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.

Seth Sandler's "How to Make a Cheap Multitouch Pad" YouTube video is going viral...

Seth Sandler, a member of the NUI group, has worked very hard at putting together low-cost multi-touch screen surfaces. Seth has a background in music, so his projects focus on interactive music applications. Over 315,000 people watched this video within the week that it was uploaded.

Thanks Seth, for sharing this vision with the world!



Seth's AudioTouch Blog: "An Interactive Multi-user, Multi-touch Musical Table and More"

Hint for high school teachers: This sort of thing would be a great project for an after-school technology club!

Two Links: Urban Screens, Urban Interfaces, Digital Media, and the Arts in Social-Public Spaces; Edward Tufte is a Smart Guy

Here are two links that I think you'll find interesting:

My post on the TSHWI blog, reflecting on interdisciplinary research and topics related to ubiquitous computing and large interactive displays in public spaces:

Urban Screens, Urban Interfaces, Digital Media, and the Arts in Social-Public Spaces


Bill Mackenty's reflections about workshop he attended that was led by Edward Tufte, known for his insights about the presentation of information graphics:

Edward Tufte is a Smart Guy

Cross post via Tech Psych: Games for Health conference

I recently presented at the Games for Health conference in Baltimore, Maryland. The attendees and presenters at the conference came from a variety of fields- game development, education, occupational and physical therapy, health, bio-mechanical engineering, media arts, and more, all interested in sharing ideas about using game, simulations, and virtual worlds to improve health.

Many of the topics covered during the recent Games for Health conference apply to K-12 settings. If you think about it, many children and teens are at risk for health problems that will adversely impact their lives as adults. If we can provide a means for young people to develop healthy behaviors and attitudes at an early age, we will help to ensure healthy futures, for individuals and communities alike.

If you have a little time, you can listen to the overview provided in an audiocast consisting of interviews with Ben Sawyer and others involved with the conference.

My presentation slides - Game Accessibility and Health Education in K-12 Settings - from the pre-conference, are posted SlideShare, where you can find slides from other presentations on the Games for Health group section.

You can find more information on the Pioneer Portfolio of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation website, including a section about Games for Health.

Edutopia Video: No Gamer Left Behind: Virtual Learning Goes to the Next Level

The following video is from from Edutopia, part of the George Lucus Educational Foundation. It provides a good overview of the at the use of virtual worlds and interactive games in education. Some high schools provide virtual labs to teach science concepts, and others offer courses that teach students how to create games and virtual environments, and in turn, these student learn art, story-telling, math and computer programming concepts.

Teachers report that incorporating virtual learning in their classrooms increases student engagement and academic performance.

This video clip features Doug Whitley,from Kurt Squires and William Shafer, from the University of Wisconsin, students from the Digital Media program at McKinley High School (Washington D.C., and Eric Johnson, from Lucas Arts.



According to Mark Prensky, there are many barriers to the use of simulations and games in education, inlcuding the lack of money, time, and adequate technology. In addition, many educators are not aware of the power that interactive simulations hold for their students.

Oakland Blues: Virtual Preservation of Seventh Street's Jazz Scene, more about educational gaming MMO's

I recently attended the Visualization in the World Symposium sponsored by the Charlotte Visualization Center at UNC-Charlotte. I enjoyed the symposium because the presentations were interdisciplinary, drawing from fields such as psychology, architecture, journalism, scientific visualization, data visualization, and photography.

The audience consisted of people from a variety of disciplines. This added dimension to the discussions after each presentation, eliminating the "birds of a feather" feeling experienced at conferences that are narrow in focus.

Yahuda Kalay's presention:



One of the presentations was about the on-line interactive virtual preservation of Oakland California's 7th Street from the 1950's, a center of jazz at the time. The project was the result of collaboration between the Architecture and Journalism departments at the University of California-Berkeley. Preserving cultural heritage is important, but proves to be a difficult task. Digital media can assist with this problem through the use of modeling and visualization.

Because the project was designed to be used by people via the interent, decisions needed to be made regarding the quality of the graphics, since many users would not have high-end graphics cards installed in their computers. Garage Game's Torque engine was used to develop the game, because it contained a physics engine and also supported players and non-player characters (NPC), or virtual characters. The NPC's were programmed to provide interactive dialogues with players, and each NPC's dialogue contributed to telling the story of 7th street.

Below is the course description from a recent journalism class at UC-Berkeley that used the Oakland's 7th street videogame for many of the course assignments. It looks like it could be easily adapted for high school courses:

"J-298: Oakland Jazz and Blues (Spring 2008)This class is using a video game program to recreate and tell the story of the jazz and blues club scene on Oakland's 7th Street during its heyday in the 1940s and 1950s - a remarkable part of the city's history that has been all but lost to urban decay. An eight-block stretch of 7th Street is being recreated as a virtual world, which people can access over the Internet and then adopt avatar figures to walk up and down the streets, enter the clubs, listen to the music of the era and interact with other people logged onto the site. The virtual reality program used in the class was developed by the UC Berkeley Architecture Department, which is collaborating on this year-long project. This class involves reporting and research on the stories of the clubs and other establishments on 7th Street, the musicians and other characters who frequented the scene, the music played in the clubs, and the redevelopment projects that destroyed the area. And the class will work on how to tell the story of the clubs and the history of the area using video game narratives."

Further Reading:

OAKLAND BLUES. Virtual Preservation of Seventh Street's 1950s Jazz Scene by Yehuda E. Kalay and Paul Grabowicz, Center for New Media, University of California, Berkeley, USA JISC 3DVisA Bulletin, Issue 1, September 2006

RELATED: New Media Consortium

The New Media Consortium's overview of interactive virtual worlds used for education provides information about a variety of projects and the time-frames in which they will become fully implemented. It also provides an overview of massively multiplayer educational gaming, with resources for further reading. The NASA MMO project to support STEM learning is an example massively multi-player educational gaming.

I am excited about these innovations, since they will provide visual learners with educational opportunities that are suited to how they learn.