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Media Arts and Technology |
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Speaker: Edward A. Shanken, Professor, Department of Media Studies, University of Amsterdam
Time: Tuesday, February 21, 5:30-7pm
Location: Engineering Science Building, room 2001
Abstract:
The malleability of history is demonstrated by the many ways the canon of art history has been written and rewritten from the perspectives of ever-changing presents. But this is also a two way street. Just as every "now" arguably constructs an alternative "then," so every "then" constructs an alternative "now". Moreover, every alternative "now" and "then" establishes a particular foundation for imagining the future. This inevitably impacts the "nows" and "thens" to be; those that are yet to come. My talk will explore the relationship between history and the future in the narratives of art. I will share some examples from my work on the history of art and technology and from my current research on bridging the gap between mainstream contemporary art and new media art.
Bio:
Edward A. Shanken writes and teaches about the entwinement of art, science, and technology with a focus on interdisciplinary practices involving new media. He is a researcher at Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) and a member of the Media Art History faculty at the Donau University in Krems, Austria. He was formerly Universitair Docent of New Media at UvA, Executive Director of the Information Science + Information Studies program at Duke University, and Professor of Art History and Media Theory at Savannah College of Art and Design. Recent and forthcoming publications include essays on art and software in the 1960s; sound art and ecology; art historiography; and bridging the gap between new media and contemporary art. His forthcoming book, Inventing the Future: Art, Electricity, New Media will be published in Spanish and Chinese in paper and e-text. He edited and wrote the introduction to a collection of essays by Roy Ascott, Telematic Embrace: Visionary Theories of Art, Technology and Consciousness (University of California Press, 2003).
His critically praised survey, Art and Electronic Media (Phaidon Press, 2009) has been expanded with an extensive, multimedia Online Companion: www.artelectronicmedia.com.
Website: www.artexetra.com
For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
www.mat.ucsb.edu/595M.
Speaker: Ben Shneiderman, University of Maryland, College Park
Time: Tuesday, February 14, 5:30-7pm
Location: Engineering Science Building, room 2001
Abstract:
Interactive information visualization tools provide researchers with remarkable capabilities to support discovery. These telescopes for high-dimensional data combine powerful statistical methods with user-controlled interfaces. Users can begin with an overview, zoom in on areas of interest, filter out unwanted items, and then click for details-on-demand. With careful design and efficient algorithms, the dynamic queries approach to data exploration can provide 100msec updates even for million-item visualizations that can represent billion-record databases.
This talk reviews the growing commercial success stories such as www.spotfire.com, www.smartmoney.com/marketmap and www.hivegroup.com. and research tools for time series data such as (www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/timesearcher ).
The central theme is the integration of statistics with visualization as applied to temporal event sequences such as electronic health records (www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/lifelines2 and www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/lifeflow) and social network data (www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/socialaction and www.codeplex.com/nodexl).
Bio:
Ben Shneiderman is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Founding Director (1983-2000) of the Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory (http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/) at the University of Maryland. He is a Fellow of the AAAS, ACM, and IEEE, and a Member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2010.
Ben is the co-author with Catherine Plaisant of Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction (5th ed., 2010) http://www.awl.com/DTUI/. With Stu Card and Jock Mackinlay, he co-authored Readings in Information Visualization: Using Vision to Think (1999). With Ben Bederson he co-authored The Craft of Information Visualization (2003). His book Leonardo’s Laptop appeared in October 2002 (MIT Press) and won the IEEE book award for Distinguished Literary Contribution. His latest book, with Derek Hansen and Marc Smith, is Analyzing Social Media Networks with NodeXL (www.codeplex.com/nodexl, 2010).
Website: www.cs.umd.edu/~ben
For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
www.mat.ucsb.edu/595M.
Speaker: Simon Penny, University of California, Irvine
Time: Tuesday, February 7, 5:30-7pm
Location: Engineering Science Building, room 2001
Abstract:
Over 25 years, Penny has explored embodied interaction within hybrid robotic installations, variously deploying immersive technologies and custom hardware and software systems. The theoretical and philosophical tensions which lie at the heart of the the so called convergence of digital technologies and cultural practices were always a preoccupation and have led Penny through a phenomenological critique of AI into embodied cognition. The relevance of theories of embodied cognition to arts practices and in particular will be discussed in the context of presentation of several works.
Bio:
Simon Penny is an Australian practitioner in the fields of Digital Cultural Practices, Embodied Interaction and Interactive Art. His practice has included artistic practice, technical research, theoretical writing, pedagogy and institution building. Over the last twenty-five years, he has made interactive and robotic installations which address critical issues arising at the intersection of culture and technology, informed by traditions of practice in the arts including sculpture, video-art, installation and performance; and by theoretical research in enactive and embodied cognition, ethology, neurology, phenomenology, human-computer interaction, ubiquitous computing, robotics, critical theory, cultural and media studies. Informed by these sources, he designs and builds artworks utilising custom sensor and effector technologies. He built the autonomous robotic artwork Petit Mal in the early 1990s. His machine vision based interactive digital video work Fugitive was exhibited at the opening of the ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany in 1997. Traces ( a 3D machine vision driven CAVE immersive interactive) was presented at Ars Electronica in 1998. Fugitive Two was commissioned by the Australian Center for the Moving Image (ACMI), Melbourne Australia, in 2000, and premiered there in 2004. He has received funding and/or residencies from the Daniel Langlois Foundation for Science and Art, ZKM, GMD, WDR, and other sources.
Penny has spoken widely internationally and published over 50 papers and essays on digital cultural practices, in several languages. He was director of Digital Arts and Culture conference 2009 (DAC09). He curated Machine Culture (arguably the first international survey of interactive art) at SIGGRAPH 93 and edited the associated catalog and anthology. He edited the anthology Critical Issues in Electronic Media (SUNY Press 1995). He was architect and founding director of the interdisciplinary graduate program in Arts, Computation and Engineering ( www.ace.uci.edu). He was Associate Professor of Art and Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University (a joint appointment between the College of Fine Arts and the Robotics Institute) 1993-2001. He is a guest professor in the Interdisciplinary Master in Cognitive Systems and Interactive Media at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona. He has served on juries, boards and review committees for the National Research Council of the National Academies, the Rockefeller Foundation, Daniel Langlois Foundation for Science and Art (Canada), the "VIDA" Art and Artifical Life Award of the Telefonica Foundation (Spain/Latin America), the Banff New Media Institute (Canada), the international board of ISEA and other bodies.
Website: simonpenny.net
For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
www.mat.ucsb.edu/595M.
Time: Monday, February 13, 4-5pm
Location: TBA
Abstract:
To date information and scientific visualizations have evolved into two sub disciplines of visualization that are quite distinct from each other. A separation between these fields was justified because of significant differences in the type of problems and the corresponding data sets tackled by each. This separation led to a gap between the software tools, hardware technologies and visual languages adopted. However, information visualization techniques can find appropriate uses in scientific visualization applications of high dimensional data sets that consist of physical/spatial/structural components and additional abstract dimensions. Similarly, 3D graphics rendering methods which are readily adopted in scientific visualizations, can be used to enhance 2D information visualizations for improved functionality. This thesis is motivated by the goal of developing synergy between scientific and information visualization, which would enable researchers and developers to build visualization tools that leverage the key advantages afforded by each of these sub-disciplines.
The goal of this thesis is to find appropriate uses for 3D graphics technologies within the bounds of 2D information visualizations. To this end, we examine: (i) the use of stereoscopic depth in 2D node-link diagrams to support adjacency and accessibility tasks; (ii) the use of lighting and shadows to improve the readability of overlapping set representations. Additionally, the goal is to also define novel interaction metaphors and interface solutions to bridge 2D and 3D visualizations. These are explored via two applications – (i) the integration of multiple displays to present 3D visualization on a large display and associated 2D textual information and/or visualizations on personal tablet devices, (ii) coordinated visualization of 3D structural networks and 2D abstract networks to support interpretation of these data sets in relation to each other.
Speaker: Roger Malina, Distinguished Professor of Arts and Technology, and Professor of Physics at the University of Texas, Dallas
Time: Tuesday, January 31, 5:30-7pm
Location: Engineering Science Building, room 2001
Abstract:
A recent series of National Science Foundation workshops have explored the useful links between Science and Engineering with the Arts and Design; among other ideas these discussions have fed into a national discussion of turning STEM into STEAM. As an astrophysicist with a long hybrid career in both science and in the arts and humanities I want to articulate some of the arguments for creating platforms that allow productive, two way, collaboration between experts in the arts and humanities with scientists. I will discuss examples of such initiatives internationally including the IMERA Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies, and the new Art-Science program at the University of Texas, Dallas. I have recently been named Professor of Physics and Distinguished Chair of Arts and Technology in the School of Arts and Humanities and will be working on hard problems that require collaboration between the sciences with the arts and humanities.
Bio:
Roger Malina is an art-science researcher, astronomer and editor. He is Distinguished Professor of Arts and Technology and Professor of Physics at the University of Texas, Dallas; he is also Directeur de Recherche at the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille and Executive Editor of the Leonardo Publications at MIT Press.
For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
www.mat.ucsb.edu/595M.
Speaker: Harold Cohen, Professor Emeritus, University of California, San Diego
Time: Tuesday, January 24, 5:30-7pm
Location: Engineering Science Building, room 2001
Abstract:
Harold Cohen began work on his acclaimed AARON program in the early 1970s, making it one of oldest continuously developing programs in history. During that period his relationship to the program has changed significantly. In this talk he discusses AARON’s developing role, from potentially autonomous artist to collaborator, in terms of the changing algorithmic strategies that have marked its development. And he offers some thoughts on the nature of algorithms and some tentative conclusions on the nature of computational creativity.
Bio:
Cohen, founding director of the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts at UCSD, was an English painter with an established international reputation when he came to the U.S. in 1968 for what was intended as a one-year visiting professorship. His work on AARON began when he was a visiting scholar at Stanford University’s Artificial Intelligence Lab in 1972-3. Together, Cohen and AARON have exhibited at London’s Tate Gallery, the L.A. County Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego and many more of the world’s major art spaces. They have also been shown at a dozen science centers, including the Ontario Science Center, the Boston Science Museum and the Los Angeles Museum of Science and Industry. Cohen represented Britain in the Venice Biennale in 1966 and the U.S. in the World’s Fair in Tsukuba, Japan, in 1985. His work is represesented in many international art museums, and he has permanent exhibits devoted to his work in the Museum of Computing History in Mountain View, Calif., and in the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh, PA.
For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
www.mat.ucsb.edu/595M.
Speaker: Elaine Chew, Professor of Digital Media, School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science, Queen Mary, University of London
Time: Tuesday, January 17, 5:30-9pm
Location: Engineering Science Building, room 2001
Abstract:
As artists increasingly use technological tools to create and express, and scientists/engineers extend their research to inventions and investigations in the performing arts, the possibilities can be endless as each draws inspiration from the other. When top practitioners from each field come together to collaborate, the results can be seismic (Guardian, 21 Aug 2011). What happens when rather than one-off seismic events, we are interested in building sustainable collaborations that can withstand the test of time? How can we take into account the continued prosperity, long-term wellbeing, and professional advancement of all parties involved?
In this talk, I argue that unless the two worlds change the solution lies in balancing professional requirements in the two cultures, in light of each tribe’s differing currencies of exchange. I present some rules of engagement and reflect on three collaborations amongst musicians and engineers in which I have been or still am involved. The examples, which span a decade, are: Flying Sonics – a tale of immersive audio and diverse instruments, Distributed Immersive Performance – a study on the effect of network latency on distributed ensemble performance, and Mimi – multi-modal interaction in musical improvisation. SWOT analyses will reveal how each project fared in creating a sustainable collaboration. If time permits, I shall speak on how I reconcile the two worlds in my solo performances and single investigator work.
Bio:
As both a musician (pianist) and engineer (operations researcher), Elaine Chew lives in the crucible of debate on whether the worlds of the performing musician and the academic engineer can productively co-exist. As a graduate student in operations research at MIT, she engaged in too many musical performances (including an open rehearsal of Harbison’s Cello Concerto with Yo-Yo Ma), and was appointed Affiliated Artist of the Institute’s Music and Theater Arts division following a MISTI-funded field study on contemporary Chinese piano music. As Affiliated Artist, she founded the Aurelius Ensemble and curated its highly successful eclectic themed concerts from 1998 to 2000. She has collaborated with composers to premiere new works, her performances have been broadcast on WGBH (Art of the States), KUSC, and WDIY, and her recordings have appeared on Albany and Neuma Records.
As a graduate student, Chew covered topics in nonlinear optimization, computational biology, and computational finance. It was not until she met Jeanne Bamberger who introduced her to Music-and-AI that her two worlds came together, and she graduated with a PhD thesis on mathematical modeling of tonality. After a brief stint at Lehigh University, Chew joined the University of Southern California as a faculty member in the Viterbi School of Engineering, with a joint appointment in the Thornton School of Music. At USC, she founded the Music Computation and Cognition Laboratory, created a new course on Topics in Engineering Approaches to Music Cognition, and directed research in music and computing. In 2004/2005, she won the NSF Career/PECASE awards for her teaching/research activities at the cusp of music and engineering. She joined Queen Mary, University of London, this Fall as Professor of Digital Media, where she is Director of Music Initiatives at the Centre for Digital Music and Director of Graduate Studies in Electronic Engineering and Computer Science.
For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
www.mat.ucsb.edu/595M.
Speaker: Tod Machover, Professor of Music and Media, MIT Media Lab, Opera of the Future
Time: Tuesday, January 10, 5:30-7pm
Location: Engineering Science Building, room 2001
Abstract:
Professor Mavhover will have informal dialogues with MAT students and discuss their work. He will also be sharing with us some of his own work.
Bio:
Tod Machover is head of the Media Lab’s Opera of the Future group. An influential composer, he has been praised for creating music that breaks traditional artistic and cultural boundaries; his music has been performed and commissioned by some of the world’s most important performers and ensembles. In 1995, he received a "Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres", one of France’s highest cultural honors, and in 1998 he was awarded the first DigiGlobe Prize from the German government. He has composed five operas and is the inventor of Hyperinstruments, a technology that uses smart computers to augment virtuosity. Hyperinstruments have been used by performers such as Yo-Yo Ma, Prince, and Peter Gabriel. Machover is also the creator of the Toy Symphony, an international music performance and education project. His research group is currently examining ways to use music in therapy for emotionally and physically challenged individuals.
Machover’s opera "Death and the Powers" premiered in Monte-Carlo in the fall 2010; the project was developed by a creative team of international artists, designers, writers, and theatrical luminaries, as well as by an interdisciplinary team of Media Lab graduate and undergraduate students. Scored for a small ensemble of specially designed Hyperinstruments, Powers features a robotic, animatronic stage — the first of its kind — that gradually "comes alive" as the opera’s main character. Machover, who was formerly director of musical research at Pierre Boulez’s IRCAM institute in Paris, received both his BA and MA from the Juilliard School in New York.
For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
www.mat.ucsb.edu/595M.
Time: Thursday, January 12, 4-6pm
Location: Information Visualization Lab, room 2611, Elings Hall
Abstract:
Issues of consonant and dissonant sonorities in music have defined its compositional practices for centuries. Musical issues continue to arise as new compositional styles and musical vocabularies emerge, constantly forcing composers and listeners to reevaluate what is consonant, what is dissonant, and how musical relationships are formed between the two. Contributing to our understanding of consonant and dissonant sonorities is the quantification of sensory dissonance. There has been much research done in developing a method to quantify the sensory dissonance between two tones. All methods consider the physical and psychoacoustical aspects of sonic perception. However, these models are typically without the dimension of physical space.
This project aims to develop a model for representing sensory dissonance in three-dimensional space. In doing so, the proposed method accounts for numerous factors that impact the spatialization of sound and, in turn, sensory dissonance. These factors include the inverse-square law, head-related transfer functions, atmospheric absorption, phase, and auditory masking. The implementation of these factors will be discussed in detail, ultimately resulting in a method to model the sensory dissonance of sound in space.
Once the method is established, dissonance fields will be calculated, displaying the contours of dissonance that occur in a given space with multiple sound sources. It will then be shown how such dissonance fields and contours can be altered by manipulating sound sources. The result of this is the ability to create atmospheric sculptures resulting from the sonic arrangement of a given space.
Speaker: Raitis Smits (Riga, Latvia)
Time: Friday, December 2, 4:30pm
Location: Systemics Lab, room 2810, Elings Hall
This lecture will focus on the most recent collaborative projects by RIXC which can be rightfully described as artistic investigations into the field of alternative energy and practices of sustainability.
How does art can address questions about climate change, sustainable living and ecology to the general public and how these themes, if we can call them themes, change the language of art and aesthetics. Can art help in shifting our mindset towards awareness of more sustainable development and what would be the criteria in discussing such art.
In a quest for a sustainable future, artists are amongst those who, instead of global constructs, offer a different approach based on everyday practice – by using networking strategies, interdisciplinary collaboration, as well as open source, DIY and other ideas of participatory culture.
RIXC's recently founded Renewable Network continues to develop networking practice today based both on the previous experience by new media collaboration networks of the 1990s and by investigating new fields for creative explorations. Renewable Network was established in 2009 as a result of several events initiated and organized by RIXC in the North-East European region. Renewable Network unites artists that explore hybrid relationship forms and new approaches by combining art and science as well as art and agriculture, technologies – and nature, open source ideas and folklore studies, social actions and urban gardening, food production and open information systems as well as cultural heritage – and alternative energy networks. In this lecture I will demonstrate one of the latest net.art works by me and RIXC - “Talk to me”, which invites people to talk to a “long bean” plant. We ourselves cultivated the plant in an exhibition space and we invited people to talk to the plant presumably helping it to grow better, faster and longer. I will also introduce an on-going project by RIXC – Renewable Network Interface, which is an online research tool for mapping people, projects and fields artistically investigating new realms of information and energy, and other sustainability issues.
Website: renewable.rixc.lv
Speaker: Gary Kendall
Time: Monday, November 28, 5pm
Location: Studio Xenakis, Music Building, room 2215
Composers engaged in the sonic arts have frequently found themselves attempting to use spatial audio in ways that didn’t work as intended. Maybe more than any other facet of technological music, mastering spatial audio seems to involve a learning process in which one slowly discovers the things that work and those that don’t. The purpose of this paper is to foster understanding of spatial audio through examples of practical problems. These problems reveal some general misconceptions about spatial hearing that explain why things go wrong. A particular lesson to be gleaned from this discussion is that there is no silver bullet for solving spatial audio problems, and every situation needs to be understood in its proper context.
Gary Kendall has recently been appointed Lecturer at the Sonic Arts Research Center in Northern Ireland. Before this new appointment he was Associate Professor of Music Technology at Northwestern University where he served both as Coordinator of the Music Technology Program and Co-Director of the Program in Sound Design. As an author, especially in 3D sound and spatial audio, he has contributed to the Computer Music Journal, Organised Sound and Proceedings of the ICMC. He has presented research at the Electroacoustic Music Studies conference, SEAMUS, the Audio Engineering Society and the Acoustical Society of America. His compositions have been performed at SEAMUS, the Spark Festival, and the Florida Electroacoustic Music Festival. Much recent creative work has centered on energetic healing through music and includes spatial sound installations. He is a student of Andean Shamanism and trained as an energetic healer through studies with Amorah Quan Yin.
Website: www.garykendall.net
Presented by The Center for Research in Electronic Art Technology (CREATE) at UC Santa Barbara.
Time: Wednesday, December 7, 11am-1pm
Location: Engineering Sciences Building, Room 1001
Abstract:
The current landscape of parametric digital sound and graphical synthesis techniques is vast, but is largely an incongruous mixture of closed and highly specialized mathematical equations. While much of this can be attributed to the independent development of synthesis techniques within each field, upon closer examination it is clear that there exist common mathematical bases between the modalities. By pulling back into a broader mathematical context, it is possible to develop a language of unified audio/visual synthesis principles so that many of the existing paradigms, regardless of modality, can be understood from a single vantage point.
This dissertation defends the thesis that a large portion of known sound and graphical synthesis techniques can be unified, unmediated, through a rational function of inverse discrete Fourier transforms and that symmetry, invariance under transformation, plays an important role in understanding the patterns that it produces. We call this newly proposed audio/visual synthesis model the harmonic pattern function. A survey of a wide assortment of historic mechanical and electronic devices and computational systems used for generating sonic and visual patterns in art and science reveals that their underlying mathematical descriptions are special cases of this new synthesis function.
The contributions of this dissertation include the introduction of a simple mathematical function, the harmonic pattern function, capable of generating a wide assortment of both known and previously unknown patterns useful for sound and/or visual synthesis, a simplified notation for specifying the complex sinusoids composing such patterns, and a thorough analysis of general themes and specific instances of patterns producible from the harmonic pattern function.
Time: Wednesday, December 7, 4pm
Location: Information Visualization Lab, room 2611 in Elings Hall
Abstract:
"Circumaurality (Listening around Sound)" investigates sonic art that serves to explore and reveal the characteristic ways that sound propagation is affected by the specific situations surrounding an event. This activity is found in the genres of soundscape composition and glitch music, as well as the music compositions of Alvin Lucier and the sound installations of Robin Minard, Max Neuhaus, and Bill Fontana. This dissertation introduces the basic concepts and terminology necessary to discuss this artistic activity as a single category and investigates the aspects common to this category, thus facilitating interpretation and discussion of these works and providing artists with a better understanding of how to achieve similar results in their own works.
This dissertation introduces the terms "context" and "contextual representation". "Context" describes the specific situations that affect sound, placing focus on their contrasting effects. "Contextual representation" refers to sonic art works that reveal a context's sonic characteristics by exposing the listener to sound affected by that context. This dissertation examines the boundaries of contextual representation, justifying the placement of various works within or outside the category. Additionally, this dissertation describes the various works of contextual representation listed above. This dissertation finds four compositional aspects common to these works -- stasis, nonsense, non action, and juxtaposition -- and explains how the works described use these aspects to aid in revealing a context's characteristics to the listener. Finally, this dissertation describes four of my sonic art works included in the dissertation's artistic component (located at www.circumaurality.info) - Santa Barbara Soundscape, Intermission, Source: Diaphonic Trio by James Tenney from the Compact Disc Music for Violin & Piano (via File Hosting Website), and Nodes and Passages -- and provides an analysis of each of these works, explaining why it does or does not qualify as contextual representation and how it uses the four compositional aspects introduced herein. These works serve as a practical demonstration of the concepts introduced in the dissertation's written component. Conversely, the written component of this dissertation serves to draw a path of discourse between generally understood sonic art concepts and my personal artistic approach and realization.
Speaker: Scott Snibbe, media artist, filmmaker, researcher in interactivity
Time: Tuesday, November 29, 5:30-7pm
Location: Engineering Science Building, room 2001
Abstract:
Scott Snibbe will present selections from twenty years of interactive art, music, exhibits, and entertainment. He will show many examples of interactive art that mine themes from science and cinema to produce unabashedly entertaining and poetic re-interpretations of our universe, including recent work creating the first app album with Björk: Biophilia; and interactive exhibits created for James Cameron’s movie Avatar. He will discuss the educational and societal benefits of interactivity; and the joys, challenges, and research involved in the creation and distribution of interactive art as an artist/entrepreneur.
Bio:
Scott Snibbe is a media artist, filmmaker, and researcher in interactivity. Whether on mobile devices or in large public spaces, his interactive art spurs people to participate socially, emotionally, and physically. His works are strongly influenced by cinema: particularly animation, silent, and surrealist film; and often mix live and filmed performances with real-time interaction. Snibbe’s artwork is in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York) and The Museum of Modern Art (New York); and has been shown in several hundred solo and group exhibitions worldwide, including a solo retrospective at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. His large-scale interactive projects have been incorporated into concert tours, Olympics, science museums, airports, and other major public spaces and events, and he has collaborated on interactive projects with musicians and filmmakers including Björk and James Cameron.
Snibbe has received grants and awards for his artwork from the National Science Foundation, Renew Media, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, Prix Ars Electronica, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He is the founder of three organizations: Snibbe Interactive, creating interactive exhibits and events; Scott Snibbe Studio, producing apps for mobile devices; and Sona Research, engaging in educational and cultural research.
Snibbe was born in 1969 in New York City. He holds Bachelor’s degrees in Computer Science and Fine Art, and a Master’s in Computer Science from Brown University. Snibbe studied experimental animation at the Rhode Island School of Design and his films have been widely shown internationally. He has taught media art and experimental film at Brown University, The San Francisco Art Institute, the California Institute of the Arts, the Rhode Island School of Design, and U.C. Berkeley. Early in his career, Snibbe worked at Adobe Systems where he helped to create the special effects software After Effects. Snibbe also worked at Interval Research, performing basic research in haptics, computer vision, and interactive cinema. As a researcher, Snibbe has published numerous articles and academic papers, and is an inventor on over a dozen patents.
For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
www.mat.ucsb.edu/595M.
Time: Monday, December 5, at 2pm
Location: Information Visualization Lab, room 2611, Elings Hall
Abstract:
Researchers have been working to create novel Gesture Based Interaction systems for decades with the idea of revolutionizing how humans interact with machines on a daily basis. Much of this research is focused on creating systems around the technical constraints posed by either the massive expanse of required hardware or limited computational power of smaller setups. The general lack of interaction frameworks with gestures that are natural, flexible and meaningful, forms the motivation for this research.
Quintilian was implemented to take advantage of the existing real time motion capture system in the Allosphere, focusing on the psycholinguistic and ergonomic aspects of human interaction based on hand gestures. The framework is intended to provide a basis for building a human centric interaction space derived from meaningful communication of gestural discourse (semiotic values) and manipulative properties of physical interaction (ergodic values). These principles are applied to achieve interaction tasks in immersive environments for navigation within virtual worlds and manipulation with their objects. A Device Server plugin was also implemented for the framework to make it easier for existing applications to obtain a much more natural mode of interaction than currently exists.
The thesis documents the theoretical process of applying the concepts of real world interactions to attain a deeper level of immersion in virtual environments as well as the implementation details of gesture spotting, context detection and task realization within the framework.
Time: Wednesday, December 7, at 2pm
Location: Information Visualization Lab, room 2611, Elings Hall
Abstract:
The Electromagnetically Sustained Rhodes Piano is an augmentation of the original instrument with additional control over the amplitude envelope of individual notes. This includes slow attacks and infinite sustain while preserving the familiar spectral qualities of this classic electromechanical piano. These additional parameters are controlled with aftertouch on the existing keyboard, extending standard piano technique. We explain the physics behind the design of the original instrument and several methods that were investigated for driving oscillations in the mechanical tone generator, for controlling the amplitude of these oscillations, and for removing the strong driving signal that is picked up by the sensor from the audio output.
Time: Thursday, December 1, at 4pm
Location: Information Visualization Lab, room 2611, Elings Hall
Abstract:
DrawJong 2.0 is an application that renders and sonifies a number of chaotic attractors, including De Jong, Lorenz, Rossler, Clifford, and Duffing. It is perhaps the only commercially-available application that is capable of rendering all of these attractors in real-time. You can use it to explore how these attractors work, or just use it to make sounds.
Time: Monday, December 5, 4-6pm
Location: Information Visualization Lab, room 2611 in Elings Hall
Abstract:
In the last two decades, the field of Artificial-Life Art (A-Life Art) has addressed new approaches to creating art based on the synthesis of life-like phenomena. At the same time, there has been increasing interest and experimentation in creating immersive environments as virtual worlds or "worldmaking".
As a combination of both, this dissertation proposes the name "artificial natures" to describe a novel form of installation art: computational artworks of complex systems creating worlds with their own physics and biology, within immersive, interactive environments. It constructs nature-like aesthetic experiences using the mechanisms and evolutionary processes of life in order to express generative creativity and emergent beauty.
The motivation is to construct an aesthetic unity in which art, science, play, and life integrate into a single fulfilled experience akin to childhood memories of playing in nature; ludic investigation considered as an infinite game. As a contemporary art practice, it is not based on a refutation of past art practice but on free production and expression of our current and future times. Choosing a holistic approach, this research is a reciprocal engagement of concept, theory, and art practice based on a trans-disciplinary implementation, seeking a reconciliation between subjective beauty (artificial) and objective truth (nature).
The thesis will document the theoretical approach to artificial natures as a general form of art, and the researching and production of a series of artificial nature artworks as a vehicle by which to critically and practically examine its requirements, key concepts, challenges, techniques, and opportunities.
Speaker: Mark Applebaum, Associate Professor of Composition, Stanford University
Time: Tuesday, November 22, 5:30-7pm
Location: Engineering Science Building, room 2001
Abstract:
Composer Mark Applebaum presents his recent work in Visual Music, including pieces that problematize musical convention: a work for three conductors and no players, a concerto for florist and orchestra, works for instruments made of junk, choreographed pieces for artists at amplified easels, notational specifications that appear on the faces of custom wristwatches, works for an invented sign language choreographed to sound, amplified Dadaist rituals, and a 70-foot long graphic score. Applebaum will elucidate various technologies employed in these works as well as invite a discussion on corresponding aesthetic dilemmas. The talk will also serve as a prelude to a portrait concert immediately afterward.
Bio:
Mark Applebaum is Associate Professor of Composition at Stanford University where he received the 2003 Walter J. Gores Award for excellence in teaching and was named the Hazy Family University Fellow in Undergraduate Education and Leland & Edith Smith Faculty Scholar. He received his Ph.D. in composition from the University of California at San Diego where he studied principally with Brian Ferneyhough. His solo, chamber, choral, orchestral, operatic, and electroacoustic work has been performed throughout the United States, Europe, Africa, South America, and Asia with notable performances at the Darmstadt Sessions. He has received commissions from Betty Freeman, the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, the Fromm Foundation, the Vienna Modern Festival, the Paul Dresher Ensemble, and numerous others. At Stanford he directs [sic]–the Stanford Improvisation Collective. He is also an accomplished jazz pianist and concertizes internationally with his father, Bob Applebaum, in the Applebaum Jazz Piano Duo. His music appears on the Innova, Tzadik, Capstone, SEAMUS, and Evergreen labels.
For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
www.mat.ucsb.edu/595M.
Speaker: Randy Jones, Madrona Labs.
Time: Tuesday, November 8, 5:30-7pm
Location: Engineering Science Building, room 2001
Abstract:
Computer music research has been wildly successful in making new timbral resources available to the composer. But while advances like physical modeling and granular synthesis have spread to a wide audience through commercially available software, hardware devices capable of intimate control over these synthesis methods are just beginning to appear.
I designed one such instrument, the Soundplane, and after three years of development I am making it commercially available starting this Fall. Externally, the Soundplane is a wooden interface with the feel of an acoustic instrument. Internally, it is a surface pressure sensor with a resolution of 8 rows by 64 columns by 12 bits by 1kHz. Its design invites effortful manipulation, and a connection between performer and audience. I will demonstrate a prototype and pass it around for hands-on time. I’ll also describe the inner workings of the Soundplane in detail, and chart its development process from thesis project to shipping product.
Bio:
Randy Jones is a composer and designer who makes new systems for audiovisual expression. He has performed and lectured at festivals including Cimatics (Brussels), MUTEK (Montreal), the Festival de Música Electroacústica (Havana), Decibel (Seattle), and New Forms (Vancouver). He was a co-creator of Jitter, the graphics and matrix processing software published by Cycling ’74. At his new company, Madrona Labs, Randy and his colleagues are on a mission to design and build electronic instruments that are at least as expressive as acoustic ones.
For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
www.mat.ucsb.edu/595M.
Speaker: David Thall - Senior Audio R&D Engineer, DTS Inc.
Time: Tuesday, November 1, 5:30-7pm
Location: Engineering Science Building, room 2001
Abstract:
Video games can teach us a lot about audio programming and simulation. With limited mips, memory and time, one has to create an interactive and believable simulation beyond that offered by current off-the-shelf solutions. Reverberation, in the context of a video game, is an example of one such technology that many of us are familiar with. However, in the context of gaming it requires a level of scalability and realism far beyond the current set of real-time offerings.
This talk will teach attendees about synthesizing fast and believable environmental reverb. Fast… using advanced data-oriented optimization techniques, and believable… using the latest in 3D acoustic modeling technologies for games.
Bio:
David Thall currently holds the position of Senior Audio R&D Engineer at DTS, where he is developing the next generation of 3D audio processing technologies for interactive music and video game engines. Prior to this, David held the position of Sound Engine Programmer at Insomniac Games, where he was responsible for the core audio signal-processing technologies used to drive sfx, music and dialogue processing in multiple video games. He has worked on over a half dozen console-based AAA game titles, including the Ratchet and Clank series and Resistance series for the PS3, as well as games for the XBox360 and Nintendo Wii. He has extensive knowledge of real-time 3D audio processing, and has developed a number of new technologies that are redefining audio in a gaming context. Previous to his work in the video game industry, David developed software synthesizers and music sampling technology at E-MU Systems. He is a graduate of the Media Arts and Technology Program at UC Santa Barbara, with a Master of Science Degree in Multimedia Engineering.
For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
www.mat.ucsb.edu/595M.
Speaker: Christopher Kelty - Center for Society and Genetics and Information Studies, UCLA.
Time: Thursday, October 27, 4:00-6pm
Location: McCune Conference room, 6020 HSSB
This lecture is sponsored by the UCSB Interdisciplinary Humanities Centers' "Public Goods" lecture series.
Abstract:
Why are new information technologies so frequently associated with freedom? Which cultural and philosophical concepts of freedom are central to technology design, use and critique? Why freedom instead of justice, equality or well-being? How was the link forged and why? This presentation will explore the fog of freedom in episodes from the last 40 years of the development of information technology: the development or UNIX, the rise of free software, the appearance of "social media", cloud computing,and crowdsourcing, and the eternal return of the monopoly tech company.
Bio:
Christopher M. Kelty is an associate professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has a joint appointment in the Center for Society and Genetics and in the Department of Information Studies. His research focuses on the cultural significance of information technology, especially in science and engineering. He is the author most recently of "Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software" (Duke University Press, 2008), as well as numerous articles on open source and free software, including its impact on education, nanotechnology, the life sciences, and issues of peer review and research process in the sciences and in the humanities. He is trained in science studies (history and anthropology) and has also written about methodological issues facing anthropology today.
For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
www.mat.ucsb.edu/595M.
Time: Thursday, October 13, 8pm
Location: Lotte Lehmann Concert Hall
Admission: $15/general, $7/students
The program will feature the American premiere of the extraordinary new electronic work "Points-critiques" (2011) by the celebrated Paris-based composer Horacio Vaggione. Also included are the live Boston-based duo of Feeney-Rawlings: "Their music explores an unpredictable relationship with making sounds, achieved by elaborate preparation of acoustic sound boxes, such as drums or cello, and expanded via original electronic instruments, ranging from naked circuit boards to amplified kitchen objects".
Finally, the dramatic soundscape composition "Origin" by UCSB alumnus Ron Sedgwick will be projected in full octophonic sound using CREATE's magnificent Meyer Sound system.
Horacio Vaggione, Argentinian composer of electroacoustic and instrumental music, has had his music regularly played worldwide in major centers and festivals of contemporary music. Awards include four Bourges prizes, International Computer Music Association Commission Award, and the DAAD Berlin Künstlerprogramm Award, among many others. Vaggione has lived in France since 1978, working in centers such as IMEB (Bourges), Ina-GRM and IRCAM (Paris). In 1986 he founded the CICM (Centre de Recherche Informatiq ue et Création Musicale / Center for Computer Music Research) of the University of Paris VIII. Vaggione currently lives in Paris where he is Professor of Music at the University of Paris VIII and Director of the Doctoral Program in Computer Music.
Ron K. Sedgwick received his Ph.D. from UCSB where he received a five-year UC Regents Special Fellowship. Both his acoustic and electro-acoustic works have received numerous awards and have been performed in the United States and Europe. He has studied composition with Joel Feigin, Karen Tanaka, and Kurt Rohde; and computer music with Curtis Roads, Clarence Barlow, and JoAnn Kuchera-Morin.
Tim Feeney and Vic Rawlings have performed together as a duo since meeting within Boston's "lowercase" improvising community in 2005. Their music explores an unpredictable relationship with making sounds, achieved by elaborate preparation and extension of acoustic soundboxes, such as drums or cello, and expanded via original electronic instruments, ranging from naked circuitboards to amplified kitchen objects. They focus on the metamusical potential of unstable sounds and silences, exploring austere combinations of sound and the otherworldy ripple effects that pulse through a silent space or alert ears. The group has toured throughout the United States, and released its first CD, In Six Parts, on the Sedimental label in fall 2007. Upcoming releases include Ithaca Recordings, for The Watchful Ear, and Fairchild Chapel for Homophoni.
JoAnn Kuchera-Morin is Director of CREATE, Curtis Roads is Associate Director, Matt Wright is Research Director. For information about CREATE, visit: www.create.ucsb.edu.
Speaker: Ge Wang – Assistant Professor, Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) and Department of Music, Stanford University.
Time: Tuesday, October 18, 5:30-7pm
Location: Information Visualization Lab, Elings Hall, room 2611
Abstract:
Due to their mobility, computing power, and sheer strength in numbers, mobile phones have become much more than simply “a phone” (and mobile devices more than simply “portable computers”), increasingly serving as personal and “natural” extensions of ourselves. Therein lies, we believe, immense potential to reshape the way we think and do, and especially in how we engage one another expressively and socially. This presentation explores the research we are doing on social/mobile music at Stanford and at Smule – including mobile phone orchestras, iPhone’s Ocarina, Leaf Trombone: World Stage, Magic Piano, and more. We also trace their origins to laptop orchestras, programming languages for music, and an intersection of music, computer science, and the simple joy of building things together.
Bio:
Ge Wang is an Assistant Professor at Stanford University in the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA). His research include interactive software systems for computer music, programming languages, mobile music, new performance ensembles (e.g., laptop orchestras and mobile phone orchestras), interfaces for human-computer interaction, and methodologies for education at the intersection of computer science and music. Ge is the author of the ChucK audio programming language. He is the founder and director of the Stanford Laptop Orchestra (SLOrk) and the Stanford Mobile Phone Orchestra (MoPhO). Concurrently, Ge is also the Co-founder, CTO, and Chief Creative Officer of Smule, a startup exploring interactive social music for mobile platforms. He is the designer of the iPhone’s Ocarina and Leaf Trombone: World Stage, and the iPad’s Magic Piano and Magic Fiddle.
For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
www.mat.ucsb.edu/595M.
Speakers:
Andres Burbano, PhD student, Media Arts and Technology, UC Santa Barbara
Pablo Colapinto, PhD student, Media Arts and Technology, UC Santa Barbara
Marcos Novak, Professor, Media Arts and Technology, UC Santa Barbara
Marko Peljhan, Professor, Media Arts and Technology, UC Santa Barbara
Time: Tuesday, October 11, 5:30-7pm
Location: Engineering Science Building, room 1001
Four presentations that were given at the 2011 International Symposium on Electronic Art in September.
For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
www.mat.ucsb.edu/595M.
Speaker: Theodore Kim – Assistant Professor, Media Arts and Technology, UC Santa Barbara
Time: Tuesday, October 4, 5:30-7pm
Location: Engineering Science Building, room 1001
Abstract:
The Laplace operator is ubiquitous in mathematical physics, and plays a role in many natural phenomena. It governs the pressure field in fluid dynamics, the heat field in ice formation and boiling dynamics, and the electric potential in lightning formation. In this talk I will describe methods of visually simulating these different phenomena efficiently using a variety of numerical, analytic, and hardware techniques that solve the Laplacian in its various forms.
Bio:
Theodore Kim joined the faculty of the UCSB Media Arts and Technology Program in the Fall of 2011 as an Assistant Professor. He conducts research in physically-based simulation for computer graphics, particularly in fluid dynamics, solid mechanics, and multi-core techniques. His work has appeared in over a dozen movies. Previously, he has been an Assistant Professor in Computer Science at the University of Saskatchewan, a Post-Doctoral Associate at Cornell University, and a Post-Doctoral Fellow at IBM TJ Watson Research Center. He received his PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2006.
For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
www.mat.ucsb.edu/595M.
Time: Wednesday, June 1, 5:30pm
Location: Engineering Science Building, room 2001
Abstract:
Matthew Biederman will discuss his work in relation to ideas of the artist as artisan, provocateur, and tool maker. The transition from the lineage of the signal as medium, as in the works of early video pioneers to modular software coding and the pixel will be examined through examples of my own work and historical documents.
Bio:
My work follows simultaneous threads intertwined creating a varied practice when examined traditionally. That is, if it is looked at it in a compartmentalized fashion, my practice would be situated within tactical media, radio, painting, design, performance, and art and technology. However, I choose not to remain within any of these but instead allow for exchange and crossover between them through diverse combinations of engagements of media, place, content, and aim. I believe the in the idea of the artist as artisan, the artist as provocateur and the their necessity to present (and provoke) a vision of sublime emotion, one possible version of beauty that leads to new understandings and conceptions of the world, its systems, and potentials. In this way the artist is an inventor, not in a conventional sense, but inventor to serve as a beacon illuminating possibilities. Matthew Biederman (US/CA) lives and works in Montreal. He has shown his work and participated in events globally such as El 7 Festival Internacional de video/arte/electrónica (Lima), Ars Electronica (Linz), Nuit Blanche (Paris), Hipersonica (Rio), ISEA (Singapore/San Jose/Ruhr), and the Museum of Modern Art (Ljubljana), among many others. He is represented by Art45, Montreal.
Website: www.mbiederman.com.
For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
www.mat.ucsb.edu/595M.
Speaker: Lisa Parks – Chair of Film and Media Studies, UC Santa Barbara
Time: Wednesday, May 24, 5:30pm
Location: Engineering Science Building, room 2001
Abstract:
For centuries cosmographers have been mapping the features of the universe, charting the constellations, solar system, galaxies, and cosmic horizons. This paper focuses upon maps, visualizations, and models that conceptualize and represent a space situated between the earth’s surface and the expansive domain of outer space — that of orbital space. Rather than imagine this space as a vestige of the Cold War era, the paper approaches orbital space as a domain of enormous political, economic, and cultural significance, which is registered, for instance, in the growing use of GPS technology, satellite television, and remote sensing imagery in sites around the world. Military strategists, telecommunications corporations, and contemporary artists have mapped orbital space in a variety of ways. Their representations of orbital paths, satellites, orbital debris, and signal traffic help to expose the satellitarian order that has taken shape– a techno-social order in which a large proportion of daily activities and transactions, whether commerce, automobile navigation, television viewing, or policing occur via satellite. This satellitarian order is manifest not only in a host of satellite-based transactions and activities, or satellite-actions; it can also be detected in the (re)territorialization or satellitization of space on earth and in orbit. After describing and analyzing various representations of orbital space, the paper concludes with a discussion of the practice of mapping orbit in relation to what Giorgio Agamben calls “the signature of all things.” The mapping of orbit suggests a particular approach to the question of method that is invested in the communicative potential of hidden things.
Bio:
Lisa Parks is professor and chair of the Film and Media Studies department at UC Santa Barbara. She is the author of Cultures in Orbit: Satellites and the Televisual (Duke University Press 2005) and co-editor of Planet TV (NYU Press 2003) and Undead TV (Duke UP, 2007). Parks is currently working on three new books: Coverage: Media Space and Security after 9/11 (forthcoming Routledge 2012); Mixed Signals: Media Infrastructures and Cultural Geographies; and Down to Earth: Satellite Technologies, Industries and Cultures (forthcoming, Rutgers UP, 2012), co-edited with James Schwoch.
For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
www.mat.ucsb.edu/595M.
Speaker: Casey Reas, University of California Los Angeles.
Time: Wednesday, May 18, 5:45pm
Location: Engineering Science Building, room 2001
Abstract:
Reas will discuss his Process Compendium (2004-2010) series of work and two recent projects, Chronograph and Signals. He will also present a series of recent projects created with Processing, an open-source programming environment, to demonstrate its recent evolution. Chronograph (2011) is a large-scale architectural projection onto the new Frank Gehry-designed New World Symphony campus in Miami. Signals (2011) is a data-inspired mural commissioned for building 76 at MIT.
Bio:
Casey Reas is the recipient of a 2008 Tribeca Film Institute Media Arts Fellowship (supported by the Rockefeller Foundation). He’s currently working on a video mural commission for the New World Symphony’s new Frank Gehry campus, to open January 25, 2011. Commissioned to create work for the Whitney Museum’s ArtPort collection online in 2004, Reas is also the recipient of the 2005 Golden Nica from the Prix Ars Electronica. Cited in the 2008 ArtReview Power 100, his images have also been featured in various publications including The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, Print, Eye, Technology Review, and Wired.
Reas is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. He holds a masters degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Media Arts and Sciences as well as a bachelors degree from the School of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning at the University of Cincinnati. With Ben Fry, Reas initiated Processing in 2001. Processing is an open source programming language and environment for creating images, animation, and interaction.
Reas and Fry published Processing: A Programming Handbook for Visual Designers and Artists, a comprehensive introduction to programming within the context of visual media (MIT Press, 2007). With Chandler McWilliams and Lust, Reas published Form+Code in Design, Art, and Architecture (Princeton Architectural Press, 2010), a non-technical introduction to the history, theory, and practice of software in the visual arts.
For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
www.mat.ucsb.edu/595M.
Date: Thursday, June 9, 2011
Open Critiques: 10am–5pm
Reception: 6–9pm
Location: Elings Hall, UC Santa Barbara
Map: www.cnsi.ucsb.edu/visitor
Please join us for our annual display of Master’s and Doctoral student work in Media Arts and Technology.
Come experience the Allosphere, interactive installations, live audio-visual performances and screenings. Located in the California Nanosystems Institute, MAT is a transdisciplinary graduate program that fuses emergent media, computer science, engineering, electronic music and digital art research, practice, production, and theory.
A reception with faculty and students, live performances and Allosphere tours will be held during the reception.
For more info, visit: show.mat.ucsb.edu.
Time: Thursday, May 19, 8pm
Location: Lotte Lehmann Concert Hall
The UCSB Department of Music, Media Arts and Technology, and CREATE presents new electronic works by Mills College composer Maggi Payne, Curtis Roads, and student composers.
Compositions will be projected on the Creatophone, a pluriphonic sound projection system developed at CREATE. All works in the concert are Santa Barbara premieres.
Speaker: W. Patrick McCray, Department of History, and Media Arts and Technology, UC Santa Barbara.
Time: Tuesday, May 17, 5:30pm
Location: Engineering Science Building, room 2001
Abstract:
Despite its seeming newness, nanotechnology already has many different historical narratives. From seminal speeches at the start of the Space Age to futuristic imaginings in the 1980s to industrial commercialization in the 1990s, nanotechnology is always linked to California in some fashion. In this talk, I explore how the West Coast version of nanotechnology resonated among researchers, policy makers, the media, and the public within and beyond the Golden State. Seen more broadly, this California-infused perspective gives insights into the nature of technological ecosystems, historical analogies, and the challenges posed by competing historical narratives.
Bio:
W. Patrick McCray is a professor in the History Department at UCSB. McCray entered the historians’ profession via his original career as a scientist. Since 1996, he has written widely on the history of science and technology after 1945 including books which have explored how scientists build and use today’s most modern telescopes as well as the activities of citizen-scientists during the Cold War.
McCray is a founding member and co-PI for the NSF-funded Center for Nanotechnology in Society at UCSB. He currently leads the CNS’s research initiative that explores various histories of nanotechnology. He is currently finishing a new book for Princeton University Press about “visioneers” – people who used their expertise as scientists, engineers, and popularizers to promote visions of a more expansive technological future.
After this book, McCray plans to start two new pilot projects which are relevant to MAT. One considers the interaction between scientists, engineers, and artists during the first three decades of the Cold War. The other, which he’ll start next year while a visiting professor at Caltech, explore how astronomers view of the night sky transformed from an analog vision to one fully mediated by digital technologies.
For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
www.mat.ucsb.edu/595M.
Time: Tuesday, May 10, 5:30pm
Location: Engineering Science Building, room 2001
Bio:
Dr. Wright’s dissertation “The Shape of an Instant: Measuring and Modeling Perceptual Attack Time with Probability Density Functions” concerned models of musical rhythm, including onsets, repetition, pulsation, meter, and phrasing, with particular emphasis on the question of when exactly we perceive musical events to occur. His interests are both theoretical and practical, aimed towards computer simulation of perceptual aspects of listening to musical rhythm for the construction of “automatic listeners”. He worked for 15 years as the Musical Systems Designer at UC Berkeley’s Center for New Music and Audio Technology (CNMAT), conducting research in topics including intimate musical control of computers, sound analysis and resynthesis, and rhythm; at CNMAT he helped to develop and propagate the now well established and much appreciated SDIF (Sound Description Interchange Format) and OSC (Open Sound Control) standards. His post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Victoria was devoted to the emerging field of computational ethnomusicology, and he is now the Research Director at UC Santa Barbara’s Center for Research in Electronic Art Technology (CREATE). He is also an accomplished musician, focusing for the last many years on music of non-Western cultures, with a special interest in Afro-Brazilian percussion and on the music of India, Afghanistan, the Middle East, and North Africa.
For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
www.mat.ucsb.edu/595M.
Time: Tuesday, May 3, 5:30pm
Location: Engineering Science Building, room 2001
Abstract:
This talk is structured around three questions: – How do computer games produce meaning? – What space of meaning is available to today’s computer games? – How can we expand this space? Most computer games focus on moving through simulated spaces, virtual objects running into each other, and making resource allocation tradeoffs. They tend to be about the physical actions of soldiers, sports heroes, cunning criminals, or even gods. But what if we wanted to make a game about thoughts, relationships, beliefs, and lives? Simply trying to “re-skin” a sports or shooting game simply isn’t going to work. Game mechanics — which define the fundamental space of player action and game response — are founded on operational logics. And while we have successful logics in areas such as collision detection, our approaches in areas such as ideology, narrative, or conversation are mostly ad-hoc. We need to invent new logics. In this talk I outline one attempt to do so, for the “social physics game” Prom Week, soon to be released by the Center for Games and Playable Media at UC Santa Cruz.
Bio:
Noah Wardrip-Fruin is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where he co-directs the Expressive Intelligence Studio, one of the world’s largest technical research groups focused on games. He also directs the Playable Media group in UCSC’s Digital Arts and New Media program. Noah’s research areas include new models of storytelling in games, how games express ideas through play, and how games can help broaden understanding of the power of computation. Noah has authored or co-edited five books on games and digital media for the MIT Press, including The New Media Reader (2003), a book influential in the development of interdisciplinary digital media curricula. His most recent book, Expressive Processing: Digital Fictions, Computer Games, and Software Studies was published by MIT in 2009. Noah’s collaborative playable media projects, including Screen and Talking Cure, have been presented by the Guggenheim Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, New Museum of Contemporary Art, Krannert Art Museum, Hammer Museum, and a wide variety of festivals and conferences. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Electronic Literature Organization. Noah holds both a PhD (2006) and an MFA (2003) from Brown Univers
For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
www.mat.ucsb.edu/595M.
Website: games.soe.ucsc.edu/people/.
Speaker: Nicholas Pisca, Gehry Technologies.
Time: Tuesday, April 26, 5:30pm
Location: Engineering Science Building, room 2001
Abstract:
Nicholas Pisca founded the research and fabrication lab 0001d to develop and implement cutting edge digital techniques in parametrics, automation, and CNC technology in architecture, web, cinema, and other design environments. For this particular lecture, Pisca will showcase several 0001d projects from the last three years: ongoing Flesh[]logically-transparent computational architecture research, the Glendale Satelite Library parametric design/fabrication tool development, his RGB-based "Spheriolithography" technique of 3d-Printing, the Balcony-INTRUDER design/automation/CNC fabrication/installation, his collaboration with Ma77er Management on the Vivarium Virtual Organism, recent 4D data visualization experiments and other computational/algorithmic/parametric works.
Bio:
Nicholas Pisca is a computational designer working in the fields of architecture, web design, and other virtual environments. As Automation Manager at Gehry Technologies, Pisca provides technical direction by developing and implementing new digital rationalization and design techniques for large-scale architectural, contracting, fabrication, and research projects. He has conducted seminars, studios, and workshops at USC, SCI-Arc, UC Santa Barbara, Ohio State University, UW-Seattle, and many firms. As co-editor of the GTWiki and founder of the 0001d Blast Meta Scripting Wiki, he has written over one-thousand articles and contributions to these resources. Pisca is a Lecturer at the University of California Santa Barbara Media Arts and Technology Department (UCSB MAT) and faculty at the University of Southern California School of Architecture (USC). He is the author of “YSYT – Maya MEL Basics for Designers” and runs the blog 0001d Sherpa, writing about advanced automation techniques in the AEC industry. Pisca is the founder of 0001d, a digital research lab focused on the promotion of innovation in algorithmic and parametric design for visualization, architecture, special effects, and web design. Pisca holds a BSAS from the University of Wisconsin and a Master of Architecture from the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc).
For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
www.mat.ucsb.edu/595M.
Speaker: Kevin Ponto, University of Wisconson
Time: Tuesday, April 19, 5:30pm
Location: Engineering Science Building, room 2001
Abstract:
The challenges of today’s world are inherently interdisciplinary in nature. Prominent issues such as global climate change, the rising cost of health care, and energy production require solutions that span the boundaries seen in traditional academic environments. Historically, interdisciplinary research and collaboration has enabled a wide range of technological breakthroughs, from the moon landing, to gene sequencing to the microwave. This presentation will cover a wide variety of interdisciplinary projects ranging from the domains of media art, augmented reality, human computer interaction, distributed computing, art history, archeology, environment science and cultural heritage. Much of this work has focused on enhancing the ways machines and humans communicate, from multi-touch devices, to ultra-high-resolution viewing technologies, to mixed reality interfaces. The amalgamation of different disciplines has enabled new collaborative work environments which enable exploratory methods for data analysis.
Bio:
Dr. Kevin Ponto has a long history of working in interdisciplinary environments. After receiving his B.S. in Computer Engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he joined the Arts Computation Engineering program at the University of California, Irvine. While there, he worked on the well recognized media art project, “Pigeon Blog”, showcased work in the Beall Center for Art + Technology, and published his work in engineering journals. After graduating with his M.S., he continued his multi-disciplinary studies at the University of California, San Diego. Through the Center of Interdisciplinary Science for Art, Architecture and Archaeology, he worked on projects aimed to rediscover a lost Leonardo da Vinci painting, locate the tomb of Genghis Khan, and facilitate natural methods for the public to explore cultural heritage artifacts. He was also a key developer of software, applications, and techniques for HIPerSpace, the nearly 300 megapixel tiled display system. Dr. Ponto received his Ph.D. in the fall of 2010 and is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the interdisciplinary Computation and Informatics in Biology and Medicine program.
For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
www.mat.ucsb.edu/595M.
Speaker: David Wilson – Museum of Jurassic Technology, Los Angeles
Time: Wednesday, April 13 at 5pm
Location: Broida 1640 UCSB
Abstract:
The lecture will present the work of the 19th century philosopher-librarian Nikolai Federov, whose ideas about space travel and habitation influenced the scientist and visionary of Russian Cosmonautics, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. This story is told partly through live narration of a poetic documentary made by the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Russia, entitled Obshee Delo – The Common Task.”
Bio:
“David Wilson is the founding director of the Museum of Jurassic Technology. He received his MFA from California Institute of the Arts in 1974 and opened The Museum of Jurassic Technology in 1988 at its current Culver City, California location. Since its inception, the Museum has expanded both in terms of its public offerings, through exhibitions and associated programs, as well as in its public recognition and reputation. The MJT has exhibited internationally and Mr. Wilson has lectured throughout the North America and Europe. In addition, Mr. Wilson has produced eight independent films, most recently under the auspices of MJT in conjunction with Kabinet, an arts and science-based cultural institution located in St. Petersburg, Russia. The latest of their collaborative efforts is entitled Bol’shoe Sovietskia Zatmenie or The Great Soviet Eclipse. Over the past decade, the Museum and Mr. Wilson have been honored through numerous grants and awards. In 2001, the MacArthur Foundation granted him a Fellowship in recognition of his accomplishments at The Museum of Jurassic Technology.
Website: www.mjt.org.
For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
Speaker: Theodore Kim - University of Saskatchewan
Time: Tuesday, April 12 at 5pm
Location: Engineering Science Building 1001
Abstract:
We routinely consume the results of physics-based simulations in films and games, but the number of designers who can leverage these simulations to author novel motions has remained small. This is unfortunate because simulations can produce results that would be impossible using other methods, and they have the potential to transform the way that visual motion is produced. In this talk, I will describe several methods that collaborators and I have developed to work towards making physics-based simulation a ubiquitous visual design tool. Fluid simulations can model smoke rising from a cigarette or a volcanic eruption, but existing methods impede rapid design iteration because motions roughed out at coarse, interactive resolutions are totally invalidated when the resolution is increased. We have developed a novel wavelet turbulence method that preserves the design work performed at low resolutions and allows fine-scale detail to be added quickly and automatically as a post-process. Our method is widely used in industry, and has appeared in several recent films. Increasingly sophisticated and time-consuming numerical methods are being used to simulate virtual humans, but the final computed motions are often “low-rank”; they can be summarized by a small set of keyframes. “Reduced-order” methods provide a way to exploit this keyframe intuition to obtain thousand-fold speedups that greatly facilitate design work. I will describe a novel reduced-order method that efficiently incorporates realistic, non-linear material properties and dovetails naturally with existing character animation techniques.
Bio:
Theodore Kim has been an Assistant Professor in Computer Science at the University of Saskatchewan since the fall of 2009. Previously, he was a Post-Doctoral Associate at Cornell University and at IBM TJ Watson Research Center. He received his PhD in Computer Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2006. His current research deals with the efficient numerical simulation of high-dimensional physical systems for use in computer graphics and animation. It also touches on parallel and multi-core algorithms, haptic-rate simulations for virtual surgery, and computational biomechanics. His research has appeared in several recent films, including Alice in Wonderland, Sherlock Holmes, and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.
For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
www.mat.ucsb.edu/595M.
Speaker: Xavier Amatriain - Research Scientist at Telefonica
Time: Monday, April 11 at 5pm
Location: Harold Frank Hall 1132
Abstract:
For several years, I have been leading the development of the CLAM framework (http://www.clam-project.org). The framework, which started as an internal tool for developing applications, ended up obtaining the ACM Prize to the Best Open Source Multimedia Software and being used in projects throughout the world. But more than this, the design process of the framework produced a number of unexpected side-effects such as a Pattern Language, or a Domain-Specific Language (DSL). In this talk I will present some of our experiences in developing CLAM and will propose a general process model for developing frameworks. This model proposes to separate three workflows - framework, metamodel, and patterns - and identifies three phases - inception, construction, and formalization. The process also relies heavily on practices coming from Agile methods. I will also discuss how our process model can become a conceptual aid to plan and formalize approaches to developing any large and complex project, ranging from an art piece to a large immersive instrument like the Allosphere.
Bio:
Xavier Amatriain is Research Scientist at Telefonica, where his current focus is on Recommender Systems, User Modeling, Data Mining, Social Networks, and neighboring Web Science areas. He has also worked extensively on Multimedia and Immersive Systems, and Music and Audio processing. Previous to his current position, he was Research Director at UCSB’s CREATE Center and, together with JoAnn Kuchera-Morin, led the Allosphere project. During his PhD at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, he was lead developer and coordinator of the award-winning CLAM project. Xavier has authored more than 50 publications, holds several patents, and has been lecturing in several universities for over 10 years. He currently teaches Information Systems for Managers at EADA Business School. He is also interested in research management, and in particular in research technology transfer and agile methods.
For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
www.mat.ucsb.edu/595M.
Time: Thursday, April 7, 8pm
Location: Lotte Lehmann Concert Hall
$15 general admission, $7 Students - Tickets at the door.
The Center for Research in Electronic Art Technology presents renowned guest artist Kaffe Matthews in an evening of electronic music.
Speaker: Miriah Meyer - Harvard University
Time: Tuesday, April 5 at 5pm
Location: Engineering Science Building, room 2001
Abstract:
Visualization tools are essential for deriving meaning from the avalanche of data we are generating today. To facilitate an understanding of the complex relationships embedded in this data, visualization research leverages the power of the human perceptual and cognitive systems, encoding meaning through images and enabling exploration through human-computer interactions. In my research I design visualization systems that support exploratory, complex data analysis tasks by scientists who are analyzing large amounts of heterogeneous data. These systems allow users to validate their computational models, to understand their underlying data in detail, and to develop new hypotheses and insights. My research process includes five distinct stages, from targeting a specific group of domain experts and their scientific goals through validating the efficacy of the visualization system. In this talk I'll describe a user-centered, methodological approach to designing and developing visualization tools and present several successful visualization projects in the areas of genomics and systems biology. I will also discuss generalizations that arise from working on focused, visualization projects as well as long term implications for the field.
Bio:
Miriah is a postdoctoral research fellow in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University and a visiting scientist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. She obtained her bachelors degree in astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State University, and earned a PhD in computer science from the University of Utah where she worked in the Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute. Miriah is the recipient of a NSF/CRA Computing Innovation Fellow Award for her work on collaboratively designing visualization tools for biological data. She was also awarded an AAAS Mass Media Fellowship that landed her a stint as a science writer for the Chicago Tribune. Miriah is a cofounder of the Data Visualization Initiative at the Broad Institute, and she is on the organizing committee for the inaugural IEEE Symposium on Biological Data Visualization.
For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
www.mat.ucsb.edu/595M.
Speaker: Rehmi Post - Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Time: Monday, April 4 at 12pm
Location: Elings Hall, room 1601
Abstract:
A new class of materials with integrated intelligence promises to bring our physical reality closer to the vision of Ubiquitous Computing, radically transforming the way we interact with computers, each other, and the world we create. More so than traditional engineering practice, Material Computing seeks to blur the line between "hardware" and "software" by intimately coupling logic and transduction into physical media. Crucially, it is guided by intuition, design, and art and can lead to new ways to solve engineering problems. I will show examples of new technologies that are emerging - perhaps uniquely - as a result of this approach.
Bio:
Rehmi Post is a Visiting Scientist at the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms, where he develops novel inertial sensors and applications exploiting the electronic properties of materials. In 1996 he earned a B.Sc. in Physics from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he worked in the Tuominen Nanostructures Lab building superconducting single-electron transistors and wearable computers. As an Interval Research Fellow at the MIT Media Lab, he earned an M.Sc. in 1998 for his pioneering work demonstrating multi-layer electronic circuits in textiles. In 2000 he co-founded ThingMagic, an RFID industry leader acquired in 2010 by Trimble Navigation Ltd. Under a Motorola Fellowship he earned a Ph.D. in 2003 for the development of a novel inertial sensor based on the dynamics of levitated particles. His early work on interactive multi-touch surfaces appeared at MoMA (NY) in 1999, winning a Silver Medal in I.D. Magazine's Interactive Media Design Review (2000) for "its social dynamic and its capacity to integrate technology into a domestic space." Most recently he has been interested in methods to harvest power and information from "static" electricity arising in textiles and other media.
For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
www.mat.ucsb.edu/595M.
Time: Monday, November 29, 5:45 - 7:15pm
Location: Engineering Science Building, room 2001
Speaker: JoAnn Kuchera-Morin - Composer, Professor of Media Arts and Technology and Music
Abstract:
In this information-rich age when voluminous amounts of data are being generated, processed, and transformed at ever increasing rates, how does one master control, working with these data as if it were intuitive and second nature? Can one master control much in the same way that a composer or musician creates or performs a composition, with intuitive precision? What if one could compose and perform complex N-dimensional data as a composer composes and performs a piece of music? Could intuitive control of complex quantum information lead to an elevated level of consciousness? Could one design a computational framework that could support this creative process, allowing researchers of different fields to work with their data as artists do? For many years, a team of interdisciplinary researchers (media artists, scientists and engineers) at UC Santa Barbara has developed an approach to working with multidimensional scientific and mathematical data in the same way that a composer, artist or designer would unfold a work of art, or design a system. This is leading to a computational framework based on the creative process being developed for one of the largest immersive instruments in the world for scientific visualization, the AlloSphere, a three-story metal sphere in an echo free-chamber that has been built as a design stage and is performed as an instrumental ensemble would compose and perform a piece of music. In this talk I will discuss how my work as a composer has led to the creation and design of the AlloSphere instrument and how this is leading to the development of a creative computational framework.
Bio:
JoAnn Kuchera-Morin is a composer, Professor of Media Arts and Technology and of Music, and a researcher in multi-modal media systems, content and facilities design. The culmination of Professor Kuchera-Morin’s research efforts is the Allosphere Research Facility, completed in 2007, in the California NanoSystems Institute (Elings Hall) at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The AlloSphere, a 30-foot diameter sphere built inside a three-story near-to-anechoic cube, facilitates research collaboration in an environment that can simulate reality. Dr. Kuchera-Morin serves as the Director of the AlloSphere Research Facility. Earlier Professor Kuchera-Morin created, built, and designed UC Santa Barbara’s Center for Research in Electronic Art Technology and has been the Center’s Director since its inception in 1986. Her years of experience in digital media research led to the creation of a multi-million dollar sponsored research program for the University of California - the Digital Media Innovation Program. Dr. Kuchera-Morin was Chief Scientist of the Program from 1998 to 2003.
For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
www.mat.ucsb.edu/595M.
Time: Monday, November 22, 5:30 - 7:00pm
Location: Engineering Science Building, room 2001
Speaker: Matteo Pasquinelli - Author of "Animal Spirits: A Bestiary of the Commons"
Abstract:
In February 2010, The Economist reported that digital information is growing out of measure, out of the storage and computing capacity of the current network infrastructure. The article appears optimistic and comfortable about new business opportunities, but some data provided by the report itself point to a structural contradiction. The question is whether the technological limits of the Turing universe will unveil a political limit: if the excess of social cooperation and communication feeding the mediasphere may turn into a sort of political Singularity. Indeed the current debate on network economy appears to have obliterated any notion of surplus or excess and to be dominated by metaphors of horizontal, linear and symmetrical cooperation. Moving from the critique of the Marxian law of value advanced by Hardt and Negri in Commonwealth, this colloquium discusses the political models that are employed to describe the immaterial surplus. Specifically Google’s PageRank algorithm will be analyzed as a central diagram of cognitive capitalism and the new society of metadata.
For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
www.mat.ucsb.edu/595M.
Time: Wednesday, November 17, 8pm
Location: Lotte Lehmann Concert Hall
$15 general admission, $7 Students - Tickets at the door.
The Center for Research in Electronic Art Technology (JoAnn Kuchera-Morin, Director, Curtis Roads, Associate Director, Matthew Wright, Research Director) presents microtonal guitarist Ron Sword and the computer-generated Ephemera (2010) by UCSB graduate student Yutaka Makino, currently on a DAAD Fellowship in Berlin.
Time: Monday, November 15, 5:30 - 7:00pm
Location: Engineering Science Building, room 2001
Speaker: Stephen Travis Pope - Media Arts and Technology and CREATE, University of California Santa Barbara
Abstract:
The 80-minute music/video work "Periodic Table of the Elements of Spirit" (2000-2010) is a ritual of thanksgiving in five parts: (1) a lament of surrender (Jerusalem's Secrets, Lamentatio - 19:50), (2) the reading of the scriptural lesson (Leur Songe de la Paix (Their Dream of Peace) - 13:54), (3) the celebration/mystery of the ritual (Evigt Dröm (Eternal Dream): A Ritual - 22:56), (4) the recitation of the creed (Credo - 14:54), and (5) a hymn of benediction (Ora penso invece che il mondo... (Today, however, I think that the world...) - 11:32). When looked at this way, it closely mirrors the structure of the Catholic mass as well as other rituals of gratitude celebrated throughout the ages and across cultures and religions. Each of the five parts of "Periodic Table of the Elements" has its own tonal and timbral language, and yet they fuse into a whole when viewed as a single large-scale work. The two inner parts ("Leur Songe de la Paix" and "Credo" have text subtitles incorporated into the videos (texts by Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mohandas K. Gandhi, respectively), while the other parts each has a related text of some sort. The realization of the music and videos for the five component pieces involved a team of creatives over the span of ten years, and used a wide variety of notations and tools, which will be described in this presentation. The result is a mastered Blu-Ray HD disc, as well as a (music-only) CD.
Bio:
Stephen Pope is a composer and computer scientist based in Santa Barbara. From 1996-2010 he was affiliated with UC Santa Barbara CREATE and MAT.
For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
www.mat.ucsb.edu/595M.
Time: Monday, November 8, 5:30 - 7:00pm
Location: Engineering Science Building, room 2001
Speakers: Álvaro Barbosa and Gustavo Martins - School of Arts from Oporto’s Portuguese Catholic University
Abstract:
The Public Sound Objects (PSOs) project consists of the development of a networked musical system, which is an experimental framework to implement and test new concepts for on-line music communication. The new project of a Public interactive installation based the PSOs system was commissioned in 2007 by Casa da Musica, the main concert hall space in Porto and it was installed permanently in 2009. It resulted in a distributed musical structure with up to ten interactive performance terminals distributed along the Casa da Musica’s hallways, collectively controlling a shared acoustic piano. The installation allows the visitors to collaborate remotely with each other, within the building, using a software interface custom developed to facilitate collaborative music practices and with no requirements in terms previous knowledge of musical performance.
Music is built from sound, ultimately resulting from an elaborate interaction between the sound-generating properties of physical objects (i.e. music instruments) and the sound perception abilities of the human auditory system. Humans, even without any kind of formal music training, are typically able to extract, almost unconsciously, a great amount of relevant information from a musical signal (e.g. the beat and main melody of a musical piece, or the sound sources playing in a complex musical arrangement). In order to do so, the human auditory system uses a variety of cues for perceptual grouping such as similarity, proximity, harmonicity, common fate, among others. The work presented in this talk proposes a flexible and extensible Computational Auditory Scene Analysis (CASA) framework for modeling perceptual grouping in music listening. The goal of the proposed framework is to partition a monaural acoustical mixture into a perceptually motivated topological description of the sound scene (similar to the way a naive listener would perceive it) instead of attempting to accurately separate the mixture into its original and physical sources.
Bios:
Álvaro Barbosa (Angola 1970) is an Associate Professor at the School of Arts from Oporto’s Portuguese Catholic University (UCP), the Portuguese leading research and educational institution in the field of Science and Technology applied to the Arts. He holds a PhD degree in Computer Science and Digital Communication from Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona, Spain and a Graduate Degree in Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering from the Aveiro University in Portugal. His activity is mainly on the field of Music Technology, in which he worked for five years as a resident researcher at the Barcelona Music Technology Group (MTG). His recent research has mostly been developed at the UCP’s Research Center for Science and Technology of the Arts (CITAR) and is focused on the study and development of experimental Network Music Systems, as well as in Interactive Sound-Design. He has also developed several artistic projects with special emphasis in Music Composition, Interactive Installations Design and Computer Animation. His work as a researcher and an Artist has been extensively published internationally. Presently He is undertaking a Visiting Scholar Position at the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA) from Stanford University.
Luís Gustavo Martins is a Professor at the Sound and Image Department of the School of the Arts of the Portuguese Catholic University (UCP), and a Researcher at the Research Center for Science and Technology in the Arts (CITAR), Porto, Portugal. He received his PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering at University of Porto, Portugal, in 2009, with a thesis on the topic of sound segregation in music signals. His research is mainly focused on audio content analysis, sound processing and synthesis, and his research interests include signal processing, machine learning, perception and cognition, and software development. More recently he has been exploring the use of tangible and multitouch interfaces for sound and music exploration and interaction. He is an active developer of the open source Marsyas (http://marsyas.sf.net) audio processing software framework.
For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
www.mat.ucsb.edu/595M.
Time: Thursday, November 4, 5:30 - 7:00pm
Location: Engineering Science Building, room 2001
Speaker: B. S. Manjunath - Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California Santa Barbara
Abstract:
I will give an overview of ongoing research at the Vision Research Lab and the Center for Bio-Image Informatics at UCSB. This includes basic research in image segmentation, registration (including attempts at georegistration), steganography, image feature/signature extraction for bio-image analysis, search and retrieval applications, and automated tagging of image data. More recent work includes analyzing large scale sensor networks, and we are in the process of building one of the largest outdoor camera networks for academic research.
Bio:
Ph.D. University of Southern California, Electrical and Computer Engineering, specialties: image processing, computer vision, neural networks, learning algorithms, self-organizing systems, multimedia databases and data mining.
B. S. Manjunath has long been interested in the applications of computing to image processing. "Multimedia computing is an important research area that is going to have a significant influence in a wide spectrum of activities, including digital libraries, medical imaging, entertainment industry and multimedia databases. The next generation of video coding standards such as MPEG-4 and MPEG-7 have components that related to not just data compression but also content-related functionalities. We have industry sponsored projects to advance the state of the art in image/video representations that facilitate search, retrieval, and manipulation of audio/video objects. Our current efforts are on reliable spatio-temporal segmentation and in combining audio with images to facilitate this analysis. NSF is supporting a project on developing a visual thesaurus that includes learning, segmentation and texture analysis as the main components. In short, multimedia information processing will be the main focus of my research group for the next few years".
For more information, visit: Vision Research Lab, UCSB.
For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
www.mat.ucsb.edu/595M.
Time: Monday, November 1, 5:30 - 7:00pm
Location: Engineering Science Building, room 2001
Speaker: Andres Burbano - PhD Candidate Media Arts and Technology University of California Santa Barbara
Abstract:
This paper revisits the work of engineer Konrad Zuse on the basis of an interview with his eldest son, Hörst Zuse. It elaborates on historical, technical and cultural aspects of Konrad Zuse's work, paying special attention to the characteristics of the Z3 computer built in Berlin in 1941. This particular machine is considered today as the first binary, electromechanical, programmable computer. The paper places the Z3 in the context of film historiography and cinematographic alternative developments, taking into account the fact that the Z3 had an interface to read instructions from punched film stock.
Bio:
Burbano, originally from Colombia, explores the interactions of science, art and technology in various capacities: as a researcher, as an individual artist and in collaborations with other artists and designers. Burbano's work ranges from documentary video (in both science and art), sound and telecommunication art to the exploration of algorithmic cinematic narratives. The broad spectrum of his work illustrates the importance, indeed, the prevalence, of interdisciplinary collaborative work in the field of digital art. Andres Burbano is currently a PhD candidate of Media Arts and Technology at the University of California Santa Barbara.
For more information, visit: burbane.org.
For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
www.mat.ucsb.edu/595M.
In residency: November 1-13, 2010.
Robert HP Platz, prominent composer and conductor from Cologne, Germany,
will be in residence at UCSB November 1-13 where he will introduce a concert of his works (November 4) and provide insight into his musical thinking in a series of free seminars and colloquia (November 1-13).
Born in Baden-Baden in 1951, Platz studied Composition with Wolfgang Fortner and Karlheinz Stockhausen and Conducting with Francis Travis. Performances of his works and his conducting activity (more than three hundred world premieres) have taken him throughout Europe and to Japan and the United States. He has worked with, among others, both orchestras of the Südwestrundfunk, the DSO Berlin and the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg.
For twenty years Platz headed the Ensemble Köln, which he founded, and worked with composers such as Hosokawa, Huber, Stockhausen and Xenakis. Since 1990 he has directed a composition class at the Conservatorium Maastricht that is connected with a seminar on performance practice for New Music. He is a member of the Bureau du Directeur of the electronic studio of the "Centre de Recherches et Formation Musicales de Wallonie" (CRFMW) in Liège and is the principal guest conductor of the ensembles "Alternance" in Paris and "Musica d'Insieme" in Milan.
For more information, go to:
http://www.music.ucsb.edu.
Time: Thursday, October 28, 6-9pm
Location: AlloSphere, California Nano Systems Institute
Among the activities of GIMIK Initiative for Music and Informatics Cologne is the regular presentation of innovative works, ideas and concepts from the areas of current electroacoustic and instrumental music as well as from audiovisual art as related to computer technology. Three different team play collaborations of composers and video artists will be presented in an audiovisual installation in UCSB's AlloSphere.
For more information, go to:
http://teamplay.computing-music.de.
Time: Thursday, October 21, 4:00pm
Location: McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB
Speaker: George Legrady (Art / Media Arts and Technology, UCSB)
In 1973, George Legrady created a photographic document of everyday life in four James Bay Cree Indian settlements in sub-arctic Canada at the time of the start of their legal negotiations with the James Bay Hydro-Electric Corporation. This project was a mix of journalistic, ethnographic, and fine arts photography and resulted in a collection of 3200 black and white and color images that represented a personalized overview of the Cree indigenous culture as Legrady encountered it in his day-to-day life over an eight week period. The images include rituals, housing, hunting, people, interaction with nature, and the transition to Western ways. During the past few years, the project has been rediscovered as the Cree are historicizing their forty year negotiations for legal, cultural and land rights with the government, the James Bay Corporation and the mediated world at large. The period between 1973 to now has been a significant transition for the Cree as the culture shifted from hunter trappers to a politically conscious culture which has managed to define their own identity, and cultural focus throughout the years of external and cultural intrusion. The lecture will give an overview of the 1973 project Legrady, describe its context, and follow with current plans for its transformation into an interactive digital cultural atlas.
George Legrady is director of the Experimental Visualization Lab in the Media Arts and Technology department with a joint appointment in the Department of Art. He received his MFA in photography from the San Francisco Art Institute. Legrady’s early artistic work focused on a conceptual and semiotic analysis of the photographic image, and is one of the first generation of artists in the 1980’s to integrate computer processes into their artistic work, producing pioneering projects in interactive digital installations. His contribution to the digital media field has been in intersecting cultural content with data processing as a means of creating new forms of aesthetic representations and socio-cultural narrative experiences. His commission for the Seattle Public Library is one of the few digital artworks to collect and parse data continuously until 2014, and his project on the NASA Spitzer infrared satellite was featured at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.
Sponsored by the IHC’s Geographies of Place series.
For more information, please visit: IHC.
Time: Monday, October 18, 5:30 - 7:00pm
Location: Engineering Science Building, room 2001
Speaker: Dan Goods - Artist in residence at the JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory)
Abstract:
I will share a bit about my unusual journey. During the day I am the
Visual Strategist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. There
I develop ways of communicating in various ways. Sometimes this is done
through art pieces that go to public space. These pieces give a sense of
what NASA is working on, but in locations that one might not expect to
be exposed to NASA. Other times it is by creating creative spaces at JPL
for brainstorming new mission concepts. I am also involved in helping to
win new missions by helping teams clarify what they are proposing in
succinct and meaning ways.
When I am not at JPL I try to be involved in interesting projects.
Recently I was on a team commissioned to create an artwork for a new
airport terminal in San Jose. It is a 108ft data driven sculpture called
the eCLOUD. In addition, I co-curated a show called DATA + ART: Art and
Science in the Age of Information at the Pasadena Museum of California
Art. There we put together a cross section of people working in the data
collecting, expressing, and archiving realms.
Bio:
Growing up I was never interested in art and I still cannot draw. In high school I never applied myself because I had no passion to drive me. After a chance conversation, I found myself going to an art school in Seattle and then eventually to ArtCenter College of Design where I found my passion to create meaningful experiences for people. I studied Graphic Design and ironically became Valedictorian. Now I work with world class scientists and engineers and am treated as a peer. It has been a strange and exciting journey.
For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
www.mat.ucsb.edu/595M.
Time: Monday, October 11, 5:30 - 7:00pm
Location: Engineering Science Building, room 2001
Speaker: Clarence Barlow - Corwin Professor and Head of Composition, Music Department, UCSB
Abstract:
This paper describes three projects in which I have composed music by the use of mathematical formulas: 1) In 1970 I wrote the composition Cheltrovype for chamber ensemble, in which I for the first time generated a series of pitches by means of probability calculations. For the choice of every pitch to be played, the probability of every note in the individual instruments' ranges was computed according to a set of formulas and the result obtained by the use of random numbers. 2) 1978 saw the beginnings of my system of quantification of harmony and meter for the generation of melodies and rhythms as installed in my computer program Autobusk (1986-2002). Here I calculated the probability of attack of a given pulse in a meter, and if there was to be an attack, the probability of the pitch to be played. These probabilities were derived from the relative metric importance of each pulse and the relative harmonic importance of each pitch, based on formulas I developed for the purpose. 3) In 2001 I introduced my digital sound processing technique ISIS, whereby the interpolation of imaginary connecting sinusoids between the samples of a sound wave yields possibilities for converting the latter into a melody and vice versa. It is possible by means of this technique to view any sound wave as a microtonal sequence of sine tones running at the sampling rate and centered in pitch at the sampling rate frequency. This sequence can be slowed down to a perceptible speed and transposed down to the audible frequency range. By the reverse procedure, any melody can be converted into a sound wave. The domains of rhythm, pitch and timbre can thus be made to form a continuum.
Bio:
1945: born into the English-speaking minority of Calcutta, going there to school and college, studying piano, music theory and natural sciences. 1957: first compositions. 1965: graduated in science at Calcutta University, thereafter active as conductor and music theory teacher at the Calcutta School of Music. 1968: moved to Cologne, studying (until 1973) composition and electronic music at Cologne Music University. 1971-1972: studied also at the Institute of Sonology, Utrecht University. 1971: began to use computers as a compositional aid. 1982: initiated, 1986 co-founded, 1986-1993 and 1996-2002 chaired GIMIK: Initiative Musik und Informatik Köln. 1982-1994: in charge of Computer Music at the Darmstadt Summer Courses for New Music. 1984-2005: lecturer on Computer Music, Cologne Music University. 1988: Director of Music, XIVth International Computer Music Conference, held in Cologne. 1990-1991: visiting professor of composition, Folkwang University Essen. 1990-94: Artistic Director, Institute of Sonology, Royal Conservatory, The Hague. 1994-2006: Professor of Composition and Sonology at the same conservatory. 1994-2010: member of the Académie Internationale de Musique Electroacoustique in Bourges. 2005-2006: visiting professor of composition, School of Music and Performing Arts ESMAE in Porto. Since 2006: Corwin Professor and Head of Composition, Music Department, University of California Santa Barbara; concurrently also Affiliate Professor, Media Arts and Technology as well as College of Creative Studies, UCSB.
For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
www.mat.ucsb.edu/595M.
Time: Monday, October 4, 5:30 - 7:00pm
Location: Engineering Science Building, room 2001
Speaker: Bo Bell - PhD Candidate at Media Arts and Technology, UCSB
Abstract:
Graduates of advanced degree programs in digital media, sucha s MAT, usually consider careers in academia, art, or established industry. However, there is a wealth of opportunity for such in the current climate of technological entrepreneurship and digital media startup businesses. This talk will compare assumptions about the various fields and will share a number of observations and examples from current work in the area. Grad students who are undertaking career searches in the near future are especially encouraged to attend.
Bio:
Research Interests: Interactivity; Multimedia Theater Design; Gesture Analysis and Multimodal Sensing; Text-based Composition. Artistic Interests: Public (Trans-spatial/"Guerilla") Performance; Narrative and Ritual; Found Sounds and Objects; Human Interaction in Absurd/Altered Environments. Recent Work: Sound Design, Pericles by William Shakespeare, Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival (New York), 2009. Computer Vision architect, MODE Studios' large-scale interactive artwork, Microsoft E&D Buildings, Redmond WA, 2009. Interactive Programming consultant, Marie Sester's BE[AM] (gallery installation), 2008. Lucius McKeon Bell, Male Human Child, Sept 2008. Interactive audio/visual installations, NIGHTS series, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 2006-2008. Sound Design, Richard III by William Shakespeare, Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival (New York), 2007 Computer Vision Consultant, Marie Sester's "Threatbox.us" at Centro de Arte y Creacion Industrial, Gijon, Spain, March-June 2007.
For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
www.mat.ucsb.edu/595M.
Time: Monday, September 27, 5:30 - 7:00pm
Location: Engineering Science Building, room 2001
Speaker: Curtis Roads - Media Arts and Technology / Department of Music, UC Santa Barbara
Abstract:
Biographical remarks, Specificities of electronic music, Overview of microsound, Visualizations of granular analysis and synthesis, Research interests, Conclusion.
Bio:
PhD. Université Paris 8, Music. Specialties: composition, microsound synthesis, graphical synthesis, sound analysis and transformation, sound spatialisation, history of electronic music.
Curtis Roads teaches and pursues research in the interdisciplinary territory spanning music and technology. He was Editor and Associate Editor of Computer Music Journal (The MIT Press) from 1978 to 2000, and cofounded the International Computer Music Association in 1979. A researcher in computer music at MIT (1980-1986), he also worked in the computer industry for a decade. He taught electronic music composition at Harvard University, and sound synthesis techniques at the University of Naples. He was appointed Director of Pedagogy at Les Ateliers UPIC (later CCMIX) and Lecturer in the Music Department of the Université Paris 8.
Among his books are the anthologies Foundations of Computer Music(1985, The MIT Press) and The Music Machine (1989, The MIT Press). His textbook The Computer Music Tutorial (1996, The MIT Press) is widely adopted as a standard classroom text and has been published in French (1999, second edition 2007), Japanese (2001), and Chinese (forthcoming) editions. He edited the anthology Musical Signal Processing in 1997. His book, Microsound (2002, The MIT Press) presents the techniques and aesthetics of composition with sound particles. A pioneer in the development of granular synthesis (1974), he also developed (with Alberto de Campo) a sound particle synthesis program PulsarGenerator (2001), distributed by the Center for Research in Electronic Art Technology (CREATE) at UCSB. His collection of electronic music compositions POINT LINE CLOUD won the Award of Distinction at the 2002 Ars Electronica in Linz and was released as a CD + DVD on the Asphodel label in 2005. His new book is Composing Electronic Music: A New Aesthetic (forthcoming) published by Oxford University Press. A new revised edition of The Computer Music Tutorial by The MIT Press will follow. He is keenly interested in the integration of electronic music with visual and spatial media. Since 2004, he has been researching a new method of sound analysis that is the analytical counterpart of granular synthesis called dictionary-based pursuit, which has been sponsored by the National Science Foundation. A new collection of electronic music is in the works.
For more information, visit: clang.mat.ucsb.edu.
For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
www.mat.ucsb.edu/595M.
Time: Monday, May 24, 5:30 - 7:00pm
Location: Harold Frank Hall, room 1132
Speaker: George Legrady - MAT / Deptartment of Art, UC Santa Barbara
Abstract:
In this talk, George Legrady will trace the evolution of his artistic work from photography to digital data visualization.
Bio:
George Legrady is an artist in the field of interactive media arts. Born in Budapest, he holds both Canadian and American citizenships. Legrady received his MFA in photography from the San Francisco Art Institute, and is one of the first generation of artists in the 1980’s to integrate computer processes with a conceptually based art practice, producing pioneering prize-winning projects that explore the relationship of digitality and cultural narrative.
Legrady's artwork has been exhibited internationally in Asia, Europe, and North America at museums and media arts festivals such as: Vancouver (2010), Shanghai (2009), Hanover (2008), Toronto (2006); ISEA 06, (2006); Beijing (2006); Madrid (2006); Los Angeles (2006); Taipei (2007), Frankfurt (2006), Manchester, UK (2005), Helsinki (2004), Budapest, (2003); Linz (2003); Rotterdam (2003); Paris (2001). Karlsruhe, (2002); Munich, (1999-2000); Los Angeles, (1998); Bonn, (1997-1998); Ottawa (1997-1998); Brussels (1997); Philadelphia, (1997); Berlin, (1997); Dusseldorf (1998); New York, (1998), and Seattle, (1998) and other places. He has realized public commissions for the Los Angeles Metro Rail Subway system (2007); and his commission for the Seattle Public Library (2005-2014) is one of the few digital artworks to collect and parse data continuously for a period of ten years. He has received awards from the Creative Capital Foundation, the Daniel Langlois Foundation for the Arts, Science and Technology, the Canada Council for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and three honorable mentions at the Ars Electronica Festival. During the past few years, many of the projects have been realized with the participation of MAT students Andreas Schlegel, August Black, Ethan Kaplan, Rama Hoetzlein, and Angus Forbes.
For more information, visit:
and
www.fondation-langlois.org/html/e/page.php?NumPage=510
For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
www.mat.ucsb.edu/595M.
Time: Monday, May 17, 5:30 - 7:00pm
Location: Harold Frank Hall, room 1132
Speakers: Alan Liu - Department of English, UC Santa Barbara, Pehr Hovey - MAT masters student, Ivana Andjelkovic - MAT PhD student.
Abstract:
RoSE is a research-oriented social environment for tracking and integrating relations between authors and documents in a combined "social-document graph". It allows users to learn about an author or idea from the evolving relationships between people-and-documents, people-and-people, and documents-and-documents. Unique features of RoSE include:
RoSe is currently a demonstration project in early development by the UC Transliteracies Project, which focuses on the digital reading in today’s socially-networked digital environments. As a demonstration project, its limited goal is to suggest what is possible and to offer a hands-on way of thinking about some of the critical issues that would need to be confronted if RoSE were to be implemented as a production-scale system. These issues—which map the frontier where older document-centric modes of knowledge are extending into new socially-networked digital environments—include: expertise and networked public knowledge, data-mining and visualization of social networks, information credibility, fluid ontologies and metadata for social and historical research, and online reading and research environments.
For more information, visit: transliteracies.english.ucsb.edu/category/researchproject/rose.
Bio
Alan Liu is Chair and Professor in the English Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He began his research in the field of British romantic literature and art. His first book, Wordsworth: The Sense of History (Stanford Univ. Press, 1989), explored the relation between the imaginative experiences of literature and history. In a series of theoretical essays in the 1990s, he explored cultural criticism, the "new historicism," and postmodernism in contemporary literary studies. In 1994, when he started his Voice of the Shuttle Web site for humanities research, he began to study information culture as a way to close the circuit between the literary or historical imagination and the technological imagination. In 2004, he published hisThe Laws of Cool: Knowledge Work and the Culture of Information (Univ. of Chicago Press). Recently published from Univ. of Chicago Press is Local Transcendence: Essays on Postmodern Historicism and the Database. Liu founded the NEH-funded Teaching with Technology project at UC Santa Barbara called Transcriptions: Literature and the Culture of Information (recently renamed Literature.Culture.Media) and his English Dept’s undergraduate specialization on Literature and the Culture of Information. During 2002-2007 he was a member of the Board of Directors of the Electronic Literature Organization (ELO) and chair of the Technology/Software Committee of the ELO’s PAD Initiative (Preservation / Archiving / Dissemination of Electronic Literature). His current major project, which he started in 2005 as a University of California multi-campus, collaborative research group, is Transliteracies: Research in the Technological, Social, and Cultural Practices of Online Reading.
For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
www.mat.ucsb.edu/595M.
Please join us for our annual display of Master's and Doctoral student work in Media Arts and Technology. Come experience the Allosphere, interactive audio-visual installations and live performances.
A reception with faculty and students, live performances and Allosphere tours will be held Wednesday May 26th from 6pm - 9pm. Student work will be on display in Elings Hall from Monday May 24th thru Thursday May 27th.
Web: www.mat.ucsb.edu/show.
Time: Monday, May 10, 5:30 - 7:00pm
Location: Music Building, room 2215
Speaker: Diana Deutsch, UC San Diego
Abstract:
This paper describes two lines of research that point to strong linkages between music and speech. The first concerns absolute pitch. It is argued that the real puzzle concerning this ability is not why a few people possess it, but rather why it is so rare. Findings are described showing that the prevalence of absolute pitch is far higher among speakers of tone languages such as Mandarin than among speakers of nontone languages such as English, and the reason for this association is discussed.
The second part of the talk is built around an illusion in which a spoken phrase is made to be heard convincingly as sung rather than spoken, just by repeating it several times over. This perceptual transformation occurs in the absence of any musical context, and without altering the signal in any way. Furthermore, once this perceptual transformation has occurred, the phrase continues to be heard as sung rather than spoken even after months have elapsed. The illusion is demonstrated, and the conditions under which it occurs are explored.
Bio:
Diana Deutsch is Professor of Psychology at the University of California, San Diego, and conducts research on perception and memory for sounds, particularly music. She has discovered a number of musical illusions and paradoxes, which include the octave illusion, the scale illusion, the glissando illusion, the tritone paradox, and the speech-to-song illusion, among others. She also explores ways in which we hold musical information in memory, and in which we relate the sounds of music and speech to each other. Much of her current research focuses on the question of absolute pitch - why some people possess it, and why it is so rare.
Deutsch obtained a First Class Honors B.A. in Psychology, Philosophy and Physiology from Oxford University, and a Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of California, San Diego. She is Editor of the book The Psychology of Music, Academic Press, 1982, 2nd Edition 1999, and author of the compact discs Musical Illusions and Paradoxes (1995) and Phantom Words and Other Curiosities (2003).
Deutsch has been elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Acoustical Society of America, the Audio Engineering Society, the Society of Experimental Psychologists, the American Psychological Society, and the American Psychological Association. She has served as Governor of the Audio Engineering Society, as Chair of the Section on Psychology of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, as President of Division 10 of the American Psychological Association, and as Chair of the Society of Experimental Psychologists. She is Founding Editor of the journal Music Perception, and served as Founding President of the Society for Music Perception and Cognition. She was awarded the Rudolf Arnheim Award for Outstanding Achievement in Psychology and the Arts by the American Psychological Association in 2004, and the Gustav Theodor Fechner Award for Outstanding Contributions to Empirical Aesthetics by the International Association of Empirical Aesthetics in 2008.
For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
www.mat.ucsb.edu/595M.
Time: Thursday, May 6, 12:00pm
Location: McCune Conference Room
Speaker: Tobias Höllerer
Personal computing and the user interfaces that define our computer experiences are in transition. While most office computing is still locked in to the traditional 2D Desktop paradigm, we are witnessing several developments of change in personal and mobile computing: the personal desktop is experiencing a 3D graphics makeover, cameras have become commonplace communication and input devices for a lively web 2.0 community, and mobile platforms with innovative interfaces have entered the market. 2009 was the year in which Augmented Reality has turned from "purely research" into a web phenomenon and something seriously pursued by new startup companies.
We use the term "Anywhere Augmentation" to describe a powerful general user interface, making augmented reality (AR) overlays readily and directly available in any situation and location. Graphical annotations can be viewed and placed through optical see-through glasses or by using your phone or tablet computer as a video-see-through lens. A key question is how to achieve robust spatial registration between the objects in the physical world and their AR annotations. Promising new approaches make use of computer vision in conjunction with various GIS data sources, which are becoming universally available, allowing mobile users to grow and browse a web of volunteered location-based information around them. We expect that "Social AR" will help grow information repositories for augmented reality similar to how crowdsourcing and social networking are already changing the fabric of the world-wide web.
Bio:
Tobias Höllerer is Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he co-directs the Four Eyes Laboratory, conducting research in the four I's of Imaging, Interaction, and Innovative Interfaces. Dr. Höllerer holds a graduate degree in informatics from the Technical University of Berlin and an MS and PhD in computer science from Columbia University. He is a recipient of the National Science Foundation's CAREER award, for his work on "Anywhere Augmentation" which enables mobile computer users to place annotations in 3D space wherever they go. Dr. Höllerer has published more than 75 international journal and conference papers in the areas of augmented and virtual reality, information visualization, 3D displays and interaction, mobile and wearable computing, and adaptive user interfaces.
The Center for Information Technology and Society presents this lecture as part of the Spring Faculty Lecture Series.
Time: Monday, April 19, 5:30 - 7:00pm
Location: Harold Frank Hall, room 1132 (Computer Science conference room)
Speaker: David Em
Abstract:
In the 2nd part of his monumental overview of 20th-Century media art (see Part One), David Em will cover the last 20 years of technological development and content creation.
Bio:
Electronic art pioneer David Em began producing digital art in the 1970s, before the advent of personal computers. He worked as an independent artist in research laboratories, including the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, CalTech, and Apple Computer’s Advanced Technology Group. In 1994, he set up his own electronic studio in Los Angeles. His work has been featured in many publications, including Smithsonian, Newsweek, Der Spiegel, and the textbook Gardner’s Art Through the Ages, and exhibited in museums in the US, Europe, and Japan, including Centre Pompidou, the Seibu Museum in Tokyo, and the Spanish Museum of Contemporary Art.
For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
www.mat.ucsb.edu/595M.
Time: Monday, April 12, 5:30 - 7:00pm
Location: Harold Frank Hall, room 1132 (Computer Science conference room)
Speaker: Alan Macy
Abstract:
The use of gestural information, such as hand movements, as a data input source to control computer-influenced environments has been around since the advent of the computer mouse. More recently, hand, arm and body movements are becoming increasingly used as data input via such devices as the Wii® Controller or iPhone®. New computer interfaces are becoming increasingly available which transform other biologically-generated activity into viable data input sources for computers. Human-sourced activity such as the biologically generated signals manifested by the heart, skeletal muscle, neuronal activity of the brain, eye movements, skin conductance or pulse are also viable input data sources for computers and provide a wealth of information not readily available via alternate means. Methods for collection, analysis and interpretation of these types of data will be presented.
Bio:
Alan Macy is a co-founder of BIOPAC Systems, Inc, and presently Director of R&D. In those off-hours, Alan occasionally participates with Fishbon, a Santa Barbara based arts collaborative, where he develops kinetic and flame sculptures and other technically-based art. Alan's lives in Santa Barbara with his wife, Cindy, and daughter, Lola Jo.
For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
www.mat.ucsb.edu/595M.
Time: Monday, April 5, 5:30 - 7:00pm
Location: Harold Frank Hall, room 1132 (Computer Science conference room)
Speaker: Marco Pinter
Abstract:
The BodyTech Symposium on Embodied Media and Interactive Performance, which was held at UC Irvine in late February, presented recent developments in the theory and practice of embodied media and performance technologies. Panelists and presenters discussed real-world performative environments that foster real-time interactions between people and computing technology, incorporating digital media with movement, voice and other forms of dynamic expression. Additionally, there was a focus on inter-disciplinary study of movement technology within the UC system, including the plausibility of creating a UC network of dance labs connected for large-scale telepresence interaction. Marco Pinter will present a debriefing on the symposium, interspersed with examples of his own work in the areas of movement visualization and dance technology.
Bio:
Marco Pinter is an interactive visual artist, creating installations and performances with an emphasis on live interactive visualizations for dance and kinetic movement. Prior to this he developed interactive installations for Disney Imagineering, and CD-ROMs for Mattel Media for the "tween" girl demographic. Pinter also produced "Splice!" a digital video editing package which was acquired by a Paul Allen company. He developed the video and distance connection capabilities for RP-7, the world's first commercial "remote presence" robot, and most recently "Multi-Presence" the capability of multiple remote users to collectively embody a single mobile robot. Pinter has developed Artificial Intelligence techniques for Activision games, and has been a lecturer at Bucknell University. He is a contributing author to The McGraw Hill Handbook of Multimedia, The Ultimate Multimedia Handbook, and AI Game Programming Wisdom. He is an inventor on 7 issued and 23 pending patents in the areas of digital video, UI, telepresence and robotics.
For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
www.mat.ucsb.edu/595M.
When: Monday, April 26 - Friday, April 30. Various times and locations.
This annual festival features:
An installation by Luke Thomas Taylor which explores the sound world of everyday spaces, takes place in the stairwell next to the Music Department's basement offices, between Lotte Lehmann Concert Hall and the Music Main Office.
A concert directed by Jeremy Haladyna and featuring works by Clarence Barlow, Leslie Hogan, Justin Weaver, and others.
A concert featuring works by guest composer Robert Morris, Eastman School of Music, Bebe Barron, Ludger Brümmer, and the premiere of Curtis Roads' "Never".
A concert directed by Luke Thomas Taylor and featuring works by UCSB student composers.
An avant-garde concert event directed by Ron Sedgwick and highlighting emerging trends in crushed electronica music, new media art, and dance.
For more information, visit: www.ccs.ucsb.edu/primavera.
Time: Monday, May 3, 5:30 - 7:00pm
Location: Harold Frank Hall, room 1132 (Computer Science conference room)
Speaker: Rozalie Hirs
Abstract:
Rozalie Hirs will talk about some of her recent compositions. Roseherte (2007-08), for a ninety-piece orchestra and one hundred and fifty electronic sounds, borrows its name from the Middle Dutch mythical animal that lives in the depths of the heart. Roseherte (Rose hart) is roused from her eternal sleep by the Occitan unicorn. They set out in the rain as the sun breaks through and rainbows appear in the silver-grey sky. They sing about the zeppelins and air balloons flying by. Along with humming high-tension cables they sing of clouds and time. They are fond of pairs of dominant seventh chords whose roots are separated by the consonant interval of a perfect fifth. These pairs of seventh chords occur in various transpositions throughout Roseherte, and can be conceived as combinations of two or three harmonic series with matching partials. Roseherte employs ring modulation calculations between the two dominant seventh chords occurring within a pair. In this way, the two chords are, as it were, heard in the light of each other.
All calculations were done with OpenMusic software and transformed into the orchestral score by hand and ear. The calculated frequencies underlying the instrumental score were, then, used for sound synthesis with Csound software. During the performance of Roseherte, a musician triggers the synthesized sounds with a sampler, while two stereo loudspeakers that are placed next to the orchestra on stage project the electronic sounds into the hall. The resulting flexible soundtrack amplifies the orchestral mass during the performance: It adds perspective to the orchestral sound, blends with it mysteriously as a kind of aural halo, and, then again, sets itself apart placing the orchestra, as it were, in a sound space.
Bio:
After completing her Chemical Engineering studies (MSc) at Twente University, The Netherlands, Rozalie Hirs followed her heart to the Royal Conservatoire, where she studied composition with Diderik Wagenaar (1991-94), Louis Andriessen (1994-98) and Clarence Barlow (1997-98). On a Fulbright grant she traveled to New York to pursue a DMA degree in composition at Columbia University. She studied with Tristan Murail (1999-2002) and completed her DMA degree in 2007 with a dissertation essay entitled On Murail's Le lac and the composition Platonic ID, written for the Asko Ensemble. Her portrait CD Platonic ID, with compositions for the Asko Ensemble, appeared in 2007 with Attacca records, Amsterdam. Recent musical works include: Roseherte for large orchestra and electronic sounds, premiered by the Dutch Radio Philharmonic Orchestra (this work was selected amongst the ten "Most beautiful new Dutch works" for Toonzetters 2009), and the electroacoustic Pulsars, commissioned by the Dutch radio (this work received the mention "Recommended work" at the IREM in Lisbon in 2007). Hirs is also a poet. Her four poetry books, Locus (1998), Logos (2002), Speling (2005), and Geluksbrenger (2008), appeared with Querido, Amsterdam.
Web: www.rozalie.com/2A.htm.
For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
www.mat.ucsb.edu/595M.
Time: Monday, March 29, 5:30 - 7:00pm
Location: Harold Frank Hall, room 1132 (Computer Science conference room)
Speakers: Lisa Jevbratt and Javier Villegas - MAT and the Department of Art, UCSB
Abstract:
ZooMorph is a software-art project in development that consists of image and video filters that create simulations of how a large selection of non-human animals see; generating pictures that help us experience the world through the eyes of another species. The filters will be used in PhotoShop and video software such as Final Cut Pro, in an online Flickr based interface, and as an augmented reality application in smart phones such as the iPhone. When a ZooMorph filter is applied to an image it changes its hue, sharpness, brightness, contrast and other aspects, to provide an estimation of what the selected species see. Several aspects of vision are simulated including color vision, light sensitivity and acuity. The filters are currently being created with the assistance of scientists in the field of animal vision as well as non-scientific experts on animal vision such as shamans and animal communicators. The project wants to make its users/audience acutely aware and respectful of the ever-presence of a multitude of parallel experiences of the world (or Umwelten as described by Jakob von Uexkuell). It intends to make us aware of, and if possible facilitate, an intellectual, emotional and spiritual partnership with the species around us in the quest for a sustainable environment for all of us to thrive within.
In the presentation Jevbratt and Villegas will discuss the conceptual foundation of the project and the technical aspect they are currently working on. They are seeking collaborators interested in animal vision, image processing, plug-in programming, iPhone development etc.
Bios:
Lisa Jevbratt is a Swedish born artist, currently an associate professor in the Art Department and the Media Art Technology program at University of California, Santa Barbara. Her work, ranging from internet visualization software to interspecies collaboration, has been exhibited extensively internationally in venues such as The Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), Banff Centre for the Arts (Canada), The New Museum (New York), The Swedish National Public Art Council (Stockholm, Sweden), and the Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York); and it is discussed in numerous books, for example "Internet Art" by Rachel Greene and "Digital Art" by Christiane Paul (Thames and Hudson). Jevbratt also publishes texts on topics related to her projects and research, for example in the anthology "Network Art - Practices and Positions" ed. Tom Corby (Routledge). Last year her current project ZooMorph was awarded a Creative Capital grant.
Javier Villegas is an electrical engineer from the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogota Colombia and M.Sc in electrical and computer engineer from Los Andes university also in Bogota Colombia. Currently He is a Ph.D Candidate in Media Arts and Technology at the University of California Santa Barbara. He is interested in multimedia signal processing and currently working in analysis / synthesis approaches to video processing.
Links:
For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
www.mat.ucsb.edu/595M.
Time: Thursday, March 18, 6pm
Location: Studio Xenakis (Music 2215)
The UCSB Corwin Chair Series and CREATE present Kirsten Reese, Berlin-based composer and sound artist, in a lecture, Lotussound and other installations and media compositions. From March 17-20, Reese will install over sixty small loudspeakers throughout the spectacular gardens of Lotusland. Her work, experimental music for electronics and instruments, audiovisual installations, and performative works with electronic media, has been presented at international festivals and exhibitions. She is currently a 2009 Fellow at Villa Aurora in Los Angeles.
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Time: Friday, March 5, 8:00pm Earl Howard's method of creating orchestrated sounds with electronics and adding live, improvisational performance creates a unique, densely layered composition. David Wessel, Professor of Music at UC Berkeley and Director of The Center for New Music and Audio Technologies (CNMAT), is interested in live-performance computer music where improvisation plays an essential role. |
Time: Monday, March 1, 5:30 - 7:00pm
Location: Harold Frank Hall, room 1132 (Computer Science conference room)
Speaker: Will Wolcott, Dolby Labs, San Francisco
Abstract:
This presentation will introduce the growing suite of technologies developed by Dolby Labs to enhance home entertainment. The PC Entertainment Experience (PCEE) Project captures many of the new ideas in psychoacoustics coming out of Dolby and combines them to improve the performance of personal computer audio. "Dolby Volume" creates a reference level listening environment at any volume; "Audio Optimizations" flatten the response of small speakers; Next Generation Surround, Virtual Speaker and Dolby Headphone simulate a theater surround experience regardless of the input or listening conditions.
This talk will give an overview of the theory behind these technologies and the framework that brings them together for a home theater PC. I will leave time to demonstrate how these technologies improve the quality of laptop sound.
Bio:
Will Wolcott has been a Design Engineer for Dolby Laboratories since 2007. In the Technology Development Group, he has been a designer and programmer for the Dolby Volume, PCEE3 and PCEE4 projects. He graduated from the Media Arts and Technology program at UCSB where he focused on spatial audio and wave field synthesis. Before immigrating to the temperate California coast, Will did his undergraduate work in electrical engineering and physics at North Carolina State University.
For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
www.mat.ucsb.edu/595M.
Time: Monday, February 22, 5:30 - 7:00pm
Location: Harold Frank Hall, room 1132 (Computer Science conference room)
Speaker: Hubertus von Amelunxen, Berlin/Switzerland
Abstract:
Hubertus von Amelunxen, media theorist, curator and academic, recently curated a major exhibition on the topic of "notation" exhibited this year at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin, and the ZKM | Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe. The exhibition explores the multifaceted spectrum of artistic processes existing between concept and work. The exhibition places works from all areas of art from 1900 until today in relation to one another: sign systems in literature, music, painting, choreography, architecture, photography, film and in media art. During the 20th century, artists have repeatedly made visible new realities through the connection between scientific calculation and artistic form. Over 450 works are featured by John Cage, Etiénne-Jules Marey, Walter Benjamin, Edgard Varèse, Iannis Xenakis, Mary Wigman, Robert Walser, Oskar Fischinger, Marcel Broodthaers, Allan McCollum, Mel Bochner, and others.
Bio:
Hubertus von Amelunxen is curator at the Canadian Center for Architecture, Montreal, and Professor the European Graduate School, Saas-Fee, Switzerland. Hubertus von Amelunxen lectured in Basel and became a Visiting Professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. From 1995 to 2000 he was a professor at the Muthesius Hochschule for Art and Design in Kiel where he founded the Center for Interdisciplinary Project Studies. In 2000 he taught at the University of Dusseldorf and at the Institute for Fine Arts in Antwerpen. Since 2001 he is working as a Senior Curator at the Centre Canadien dArchitecture in Montreal.
Web: www.egs.edu/faculty/hubertus-von-amelunxen/bibliography.
For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
www.mat.ucsb.edu/595M.
Time: Tuesday, February 16, 2:00 - 3:30pm
Location: Elings Hall, room 2611
Speaker: Zhang Ga, Tsinghua/Parsons/MIT
Abstract:
Reflecting on his past curatorial works in China and elsewhere, Zhang Ga invokes some of the fundamental concepts developed in Deleuze’s extensive work on cinema to extend the discussion of "movement image" and "time image" into the digital contemporary. He argues that movement image is time-lapse—unfolding narratives that are representational, while time-collapse signals a shift to time image which erases the Cartesian duality of spatial and temporal constructs, forcing upon us a presentation as expression of real time in which re-presentation in aesthetic judgment and cultural and geo-political establishments undergoes a crisis.
Bio:
Zhang Ga is an internationally recognized media art curator and professor of Media Art at Tsinghua University and associate professor at the School of Art, Media and Technology, Parsons the New School for Design. He also holds appointments as Consulting Curator of Media Art at the National Art Museum of China, Senior Researcher at the Media and Design Lab of EPFL | Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne in Switzerland, and Visiting Scientist at the MIT Media Lab in the US. He directed and curated Synthetic Times: International New Media Art Exhibition, a Beijing Olympics Cultural Project organized by the National Art Museum of China in 2008, and Shanghai eArts Beyond, Sept, 2009. His upcoming curatorial projects include "Sense Exercise" Ars electronica (2010), "Sensor and Sensibilities" National Art Museum of China, Beijing (2011). He speaks widely around the world on media art and culture.
Web: www.mediartchina.org.
For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
www.mat.ucsb.edu/595M.
Time: Monday, February 8, 5:30 - 7:00pm
Location: Harold Frank Hall, room 1132 (Computer Science conference room)
Speaker: David Em, Visual artist, Los Angeles
Abstract:
David Em discusses the evolution of his electronic art from 1975 to the present in terms of the interactions between ideas, tools, methodologies, economics, and social forces.
Bio:
Electronic art pioneer David Em began producing digital art in the 1970s, before the advent of personal computers. He worked as an independent artist in research laboratories, including the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, CalTech, and Apple Computer’s Advanced Technology Group. In 1994, he set up his own electronic studio in Los Angeles. His work has been featured in many publications, including Smithsonian, Newsweek, Der Spiegel, and the textbook Gardner’s Art Through the Ages, and exhibited in museums in the US, Europe, and Japan, including Centre Pompidou, the Seibu Museum in Tokyo, and the Spanish Museum of Contemporary Art.
Web: www.davidem.com.
For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
www.mat.ucsb.edu/595M.
Time: Tuesday, February 9, 6:00pm
Location: Elings Hall, room 1605
Larry Polansky, composer, theorist, performer, teacher, writer, editor, and publisher, presents a talk about his music. He is the Strauss Professor of Music at Dartmouth College, where he also teaches in the graduate program in electro-acoustic music.
Time: Friday, January 29, 1:00 - 2:00pm
Location: Music Building, room 2215
Abstract:
SenseStage is a research-creation project to develop a wireless sensor network infrastructure for live performance and interactive, real-time environments. The project is motivated by the economic and technical constraints of live performance contexts and the lack of existing tools for artistic work with wireless sensing platforms. The development is situated within professional artistic contexts and tested in real world scenarios.
In the talk the hardware design and software infrastructure, and its integration with popular media programming environments, will be discussed. Also several examples of works where the technology is used are shown: two dance performances, two media projects involving environmental data and an interactive, multi-sensory installation.
Bio:
Marije Baalman studied Applied Physics at the Technical University in Delft and graduated in February 2002 on the topic of Perceptual Acoustics. In 2001/2002 she followed the Sonology Course at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. She completed her Ph.D. on Wave Field Synthesis and electro-acoustic music in 2007 at the Electronic Studio of the Technical University of Berlin. Currently she is a post-doctoral researcher in Computation Arts at Concordia University in Montreal. Her research goes into the use of wireless networks for live performance (such as dance and music), and installations. She has performed and exhibited work across Europe (STEIM, WORM (NL), EXIT festival (F), Club Transmediale (D)) and beyond (Electrofringe (AU)). She is a contributor to "The SuperCollider Book" (MIT Press, coming up in 2011).
In her artistic work she is interested in the realtime components of the work, in that nothing is precomposed as such, but rather the (mostly, but not exclusively) sonic output depends on realtime interactions, be it of the performer, or of the audience. Thus composition becomes more the composing of behaviours and interaction modalities, creating processes, rather than fixed sound tracks. This is expressed with tools such as physical computing (performance interfaces and/or installations), livecoding (both as a skill, as well as a performance interface), digital and analog sound processing, and improvisation.
She has collaborated with various people, amongst which Alberto de Campo, Hannes Holzl, Chris Salter, Michael Schumacher, Attakkalari Dance Company and Workspace Unlimited.
For more information about the SENSE/STAGE Project, go to: sensestage.hexagram.ca
Time: Monday, January 25, 5:30 - 7:00pm
Location: Harold Frank Hall, room 1132 (Computer Science conference room)
Speaker: Dr. John O'Donovan, Department of Computer Science, UCSB
Abstract:
The abundance of network data available on social web sites such as Facebook highlights a need for more dynamic and scalable visualization architectures, capable of meeting data-exploration requirements for a broad variety of users with different browsing devices and computational resources.
We believe that interactive network visualizations can be applied to more complex tasks than simple data-exploration, in that they can be used to guide, control, and/or enhance openness and trust in complex network based processes such as product recommendation on Amazon.com or reputation modeling on eBay, for example.
To enable the application of interactive network visualizations to the above problems we require a visualization framework which is interactive, scalable, and easily accessible over the web, preferably in a single-click. However, traditional network visualization tools are largely desktop-based, have poor interaction support and inherently suffer from scalability problems, especially when deployed over the web.
In this talk I will firstly introduce WiGis –a novel framework for Web-based Interactive Graph Visualizations, and then I will discuss ways in which the framework has been applied to solve a range of visualization problems, with specific focus on visual item recommendation based on live Facebook data, and the increased transparency and trust generated by the visual components.
I will explain how WiGis exemplifies the first fully web-based framework for visualizing large-scale graphs natively in a user's browser at interactive frame rates, and provide a live demonstration of interactive graph animations for up to hundreds of thousands of nodes in a browser through a novel use of asynchronous data and image transfer. I will describe some comparative experiments in which our system outperforms traditional web-based graph visualization tools by at least an order of magnitude in terms of scalability, while maintaining fast, high-quality interactions. I hope to conclude the talk with your questions and input on possible improvements to, and applications of the WiGis framework.
Bio:
John O’Donovan is post doctoral researcher in the Department of Computer Science, University of California, Santa Barbara. John received his PhD from the National University of Ireland (UCD) for his thesis entitled “Trust in the Social Web, Applications in Recommender Systems and Online Auctions” , advised by Prof. Barry Smyth. This work was nominated for the 2008 national doctoral dissertation award and is widely cited by the AI community. John also holds Masters and Bachelors (Hons.) degrees in Computer Science from UCD. During his PhD he spent one year at the Viterbi School of Engineering, University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
John’s research background is in Artificial Intelligence, with a specific focus on trust networks within social web applications and other platforms for user-provided content. Like many other areas of study relating to the web, ideas from various disciplines are combined in his work. These include, but are not limited to: data mining, user modeling, network visualization, personalization and natural language processing. His current work at UCSB focuses on network visualizations for the social web, specifically in ways they can be applied to recommendation and reputation systems.
John has had many collaborative colleagues and has co-authored over 20 international conference and journal papers, including a recent book chapter on Social Computing, published by Springer. John’s recent submission to IEEE SocialCom ‘09 received two best-paper nominations. John has served on program committees and has reviewed for fifteen conferences and journals, and he is a member of IEEE, AIAI, ECCAI and ACM.
For more information about the WiGis Project, go to: www.wigis.net/wigi
For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
www.mat.ucsb.edu/595M.
Time: Friday, January 15, 5pm
Location: MAT conference room
Room 2003, Elings Hall
The talk presents research showing that music and cognition have strong links at many levels. Studies on music recognition suggest a great deal of surface information is encoded in memory. Very short excerpts of popular music can be identified with artist, title, and release date. Even when an excerpt is not identified, emotion and style judgments are consistent. At a somewhat deeper level, sensitivity to statistically frequent patterns in the sounded events enables listeners to abstract a tonal framework for encoding and remembering music and generating expectations. Violations of these expectations contribute to the emotional response to music and produce neural responses in fMRI studies. Thus, statistical learning, found for language and other perceptual domains, extends to music. An example of a link at a deep level is the empirical support found for the theory of musical tension proposed in Lerdahl’s Tonal Pitch Space model. The confirmation demonstrates that the cognitive representation of musical structure includes hierarchical trees similar to those proposed for language and that deeply theorized properties of music link to cognitive processes.
Time: Monday, January 11, 5:30 - 7:00pm
Location: Harold Frank Hall, room 1132 (Computer Science conference room)
Speaker: Dr. Jim Blascovich, Department of Psychology, UCSB
Abstract:
The current state of a dozen years of integrated conceptual, theoretical and empirical work at RECVEB underlying social interaction within virtual environments will be described and discussed.
Bio:
Jim Blascovich is Professor Above-Scale and past Chair of the Department of Psychology at UCSB. He co-directs the Research Center for Virtual Environments and Behavior at UCSB. He is a past president of both the Society for Personality and Social Psychology and the Society of Experimental Social Psychology. He is a member of the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research, a charter fellow of the Association of Psychological Science, and a fellow of the American Psychological Association. Dr. Blascovich was awarded the Inaugural Australasian Social Psychology Society/Society of Personality and Social Psychology Teaching Fellowship as well as an Erskine Fellowship and a Science Prestige Lectureship at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. He won the Gordon Allport Prize Intergroup Relations Prize for 2007. He has also received the Chancellor’s Award for Undergraduate Research at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Dr. Blascovich has served on numerous grant review panels and was appointed to the National Research Council’s Committee to Evaluate the Scientific Evidence on the Polygraph. He Chaired the Committee on Opportunities in Basic Research in the Behavioral and Social Sciences for the Military. He has served on many editorial boards of journals, including /Psychological Science and the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Psychological Inquiry, Media Psychology, and Presence./ Dr. Blascovich’s research has received continuous funding from the National Science Foundation for more than 20 years as well as periodic funding from many other agencies.
For more information about the MAT Seminar Series, go to:
www.mat.ucsb.edu/595M.
