Electronic Visualization Laboratory

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The Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) is an interdisciplinary research lab and graduate studies program at the University of Illinois at Chicago, bringing together faculty, students and staff primarily from the Art and Computer Science departments of UIC. The primary areas of research are in computer graphics, visualization, virtual and augmented reality, advanced networking, and media art. Graduates of EVL either earn a Masters or Doctoral degree in Computer Science.

Contents

History

EVL represents one of the oldest art and engineering collaborations in the United States. It was founded in 1973 by Tom DeFanti (then of the UIC Chemistry Department, later Computer Science) and Dan Sandin (of the Art Department). The lab was originally known as the Circle Graphics Habitat, in reference to the then-name of UIC, the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle. DeFanti and Sandin served as Co-Directors of the lab, joined by Maxine D. Brown as Associate Director 1987. In 2001, Sandin retired from teaching, but continued to co-direct the lab with DeFanti until his retirement in 2004. EVL PhD graduate, Jason Leigh took the helm from 2004 through 2014, after which Brown became EVL Director joined by longtime collaborator and computer science professor Andrew Johnson as Director of Research.

Research

Tom DeFanti demoing early EVL work Tom DeFanti EVL demo.jpg
Tom DeFanti demoing early EVL work
The CAVE CAVE Crayoland.jpg
The CAVE

Work at EVL over the years has included:

Art

Highlights of the electronic art work done at EVL include:

EVL was featured in the Chicago New Media 1973-1992 exhibition centering the artwork that was created with the EVL and a demonstration of CAVE 2 was held during the time of the exhibition. [5] The exhibition was held at UIC's gallery 400, and curated by Jon Cates. [6]

SIGGRAPH

The members of EVL have been involved with the SIGGRAPH organization and conference ever since its inception. DeFanti has served as Secretary (1977-1981) and Chair (1981-1985) of the organization, and 1979 conference chair. Brown has served as Vice Chair for Operations (1985-1987) and Secretary (1981-1985), and chaired the 1992 conference. According to Jim Blinn, the popular Electronic Theatre "started out as a bunch of people crowding into Dan Sandin’s dorm room to watch videotapes." [7] In 1979, DeFanti established the SIGGRAPH Video Review, which has been edited and administered by EVLer Dana Plepys since the mid '80s to present. At SIGGRAPH '92, EVL organized the "Showcase" event, where researchers demonstrated 35 projects in state-of-the-art computational science and scientific visualization. At SIGGRAPH '94, EVL organized the VROOM event, demonstrations of the state of virtual reality technology.

In 1998, Brown received the first ever SIGGRAPH Outstanding Service Award for her contributions to the organization. In 2000, DeFanti and EVL alumna Copper Giloth also received the Outstanding Service Award.

Related Research Articles

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Myron W. Krueger</span> American computer artist

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sandin Image Processor</span>

The Sandin Image Processor is a video synthesizer, usually introduced as invented by Dan Sandin and designed between 1971 and 1974. Some called it the "video equivalent of a Moog audio synthesizer." It accepted basic video signals and mixed and modified them in a fashion similar to what a Moog synthesizer did with audio. An analog, Modular Synthesizer, real time, video processing instrument, it provided video processing performance and produced subtle and delicate video effects of a complexity not seen again until well into the digital video revolution.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Daniel J. Sandin</span> American artist and researcher

Daniel J. Sandin is an American video and computer graphics artist, designer and researcher. He is a Professor Emeritus of the School of Art & Design at University of Illinois at Chicago, and co-director of the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is an internationally recognized pioneer in computer graphics, electronic art and visualization.

Thomas Albert "Tom" DeFanti is an American computer graphics researcher and pioneer. His work has ranged from early computer animation, to scientific visualization, virtual reality, and grid computing. He is a distinguished professor of Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and a research scientist at the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2).

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maxine D. Brown</span> American computer scientist

Maxine D. Brown is an American computer scientist and retired director of the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). Along with Tom DeFanti and Bruce McCormick, she co-edited the 1987 NSF report, Visualization in Scientific Computing, which defined the field of scientific visualization.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carolina Cruz-Neira</span> American computer scientist and educator

Carolina Cruz-Neira is a Spanish-Venezuelan-American computer engineer, researcher, designer, educator, and a pioneer of virtual reality (VR). She is known for inventing the cave automatic virtual environment (CAVE). She previously worked at Iowa State University (ISU), University of Louisiana at Lafayette, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, and she is currently an Agere Chair Professor at University of Central Florida (UCF).

Jane Veeder is an American digital artist, filmmaker and educator. She is a professor at San Francisco State University in the Department of Design and Industry, at which she held the position of chair between 2012 and 2015. Veeder is best known for her pioneering work in early computer graphics, however she has also worked extensively with traditional art forms such as painting, ceramics, theatre, and photography.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Franz Fischnaller</span>

Franz Fischnaller is a new media artist and transdisciplinary researcher. He is recognized for the creation of his digital, virtual reality and interactive art installations works across the fields of art, technology, humanities and cultural heritage.

Barbara Sykes into a family of artists, designers and inventors. Since childhood, she has produced work in a variety of different art forms. In 1974, she became one of Chicago's pioneering video and new media artists and, later to include, independent video producer, exhibition curator and teacher. Sykes is a Chicago based experimental video artist who explores themes of spirituality, ritual and indigeneity from a feminist perspective. Sykes is known for her pioneering experimentation with computer graphics in her video work, utilizing the Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois, Chicago, at a time when this technology was just emerging. Her early works broke new grounds in Chicago's emerging New Media Art scene, and continue to inspire women to explore experimental realms. With a passion for community, she fostered significant collaborations with many institutions that include but are not limited to University of Illinois, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Columbia College, Center for New Television, and (art)n laboratory. These collaborations became exemplary for the showcasing of new media work. The wave of video, new media and computer art that she pioneered alongside many other seminal early Chicago New Media artists persists as a major influence for artists and educators today. Her work has been exhibited internationally, at institutions such as Moderna Museet (Stockholm), Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek (Copenhagen), Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Metropolitan Museum of Art , Museum of the Art Institute (Chicago), The Metropolitan Museum of Art and SIGGRAPH. Sykes's tapes have been broadcast in Sweden, Italy, Puerto Rico and extensively throughout in the US, including "The Independents", PBS national broadcast, 1985, and national cablecast, 1984. Media Burn has an online selection of her tapes and over 200 of her raw footage, master edits, dubs and compilation tapes in their Independent Video Archives @ Barbara Sykes https://mediaburn.org/collections/videomakers-page/barbara-sykes/. Select grants include a National Endowment for the Arts and American Film Institute Regional Fellowship, Evanston Art Council Cultural Arts Fund and several Illinois Arts Council grants. In 2017, Sykes began to paint. In 2020, as the recipient of an Evanston Art Center Individual Artist Exhibition Award, Ethereal Abstractions, Sykes's first solo watercolor exhibition premiered 81paintings and she gave an online Artist Talk. Her paintings are lyrical, colorful abstractions reminiscent of organic shapes, ethereal forms and underwater landscapes - evocative impressions of spiritual and elemental worlds. They evoke the spontaneity and themes that have evolved from her previous body of time-based and digital artwork. In 2021, she moved to Florida. Her 2022 painting exhibitions/reviews include Forces of Nature showcased on the cover of Estero Life Magazine and she is in the article, Beholding Beauty: Artists of Estero Exhibit at COCO Art Gallery, the Florida Watercolor Society's 2022 Online Show, the 36th Annual All Florida Exhibition and Connections Art in Flight exhibit at the Southwest Florida International Airport, June 2022 to June 2023. She paints under the name of Barbara L. Sykes.

Copper Giloth is a new media artist based in Amherst, Massachusetts. Giloth's work involves digital media, mobile art, virtual environments, animations, videos, painting, and installations, and have been influenced by elements of her life such as her parents. She, along with Darcy Gerbarg, helped organize art exhibitions that showed alongside the SIGGRAPH conference, marking the exhibitions as the first to be shown at the conference. Giloth has been described as "one of the leading exponents of computer art".

Bob Snyder is an American composer, sound and video artist, who lives and works in Chicago. His work focuses on the formal relations between electronic sounds and images, using synthesized visual and audio signals as his main medium. Throughout his career he has worked extensively with Sandin Image Processor, and his work has been featured in two Whitney Biennal exhibitions as well as institutions like the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the New York Public library and the Art Institute of Chicago. Several of his works have been made in collaboration with the artists Phil Morton, Tom DeFanti and Dan Sandin. Snyder is also the founder of the sound department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in its present form, where he was Professor Emeritus from 2016(?) until his retirement in 2022 after forty-six years at SAIC. He is the author of the book Music and Memory published by the MIT Press . He is also the author of the "Memory for Music" chapter in the 2009 and 2016 editions of the Oxford Handbook of Music Psychology. In 2020, Snyder contributed a chapter entitled “Repetitions and Silences: A Music and Memory Supplement” to the anthology Composition, Cognition, and Pedagogy, published by the Brazilian Association of Cognition and Musical Arts. (ABCM).

Immersive learning is a learning method which students being immersed into a virtual dialogue, the feeling of presence is used as an evidence of getting immersed. The virtual dialogue can be created by two ways, the usage of virtual technics, and the narrative like reading a book. The motivations of using virtual reality (VR) for teaching contain: learning efficiency, time problems, physical inaccessibility, limits due to a dangerous situation and ethical problems.

References

  1. Sturman, D.J.; Zeltzer, D. (January 1994). "A survey of glove-based input". IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications. 14 (1): 30–39. doi:10.1109/38.250916. S2CID   7119184.
  2. Cruz-Neira, C.; Sandin, D.; DeFanti, T.; Kenyon, R.; Hart, J. (1992). "The CAVE: Audio Visual Experience Automatic Virtual Environment". Communications of the ACM. 35 (6): 65–72. doi: 10.1145/129888.129892 . S2CID   19283900.
  3. DeFanti, T., Foster I., Papka, M., Stevens, R., Kuhfuss, T. (1996). "Overview of the I-WAY: Wide Area Visual Supercomputing". International Journal of Supercomputing Applications. 10 (2): 123–130. doi:10.1177/109434209601000201. S2CID   6422566.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  4. Mateevitsi, V., Haggadone, B., Leigh, J., Kunzer, B., Kenyon, R. (2013). "Sensing the environment through SpiderSense". Proceedings of the 4th Augmented Human International Conference. pp. 51–57. doi:10.1145/2459236.2459246. ISBN   9781450319041. S2CID   1437545.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  5. Parmet, Sharon (October 23, 2018). "UIC Electronic Visualization Lab featured in 'Chicago New Media 1973-1992' exhibit". UIC Today. Retrieved September 25, 2019.
  6. Picard, Caroline (November 29, 2018). "'Chicago New Media 1973-1992' pays tribute to the city's contribution to video games and digital art". Chicago Reader. Retrieved September 25, 2019.
  7. Blinn, J. (1995). "How to Attend a Siggraph Conference". IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications. 15 (4): 86–88. doi:10.1109/38.391503.