Math Multimedia: Paul Bourke's Random Space Filling Tiling of the Plane; Lots'o Related Info and Links

Paul Bourke is a research associate professor and director of iVEC at the University of Western Australia.  I've been following Dr.  for several years and never cease to be amazed by his mathematical and scientific visualization experiements. 


Dr. Bourk recently posted a video of one of his recent projects on Google+ that I found fascinating.  If you are a member of Google+,  you can view the video at https://plus.google.com/117410063754013499525/posts  (I wasn't sure how to embed the video in this post.)


Take the time to follow the link below to Paul Bourke's web page about his current work. The pictures and math are worth the effort!
RANDOM SPACE FILLING TILING OF THE PLANE

Paul Bourke, July 2011

Paul Bourke's "tiling of the plane" work was inspired by John Shier, a computer artist who integrates random numbers in his creations.

In my opinion, introducing students to the works of Paul Bourke, John Shire, and others might be a great way to spark curiosity and creativity in the study of mathematics, computer programming, and digital art.

RELATED

Paul Bourke's Amazing Collection of Textures 
Paul Bourke's Amazing Scientific Visualization Lecture Slides (pdf)
(The titles above are my own.)

MRI-style 3D volumetric data set of a liver

"A fulldome (planetarium) visualisation of three microCT volumetric datasets rendered in Drishti.  They include: (i) Liver Lobe, Rabbit liver illustrating venous and arterial (orange) systems; (ii) Interior of a lizard head (common garden skink); (iii) Fossil fish eyeball (Placoderm), 410 million years old, found in Wee Jasper, NSW. "


Credits for Artforms of Nature: A new way of seeing. 
Ajay Limaye, Peter Morse, Paul Bourke. Vizlab, Australian National University. WASP, University of Western Australia. Featuring fisheye volume rendering from Drishti. Datasets Fossil fish eyeball (Placoderm). Gavin Young, ANU Common garden skink. Tim Senden, ANU Rabbit liver lobe. Tim Senden, ANU ©2008 by the artists. "-http://www.youtube.com/user/peteremorse


Drishti: Volume Exploration and Presentation Tool
"Drishti has been developed keeping in mind the end-use : visualizing tomography data, electron-microscopy data, etc. Understanding the data set is important and conveying that understanding to the research community or a lay person is equally important. Drishti is aiming for both. The central idea about Drishti is that the scientists should be able to use it for exploring volumetric datasets as well as use it in presentations."

Paul Burke's Experiments in Interactive Visual Immersion in Second Life

Lynn Marentette, Interactive Multimedia Technology, 5/14/08

Interdisciplinary Workshop - OZVIZ 2011:  November 23-25, Sydney, Australia

"The workshop provides an occasion for participants to present research outcomes, share innovative ideas, publicise work and meet colleagues. It is highly multidisciplinary, with participants from fields such as mathematics, geoscience, architecture, biology, medicine and astronomy presenting alongside computer graphics and visualisation experts."

OZVIZ 2010

"The Known Universe Scientifically Rendered for All to See" (Americal Museum of Natural History via O'Reilly Radar)

-Astronomy Picture of the Day 


THIS IS BEAUTIFUL:


The Known Universe Scientifically Rendered for All to See
This six and 1/2 minute trailer is from a 60 minute experience, "The Known Universe: A Grand Tour with Brian Abbott", based on information from the Digital Universe Atlas, a four-dimensional map of the universe  maintained by the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History. (The video was uploaded to YouTube on December 15th,2009 and has had 1,473,213 views in less than two weeks.)

"The Known Universe takes viewers from the Himalayas through our atmosphere and the inky black of space to the afterglow of the Big Bang. Every star, planet, and quasar seen in the film is possible because of the world's most complete four-dimensional map of the universe, the Digital Universe Atlas that is maintained and updated by astrophysicists at the American Museum of Natural History. The new film, created by the Museum, is part of an exhibition, Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe, at the Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan through May 2010. "


RELATED
Digital Universe Atlas 
You can download the Digital Universe Atlas, from the American Museum of Natural History website.  It will run on Windows, Mac, Linux, and IREX.  I'd recommend downloading the "Digital Universe Uncut" if you are a parent, teacher, or student.


Astrophyics Visualization Archive
"Explore astrophysics through scientific visualization and animation."


American Museum of Natural History (AMNH)
AMNH's Space Show:  Journey to the Stars
"Journey to the Stars is an engrossing, immersive theater experience created by the Museum's astrophysicists, scientific visualization, and media production experts with the cooperation of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and more than 40 leading scientists from the United States and abroad."


The Science of "Journey to the Stars"


Directing Journey to the Stars (Includes an interview of Carter Emmart, Director of Astrovisualization at the American Museum of Natural History)

Paul Bourke's Experiments in Interactive Visual Immersion in Second Life - and more....

"Preprocessed spherical projections from inside a crystal including the Hershfield surface"
Evaluating Second Life as a Collaborative Tool for Scientific Visualization
http://local.wasp.uwa.edu.au/~pbourke/papers/cgat08/

I thought I'd devote a post to Paul Bourke's exciting work in the area of what I call "interactive visual immersion".

According to a bio on a math art website, Paul's working life "has revolved around high performance computing and computer graphics, in particular scientific visualisation: the use of computer graphics to represent scientific data with the aim of enhancing understanding of the underlying structure and processes." Paul is also interested in the use of "novel display technologies that can further enhance the understanding of large and complicated geometric datasets...These engage capabilities of our visual system not exploited by traditional computer displays..."

Paul recently participated in the the Computer Games, Multimedia & and Allied Technology 08: International Conference & Industry Symposium on Computer Games; Animation, Multimedia, IPTV & Edutainment. (CGAT'08, Singapore, April 28-30)

The above picture is from his paper, Evaluating Second Life as a Tool for Collaborative Scientific Visualization. (pdf), taken from Paul's webpage, where you can find a link to the slides from his talk.

Bourke points out that there are few software tools available that support shared, remote collaborative scientific visualization. What is available is expensive, exploratory, and/or difficult to install and operate. Bourke proposes that Second Life might prove to be a useful tool for collaborative SciViz, despite some current limitations. Second Life is a cross-platform 3D environment that was designed specifically for interaction between many people, and it allows for texture mapping, which is a plus for visualization work. Burke notes that there are limitations, such as Second Life's low geometric complexity.

Paul Bourke's website includes a page that lists all of his papers, articles, and seminars, with impressive visuals alongside each entry. Since I recently completed a visualization class and also gave a short presentation about accessible games for health, I found many of Bourke's papers intriguing:

Vertical dome (iDome): Visualisation and Navigable movies
Visualization for scientists, museums, public outreach, and education
Immersive environments and applications to gaming
Exploiting our sense of touch for scientific visualization.
Tactile Visualization: Feel your data!
Apple technology powering displays that engage the human visual system
iDome and digital projection into hemispherical domes

Take the time to explore Bourke's entire website. Look at his texture library and his "other" section!

FYI: Here is a link to the CGAT'08 list of speakers, complete with bios and abstracts.