Eyes on Earth:
Scienceworks: The Virtual Room (II)

See how satellites track weather, monitor pollution, create maps and help predict storms.

Eyes on Earth's interactive exhibition will incorporate a Virtual Room show. The Virtual Room's state-of-the-art display environment provides a unique place for the visualisation of satellites and their orbits up close and in 3D.

Sponsors: An exhibition built by Scienceworks under licence from the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry, USA. Virtual Room was developed by Museum Victoria.

Event Type: Temporary Exhibition

Lifelab: Wirefire

LIFELAB is an on-going series of virtual universes, developed by artists and computer scientists from Monash University's Centre for Electronic Media Art. The first of these universes, Wirefire is currently showing in the virtual room.

Wirefire consists of hundreds of simple virtual creatures that fly around in three-dimensional space. When the creatures are close to each other, they form lines, which is what you see on screen. The creatures have personalities – they will be attracted to you and movement you make, but sudden movement will scare them off! By moving your body you can control their movements and behaviour. Try to catch them, or stand very still for a while and use your hands to direct their movement.

Credits:
LIFELAB Concept: Jon McCormack
Wirefire direction and software: Aidan Lane
LIFELAB Project team: Alan Dorin, Aidan Lane, Jon McCormack
© Copyright 2007 Monash University / Centre for Electronic Media Art (CEMA)

ZOOM IN CLOSE UP: the natural world of Peter Parks

For more than forty years Peter Parks has combined his interests in wildlife, art and design, engineering and photography to try to take his audiences into the unfamiliar world of the small and very small but not at the expense of the big and very big. "It's just that the world seems not to realise that small is as beautiful as big," he insists. To be able to tell the complete story is perhaps what intrigues and challenges him most.

As one of the original founders of Oxford Scientific Films in 1968, Peter was in charge of High Magnification work, all marine film expeditions and all engineering. Over the years he developed and patented a series of high magnification optical systems that have travelled the world many times and recorded weird and wonderful subjects from places as far a field as The Great Barrier Reef, The Gippsland Lakes, Bermuda , The Florida Everglades and The Ocean Depths. In 1990 he left OSF and set up Image Quest so as to concentrate on bringing his subjects to the world of Imax . In 1995 his son Chris joined forces and together father and son pioneered the unexplored challenges of 3-D film and photography for the biggest film screens in the world (the Sydney, Darling Harbour Imax Screen is 125' across!).

To this screen Peter and Chris have now brought some of the very smallest aspects of Insect Life in the award winning Imax film "BUGS 3D". In 2004 Peter won a Lifetime Achievement Oscar for this and other filmic advances.

The Image Quest Image Library (Image Quest Marine) now offers more than 15,000 images online and many of these are available in 3-D.

Chris is currently taking their brand of close-up photography into the world of Fine Art and Corporate Art. Peter is integrating aspects of their work into children's and family books and films. Both are developing 3-D display and retail systems.

All Photography: Image Quest 3-D www.imagequest3d.com
Director/Producer: Sarah Kenderdine
Animation and Sequencing: Evan Hallein
Compostion: Peter Mcilwain

Dive into Diabetes Science:

The animations have been created by Drew Berry from The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, using data generated by Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) for the structure of the body; Electron Microscope Tomography (EMT) for cells; and X-Ray Crystallography for DNA and blood molecules.

The DEEP

CSSE Monash University: Direction: Jon McCormack, Alan Dorin. Animation: Alan Dorin, Jon McCormack, Michael Rigby. Animation software: Alan Dorin, Angus Montgomery. Sound: Peter Mcilwain

Victoria goes Expo

An innovative new three-dimensional movie giving viewers a taste of World Expo 2005, currently underway in Aichi, Japan. The movie was shot on a stereo-camera rig and produced by Museum Victoria. It features the Australian Pavilion, along with Korea, Bhutan, Czechoslovakia, New Zealand and Nepal. The show will tour the regions of Victoria in a traveling Virtual Room display through the months of August and September to bring Expo to all Victorians.

Director/Producer: Sarah Kenderdine, Museum Victoria
Camera: Evan Hallein, Swinburne University, Astrophysics.

Sacred Angkor: stereographic panoramas of the temple complex

These striking stereographic panoramas capture the potent sacred space of Angkorean temple architecture and relief sculpture. Travel through a 3-D landscape of celestial palaces, rich with Khmer iconography illustrating the narratives of Hindu and Buddhist mythologies. Angkor was capital of the medieval Khmer empire in Cambodia (9th–17th C) and it continues to capture the world’s imagination with its immense scale and beauty.

Panoramic vision has been a mode of virtual travel for hundreds of years. This compelling work uses a sophisticated combination of technologies to bring panoramic scenes and viewers into a new degree of intimacy. The combination of 3-D landscapes with spatial sound, audio spotlights, animations and real-world video brings new life to each scene. This is a groundbreaking and exceptional work which paves the way for heritage visualisation.

This is a project of Museum Victoria in collaboration with APSARA-Authority, Cambodia

The Future of Visualisation

RMIT University. The Interactive Information Institute, under the direction of Norbert Nimmervoll, has a wealth of industrial experience in the creation and use of virtual reality.

Australian Polar Dinosaurs

A collaboration between Melbourne University DCHAVU and Osmosis. Osmosis Solutions is a visual communication company dedicated to creating dynamic lasting design solutions. By combining design and animation expertise with skills from various disciplines, including architecture, signage, graphic design and the visual arts, the result is a solution that is unique, well-informed, and innovative.

Think Big, Exploring Mars

Swinburne University of Technology. The Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, under the direction of Matthew Bailes, has developed inexpensive VR technology for scientific visualisation and public education in the area of astronomy and space science.