VIRTUALITY&INTERACTIVITY II
Digital Renaissance "

Conferences & Encounters

Saturday 29 May 1999
9:30 - 13:30
14:30 - 18:00

"Ex Stazione Leopolda", Piazzale di Porta al Prato
Florence, Italy.

Saturday 29 May 1999

I.- Virtual Reality. Hight End Platforms: Cave. Applications in VR for the Cave.

9:30 am- 1:30 pm

Participants:

1) Carolina Cruz Neira ( 45 minutes)
Ph.D. Litton Assistant Professor
ICEMT/Iowa State University
Iowa Center for Emerging
Manufacturing Technology (ICEMT) USA

CAVE TECHNOLOGY READY FOR PRIME TIME?

The CAVE virtual reality system was introduced in 1992. Today, seven years later, CAVE technology has reached a level of interest and popularity by research and industrial groups beyond the expectations of the initial project. This presentation takes a look back to the initial stages of the CAVE project, to describe the motivations and ideas behinds its design, the transition from concept to final implementation, and the first applications developed for the CAVE. This discussion provides the background to then present how CAVE Systems are being used today and my first hand experiences introducing this Technology in industrial settings. Throughout the presentation issues related to installing and maintaining a CAVE system and approaches and tools available for application development will be discussed. Finally, the presentation looks into the future of CAVE technology and its applications. Ongoing research at Iowa State University addresses the current limitations of this technology from the structural issues such as size, number of screens, resolution, number of simultaneous active and passive users, as well as application development issues, such as development models, working strategies, and usability.

2)Dave Pape (45 minutes)
PhD nell'Electronic Visualization Laboratory
University of Illinois di Chicago, EVL,USA..

Cave as container for the arts and culture..Technic viewpoint of art in the CAVE -
what's been done, what's possible, & what are the big problems.

- What's special about the CAVE for art (compared to its use in science & engineering)
- What problems need to be solved
- Review of some past projects
- EVL's current research - new display technology and tele-immersion,Netwroks, Cave to Cave
- Experience with Cave Library ( major software to developed aplicaiton in the Cave)
-Works, applications, art pieces produce in the Cave with Cave library

3) Gerfried Stocker (30 minutes)
Director of AEC, Ars Electronica Center, Linz, Austria.

The Cave in Ars Electronic Center

Ars Electornic Center has one of few cave available to visitors. Since the opening of the center Cave is functioning as an exhibit space withitn the museum, Gerfried Sotcker the director of the center will speak about the experience of having a cave in the center, amount of visitors per year to the cave, why he chose the cave as platform ad what limit and development he see from his point of view as a director of one of the most famous center in Europe. Analysis of having a cave in the center...

Then the main question in Italy they make is why there are so little applications for the cave?? It's because it's complex to produce, expensive.. his opinion in relation to this issue.

4) Franz Fischnaller ( 30 Minutes)
Project Coordinator F.A.B.R.I.CATORS
Curator Virtuality&Interactivity II.

Producing the Multi Mega Book in the cave

Franz Fischnaller will speak about producing an application in the Cave such us The mega book. Why the Cave, what was the first expectative and what was possible to fulfill.. From scratch to the final creation. And the conclusion of it from the artistic point of view ..Did it superate or not the expectaive of the orginal idea..

5) Josephine Anstey (30 minutes)
Virtual Reality artist, writer.
EVL, University of Illinois, Chicago, USA.

The Thing.. an application for the cave

- Virtual Characters
- animation in the cave
- narrative, interaction and complexity
- virtual emotions
-Her experience creating the thing in the cave, inputs about the process, how, difficulties, development
-Animated elements in the cave..
-What is "The Thing" and why in the Cave
-Caves??How many do they exist worldwide and where..
-What are they using it for??

6) Marco Monzani (35 minutes)
Electronic Engineer.
Elekton, Milano, Italia.

Ing. Marco Monzani
Technical Director of Elekton, Milan

Inger Fredeus
Area Manager of Qualisys AB, Goteborg, Sweden

Motion Capture&Tracking the Net

What is motion capture ? Art condition of motion capture. Optical Systems- Magnetic Systems

The optical systems Qualisys. “Tracking the Net” shown in “Virtuality&Interactivity II”, in what it consist, technology, content, interactivity, interface.. why do we consider it innovative..a hit!! In cultural field and entertainment??? Possible developments as Tracking the Net in medical, entertainemnet and games markets and in cultural and artistic fields.

“Tracking the Net” is an experiment mostly in the direction of two different fields.
-Entertainment: having the possibility to host a number of persons simultaneously interacting, it is a basic structure for a lot of applications in the entertainment field.
- Medical: controlled interaction between elastic elements and muscle strenght is the basis for a lot of rehabilitative terapies, expecially to recover motion and most of all motory coordination.
The given feedback has an high motivational value expecially in younger subjects.

II.- Digital animation, effects, animation festivals, 3D stereo video

2:30pm - 6:00pm

1) Gilbert Dutertrec (1 hour 30 minutes)
Prix Pixel-INA'99, Imagina, France

Will present the famous international festival of digital production, the Prix Pixel-INA. An international competition where, evry year, the public and a jury of professionals give a prize to the best international pruductions which use these new creative instruments.

Imagina, the forum for images beyond imagination, is an event produced by INA (Institut national de l'audiovisuel) and the Festival de Télévision de Monte-Carlo and which covers the following areas: - computer graphics and animation - digital cinema and special effects - games and virtual communities - intelligent agents and augmented reality - virtual worlds and cyberspace - webcasting - synthesized sound - architectural design - medical imaging

2) Gerfried Stocker(Austria) ( 60 minutes)
Director of AEC, Ars Electronica Center, Linz, Austria

Prix Ars Electronica-'98

International Competition for Computer Arts (Linz, Austria)Will present the International Competition for Computer Arts: Prix Ars Electronica.
This competition has presented itself in an altered overall format each year since it was established in 1987 as international competition within the Ars Electronica Festival.
Categories: graphics, animation, music, web, ecc. Who pertecipated, who won, how the italian talents could partecipate at the competition, open to all the talents in this field all over the world.

4) Raymond R .Hannisian (USA) (30 minutes)
"Ray3D - Stereoscopic Imaging"

Author of famous stereoscopic videos, will speak about the making of his production and about steroscopic video.

Biographies of partecipants and brief description of labs, societies and production houses which will partecipate at the conference:

1.-Carolina Cruz-Neira (Spain)

Iowa Center for Emerging
Manufacturing Technology (ICEMT) USA
Litton Assistant Professor at the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department and Associate Director at the Iowa Center for Emerging Manufacturing Technology, both at the Iowa State University.

Dr. Cruz's main research area is on the integration of virtual reality interfaces, high-speed networks and high-performance computing engines for real-time simulations. Her research focuses on the development of tools, such as distributed software models, immersive interfaces, and sonification techniques, for scientific and engineering applications.

She graduated Cum Laude in Systems Engineering at the Universidad Metropolitana in Caracas, Venezuela.

Master's degree in EECS all'EVL at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) dall'Electronic Visualization Laboratory(EVL) ) from the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago in May of 1995.

Her PhD research involved the design and implementation of the CAVE, a surround-screen projection-based virtual reality system and the development of paradigms to combine high performance computing and communications with the CAVE for applications in computational science and engineering.

ICEMT/Iowa State University

Lo Iowa Center for Emerging Manufacturing Technology (ICEMT) is an interdisciplinary research center administered by the Institute for Physical Research and Technology at Iowa State University.

Its research involves the integration of humans and computers with advanced interfaces to enable visual, haptic, and audio interaction between users and computer generated virtual environments.

2.- Dave Pape (USA)

University of Illinois di Chicago, EVL,USA

BS and MS degrees in computer science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

He worked in the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's Space Data and Computing Division and created numerous scientific visualizations for research and education, which have been shown on national television, at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, and various technical conferences. At EVL, he is responsible for much of the core software used by CAVE and ImmersaDesk sites worldwide, and has helped create virtual reality applications shown at SIGGRAPH, Ars Electronica, ISEA, Art Futura, and ThinkQuest. Dave Pape is a PhD student in the Electronic Visualization Laboratory of the University of Illinois at Chicago.

EVL The Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago is a graduate research laboratory specializing in virtual reality and real-time interactive computer graphics. It is a joint effort of UIC's College of Engineering and School of Art and Design, and represents the oldest formal collaboration between engineering and art in the USA, offering graduate degrees to those specializing in visualization.

EVL is widely recognized for developing the CAVE and ImmersaDesk virtual reality display systems in 1992 and 1995 respectively. The CAVE and IDesk are projection-based systems. Projection-based VR is exactly the same as Head-mounted VR, except you don't have to carry the display equipment. The same mathematics and depth cues are given, allowing the user to experience a three dimensional virtual environment. The projection system allows more use of peripheral vision and the user can see his or her own body in the environment.

EVL maintains active relationships with organizations that foster the growth of Electronic Art, recognizing the blend of art and technology that this field represents. Students, faculty and staff regularly participate in art conferences and exhibitions. Work created at EVL has been seen at MediArtech, SIGGRAPH, ISEA, Ars Electronica Festivals, New York's Digital Salon, and Art Futura amongst other venues.

EVL's research currently focuses on linking CAVEs and ImmersaDesks with networks - which EVL calls "Tele-Immersion." Tele-Immersion is the extension of the "human/computer interaction" paradigm to "human/computer/human collaboration," with the computer providing real-time data in shared, collaborative environments.

EVL and Indiana University, members of the National Computational Science Alliance in the US, are working to advance the development of the International Technology Grid (iGrid). The iGrid is a prototype 21st century computational and information infrastructure integrating high-performance computers, visualization environments, remote instruments and massive databases via high speed networks to support advanced applications.

3.- Gerfried Stocker (Austria)

AEC, Ars Electronica Center, Linz, Austria.

He graduated at the Institute for Telecommunication Engineering and Electronics in Graz. Since 1990, he has been working as an indepent artist. In 1991, he founded x-space, a team for the realization of interdisciplinary projects. In this framework numerous installations and performance projects have been carried out in the field of interaction, robotics and telecommunication. Stocker was also responsible for the concept of various radio and network projects and the organization of the worldwide radio and network project Horizontal Radio. Since 1995 Stocker has been the artistic director of the Ars Electronica Festival and the managing director of the Ars Electronica Center.

Projects and installations have been shown at:

Steir. Landesausstellung '91, EXPO Sevilla '92, Kunsthalle Bonn '92, Oggi Musica '92 Biennale Venedig '93 FISEA '93 Minneapolis L'Arte dell'Ascolto '93 u. '94 Interactive Media Festival Los Angeles '94 Digital World Conference Los Angeles '94 SIGGRAPH '94 Orlando ISEA '94 Helsinki Dutch Electronic Art Festival Rotterdam '94 steirischer herbst '94, '95 Ars Electronica '95, Linz SIGGRAPH '95, Los Angeles ISEA '95, Montréal Frankfurter Buchmesse '95 New York Digital Salon '95 Biennale Venedig '97

Ars Electronica Center Linz - Museum of the Future

Un spazio su cinque livelli che offre la possibilità di scoprire, provare e giocare con le tecnologie del XXI secolo, usato come centro di cultura interattiva. Si basa sul divertimento, sulla facilità di utilizzo e presenta più livelli per venire incontro al tipo di conoscenza di ciascun visitatore. Un'interfaccia tra arte, cultura, tecnologia e società. L'hardware e il software di proprietà del museo, i suoi spazi per presentazioni e seminari, e l'esperienza del suo staff sono a disposizione di artisti, tecnologi, uomini d'affari, e ricarcatori scientifici.

Ars Electronica Festival Ars Electronica- un Festival per Arte, Tecnologia e Società- ha avuto inizio nel 1979 e si concentra sull'arte elettronica e la teoria dei media, è luogo aperto di incontro per artisti e ricercatori, è divenuto da allora un forum famoso nel mondo per arti, tecnologia e società. Fin dall'inizio Ars Electronica è stato caratterizzato dalla sua accessibilità ed il suo rifiuto delle frontiere artificiali. In collaborazione con l'Austrian Broadcasting Company (ORF) Upper Austrian Studio, organizza simposi, mostre, concerti, eventi ed una gran quantità di progetti artistici, e mostra al pubblico le ultime tendenze e sviluppi nel campo dei media digitali.

Il tema del Festival di quest'anno è "Life Science". Il Festival '99 avrà luogo dal 4 al 10 settembre 1999.

4.-Franz Fischnaller. F.A.B.R.I.CATORS, Italia

Italian. Followed art and design studies in Germany, Italy and USA. He works in the art and design fields and parallel to it he has undertaken the development of design+art+ technology and in the creation of installations, works, techniques, that will permit new possibilities for the integration of art and technology and confront the reality of "Man&art-Machine&art-interface&art".He has been involved with art+design +technology, in both theory and practice.

Coming from a background of the fine arts he likes to mix the "classical medium of art" with the "uptodate-non classical media", joining hight technology; thereby bringing it to his personal method, which he defines as "Franz's Uptodates".In the present Franz Fischnaller is the art-director and project-coordinator of F.A.B.R.I.CATORS. Among other places his work has been exhibited in:

Siggraph 95, 96 & 97 (USA), Imaginà'95,'98; Robotix '97,(UK); ArtFutura Madrid; Salon B.it Torino; Isea 97; Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnica "Leonardo da Vinci" Milan/Italy; Ontario Science Center, Canada; Mediartech- Florence/Italy, and Art-galleries in Europe and USA.

F.A.B.R.I.CATORS (an interdiciplinary group concerned with the integration of technology+ communication+art+design. The group carries out research activities in the artistic and technological fields).

5) Josephine Anstey. ( UK) University of Illinois di Chicago, EVL,USA

Josephine Anstey is a virtual reality artist, a writer, a documentarian and video maker. She and Dave Pape are collaborators on "The Thing Growing", an interactive, virtual, narrative for CAVE or ImmersaDesk, which has shown at SIGGRAPH 98, the Ars Electronica Festival 98, and New York Digital Salon 98 and now shown in “Virtuality & Interactivity II”.

She worked on the "Multi Mega Book in the CAVE", which has shown widely including at Siggraph 97, the Ars Electronica Festival 97, ISEA 97, Art Futura 97 and 98, Imagina 98, Mediartech 98, and has won a Multimedia Grand Prix 97 Award from the Multi-Media Content Association of Japan.

She has collaborated on a series of videos with video artist Julie Zando, which have shown internationally and won awards including the Best Narrative Video Award (Atlanta Film and Video Festival 1990), Best Experimental Video Award (Atlanta Film and Video Festival 1989). Many of the videos are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Videos include “Uh Oh!”, “The Bus Stops Here”, and “Let's Play Prisoners”.

6) Marco Monzani ( Italia) Elekton, Milano, Italia.

Electronic Engineer, master degree in Biomedical Appliances In 1992 starts his activities founding Elekton, a company involved in medical devices design and software. Since 1993 cooperates with various Italian scientists and issues scientific papers regarding human movement analysis and ergometrics. In 1994 starts Orbita project, with the aim to design and implement robotic devices for cinema and television shootings. Orbita project still develops in cooperation with a leading company of this market sector, now making these devices available on international basis.

Elekton Commercial activity started in 1992 and has been developing in time with designing, software engineering, manufacturing and distribution of medical devices, motion capture and analisys systems and robotic devices for TV / cinema appliances.

7) Gilbert Dutertre (France)

Prix Pixel-INA'99. Imagina, France
Manager in the National Institute of the Audio-visual
In charge of the technical and development organization of Imagina 1982.
Diploma higher in electronics in the University of Nanterre 1983 to 1990. In charge of training.

Since 1990. In charge of the technical and development of Imagina.Coordination of the logistic and technical organization, of the means of communication, the media operations and the Innovation Village.

Technological and industrial survey.
Member of the committee of program of the conferences of Satis since 86,
Member of the CST (Commission Supérieure Technique de l'image et du son),
Member of ACM Siggraph France.

Imagina is acknowledged to be the European Rendez-vous of professionals with :

Ø A cycle of conferences featuring international specialists in the most outstanding and innovative computer graphics technologies and their applications in television, cinema, games, the internet, medicine and architecture. Ø An international competition, the Prix Pixel-INA where, every year, the public and a jury of professionals rewards the best productions world-wide using these new creative tools. Ø An industrial exhibition, the European rendez vous for animation and data graphics professionals, designers, performers, cinema professionals, service providers, research workers, scientists and academics, etc. Ø An alternative space, the Innovation Village where is presented innovative installations, experiments, applications and products created by companies, laboratories and universities as part of their development programmes.

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8) Raymond R .Hannisian (USA) "

Ray3D - Stereoscopic Imaging" Ray Hannisian is a classical and jazz musician and a published composer.

After several years of providing musical scores for other people's films and videos, he began creating his own video documentaries. An avid photographer, with an interest in "stereoscopic" images and electronics, Mr. Hannisian designed and built his own 3D video camera, using surplus parts from "Virtual Reality" systems. Currently, he operates "Ray3D - Stereoscopic Imaging", from his studio in Carbondale, Colorado, creating "stereoscopic" video content for an emerging 3D 'home entertainment' market, and consulting on corporate, theatrical and educational 3D productions and projects.

Moderator: Enrico Ciabatti

Italian. In1978 he graduated Summa cumLaude in Archeology at the University of Florence.

Some of his specializations:

* Project and coordination of multimedia programmes and routes * Programming with Macromedia Director and Asymetrix ToolBook * Computer Graphics* 3D Modelling * Infonography and optical fibres

Since 1974 he partecipated to archeological excavations and directed many underwater excavations all over Italy and abroad. Since 1991 is the assistant of Prof. Gianni Pettena at the Department of History of Architecture and Architectural restoration - University of Florence. Since 1994 is the Project Coordinator of LA.M.S. (Multimedia Lab of History of Architecture - - University of Florence). He gave courses and lectures all over Italy since 1975 to nowadays, for students, teachers and researchers, on professionals programmes and multimedia direction. At the moment is the informatics consultant of the group Multimedia Waves of Florence.

He is assistant in the organization of the exhibit “Virtuality & Interactivity II”.

Some of his works: * CD-ROM : “ARCHETYPES - FRANK LLYOD WRIGHT : FALLINGWATER “ * CD-ROM : “GIANNI PETTENA : TRA ARTE E ARCHITETTURA “ * CD-ROM : “ FREDERICK LAW OLMSTED - L' ORIGINE DEL PARCO URBANO E DEL PARCO NATURALE CONTEMPORANEO “ * CD-ROM : “ANDREA BRANZI - LA CULTURA DEL PROGETTO” (Tesi) * MULTIMEDIA PROGRAMME: “ CURZIO MALAPARTE - UNO SCRITTORE IN RIVOLTA” (Comune di Prato) * CD-ROM : “ RADICALS - ARCHITETTURA E DESIGN 1960-75” (Biennale di Venezia) * CD-ROM : “ IL NUOVO DESIGN ITALIANO” (Tesi) * CD-ROM : “ ARCHETYPES - BBPR : LA TORRE VELASCA”

* CD-ROM : “PALAZZO VECCHIO - LE STANZE DI LEONE X” (Tesi) * RICOSTRUZIONE VIRTUALE DI FIRENZE DALL' EPOCA ROMANA AD OGGI * VIRTUAL MUSEUM : “LA CITTÀ MEDIEVALE TESSILE” (Comune di Prato -CEE) * CD-ROM : “Visita virtuale di Prato Medievale” (Comune di Prato -CEE) * CD-ROM : “ PALAZZO DAVANZATI” (Tesi)

He is working at: * RICOSTRUZIONE VIRTUALE DI UNA CITTÀ ROMANA* MUSEO VIRTUALE: “LA CAMPAGNA TOSCANA NEL MEDIOEVO” (Comune di Prato) * CD-ROM : “DATABASE ARCHITETTURA DOMUS-CASABELLA 1965/96” * WEB : “MUSEO CIVICO DI PRATO “ * CD-ROM : “L' ARALDICA : UN ANTICO UNIVERSO DI SIMBOLI E SEGNI”

Partecipanti:

1) JIM MORRIS (1 ora)

President

Lucas Digital Ltd. LLC

Industrial Light & Magic, a division of Lucas Digital Ltd. LLC

Presenterà le realizzazioni più straodinarie di Industrial Light & Magic, una delle compagnie più famose di Hollywood per la produzione cinematografica, di effetti speciali anche digitali.