partnership with the College of Architecture and Planning and the College of Fine Arts is currently developing a Graduate Certificate program in Hybrid and Virtual Environments. Please check this site for future progress on the certificate or email idialab@bsu.edu.
In collaboration with Clarian Health, IDIA has created a training video and interactive media to help facilitate the transition into the Ball Memorial Hospital New South Tower.
How can nurses train in a new hospital wing before it is constructed? Or after it’s complete and full of patients? For help addressing the situation, hospital officials turned to Ball State University and its emerging media experts. Rather than have the nurses don hardhats and run training seminars amidst saws and hammers, Ball State’s Institute for Digital Intermedia Arts (IDIA) worked to create a virtual training program. The result will allow nurses to interact with the new layout and better adapt t o their new surroundings well before the physical construction is complete.
This could be extremely important in terms of ultimate patient care, as nurses will be adapting to a new facility as well as learning a new patient-based floor design. Rather than having a single nursing station surrounded by many rooms, the wing will have individual nursing stations ensconced between two rooms. “Our interactive training simulation showcases new, more efficient methods for working in a decentralized care unit as opposed to a centralized care unit,” said John Fillwalk, IDIA director. “Switching from a single hub to multiple nursing stations represents a culture shift for nurses, and we were able to help them work through that.”
Using Quest 3D, a virtual reality program, Fillwalk and his team developed “New Spaces, New Care,” a training simulation that works like a computer game, allowing nurses to virtually explore their new environment, sit at their new workstations, view and walk into patients’ rooms, examine charts and access medicine cabinets.
In the weeks prior to the facilities opening, nurses assigned to the South Tower will complete the virtual training. By exploring the new wing before it’s complete, the nurses will be better acquainted the amenities, which once mastered, will give them more time for their patients, Fillwalk said. “By working directly with hospital officials and the nursing staff, we were able to create a program to more quickly acclimate staff members to their new environment and help them focus on the most important component of their jobs — tending to patients,” he added.
Virtual worlds are three-dimensional environments that can provide compelling shared experiences for their users. These media-rich immersive spaces can connect to social networks, web-services, and data to bridge into an entire universe of external content. The IDIA has developed scores of projects in virtual worlds and game environments including Blue Mars, Unity 3D, Second Life, Open Simulator, and Quest 3D.
The IDIA built and animated Odie’s character using Maya 3D; an industry standard animation software package used in the feature film and visualization industries. This game that IDIA designed with Paws characters, was developed in Unity 3D.
Paws characters Odie, Garfield and the neighborhood were then brought into the Unity game engine where the lighting, real-time shadows, and physics simulations were designed. Unity’s scripting capability was also utilized to control the Odie character’s animation and movement, trigger collision sounds, and animate Garfield as Odie moves by. There are a selection of objects for Odie to interact with, each with its own physical properties including weight, friction, and bounciness.
http://unity3d.com
MOBILE ENTERTAINMENT
Mobile devices are increasingly used to help us navigate, communicate, stay informed and be entertained. Devices such as the Apple iPhone are capable of supporting rich and complex 3D experiences such as augmented reality and games. The IDIA has been developing numerous projects for PDA enabled mobile phones including applications for social networking, conference systems, augmented reality walking tours, live musical performance and games.
The prototype 3D game, IDIA built with Paws content, has also been re-purposed here as an iPhone game – exhibiting the range and scalability of these authoring environments. The same content from any game can also be realized as a Nintendo Wii game using this production workflow.
This authoring environment supports two and three-dimensional game spaces, interacting through clicks, tilts and touch. Users can walk Odie through his neighborhood, encountering trashcans, balls and Garfield himself!
Trevor Danehy and Tom Anderson, students from the IDIA Immersion Seminar, designed and produced a 3D visualization of a therapeutic process developed by Dr. Tom Sevier of Performance Dynamics. Students worked with state of the art software and a commercial anatomical 3D model with over 4,000 parts to realize a professional quality and dynamic scientific illustration for an external client.
The ASTYM simulation was an animation used to visualize specific effects and treatments of tendonosis. Information was gathered from ASTYM researchers to turn a complex, unseen procedure into a visual explanation. Choosing a design style was a challenge because 3D animation in the medical field has a different goal than most common animations. There needs to be a balance between accuracy and simple, clean visuals. Various shader styles were considered to properly display the internal processes of the human arm accurately, while avoiding anything realistically gruesome or visual clutter that would be detrimental to explaining the complexity of the human body. Transparent, yet visible objects were needed, so students opted for a dynamic incidence shader, which would shade the curvature and sides of objects while leaving the middle portions transparent enough to see what lies under them. Bright glowing colors were used to highlight particular tendons and separate muscles from each other.
IDIA, in collaboration with the College of Architecture and Planning, will be constructing a virtual tour of the town of Reynolds, Indiana for Governor Mitch Daniels’s Biotown Project. Reynolds will eventually be removed from the power grid and will be self-sustained by biological fuels. The virtual tour will show the town as it exists today, and how it will appear after the project has been finished.
The IDIA is utilizing the open source Augmented Reality toolkit to explore possible applications of AR in the educational and art realms. Of particular interest is the use of AR in architecture to effectively evaluate students’ white models in a group setting.
Dave Schultz demonstrates the use of AR to display 3D architectural models.
Dave Schultz demonstrates the mapping of video onto an AR object.
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.
The Aesthetic Camera Project was designed to deliver digital cinema curriculum through Second Life – an online virtual world. This intensive research and development project was hatched through a partnership between the College of Fine Arts, the Center for Media Design, and Information Technology. Students learn the techniques of filmmaking in this 3D collaborative multi-user environment and are able to make virtual films using the project’s equipment. Student designers and programmers worked with a team of local and global professionals from across the arts and sciences.
The one-credit course focuses on cinematography instruction in the physical world and virtual world where it is also known as “machinima” and while teaching cinematography techniques and allowing 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.
The project is set in an environment that stimulates creativity and interaction with fellow students and instructors. This environment includes virtual versions of all the necessary tools and some that do not exist in the real world, for example, a flexible shooting environment or holodeck.
The Institute has found measurable benefits for both instructors and researchers from this project that have included the development and retention of an expert research team centered around simulation, visualization and interaction.
Benefits for students include that distance education students can participate in communal learning and synchronous dialog with instructors and a peer group.
Most recently, the 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 award recognizes IDIAA for its Aesthetic Camera filmmaking course and integrated Blackboard custom software, offered through the online world of Second Life.
interActivity was a collaborative art system at the Ball State University Art Museum on February 25th 2007. It was hosted in conjunction with the Engaging Technology exhibit run by the newly minted IDIAA.
The Las Americas Virtual Design Studio is made possible through a collaboration between IDIA, the College of Architecture and Planning at Ball State University, the Las Americas Network, with the professional firm of BSA LifeStructures. The project linked 11 international Departments of Architecture, over 100 students and 11 faculty in this immersive collaboration environment. The students worked within their prospective studios under the direction of their local instructors. At the same time each student is assigned to an international virtual studio made out of students of different universities under the advisory of several virtual instructors. The roster of virtual instructors is made out of the instructors of all participating studios and a number of professional reviewers who do not have students at their particular location.
The LAVDS is a beacon that not only attracts visitors, but encourages interaction on multiple levels: it is depicted an organic system – a radial configuration of pods or petals -spaces for small group use, and a large group meeting place at the center. A tall mast-like element. The structure relied on configurable interfaces to facilitate large and small interactions. For instance, it could be set up for small critique or large group lecture sessions.
On November 10, the Las Americas Network held the international grand opening of its Virtual Design Studio. “The nature of the tower’s architecture is specific to Second Life. There are no stairs, and dynamic pods and audio bubbles allow groups to meet together or ‘fly’ away to have private meetings,” said dean of CAP Guillermo Vasquez de Velasco.
The project was created on a Second Life island at the Ball State University Instructional Campus. Some constraints designers faced were the 96′ x 96′ x 96′ cubic site, a limit to 40 avatars able to interact simultaneously, 15,000 geometrical primitives. The project required that it celebrate the spirit of the virtual design studio while leveraging technologies and capabilities for the interaction (work and play) of the participants of the LAVDS in ways that have not been possible outside of a virtual environment.
Students from Ball State University’s Institute for Digital Intermedia Arts created a music video for recording artist Ki: Theory. The entirely animated video for the song Holiday Heart, is the artist’s first professionally produced video for broadcast on popular music television venues. This immersive learning experience connected students to an industry partner, challenged their production skills, and gave them a look at life after graduation.
The IDIA Seminar’s current project focuses on virtually recreating the original settings of various sculptures found throughout the Ball State University Museum of Art. The project focused on scanning five different sculptures using a 3D laser scanner.
This project has allowed Ball State students to get involved with 3D scanning by learning the method, techniques and limitations involved with accurate scanning procedures.
The museum scanning project was initially a way to not only digitally archive a few select sculptures, but to place them in an animated video to visualize the art in their original context, before they found their way to the Ball State Museum of Fine Arts.
Sculptures such as Adolph Alexander Weinman’s “Descending Night” and “Rising Sun” originally were meant to be viewed at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915 in San Francisco. The students intend to visually replicate that scene along with how the artist framed them for viewing with the help of a Zcorporation Zscanner 700 at a high resolution. Scanning typically takes the class around six hours (for a human sized sculpture). The ZScanner has the ability to scan any object in the tightest spaces and do it in real-time with one continuous scan. Once the scan data is acquired, there are a large variety of mediums that it can be transferred to both digitally and physically. Students then place the models within an animation using AutoDesk Maya. A high-resolution viewer and interactive touch screens are also used to view the models. Students are also investigating a method of 3D prototyping the models to a smaller, more reproducible copy.
In the virtual installation, PROXY, visitors shape the construction of a sculptural and sonic response to the virtual museum. The work progresses to form, eventually transforming to become structural support for the building. When multiple users are in the environment, their avatars interact with one another to create collaborative painting and sculpture.
FLICKR™ GETTR v6
John Fillwalk
with Jesse Allison, Composer and IDIA Lab. 2012.
FLICKR™ GETTR v6 connects the social image web service of Flickr™ to the virtual museum environment, allowing visitors to create a dynamic cloud of spatial imagery by entering a search term of their choice, that pulls in related images from Flickr™ into the virtual environment.
SURVEY FOR BEIJING
John Fillwalk
with Keith Kothman, Composer and IDIA Lab. 2012.
SURVEY FOR BEIJING is an immersive landscape simulation using real time weather data from the physical location in Beijing, China. Representations of surveyor’s tape, flags, light, time of day, wind and clouds are superimposed onto the virtual landscape in accordance with real-life weather data.
con|FLUENCE
John Fillwalk
with Michael Olson, Composer and IDIA Lab. 2012.
Participants in con|FLUENCE create pathways based on reactions to both social and spatial relationships. There is a virtual response and persistence to interactions, as the routes are drawn and sculpted in the three-dimensional environment – forming nodes that are created via visitors’ proximity
Ball State artists create “forest” of light on display in China and Internet
Muncie, Ind. — Ball State University electronic artists have created a “forest” of light and sound that will be on exhibit in Beijing, China through November, yet also accessible to visitors from Indiana or anywhere else in the world.
That’s possible because “Displaced Resonance,” as the interactive art exhibit is known, has both real-life and virtual components.
The physical portion has been installed in a gallery of the China Science and Technology Museum in Beijing. There, in-person visitors can negotiate a thicket of 16 interactive sculptures spaced 1.5 meters apart that will change colors and emit music as they approach.
A digital replica of the layout, meanwhile, resides on the Internet, accessible through the museum’s website. Online visitors can wander the virtual exhibit using an avatar, and the digital pillars will change colors and produce sounds, just like their physical counterparts.
But that’s not all — the two pieces interact with each other, says John Fillwalk, director of Ball State’s Institute for Digital Intermedia Arts (IDIA) and Hybrid Design Technologies (HDT), which created the work in collaboration with IDIA staff, students and composer Michaal Pounds, BSU.
When an online avatar approaches a virtual pillar, the corresponding real-life column also will change colors, and vice versa. In-person and virtual visitors will produce different colors, however, allowing them to track each other through the exhibit.
“It’s what we call hybrid art,” says Fillwalk. “It’s negotiating between the physical world and the virtual. So it’s both sets of realities, and there’s a connection between the two.”
The physical pillars are two meters (or more than 6 feet, 6 inches) tall. They consist of a wooden base containing a sound system; a translucent pillar made of white corrugated plastic and computer-controlled lighting.
A thermal camera mounted on the museum’s ceiling keeps track of visitors and feeds its data to a computer program that directs the columns to change color and broadcast sounds when someone draws near.
“It’s a sensory forest that you can navigate,” Fillwalk says.
Two final touches: a video screen mounted on a museum wall overlooking the exhibit allows in-person visitors to watch avatars move around the virtual version, while Internet patrons can keeps tabs on the real-life display through a window on their computer screens.
“Displaced Resonance” is the centerpiece of Ball State’s contributions to the Beijing museum’s 3rd Art and Science International Exhibition and Symposium, a month-long celebration of technology and the arts. Ball State was invited to participate because museum curators discovered some of IDIA’s work and liked what they saw, Fillwalk said.
In addition to “Displaced Resonance,” IDIA contributed four other pieces of digital art that museum visitors can view at a kiosk.
Those pieces are:
· “Proxy”, in which visitors create, color and sculpt with floating 3D pixels.
· “Flickr Gettr,” in which visitors can surround themselves with photos from the Flickr web service that correspond to search terms they submit.
· “Confluence,” in which users create virtual sculptures by moving around the screen and leaving a path in their wake.
· “Survey for Beijing,” in which real time weather data from Beijing is dynamically visualized in a virtual environment.
(Note to editors: For more information, contact John Fillwalk, director of the Institute for Digital Intermedia Arts, at765-285-1045 or jfillwalk@bsu.edu; or Vic Caleca, media relations manager, at 765-285-5948, or vjcaleca@bsu.edu. For more stories, visit the Ball State University News Center at www.bsu.edu/news.
IDIA Lab was invited to exhibit their virtual and hybrid artworks at the Third Art and Science International Exhibition at the China Science and Technology Museum in Beijing, China.
Displaced Resonance v2 is an interactive installation consisting of sixteen reactive forms that are networked in a grid of light and sound. Interaction within the sculptural field is based on a participant’s presence and proximity to each sculpture. The Displaced Resonance installation is connected to a mirrored instance of the field in a virtual environment – bridging both physical and virtual visitors within a shared hybrid space. Visitors to the virtual space are represented by avatars and through their proximity affect the light and sound of each sculpture. Each participant is aware of the other in each space and uniting both instances within a singular hybrid environment.
A computer system using an thermal camera tracks the movement of visitors and responds by controlling the distribution of sound and dynamic RGB data to the LED lights within the sculptural forms. The installation utilizes custom live processing software to transform these sources through the participants’ interaction – displacing the interaction from both their physical and virtual contexts to the processed framework of physical and virtual resonances. The two environments are linked to send and receive active responses from both sides of the installation via messaging, sensors, hardware and scripting.
In prototyping this work, the process included both physical and virtual models to design and build the form and the interaction. The physical prototypes were interpreted in a virtual simulation environment, investigating the spatial interaction of the structure. The interactive functionality was tested through scripting before the form was brought into the sensored camera-based version. After several virtual iterations, the form was re-interpreted and fabricated.
John Fillwalk
with Michael Pounds, David Rodriguez, Neil Zehr, Chris Harrison, Blake Boucher, Matthew Wolak, and Jesse Allison.
Third Art and Science International Exhibition
China Science and Technology Museum in Beijing
http://www.tasie.org.cn/index.asp
TASIE Press release
http://www.tasie.org.cn/content_e.asp?id=84
Ball State artists create “forest” of light on display in China and Internet
Muncie, Ind. — Ball State University electronic artists have created a “forest” of light and sound that will be on exhibit in Beijing, China through November, yet also accessible to visitors from Indiana or anywhere else in the world.
That’s possible because “Displaced Resonance,” as the interactive art exhibit is known, has both real-life and virtual components.
The physical portion has been installed in a gallery of the China Science and Technology Museum in Beijing. There, in-person visitors can negotiate a thicket of 16 interactive sculptures spaced 1.5 meters apart that will change colors and emit music as they approach.
A digital replica of the layout, meanwhile, resides on the Internet, accessible through the museum’s website. Online visitors can wander the virtual exhibit using an avatar, and the digital pillars will change colors and produce sounds, just like their physical counterparts.
But that’s not all — the two pieces interact with each other, says John Fillwalk, director of Ball State’s Institute for Digital Intermedia Arts (IDIA) and Hybrid Design Technologies (HDT), which created the work in collaboration with IDIA staff, students and composer Michael Pounds, BSU.
When an online avatar approaches a virtual pillar, the corresponding real-life column also will change colors, and vice versa. In-person and virtual visitors will produce different colors, however, allowing them to track each other through the exhibit.
“It’s what we call hybrid art,” says Fillwalk. “It’s negotiating between the physical world and the virtual. So it’s both sets of realities, and there’s a connection between the two.”
The physical pillars are two meters (or more than 6 feet, 6 inches) tall. They consist of a wooden base containing a sound system; a translucent pillar made of white corrugated plastic and computer-controlled lighting.
A thermal camera mounted on the museum’s ceiling keeps track of visitors and feeds its data to a computer program that directs the columns to change color and broadcast sounds when someone draws near.
“It’s a sensory forest that you can navigate,” Fillwalk says.
A video screen mounted on a wall overlooking the exhibit allows museum visitors to watch avatars move around the virtual version, while Internet patrons can affect the physical counterpart.
“Displaced Resonance” is the centerpiece of Ball State’s contributions to the Beijing museum’s 3rd Art and Science International Exhibition and Symposium, a month-long celebration of technology and the arts. Ball State was invited to participate because museum curators discovered some of IDIA’s work and liked what they saw, Fillwalk said.
In addition to “Displaced Resonance,” IDIA contributed four other pieces of digital art that museum visitors can view at a kiosk.
Those pieces are:
· “Proxy”, in which visitors create, color and sculpt with floating 3D pixels.
· “Flickr Gettr,” in which visitors can surround themselves with photos from the Flickr web service that correspond to search terms they submit.
· “Confluence,” in which users create virtual sculptures by moving around the screen and leaving a path in their wake.
· “Survey for Beijing,” in which real time weather data from Beijing is dynamically visualized in a virtual environment.
(Note to editors: For more information, contact John Fillwalk, director of the Institute for Digital Intermedia Arts, at765-285-1045 or jfillwalk@bsu.edu; or Vic Caleca, media relations manager, at 765-285-5948, or vjcaleca@bsu.edu. For more stories, visit the Ball State University News Center at www.bsu.edu/news).
IDIA, in partnership with the BSU School of Nursing, developed and launched a new Nursing Interview Simulator in the virtual world of Blue Mars. Blue Mars is a next generation and high fidelity virtual world that uses the CryEngine game engine. Student nurses practice interviews via role-playing – using avatars with predefined health histories.
The Virtual Middletown Living Museum project in Blue Mars is a simulation of the Ball Glass factory from early 20th century Muncie, Indiana. Life and conditions in the factory were one of the key elements of the Middletown Studies by Robert S. and Helen Merrell Lynd in their landmark studies Middletown (1929) and Middletown in Transition (1937). These in-depth accounts of life in Muncie, Indiana, became classic sociological studies and established the community as a barometer of social trends in the United States. In the years since, scholars in a variety of fields have returned to Muncie to follow up on the Lynds’ work, making this small city among the most studied communities in the nation. The center continues this tradition by sponsoring and promoting research on Muncie as Middletown, on small cities generally, and on the themes and issues the Lynds explored.
This simulation of industrial life, built as a prototype for a much larger project dealing with all aspects of the Lynd Study, has aimed to create an virtual living museum experience expanding the opportunities for both learning and interpretation. The approach to interactive design embeds learning and navigation experiences subtly into the project to maintain the sense of immersion. IDIA has prototyped several techniques to do this including: interactive objects that allow for close up inspection; objects that when clicked bring up web resources that show information; plans or photographs used in the interpretation; non-player character factory workers, a live interactive avatar of Frank C. Ball who greets visitors and introduces them to the factory; video and audio files of factory experts and archival films; an in-world interactive Heads-Up-Display (HUD) that provides deeper investigation and navigation through the factory; and a supporting webpage with complete documentation on all resources used in this interpretation.
Slelect “Download Client” and follow instructions to install the BlueMars client on your PC (Windows desktop or laptop)
Once you have successfully installed the BlueMars client, select “Go To City” to install the Virtual Middletown virtual world
Register your account and confirm when you receive an email from BlueMars
Modify your avatar (optional)
Explore Virtual Middletown!
NOTE: If you are a Macintosh user (OS X) you may run the BlueMars client and Virtual Middletown virtual world using the Boot Camp emulation: http://www.apple.com/support/bootcamp/
Here are links for additional information on the project:
Recommended settings: Very High Graphics with good graphics cards – otherwise High or Low as needed. Screen resolution: Minimum 1280 by 720 or higher. Sound levels should be up. Many objects in the world are interactive – anything that highlights blue can be clicked with the left mouse button and examined – or might can reference a web page. The heads up display in the lower right hand corner provides information and navigation to augment your visit.
Project partners: The Center for Middletown Studies, Library Services and the Emerging Media Initiative at Ball State University
Ball State University’s Institute for Digital Intermedia Arts (IDIA) in Blue Mars is a large scale virtual simulation that showcases re-creations of artifacts and artworks in their original historical contexts, including sculptures at the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco and a centuries-old Buddha at a Japanese temple. Through the use of such emerging technologies, visitors to Blue Mars can virtually experience these important but long lost sites.
IDIA’s simulations in Blue Mars present several examples of recent grant-supported research projects. IDIA is exploring various new ways that it might be used, from learning and the arts to gaming. Future IDIA initiatives in Blue Mars will include the prototyping the 3D internet, shared media collaboration tools and the development of an open virtual campus for use by educators interested in engaging the platform as an environment for learning.
This release of IDIA Lab introduces the following new features and updates, including
• Heads up Display system – flash-based HUD system displaying dynamic information and map based teleportation
• Automated avatar/bot greeter system
• A guided tour vehicle – launching from the orientation island
• The Snow Globe, a virtual winter simulation – employing physics, environment and particle systems. Teleports are placed throughout the City
• Depth of Field – now enabled in most environments • New navigation and orientation system
• New vegetation design – new plants with LOD
• High fidelity statues using advanced mapping techniques
• High optimization, terrain painting, parallax mapping
• Please use Very High Graphics settings to view
Blue Mars Builds
The IDIA Lab
THE INSTITUTE FOR DIGITAL INTERMEDIA ARTS is a collaborative research and design studio exploring the intersections between art, science and technology. We consult, design and produce immersive experiences for virtual reality, hybrid worlds, simulations, visualizations, games and interfaces for various platforms and devices. For more information, please visit IDIALAB.org. You can walk to all simulations or alternatively use the teleport columns you see at each location. Follow us on Twitter @ IDIA_Lab for news and updates.
Panama-Pacific International Exposition Simulation
IDIA simulation of the 1915 San Francisco Panama – Pacific Exposition The project allows for visitors to travel to the past to immersively tour a recreation of an historic environment that no longer exists. The exposition celebrated the opening of the Panama Canal but also San Francisco’s recovery from the devastating earthquake of 1906. IDIA 3D laser-scanned two sculptures by artist Adolph Weinman that have been included in this simulation and were originally installed on top of tall columns in the Court of the Universe. A more detailed examination of the sculptures can be found in our Museum Simulator. Visitors can change the time of day near controls found near this sign and the Fine Arts Palace to experience the lighting design of this exposition.
Palace of Fine Arts
The Palace of Fine Arts in the Marina District of San Francisco, California was originally constructed for the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition. One of a handful of surviving structures from the Exposition, it is the still situated on its original site. It was rebuilt in 1965 – and renovation of the lagoon, walkways, and a seismic retrofit were completed in early 2009. IDIA Lab constructed this as an addition to its Panama- Pacific Court of the Universe simulation.
Art Museum Simulation
Using blue prints, photographs, laser-scanning and measurements, IDIA Lab simulated an actual museum gallery to a high degree of accuracy for exploration and study within a live 3D environment. This goals of this build were to provide visitors with a remote immersive experience of an actual exhibition as it was installed – closely replicating all original factors such as the layout, framing and lighting of the physical space. Additional information is provided by touching each canvas or sculpture in the exhibition. Via a simulation such as this, curators can also spatially archive a show or prototype layout, lighting, and installation design.
Byodo-In Temple (Amida Hall)
Amida Hall, the most famous building in the Byodo-in temple complex was constructed in 1053 and is the only remaining building from the original site. Additional buildings making up the compound were burnt down during a civil war in 1336. IDIA scanned an Amida Buddha and created this temple site to give visitors an understanding of a typical context in which the Buddha was observed. A replica of the temple was also constructed on the island of O’ahu in Hawai’i. Nearby there are 360º immersion spheres of the Hawaiian temple that avatars can also explore.
Relic Temple
Relic Temple – located in the Ji Le Temple complex – Nangang District in Harbin, China.The Relic Temple simulation was built by by IDIA Lab as part of our larger 3D Laser Scanning and Simulation Project, including the 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition in San Francisco, Byodo-In Temple in Japan and the Bingling Si Buddhist Cave site – all simulated here on IDIA Lab in Blue Mars.
Shafer Tower
Shafer Tower is a 150-foot-tall (46 m) bell tower with a chiming clock and carillon bells located in the middle of the campus of Ball State University. A small staircase in the tower leads to a control room of the carillon, which has 48 custom-made bells. This virtual tower chimes when an avatar approaches – as does the bell in a smaller temple at our Byodo-in build.
The Snow Globe
Winter themed landscape simulation including environment, weather, particle and physics systems.
From a seashell to auditorium, laser-scanning can capture the objects and spaces we inhabit and convert them into a digital model. The IDIA scans a range of small or large scale 3D objects using facilities and equipment shared with the SimLab in the College of Architecture and Planning and supported by the Office of Information Technology. Three-dimensional geometry is captured in terms of millions of points that outline the scanned object. These points are converted into polygons to be used in the resulting animation workflow.
In 2009, the IDIA Immersion Seminar in Virtual Worlds worked to simulate the original settings of several sculptures in the collection of the Ball State University Museum of Art. Students where trained professionally to use the ZCorp 3D laser scanner using archival museum methods.
This project has allowed Ball State students to obtain skills in 3D scanning by learning the methodology, techniques and limitations involved with accurate scanning procedures. The museum scanning project was initially a way, to not only digitally archive select sculptures, but to place them in an live three-dimensional multi-user virtual environment that immerses viewers in a simulation of the works in their original context.
This significance of this project was to address the fact that pre-modern sculpture was typically originally designed to be an element in large-scale architectural, public or natural setting. IDIA developed a workflow that is now also a service that can be provided to external clients in the sciences, industry and the arts – employing emerging digital tools to illuminate a viewer’s understanding of context.
FARO and Z Corporation’s scanning technologies are used in applications such as reverse engineering, accident reconstruction, forensic science, historic preservation, entertainment and virtual simulation.
The IDIA has assembled an interdisciplinary group of students, faculty and industry experts in a significant interactive information portal for the Ball State University Museum of Art (BSUMA). The IDIA team is developing an innovative touch-based interface to navigate the collection, employing and integrating Microsoft Surface with the Museum’s database. The Surface will afford Museum patrons a collaborative, participatory public platform through which to access metadata and media of the physical exhibition – as well as extending virtually into the permanent collection. Using the Digital Images Delivered Online (DIDO) database, the interface will make visual the interconnection between works in the collection queried on searchable parameters, i.e. artist, medium, period, subject etc. This two-semester immersive project supported by the BSU Provost’s Immersion Initiative has been team-taught and has recruited students from targeted disciplines across campus.
Microsoft Surface represents a fundamental change in the potential for interaction with digital content. The Surface is a 30” tabletop interface environment that allows several people to work independently or collaboratively – all without using a mouse or a keyboard. The Surface allows users to navigate information physically, and manipulate information with natural gestures and touch http://www.microsoft.com/SURFACE/product.html#section=The%20Product.
The Ball State University Museum of Art has a collection of nearly 11,000 works of art. Central to the Ball State University Museum of Art’s mission is the provision of educational programming that will further faculty, staff, student, and public utilization and understanding of the Museum and its collection, of museums in general, and of the arts. To accomplish this goal, the Museum offer tours, talks, materials for teachers, an education database, artist demonstrations. The Museum’s education philosophy centers on bringing together the needs of visitors and the resources of the Museum , and balancing responsibility to the university with service to the community. In facilitating communication between the work of art and the viewer, the Museum subscribes to a philosophy of learner-centered programming informed by a thorough knowledge of the collection and methods and strategies for effective teaching.
Although the Museum’s collection numbers nearly 11,000, given the physical constraints of the facility, a mere 10% of the collected works are currently displayed at any given time. The incorporation of this hybrid Surface and database system will afford patrons virtual access to the entire collection – making visible those works currently stored. More importantly, the system will allow patrons to visualize the interconnectivity of the works according to multiple facets – visually re-contextualizing the works in relation to specified search parameters. This form of innovative technology within a museum context would typically be installed at major metropolitan institutions. Development of this interface at the Ball State University Museum of Art will not only benefit local community groups and patrons of BSUMA whose access to the collection will be significantly augmented, but also has the potential to influence other museums through the distribution of the outcomes of this product.
The Institute for Digital Intermedia Arts (IDIA) has a history of providing interdisciplinary immersion and new media experiences, employing pedagogy that supports students’ transformation as active, engaged learners. The Institute provides a dynamic exchange between instructor and students – where participants engage in collaborative, inquiry-based communities that provide an environment, which fosters participatory learning. As opposed to a traditional model, where knowledge is imparted by the teacher to the student, participatory learning can transform the learner into an active role. Participatory learning communities engage in a dynamic conversation centered around a subject – where analysis, comparison, and evaluation are core to the process of acquiring meaning and relationships. This environment allows students the opportunity to have a stake in the conditions of their learning, making decisions that direct their course of investigation. With a commitment to active inquiry, participants are freed to create personal and collective meaning.
BSU MUSEUM OF ART
COLLECTION PORTAL
SOFTWARE DESIGN
Carrie Arnold
Joel Happ
Garret Orth
Deekshita Reddy
Christopher Ross
Jonathan Strong
Austin Toombs
INTERFACE DESIGN
Anastasia Goryacheva
Steven Lanier
Jonathan Strong
ELECTRONICS
Eric Brockmeyer
Giovanni Rozzi
GRAPHIC DESIGN
Amy Goettemoeller
Ina-Marie Henning
FACULTY
Jesse Allison
John Fillwalk
Paul Gestwicki
PROJECT DIRECTOR
Jonathan Strong
A SPECIAL THANK YOU
UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES
James Bradley
John Straw
Budi Wibowo
SOUND
Rick Baker
Steven Lanier
Giovanni Rozzi
STRUCTURAL DESIGN
Eric Brockmeyer
Matthew Wolak
PROJECT MANAGEMENT
Ina-Marie Henning
Amruta Mhaiskar
Jennifer Weaver-Cotton
PRODUCER/PRINCIPLE INVESTIGATOR
John Fillwalk
BALL STATE UNIVERSITY MUSEUM OF ART
Peter Blume
Carl Schafer
Tania Said
Ball State University Museum of Art
College of Fine Arts
College of Architecture and Planning
Department of Architecture
Department of Art
Department of Computer Science
School of Music
Information Technology
O ffice of the Provost
University Libraries
and
Jeff Berg, IBM Interactive, IDIA Research Fellow
IDIA Presents: BSU MUSEUM OF ART COLLECTION PORTAL 3/20/11 at 2:30pm BSUMA
BSU MUSEUM OF ART COLLECTION PORTAL
Reception and Gallery Talk
Thursday, March 20 @ 2:30pm, BSU Museum of Art
The BSU Museum of Art Collection Portal was developed by students, faculty and industry research fellows in the Institute for Digital Intermedia Arts at Ball State University. The year-long project was developed in partnership with the Ball State University Museum of Art and sponsored by the Provost’s Immersive Learning Initiative.
This interdisciplinary team from art, computer science, architecture and music has developed an innovative, touch-based application to navigate the collection. The portal bridges the Microsoft Surface interface with the Museum’s collection database, the Digital Images Delivered Online (DIDO), hosted on the Digital Media Repository of Bracken Library. The Surface affords Museum visitors an interactive platform to individually or collaboratively make virtual connections between works of art both on display and in reserve – accessing information and media across the collection.
At its essence, Flickr Gettr is a novel virtual interface bridging the virtual worlds to the wealth of shared real life imagery and information in Flickr.
Participants query to search public image folders at Flickr web-service. Queries pulls related images from Flickr and feeds them back to be spatialized in an immersive visual and sonic environment. As each image spawns, it generates a chime-like sound which parallels the environment of imagery that surrounds the viewer.
In Flickr Gettr II, a participant can touch any image and receive a list of the tags associated with it. Touching the same image again initiates a random search for one of those tags thus retrieving similar imagery.
In Flickr Gettr, an external web service was used as an intermediary to query Flickr, receive images and format them for delivery as a texture. It then passed the aspect ratios and tags in a second query to be able to map the textures properly. To make these interactions more flexible, the intermediary web server was employed to collate and prepare information to retain states that can be queried from external applications. The web application effectively serves as an intermediary between the virtual world and outside environments, providing the communications link and logic to assimilate the information. This can make the creation of Web 2.0 mash-ups much simpler as the code for doing these sorts of queries and logic is already highly developed in Java, Ruby, and Perl for example. Flickr Gettr also triggered music files upon the rapid rezzing of objects to create a cumulative ambient effect.
Born in 1846, William F. Cody rode for the Pony Express, served as a military scout and earned his moniker “Buffalo Bill” while hunting the animals for the Kansas Pacific Railroad work crews. Beginning in 1883, he became one of the world’s best showmen with the launch of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, which was staged for 30 years, touring America and Europe multiple times.
