Past Viz Lab Events

2010 Winter Sustainability Fair

Viz Lab co-sponsored the guest speaker Chris Paine, director of Who killed the electric car?, for the Winter sustainability fair 2010. His talk was focused on politics, personalities, and cold hard cash reasons for return of the electric car. He shared his role as the filmmaker who caught GM and others destroying thousands of this "disruptive technology" in 2003. Seven years later, he's documenting the incredible return of electric cars for his 2011 film Revenge of the electric car.

Robotics Redefined

by Andrew Archer Sept. 16 2010

Andrew Archer is a former resident of Hermantown. He is twenty two years old and currently operates his business Robotics Redefined in Detroit, Michigan. He builds robots and controllers for numerous companies and industries. Andrew was heavily involved in legos as a child and attended and competed in many lego mindstorm camps, and currently builds and hacks robots from off-the-shelf components to design new robots for factories and tools for urban farming, among others.

Tele-Present Wind

by David Bowen

Concept: Tele-present wind is a kinetic installation that draws information from the intensity and direction of the wind in a given location. The wind is detected by a sensor device attached to a natural object in an outdoor location. The gathered information is then transferred to a collective of similar objects installed in a remote gallery space resulting in the simulation of the physical effects caused by the movement of the air from a distant location.

Technical info: This installation consisted of a series of 21 x/y tilting devices connected to thin dried plant stalks installed in the gallery and a dried plant stalk connected to an accelerometer installed outdoors. When the wind blows it causes the stalk outside to sway. The accelerometer detects this movement transmitting it in real-time to the grouping of devices in the gallery. Therefore the stalks in the gallery space moved in real-time in unison based on the movement of the wind in a remote location. In June of 2010 the 21 x/y tilting devices were installed at Laboratoria Art and Science Space in Moscow and the sensor were installed at the Visualization and Digital Imaging Lab at the University of Minnesota. The data collected by the sensor was sent in real-time via the internet to the installation in Moscow. Thus the individual components of this installation in Moscow moved in unison as they mimiced the direction and intensity of the wind in Minnesota.

Jumpstart your creativity

Researchers share their ideas for getting the creative juices flowing in this short workshop from 2-3 pm. Tom Isbel (writer), Alison Aune (fine artist), Tom Johnson (oceanographer), Lisa Fitzpatrick (graphic designer), and Rudy Perrault (composer) will share some tips and creative exercises

Celebrating 10 years of the Viz Lab!

The Viz Lab is celebrating its 10 year anniversary.

Download the pdf going over the lab's history.

New Green Screen Room

Recently the Viz Lab along with the UMD Art and Design department set up a green screen room for faculity and art/design students.

Download the how-to pdf.

Remote Sonar Drawing Device

Remote sonar drawing device is a project conceived by David Bowen an Assistant Professor in the Art and Design Department. This interactive robotic installation is a collaboration between the Visualization and Digital Imaging Lab and Laboral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial Universidad Laboral Gijón-Asturias, Spain. The project is included in Nowhere/Now/Here, an exhibition opening October 9th 2008 and running until April 20th 2009 at Laboral Centro. Nowhere/Now/Here, is an exhibition curated by the creative partnership of Roberto Feo and Rosario Hurtado (El Último Grito) and features works that Investigate new lines of enquiry in contemporary design.

This is a multinational tele-presence robotic installation. The piece consists of the drawing arm and sonar sensor array installed at the Visualization and Digital Imaging Lab in Duluth and a drawing arm and sonar sensor array installed at Laboral Centro in Gijón-Asturias. Each drawing arm produces gestures based on a participant’s interaction with the sensor arrays. The information gathered by the sensors is sent via the internet to the drawing arm in the opposite location. Therefore, the arm in Spain produces drawings based on the inputs it receives from the sensor array in Minnesota and vise-versa. The public is encouraged to participate at both locations. By moving near to the sensor array you can make gestural drawings halfway around the world.

This project was made possible with the support of:
The University of Minnesota, Grant in Aid of Research, Artistry and Scholarship
Laboral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial Universidad Laboral
Visualization and Digital Imaging Lab, University of Minnesota
The Bemis Center for Contemporary Art

Games Symposiums

The Viz Lab together with GRAVEL (Games Research and Virtual Environment Lab)—a group that embraces all campuses of the U of M system—Viz Lab's Games & Animation Group and the Multimedia Hub sponsored the first Games Symposiums: interdisciplinary, intercampus events, free and open to the public.

The Symposiums showcased gaming technologies and scholarship in an effort to promote and advance understanding of the important new medium of the video game. Presenters included Sandra Voelker, Electronic Arts; Danny Robashkin, Make, Animation and Visual Effects production; Pete Willemsen, UMD Computer Science-Tours of head mounted display virtual reality lab; Chris Bacigalupo and Harbor City High technology club; and Joellyn Rock, UMD Art + Design. Ira "Mimmu" Turunen, UMD Public Relations, showed her motivational and highlight tapes and talked about the process of creating an effective video. Additionally, game demos, and student and faculty game research were featured throughout the day.

2006 schedule

2007 schedule

2007 VAGS Flier (pdf - 230k)

Viz Lab Presents series

bi-annual reports

2005-2007 report (pdf - 3.9Mb)

2003-2005 report (pdf - 6.4Mb)

2003 report (pdf - 192kb)