On Monday February 8th, eDream and our partner institute ICHASS (Institute for Computing in the Humanites, Arts, and Social Sciences) held a digital scholarship open house here in the NCSA Building, where we are both housed.   We invited organizations from across campus to present their work in digital scholarship and co-host the event, and were grateful to have the participation of the University Library’s Scholarly Commons (Sarah Shreeves) and Digital Humanities programs (Harriett Green), NCSA/Cyberenvironments and Technologies Directorate (Luigi Marini), ICHASS/Augmented Reality project team (Alan Craig, Bob McGrath), the Illinois Informatics Institute (Judy Tolliver), NCSA/Advanced Visualization Lab (Bob Patterson, AJ Christensen), the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities (Dianne Harris, Chris Catanzarite), ICHASS/Image Spatial data Analysis Group (Peter Bajcsy), the Institute for Advanced Computing Applications and Technologies (IACAT, Bill Gropp), GSLIS/Community Informatics (Sharon Irish), and the eDream/Cultural Computing Research Group (Guy Garnett, Ben Smith, Mary Pietrowicz, Tony Reimer, Brett Jones, Raj Sodhi with guest artist Nick Duran).  We plan to make this a yearly event, since it provides a crucial gathering for networking and promoting work in this important area that is taking place across campus.

eDream presented a demonstration of our technical research partner NCSA Advanced Visualization Lab’s scientific visualizations.  These are shown on a one-of-a-kind large, super-high resolution, 3D JVC display.  eDream also held a performance demonstration of technologies in development by Associate Director Guy Garnett’s Cultural Computing Research Group.  Ben Smith’s violin-based sonifications drove interactive, realtime graphics in his virtual musiverse.  Tony Reimer, Brett Jones, and Raj Sodhi presented graphics and graphic projections driven by Mary Petrowicz’s movement-trained machine learning software.  Talented Astral Convertible dancer and MFA dance student Nick Duran graciously donated his talents to serve as the creative human engine driving the effects.

CCRG member Brett Jones has already shared with the world a video showing part of this performance demonstration, which took place in the NCSA Creativity Space studio lab.Thanks to everyone who presented, hosted, and attended!

— Kelly Searsmith