Hybrid Vigor Showcases UCI?s ACE Graduate Students

De-generative Politricks

05.14.05 – The first graduating class of the UC Irvine ACE (Arts Computation Engineering) program is exhibiting its new media and interdisciplinary arts projects at the Beall Center for Art and Technology. ACE, a pioneering interdisciplinary graduate program, is a Calit2 academic partner.

The Hybrid Vigor “open lab” exhibit consists of students' thesis projects encompassing real-time computation, robotics and motion control, sensor technologies, computer graphics, embedded and wireless technologies, and immersive media technologies.

The exhibit includes:

Blowhard

• Blowhard. An interactive investigation into anxiety, in which players’ respirations are measured as they breathe into oxygen masks;

• De-generative Politricks. An audiovisual automated debate between a liberal and a conservative, powered by a microediting technique that regenerates video speech. The result is the transformation of the two debaters into talking-head video characters;

• Cargo Cult. An interactive display that allows users to engage in the mimicking of broadcast media rituals. The display uses CHEAP, the Computationally Hackneyed Embodied Action Performance system, with its eight-channel spatialized audio array, webcam visual tracking and two-channel video projection that utilizes the Max/MSP/Jitter programming language;

• Infinicity. An infinite urban/suburban space generated on a screen through semi-algorithmic means. The player navigates the space by walking on a pressure-sensitive pad, while buildings spring up in previously open spaces;

• TactileSpace. An experimental location-aware garment that communicates tactile textures related to the spatial form of the environment;

• Linger. A representation that utilizes long-exposure photography to superimpose shadow images of its visitors into a wall-sized photograph as a way to express the benefits of a slower lifestyle;

• Untitled. An interactive computer animation that uses sound to influence shape and movement.

The Hybrid Vigor 2005 displays were created by UCI graduate students Erik Conrad, Sky Frostenson, Adrian Herbez, Garnet Hertz, Ryan Schoelerman, Margaret Watson and So Yamaoka. The exhibit runs through Saturday, April 16. Admission is free. For exhibition hours and directions, visit http://beallcenter.uci.edu/

Linger (left) and Infinicity