CaT: Creativity and Technology: Inside the Allosphere

JOANN KUCHERA-MORIN -- AlloSphere@CNSI: Towards a Fully Immersive and Interactive Artistic and Scientific Experience AlloSphere Research Facility

in partnership with the California Nanosystems Institute MAT/CNSI AlloSphere – California Nanosystems Institute What is a Digital Media Center doing in a Nanosystems institute?

A team of digital media researchers at UCSB has been fostering a cross-disciplinary field that unites science and engineering through the use of new media

Allosphere = Integration + availability to a larger community

Description and Goals

The AlloSphere is situated at one corner of the CNSI building, surrounded by different media labs.

- Visual Computing

- Interactive Installation

- Immersion/Eversion

- Robotics/Distributed Systems

- Plurilabs

Other MAT Labs at CNSI

The Allosphere

synthesis, manipulation, exploration and analysis of large-scale data sets ....

environment that can simulate virtually real sensorial perception providing multi-user immersive interactive interfaces

research into

scientific visualization, numerical simulations, data mining, visual/aural abstract data representations, knowledge discovery, systems integration and human perception

Description and Goals

Ensemble Style Composition and Performance of Complex N-Dimensional Data In A Virtual Concert Hall Setting AlloSphere – A three story instrument that holds multiple researchers inside who interact with the instrument as a musical ensemble composes and performs a work. Researchers are capable of working with complex N-dimensional data sets in a design-stage scenario. Multi-user interactive interface (the instruments) – wireless controllers and other unique devices used as an ensemble of instruments in an intelligent reactive space. Design Stage – three-story metal sphere in an echo-free chamber. Researchers stand on a bridge suspended in the middle of the design- stage (sphere) and perform their data set with their instrument in consort with one another. Using musical composition and performance as our model and focusing on a complex scientific problem that we believe is the underlying framework for building an interactive mathematical programming library for generating multi-dimensional data flow of diverse information (biological, chemical, physical, geo-physical and abstract as well), we are developing a research platform that will allow us to compose our data by performing and painting complex mathematical equations visually and sonically within the AlloSphere, one of the largest immersive scientific/artistic/instruments/laboratories in the world for immersive visualization and multimodal data manipulation. THE DESIGN STAGE - AlloSphere Instrument

Research in the Allosphere