Speakers: Tom DeFanti, Dan Sandin, Greg Dawe, Todd Margolis, (University of California San Diego/CalIT2, University of Illinois at Chicago, Electronic Visualization Laboratory)
Time: Wednesday, April 23, 6-8pm
Location: USC's Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts (RZC)
Room 201 Zemeckis Media Lab (ZML)
"CineGrid: Networked Digital Cinema Challenges"
Tom DeFanti
"VR W/O Attachments"
Dan Sandin
"The Calit2 StarCAVE, a 3rd Generation VR Room"
Greg Dawe
"CRCA: Examples of Collaborative Practice for Large Scale New Media Art Projects"
Todd Margolis
BIOS
Tom DeFanti is an internationally recognized expert in computer graphics since the early 1970s. DeFanti has amassed a number of credits, including: use of EVL hardware and software for the computer animation produced for the 1977 “Star Wars” movie; contributor and co-editor of the 1987 National Science Foundation-sponsored report “Visualization in Scientific Computing;” recipient of the 1988 ACM Outstanding Contribution Award; appointed an ACM Fellow in 1994; and appointed one of several USA technical advisors to the G7 GIBN activity in 1995. He also shares recognition along with EVL director Daniel J. Sandin for conceiving the CAVE™ Virtual Reality Theater in 1991. Currently he is a research scientist at the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2). At the University of Illinois at Chicago, DeFanti was director of the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL), a distinguished professor and a distinguished professor emeritus in the department of Computer Science, and the director of the Software Technologies Research Center. Striving for a more than a decade to connect high-resolution visualization and virtual reality devices over long distances, DeFanti has collaborated with Maxine Brown to lead state, national and international teams to build the most advanced production-quality networks available to scientists, with major NSF funding.
Dan Sandin is an internationally recognized pioneer in computer graphics, electronic art and visualization. He is Professor Emeritus of the School of Art & Design, University of Illinois at Chicago, and Director Emeritus of the Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He has worked on a number of inventions such as the Sandin Image Processor (1971-1973), a patch programmable analog computer for real-time manipulation of video inputs through the control of the grey level information. This modular design was based on the Moog synthesizer, the Sayre Glove (1977), the first data glove, as part of a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, a type of VR photography called PHSColograms (1988), a system whereby a number of still images were situated in an auto-stereoscopic manner and back-projected with light. In 1991, in conjunction with Tom DeFanti and graduate students, he designed the CAVE™ Virtual Reality Theater. More recently, he has been working on The Varrier™ Auto-Stereographic Display.
Greg Dawe's unique background mixes mastery in electronics, optics, video technology, material fabrication, computers, and software, complemented by a Florida building contractor’s license acquired in the early 1990s. Dawe holds a BFA in design from the University of Illinois at Chicago and an MFA in video art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, working under Phil Morton, the legendary video artist. Working with colleagues Tom DeFanti and Dan Sandin at EVL, Dawe is known for his contributions to the CAVE™ Virtual Reality Theater and its derivatives, the ImmersaDesk™, and PARIS™. The CAVE is a multi-screen, projection-based, virtual-reality system, and the ImmersaDesk is a single-screen, drafting table-style device. Both are commercial products sold by Fakespace Systems (formerly Pyramid Systems Inc.). Dawe also did the mechanical design for and assembled the Varrier™ auto-stereographic display, many large tiled displays and recently a six-wall CAVE (StarCAVE) installed on the ground floor of the UCSD Calit2 building.
Todd Margolis is artist, educator and technologist. He received his MFA in Electronic Visualization from the Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is a founding member of the immersive and interactive art and technology non-profit organization, Applied Interactives, and also a member of the art collaborative Sine::apsis Experiments. Margolis ic currently appointed the Technical Director of the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts(CRCA) at UCSD. Margolis was previously a Visiting Research Programmer at UIC developing a new virtual reality system, The Varrier™ Auto-Stereographic Display with Dan Sandin.
