Category: Projects

This is the main page for Projects posts. Any posts within this category will be displayed on the Projects page.

Twitter Cloud

IDIA Lab Interactive Installation, Projects, Research

The Twitter Cloud is a visualization of real time Tweets (messages) posted on Twitter.com. The system automatically scans specified user feeds, and visualizes new messages as they arrive. This piece was programmed in Java using the Processing API.

This project was also linked with the Tweet Station so users could be identified with RFID and allowed to post their own messages through a touchscreen kiosk. In the context below, conference attendees entered their Twitter feeds to be tracked so that others could read about their experiences as they posted from their laptops and phones. The Twitter Cloud visualizer has also been used within virtual worlds – both as a live event Tweet tracker, and to track and visualize avatars as they traveled to various locations within the world.

Human-Computer Interaction in the Arts

IDIA Lab Human Computer Interface, Projects

The Human-Computer Interaction Lab housed in Music Technology is a learning and exploration ground in how electronics can interact with the arts. Students who take the MuMET 440 Special Topics course in HCI can use the lab to develop projects in augmented musical instruments, electronic installation art, analog audio processors, synthesizers, robotics, wireless sensor systems, and other electronic mayhem.  The course teaches equal parts basic electronics like power regulators, op amps, etc. and programming techniques for microcontrollers – the TI MSP430 and the Arduino. Most of all, the lab serves as a proving ground for ideas and a space for exploration.

Traversal

IDIA Lab Projects, Virtual Hybrid

Traversal for Pipe Organ is a virtual performance exploring connectivity between worlds. As the name implies, it is a temporary link between the live pipe organ in a concert hall and a multi-user virtual world. “Physical” actions and events in the virtual realm compose the work in real time with the end product being a physical and aural realization of virtual performance.
As elements of the virtual instrument were engaged, their physical interactions – touch, physics, collision events – were used to create performance gestures on the organ in Sursa Hall. John Fillwalk, who had created the performance environment and virtual instrument as well as collaboratively conceptualized the work, performed live camera for the event that followed the performance for the live audience.  Jesse Allison composed the controllable sound events, and managed the communications link between the virtual and physical during the performance.

Excerpt from the premier performance.

Eco-Net

IDIA Lab Interactive Installation, Interactive Simulation, Projects

“Eco-Net” is an attempt to connect wireless network data with nature by visualizing that data with plant-like structures and organic motion. Each plant represents a computer connected to the network and each IP address is displayed above the corresponding plant. Collective network activity is displayed as websites are browsed and emails are sent. This piece represents our constantly connected state, simulated through plant and root structures, and the constant barrage of data that flows through the air all around us every day. This piece was created completely in Java, using the Processing API.

Links
Students win international award for work in the digital arts

Engaging Technology Exhibition

IDIA Lab Interactive Installation, Projects
ENGAGING TECHNOLOGY A HISTORY AND FUTURE OF INTERMEDIA BALL STATE UNIVERSITY MUSEUM OF ART NOVEMBER 17, 2006 THROUGH MARCH 11, 2007 https://idialab.org/engagingtechnology/ Engaging Technology traces a range of both pioneering and contemp-orary works exploring the intersections of electronic media and various modes of art-making. The artists selected for this exhibition – Richard Bloes,

RFID-Linked 3D Media Interface

IDIA Lab Home, Projects, Virtual Hybrid

The project allows the user to manipulate a digital world with wireless objects. Through the use of Radio Frequency Identification Devices (RFID), the virtual world can detect the presence of real-world objects and use them to manipulate its own attributes. In the case of this project, physical cubes link the user with virtual cubes within the system and allow the user to call up media such as video and sound. The system uses the software Quest 3D for real-time VR rendering and interactive animation, and Max/MSP for harvesting and inputting RFID data. Additionally, users can navigate the 3D virtual world with the use of a trackball.

Students participating in IDIA’s Immersion Seminar were named as a winner for an Award of Excellence at the International Digital Media and Arts Association (iDMAa) 2007 National Conference. The award included a $250 cash prize and was presented to only two groups out of the twelve universities participating in the conference’s student showcase. iDMAa hosted the Ideas 07: Beyond Boundaries conference in Philadelphia on November 7-11.

Links
BSU Press Release
2007 iDMAa Conference Website
iDMAa Homepage

MMFX/IMA Interactive Project

IDIA Lab Home, Immersion Projects, Projects, Simulation and Visualization

IDIA is creating a media rich interactive digital kiosk for the Digital Fabrication Institute’s MMFX Exhibit hosted by the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Students participating in the IDIA Immersion Seminar in Virtual Worlds are developing the interactive interface, which will act as a station within the exhibit where viewers can attain additional biographical and portfolio information– employing a custom designed, coded and fabricated dynamic media experience.

[un]wired

IDIA Lab Home, Human Computer Interface, Projects

[un]wired by Jesse Allison, John Fillwalk and Keith Kothman is a processing network visualizer that responds to interactions from personal radio-frequency devices such as mobile phones, WiFi signals, Bluetooth signals and car-key fobs. It tracks real-time statistical information from wireless access points (designed for seamless handoff of moving wireless traffic, like a cell phone network), along with periodically updated information from hand-held and wireless access points. The interactions then appear in sound and shapes on the screen. Users interacting with the piece can then visually see their interaction live on screen. The control information is collected from network services via the MySQL database and transferred into Max/MSP/Jitter. [un]wired was exhibited at SIGGRAPH Asia 2008 in Singapore.

http://www.siggraph.org/asia2008/attendees/art/20.php

Intermedia Artist Timeline

IDIA Lab Home, Human Computer Interface, Projects

This device was designed to take you on a journey through the history of intermedia art. The kiosk, made by the IDIA in collaboration with the Institute for Digital Fabrication at Ball State University, allows the user to interact using hand gestures to move through the timeline. The work includes a short bio, image and description of works from 30 intermedia artists of the 1960s to the present. It was displayed in conjunction with the BSU Museum of Art’s Engaging Technology Exhibit. Jesse Allison programmed the piece with help from Mike Sayre. Dustin Headley and the IDF designed and constructed the kiosk.

Virtual World/Social Media Mashup: Flickr Gettr v4

IDIA Lab Projects, Virtual Hybrid, Virtual Worlds

IDIA Lab’s new Flickr Gettr launching soon – shared & mobile virtual world mashup artwork – preview Flickr pics here http://bit.ly/bCWQCL

Flickr Gettr: Shared and Mobile Media Mashup Artwork
Virtual World/Social Media Mashup: Flickr Gettr v4
The Institute for Digital Intermedia Arts (IDIA Lab) at Ball State University

IDIA Labs Flickr Gettr connects the social image repository of Flickr to virtual worlds and mobile devices through an interactive 3D and sonic experience – immersing the viewer in a dimensional cloud of user searched imagery and sound.

Background

Flickr Gettr in Second Life, leverages the new SL shared-media plugin architecture to provide rich spatially integrated web experiences. Participants query to search public image folders at the Flickr web-service. Queries then pull in 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 sound which parallels the environment of imagery that surrounds the viewer in their selected imagery and related tags that are spoken in synthesized voice.

Flickr Gettr positions virtual worlds as a platform to navigate media in the information metaverse. Virtual worlds have the potential to position the Internet as a three-dimensional information and communication platform where live data can flow in and out to visualize, contextualize, communicate, and to inspire.

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.

In 2010, IDIA Lab was invited by the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai, India to to install Flickr Gettr at the their annual technology festival – the largest of its kind in Asia – which hosted more than 65,000 attendees.

Traversal for Boston Cyberarts

IDIA Lab Projects, Virtual Hybrid

Traversal for Boston Cyberarts was a live performance and hybrid reality installation that bridged the physical and virtual worlds. It connected Faneuil Hall in Boston with a bell tower with midi controlled carillon as part of the 2009 Boston Cyberarts Festival.

Virtual participant could perform the physical bell tower via an interactive online virtual instrument built by IDIA – located in a 3D model of Faneuil Hall. Participants from all over the world could play the actual French carillon on top of Shafer Tower via their avatars. The ringing of the bells of Shafer Tower was streamed and simulcast back into Second Life, so the virtual participants can see and hear their interactions. Participants at Shafer Tower could also connect to their virtual counterparts through technology set up at the base of the tower and perform the bells locally through the same virtual interface.

IDIA collaboratively designed and built this interactive artwork for the Boston Cyberarts Festival.

 

Links

Boston Cyberarts

Boston Cyberarts Gallery

Virtual Reality Brings Interactive, Immersive Art to the 2009 Festival

AM Radio: The Red and The Wild at IDIA Labs in Second Life

IDIA Lab Projects, Virtual Hybrid

AM Radio’s The Red and the Wild Opening Reception Sunday, April 26th 2009 7 pm SLT

IDIA is pleased to host artist AM Radio as the inaugural artist-in-residence at IDIA Labs – an exhibition and installation sim for virtual installation art and performance. IDIA hosts AM Radio’s The Red and the Wild as the inaugural artist-in-residence at IDIA Labs, an exhibition and installation sim for virtual art.

The Red and The Wild is an experimental shift in my work. The Red and Wild has its basis in earlier builds, notably Husk and Beneath the Tree that died. This time, a third house structure appears, based on a house which figures strongly in my childhood memories. The train that appears as a symbol in many of my works returns, but revived. A doorway represents an impossible or at least implausible path. Water towers dot the horizon, displaced in the context of an over abundance of water. A large red shape looms over the water and into or out of the house.

The title itself has its origins in a film and music artist friend from Atlanta. He had sent me a collection of music experiments of his just as I was in the midst of trying to understand why I was feeling a need to bring in abstract and maybe creepy shapes into my work. One of the tracks sampled some audio from the movie Breakfast at Tiffany’s. The audio lead me to watch the film again and read Capote’s Novella. In the story, the main character Holly invents a world around her in reaction to her anxieties and fears which she describes as the “mean reds.” Holly says, “But you can’t give your heart to a wild thing: the more you do, the stronger they get. Until they’re strong enough to run into the woods. Or fly into a tree. Then the sky. That’s how you’ll end up, Mr. Bell. If you let yourself love a wild thing. You’ll just end up looking at the sky ”

-AM Radio

THE INSTITUTE FOR DIGITAL INTERMEDIA ARTS is a hybrid art and design studio established as part of the Center for Media Design at Ball State University and funded the Lilly Endowment, Inc. The institute’s interdisciplinary studio collaborative explores the intersections between arts and technology – employing virtual reality, visualization, simulation and human computer interface.

Slurl: http://slurl.com/secondlife/IDIA%20Laboratories/15/134/21

Links:

SL Things To Do

DIP’s Dispatches from the Imagination Age