Projects
-
The end of a paragraph
While the semester has ended, the project lives on. Finals week marks the beginning of a period of rest and research, a time to reflect on the lessons learned this semester and to cook up a strategy for taking the project to the next level. Technical and logistical issues aside, the most malleable thing I took away from the final production process was my responsibility to act as a converter between the... -
Double Helix Progress Report
As the semester draws to a close, it’s time to reflect on progress made toward developing Double Helix. The project is fully functional at this point and includes the following features: audience interaction based on camera tracking interactive and immersive visuals drawn from Hubble Space Telescope imagery interactive and generative audio The following materials are required for the installation: Mac Computer running Max 6.1 2-channel sound projection ceiling-mounted front projection and screen... -
Static in the void
Carl Sagan must have been taking an undergraduate special problems class when he imagined his line “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe”. While I didn’t begin my filmmaking process by re-imaging the fundamental models of eletromagnetism, the pathway I took in finding a story I could tell about something which I was purely and passionately interested in became a personal inventory in... -
Advent of Virtual Reality Technology: Reinvigorating the Hunt for the True Nature of Reality
Where to begin? I”ll start with where I’m at, because that’s what most excites me. I’m making a video which explores the age old question of “what is reality?” through the relatively fresh lens of Milgram’s Virtuality Continuum. I’m retooling the model a tad to include ideology, especially as it is created through media; Milgram really only intended it to serve as a way of conceptualizing the spectrum of virtual reality... -
Diagramming a Systems Understanding
I am the daughter of three different engineers: one architectural, one aeronautical, and one electrical. As a kid I became fascinated with pictures in old college textbooks like Strength of Materials, Thickness Design, Electrical Engineering, Differential Equations, Visions of Symmetry and others that peppered the bookshelf. Though I couldn’t really fully understand or “read” them, the drawings of basic principles of stability, strength, structure, design, materials, systems, and transmission seemed to impart some... -
Interactive 3D Environments from 2D Images
My first impulse was to give depth and interest to a two-dimensional image of the Helix nebula. I began by splitting the image of the nebula into several images, each containing one colored ring surrounded by transparency. The net effect when layering each of these images on each other was the original image. Then, using a video editor, I flew a camera through a 3D environment containing each of the layers set... -
Introducing Double Helix / Triple Alpha
“We are a way for the universe to know itself. Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We long to return. And we can, because the cosmos is also within us. We’re made of star stuff.” – Carl Sagan, Cosmos Self-awareness is a matter of scale. When we were small, our entire world was our bedroom. The other occupants of this world were our family. We thought...