Eccentric Orbits Exhibit Debuts at Calit2@UCI

5.20.2005 — First-year graduate students in UC Irvine’s interdisciplinary ACE graduate program will showcase their research projects and other new media initiatives in an exhibit at the campus’s new Calit2 Building May 26-June 4. The exhibit, organized and overseen by the six students, commences with an opening reception, scheduled 6:30-8:30 p.m. Thursday, May 26. Opening night also features live interactive dance performances at 7, 7:30 and 8 p.m.

Exhibits at Eccentric Orbits – held in Calit2 ’s Media Arts Lab located on the second floor, room 2100 – include:

• Project Luna, an online community dedicated to supporting and promoting communication among young women. The project, designed by Sara Goetz, seeks to educate young women about feminism, provide an outlet for expression and discourse, and foster networking and communication using a combination of message boards, web-blogs, and member-contributed articles in a female-only online environment;

• Sculptures by Delvin Hanson that explore behavior as a medium within kinetic art. At the exhibit, Hanson will present a number of sculptures that comprise traditional and computational media;

• PushPad, by Cina Hazegh, offers a unique perspective on the development of interactive systems beyond the monitor, keyboard and mouse. Using technologies such as radio frequency identification tags (RFID), conductive ink and yarn, and design that attempts to encourage collaboration, PushPad attempts to challenge existing conceptions of computer interfaces as rigid and single-user;

• A sonic journey through California landscapes, by Eric Kabisch . Viewers are surrounded by panoramic landscape imagery, which uses movement to create an interactive musical experience;

• RCCAR, a tangible interface between the physical and virtual worlds, designed by Kevin Ponto. By controlling a small radio-controlled vehicle, users experience an augmented reality;

• Live interactive dance performances by Yicun Sun, which will take place at the grand opening, and again on Thursday, June 2, at 7, 7:30 and 8 p.m.

Exhibition hours are noon-6 p.m. weekdays, May 27-June 3, and noon-4 p.m. Saturday, June 4. Eccentric Orbits will be closed Memorial Day weekend, May 28-30.

UCI’s ACE program is a trans-disciplinary graduate program in arts, computation and engineering. The program is supported by the Claire Trevor School of the Arts, The Henry Samueli School of Engineering and the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences. The program emphasizes critical thinking in historical, social, cultural and theoretical contexts.

About Calit2: The California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (www.calit2.net) integrates multidisciplinary intellectual capital and industry expertise to conduct cutting-edge research. More than 130 leading California computer, telecommunications, software and applications companies partner with Calit2 faculty participants to investigate areas as diverse as transportation, emergency response, public safety, the environment, security, health care, business, education, the arts and entertainment.

About the University of California, Irvine : The University of California, Irvine is a top-ranked public university dedicated to research, scholarship and community service. Founded in 1965, UCI is among the fastest-growing University of California campuses, with more than 24,000 undergraduate and graduate students and about 1,400 faculty members. The second-largest employer in dynamic Orange County, UCI contributes an annual economic impact of $3 billion.

Media Contacts

Anna Lynn Spitzer, (949) 824-3317, aspitzer@rgs.uci.edu