Santa Fe New Mexican | March 19, 2010

NM Artists, Scientists and Computer Programmers Collaborate on Immersive Videos

Staci Matlock | March 19, 2010

Imagine how fun science homework would be if you could, say, project a digital galaxy around your bedroom, navigate through it like Star Trek’s Hikaru Sulu using your cell phone as the control, and then blast a meteor, virtually, into a planet to see what happens.

Researchers from the Santa Fe Complex, the Institute of American Indian Arts and The University of New Mexico believe that will be one outcome of a collaborative project funded recently by a $597,220 Partnership for Innovation Grant from the National Science Foundation. The three entities are working on ways to create immersive and fulldome videos that are interactive and can be projected onto any surface. Ultimately, they hope the project will turn fulldome technology into something starving performance artists, scientists, city planners, bored students and others can use anyplace they choose.

The possibilities are endless.

If you don’t know what a fulldome is, think of the LodeStar planetarium at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science. Multiple projectors fill a spherical shaped ceiling with video, giving people the experience of flying among the stars.

The New Mexico collaborators want to take the medium several steps further.

“We’re working on how we can calibrate a whole room so you don’t have to use a dome. The images could be projected on any surface,” said Stephen Guerin, a board member at the Santa Fe Complex and founder of Redfish Group. “We’re developing techniques so all points in a room would be interactive.”

The public can check out a fulldome demonstration during the March 26-27 Art and Science of Systems Biology workshops at the Santa Fe Complex.

David Beining, associate director of Immersive Media at the University of New Mexico’s ARTS Lab, founded the annual Domefest. “Our greatest strength is in experimenting with story telling and the experience of the audience,” he said.

UNM’s Advanced Graphics Lab brings expertise in sensors and advanced computer software programming. The lab’s director, Pradeep Sen, is the collaborative project’s leader. IAIA will bring its students, who will use dome technology for storytelling and art projects. Santa Fe Complex will devise the software to make any room into a fulldome.

Guerin gave a tour of the Santa Fe Complex and demonstrated its role in the collaborative Fulldome and Immersive Technology project.

At the complex Friday, computer animation artist Joe Abraham Dean supervised the construction of a metal frame and polyester-skin dome that will be used as part of the project research. Dean, formerly of The University of New Mexico’s ARTS Lab, now runs his own company called Lumenscapes.

Nearby was a sand-filled, rectangular box called a SimTable, developed by Santa Fe Complex researchers. Guerin moved his hand through the sand, scooping it up to look like a mountain. The surface changes colors to mark elevation. Every scoop of his hand changed the surface and colors of the sand. A couple of video cameras and projectors sent images of the SimTable to a laptop computer.

The SimTable stores can store data on topography, vegetation, wind, sun and more. Santa Fe firefighters used it to learn how fire moves through the municipal watershed and test escape routes for residents. “Now imagine if multiple cameras and projectors made a whole room into a SimTable,” Guerin said.

Santa Fe Complex is working on software dubbed “Any Surface” that would allow cameras and projectors to calibrate any kind of surface.

Contact Staci Matlock at 986-3055 or smatlock@sfnewmexican.com.

IF YOU GO
What: The Art and Science of Systems Biology, with lectures, exhibits, interactive experiments and workshops for adults and youth of all ages.
When: March 26-27, from 4:30 p.m.-9 p.m. Friday; noon-9 p.m. Saturday
Where: Santa Fe Complex, 632 Agua Fría Street, Santa Fe.
Cost: Free.
Information: www.sfcomplex.org. Online registration required for evening lectures 4:30 p.m.- 5:30 p.m.

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Source: Santa Fe New Mexican