Daria Tsoupikova

Collaborative virtual environments art exhibition

This panel presentation will exhibit artwork developed in CAVEs and discuss how art methodologies enhance the science of VR through collaboration, interaction and aesthetics. Artists and scientists work alongside one another to expand scientific research and artistic expression and are motivated by exhibiting collaborative virtual environments. Looking towards the arts, such as painting and sculpture, computer graphics captures a visual tradition. Virtual reality expands this tradition to not only what we face, but to what surrounds us and even what responds to our body and its gestures. Art making that once was isolated to the static frame and an optimal point of view is now out and about, in fully immersive mode within CAVEs. Art knowledge is a guide to how the aesthetics of 2D and 3D worlds affect, transform, and influence the social, intellectual and physical condition of the human body through attention to psychology, spiritual thinking, education, and cognition. The psychological interacts with the physical in the virtual in such a way that each facilitates, enhances and extends the other, culminating in a “go together” world. Attention to sharing art experience across high-speed networks introduces a dimension of liveliness and aliveness when we “become virtual” in real time with others.

Hearts and Minds: the Interrogations Project

Hearts and Minds: The Interrogations Project is an interactive virtual reality narrative performance made for the EVL’s CAVE2™ large-scale 320-degree panoramic virtual reality environment that visualizes stories of violence and the post-traumatic stress experienced by ordinary American soldiers who became torturers in the course of serving their country. During the American-led counterinsurgency and counter-terrorism campaigns in Iraq in the years after 11 September 2001, the torture and abuse of detainees was a commonplace tactic.

Real-time diagnostic data in multi-user virtual reality post-stroke therapy

We present a novel multi-user virtual reality (VR) environment for post-stroke rehabilitation that can be used independently in the home to improve upper extremity motor function. This project represents a collaborative multidisciplinary approach to upper extremity therapy that reinvents engagement with health, social communication and well-being for stroke survivors. This work is in the pre-clinical phase of an ongoing interdisciplinary research effort at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago which involves a team of artists, engineers, researchers and occupational therapists. This work bridges art, science and healthcare research. Our project attempts to extend traditional occupational therapy and make virtual reality art accessible for all people. It inspires a playful and natural social interaction in the comfort of the home setting for stroke survivors with hemiparesis by furthering social engagement through the rehabilitation exercises. It fosters interaction and collaboration between individual users and encourages the exchange of user-generated content. At the same time, the system captures continuous kinematic data, which can be used to better tailor therapy to the individual.

Virtual reality environment assisting recovery from stroke

Our virtual environment represents the pre-clinical phase of an ongoing research project using a pneumatically actuated glove, head/arm tracking, and a head mounted display to facilitate hand rehabilitation in stroke survivors. This is a collaborative, interdisciplinary project at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago involving a team of engineers, researchers, occupational therapists, art therapists and virtual reality artists.

Rutopia 2

As genomics digitizes life, the organism and self are initially lost to data, but ultimately a broader meaning is re-attained. ATLAS in silico reflects upon humanity’s long-standing quest for an understanding of the nature, origins, and unity of life by interrogating metagenomics and the resultant shift from an organism-centric to a sequence-centric view of nature. In parallel to challenges that Darwin’s work on natural selection posed to 19th-century representations of nature associated with concepts of species fixity, vast and abstract metagenomics data pose a fundamental challenge to our ability, in the 21st century, to represent and intuitively comprehend nature.

Hearts and minds: The interrogations project

Hearts and Minds: The Interrogations Project is an interactive Virtual Reality narrative performance developed in Unity for the CAVE2™ large-scale 320-degree panoramic virtual reality environment at the Electronic Visualization Lab (EVL) at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). The work provides an experience of true stories of abusive violence, battlefield torture and post-traumatic stress during the American-led counterinsurgency and counter terrorism campaigns in Iraq in the years after September 11, 2001. The immersive virtual reality environment of the CAVE2™ is used to communicate both difficult truths about torture and to produce an affective impression of the how these practices were experienced by individual American soldiers.

Cryptography and mathematics: educational game "Treasure Hunt"

Treasure Hunt is an interactive educational game for middle grade children based on the use of cryptography. The goal of this game is to find a secret treasure hidden in the old castle. To proceed through the story children must decrypt messages using mathematical skills. Cryptography − the science of sending secret messages − is an active area of research for both mathematicians and computer scientists. It is of increasing importance in society today, with applications all around us, from Internet security to the protection of diplomatic secrets, and it has interesting applications in history. Children have long been interested in secret codes. Treasure Hunt both entertains and challenges students, while exposing them to concepts relevant to their formal studies.

Framing the magic

This paper will explore how the aesthetics of the virtual world affects, transforms, and enhances the immersive emotional experience of the user. What we see and what we do upon entering the virtual environment influences our feelings, mental state, physiological changes and sensibility. To create a unique virtual experience the important component to design is the beauty of the virtual world based on the aesthetics of the graphical objects such as textures, models, animation, and special effects. The aesthetic potency of the images that comprise the virtual environment can make the immersive experience much stronger and more compelling. The aesthetic qualities of the virtual world as born out through images and graphics can influence the users state of mind. Particular changes and effects on the user can be induced through the application of techniques derived from the research fields of psychology, anthropology, biology, color theory, education, art therapy, music, and art history. Many contemporary artists and developers derive much inspiration for their work from their experience with traditional arts such as painting, sculpture, design, architecture and music. This knowledge helps them create a higher quality of images and stereo graphics in the virtual world. The understanding of the close relation between the aesthetic quality of the virtual environment and the resulting human perception is the key to developing an impressive virtual experience.