Building w/immaterials

3rd-Island Atmosphere-5: Inworld troposphere – Image

Brad Kligerman — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 14:00:44 +0000

Elements: image, light, water

Location: altitude: 410/460 meters

Environmental parameters: Wind, pressure, global

Database composition

- Scientific – 7

- Graphic – 1

- Kinetic – 1

HUD Composition

- Density – 9

- World Clock – 5

- Flux – 1

3rd-Island Atmosphere-4: Inworld troposphere – (e)Space

Brad Kligerman — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 13:50:19 +0000

Elements: water, fire

Location: altitude: 410/460 meters

Environmental parameters: Wind, pressure, global

Database composition

- Scientific = 2

- Graphic = 4

- Kinetic = 3

HUD Composition

- Density = 7

- World Clock = 7

- Flux = 1

3rd-Island Atmosphere-3: Installation Oculus

Brad Kligerman — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 13:39:09 +0000

Elements: sky, air

Location: altitude = 280/320 meters

Environmental parameters: Wind, pressure, global

Database composition

- Scientific = 2

- Graphic = 3

- Kinetic = 1

HUD Composition

- Density = 7

- World Clock = 5

- Flux = 4

3rd-Island Atmosphere-1: Tower Green

Brad Kligerman — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 13:28:37 +0000

Elements: earth, air

Location: altitude = 0/80 meters

Environmental parameters: Wind, pressure, global

Database composition

- Scientific = 1

- Graphic = 1

- Kinetic = 1

HUD Composition

- Density = 3

- World Clock = 3

- Flux = 7

3rd-Island Atmosphere-2: Red substructure

Brad Kligerman — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 13:19:49 +0000

Elements: clouds, air

Location: altitude = 170/2200 meters

Environmental parameters: Wind, pressure, global

Database composition

- Scientific : 1

- Graphic : 4

- Kinetic : 3

HUD Composition

- Density : 5

- World Clock : 3

- Flux : 2

Immersive Visualizations in Virtual Worlds

Brad Kligerman — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 08:34:18 +0000

The artists and architects of Building w/immaterials¹ have a long-standing interest in virtual worlds. We have studied the work that you have diffused about the use of virtual worlds for data visualization. It has become an invaluable resource for our project infra|vergence², whose objective is to Map the dynamic form of the Metaverse.³ This will be accomplished using data captured from the cumulative network activity of a large community of artists and academics currently active in virtual worlds for both work and fun. Their inworld (virtual worlds, MMOGs), online (social networks, blogging) and real-world locations and activities will be passively and anonymously captured. The data will be interpreted by isolating specific states⁴ within each world that will reveal their points of vergence.

infra|vergence is both a project that anticipates specific results, as well as a project-based research into the continued relevance of using immersive environments for visualization of data. The visualizations5 that will result from this data will be fabricated/generated inworld, creating tangible objects, events and places capable of composing legible spaces. The experience of these spaces, in the context of the infra|vergence project, will be their dynamic perception as a map revealing the context, scale and locations –inworld, online, geospatial, physical– of the Metaverse. The inworld mapping will be largely based on the work began by Glasshouse by Green Phosphor⁶, using this technology to:

put data and users in the same 3d space;
visualization becomes a question of visual perception from a multiplicity of Points-of-view;
interaction with community and data in a shared space;
the creation of layers of data, images and objects that reveal patterns.

Our continued interest in virtual worlds fulfills our desire to build by inventing new, indigenous usages for virtual world spaces that transcend the obvious metaphoric building of houses, offices, conference centers that populate/pollute virtual worlds like Second Life. It also enhances and informs my real-world activities as an architect, teacher and artist.

Based on recent academic and internet based research, it seems that there has been little, if any, progress concerning scientific visualization in virtual environments since you first became interested in this subject several years ago. We are curious to know if you think this is a misapprehension on our part, if inworld visualization is still being pursued as a credible avenue of data representation or, if in fact, innovation has slowed down. Despite this seeming lull in its development, we will be publishing a paper (in December, 2011) in the journal Metaverse Creativity⁷ on the infra|vergence project and would like to cite your work, as well as your response to any of the following questions concerning Immersive Visualization using Virtual Environments :

What inspired your incipient interest in using virtual worlds as platforms for immersive visualization?
What is your current involvement with virtual worlds? with virtual worlds as a platform for immersive visualization?

About Building w/immaterials ↩
infra|vergence Papers and presentations on this site ↩
We define METAVERSE as the collective, consensual space created from the convergence of digitally enhanced physical reality and physically persistent virtual and online worlds. The METAVERSE is composed of the sum of all virtual worlds, augmented realities and network enabled services for communication, collaboration and location. ↩
These states include : comparable activities in different worlds (ie, distance and velocity for comparing mobility in virtual and physical worlds); different activities in the same world; and, simultaneous activities in more than one world. Although activities are not necessarily the same in each world, the qualitative, quantitative, and locational data describing them is compatible and comparable. ↩
Infravergence Visualization References ↩
Green Phosphor ↩
Metaverse Creativity ↩

infra|vergence Visualization References

Brad Kligerman — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 17:45:48 +0000

This document traces the practice of data visualization, showing general examples ranging from 2 & 3-dimensional visualization to spatial immersion. Its objectives are to position the infra|vergence project within the bounds of visualization as both a cultural and professional practice ; demonstrate the sophisticated use of locational information in visualizations that employ spatial immersion, progressing from simple montage of maps in 2 or 3 dimensions to the actual integration of visualization objects into the geospatial landscape; and, establish infra|vergence as both Project and Pedagogy, a tool for the creation and diffusion of knowledge.

Visualization project examples :

2-D Visualizations
3-D Visualizations
3-D Interactive Visualizations
Visualization in Virtual Globes
Inworld Visualizations (immerse)
Inworld geo-tagged Visualizations (geospatial immersion)

2D Visualizations

Cabspotting traces San Francisco’s taxi cabs as they travel throughout the Bay Area. The patterns traced by each cab create a living and always-changing map of city life. [http://www.cabspotting.org/]

MYPOCKET traces simultaneously a personal history of expenditures and universal financial forecast. The physical and virtual evidence of all his expenditures is retained, creating a database visualization of their passage and custom software algorithm of their probability of recurrence. The Transactions Feed archives all of his economic interactions (thereby making all his personal financial records public), and posts their percentaged predictions. The Transactions Graph is a dynamic representation of the temporal and relational aspects of these transactions.

3D Visualizations

Eye candy traces the cloud of Wi-Fi signal that envelops central Salt Lake City, UT, generated by ~1700 access points.

Cascade on Wheels is a visualization project that intends to express the quantity of cars we live with in big cities nowadays. The data set we worked on is the daily average of cars passing by streets, over a year. In this case, a section of the Madrid city center, during 2006. The averages are grouped down into four categories of car types. Light vehicles, taxis, trucks, and buses.

3D Interactive Visualizations

Through partnership with mobile operators, Current Cities reveals the inner workings of a city through text messages, articulating the life of Amsterdam, here, These images depict the volume and intensity of text messages during on New Year’s Eve day and night.

The Atlas of Electromagnetic Space is an interactive visualization of the Radio Spectrum, and a database of artistic and social interventions that have been developed in the last decades that employ radio technologies. Projects are catalogued according to the frequencies they occupy.

Visualization in Virtual Globes

Shown here is the American communications objects density in a 3D graph. It’s made the author of GIS visualization tool for Google Earth called KMLer. The visualization is made with data found at the US FCC (Federal Communications Commission) wireless site.

Google Earth can be used as a scientific visualization platform as OpenEarth, who is a free and open source initiative to deal with Data, Models and Tools in marine & coastal engineering projects, does. It provides a platform to archive, host and disseminate high quality data, state-of-the-art model systems and well-tested tools for practical analysis.

Inworld Visualizations (immerse)

Green Phosphor creates a rich 3D interactive data analysis environment from any data source. It turns mundane Database or Spreadsheet data and turns it into an interactive Virtual World (a la Second Life). It allows you, and the people you invite, to view and interact with 3D visualizations of your data.

Avatar

Brad Kligerman — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 14:06:55 +0000

Avatars are the spatial embodiment of virtual world network participants. They are, in fact, more than a simple digital representation endowed with movement and voice, they are composed of three elements : an agent, the client’s presence within a simulator; an avatar, the visual representation of an agent; and a camera, through which an agent sees the world.

These 3 elements permit me to perceive, interact and communicate in spatial, natural and social environments. But taken together, these otherwise local, simple and omni-functioning elements have one essential, global ambition: to represent Me, and to make tangible my point of view. It is thanks to the fundamental engagement between agent (individual) and simulator (context), that I exist. The body in a virtual world is the result of the tension between the individual agent and the world’s simulator; where, if we substitute the term simulator (or sim) with territory, then “I” am defined by the tension between the sensory limits of my SL agent and the territories that I occupy at any given moment. My agent becomes both my reactive and receptive nervous system to capture external stimuli, and my connection to the consensual, communal spaces of this virtual territory.

Immersive visualizations

Brad Kligerman — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 15:14:17 +0000

Immersive visualizations are data representations ranging from 2-Dimensional graphic abstraction to interactive, 3-D spaces. They evolve by accruing informational, material and spatial dimensionality. They are, in fact, data visualizations that are built into an immersive virtual environment, using inworld media (primitive objects, images and video). The visual world’s physics, spatial coherence and topography will be designed to simulate scale, distance, interactivity and modularity of the metaversal spaces it will be representing.

Embedding visualizations into immersive environments is compatible to the process of data mapping, which is the creation of functions between distinct data models and their representations, a self-referential system of signification.

We are striving to effectuate a direct correlation between the content (the data) and its representation (or mapping). For example, when expressing the scale of the metaverse, an immersive visualization permits us to develop a 3-D space whose size and navigation are a direct (not metaphoric) expression of its scale. This is due to the fact that immersive visualizations take place in a virtual environment with physical characteristics (physics, movement, temporality) similar to the physical world we inhabit.

Our application of immersive visualization is based on the work of Greenphosphor, who have developped a tool that generates prim-based builds in Second Life from any structured data-set. Other ressources for immersive visualizations can be found on the Second Life Dataviz wiki.

Presentation : infra|vergence

Brad Kligerman — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 08:30:14 +0000

More information concerning our presentation at ISEA2011 can be found at ISEA2011 : infra|vergence