marientina

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Posted by marientina at 6:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

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.

Posted by marientina at 10:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you are a USC student or will be one in Fall 2007, Interactive Media is now hiring students for various positions. Email resumes, availability and a cover letter (hint: this is how I judge your personality - woodpeckers need not apply) and send to mgotsis [at] cinema [dot] usc [dot] edu. Detailed job descriptions not available yet.

* Office Assistant/Equipment Checkout Manager ($10/hour, 1-2 slots available, business hours shift, 8-15 hours per week, 2-hour minimum shift per day)
* A/V Tech Geek ($15/hour, 1 position for on-call needs 5-10 hours per week, 1 freelance for deployments and special projects)
* Open Lab Monitors ($10/hour, multiple slots, mornings, afternoons, evenings, weekdays and weekends, 2-hour minimum shifts)
* Project Manager ($15/hour, 10-20 hours per week, times vary per project)
* Tech Assistants ($15/hour, multiple positions, on-call and freelance, multiple skills)

Work study not required, but helpful. Tell your friends if they are smart and useful.

Posted by marientina at 8:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today is International Thalassemia Day, 8th of May 2007. This day is dedicated to Thalassemia, to raise public awareness for prevention of Thalassemia and to highlight the importance of Clinical Care for Thalassemia patients in all countries. This day is also dedicated to Thalassemia patients who are not with us anymore and to those who continue to struggle for survival, many whom have limited access to healthcare. As some of you already know, I suffer from the more benign form of Thalassemia. I do not require transfusions so long as I take good care of my self, but my hemoglobin remains lower than normal. Those who have inherited one thalassemia gene from each parent require lifelong blood transfusions, some as often as once per week and daily iron chelation treatment to prevent death from organ damage.

Posted by marientina at 10:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

If you are a jazz fan, come see the latest exhibit from the elusive Herman Leonard at the Fahey Klein Gallery. Herman lost 6,000 works in Hurricane Katrina, but thankfully BowHaus was able to work with his negatives to produce large format digital archival prints. These prints look absolutely amazing up close and if anyone wants to get back into black and white printing, I suggest we have a talk...

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Posted by marientina at 7:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Reminder for this event tomorrow:

Games for Health Day
USC Davidson Conference Center
May 9, 2006
Los Angeles, CA

Posted by marientina at 12:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Preliminary website located at:
http://interactive.usc.edu/thesis2006/

Posted by marientina at 12:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Not going anywhere for spring break?
Come playtest Andrew Revolski with us!

Robert Zemeckis Center for the Digital Arts
Zemeckis Media Lab (RM 201) on March 16, 2006
11am-2pm

ABOUT THE GAME
Andrew Revolski is a multiplayer network game played in an environment consisting of multiple displays. The players are placed in two different remote locations and by having mutual interactions, the game allows the players to experience a cooperative phenomenon.

Posted by marientina at 12:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

This seems relevant to our backchannel practice...

Reinventing trust, collaboration and compliance in social systems. A workshop for novel insights and solutions for social systems design

April 22, 2006
Paper Submission Deadline - 16. Jan 06

Hosted at CHI 2006
April 22-27 2006
Montreal, Canada

http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/reinvent06

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Aim of the Workshop
-------------------------------------
Designing social systems that support trust, collaboration, and compliance has emerged as a core concern in the fields of human-computer interaction (HCI) and computer-mediated communication (CMC). Research to date has focused on policing mechanisms, stable identities, reputation systems, and rich media channels, among
other approaches. However, these approaches are often costly, negate the benefits of anonymity, or rely on the truthfulness of participants.

This workshop aims to provide a forum for novel alternative approaches that have, in our view, been overlooked or under-utilized to date. Further, we want to address how the analysis of existing social systems and user-centered design methods can help in the design of social systems that support trust and collaboration.

Posted by marientina at 11:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Int. Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling ICAPS 2006
Call for proposals

The application of AI technologies in general to computer games and graphical characters is an expanding field, as witness the first in a series of international conferences on AI and Interactive Digital Media in June 2005, the International Conference on Computer Games and AI, now in its 6th year, the growth of the conference Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA), and the development of sometimes affectively-driven autonomous synthetic characters in projects in Europe, the US and Asia.

However though AI Planning has much to contribute to both these fields, particularly in producing more convincing Non-Player Characters and autonomous intelligent characters, few AI planning researchers have been involved in this work, and the technology, where applied at all, has often been used in a somewhat ad hoc way. In addition, games company use of AI planning has so far been limited - A*-based motion planning the main exception - with practitioners feeling that the technology is too computationally expensive or risky for integration into computer games.

This workshop aims to bring together researchers already applying AI planning technology to these domains so as to look at what has been done and what could be done; researchers who would like to apply their work to these areas; and anyone interested in what the main research challenges to AI planning are and what contributions it can make with respect to both domains.

Posted by marientina at 12:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Friday, October 14th, 3.30pm-6.30pm @ ZML
Download presentation mindmap (free viewer from here) PC only

Download zip file of presentation as web format (MAC or PC)

The workshop will be repeated on
Wednesday, November 16th & 30th, 2.30-5.30pm @ ZML.
(to be negotiated)

Posted by marientina at 2:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

http://www.casuality.org/

Posted by marientina at 1:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In anticipation of Celia Pearce's lecture tomorrow and in celebration of our wednesday pot luck, I made this dessert and the first lucky folks who show up with food they brought will get to taste my Super Four Berry Almond Hazelnut Torte. Since we are an Interactive department, I encourage you to interact with each other's foodstuffs for starters... Be a good sport and bring something cool to the table!

Posted by marientina at 12:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

in Baltimore!

I am working on the site for a friend of a friend (how very greek of us) and was wondering if anyone has seen these films yet. I am going to try to see some in a month while in Athens and then see if I can buy or rent some. We should have some of them for the USC CNTV collection.

When I was growing up, the production of good greek film was in deep recession (along with the rest of the country) and there was maybe one good film every couple of years. In the past five years, Greece has put out some beautiful films. Of course now I live here and I CAN'T SEE THEM easily. Argh.

Posted by marientina at 12:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)