USC Vector Journal

Vector: Jornal of culture and Technology in a dynamic vernacular

Vectors maps the multiple contours of daily life in an unevenly digital era, crystallizing around themes that highlight the social, political, and cultural stakes of our increasingly technologically-mediated existence. As such, the journal speaks both implicitly and explicitly to key debates across varied disciplines, including issues of globalization, mobility, power, and access. Operating at the intersection of culture, creativity, and technology, the journal focuses on the myriad ways technology shapes, transforms, reconfigures, and/or impedes social relations, both in the past and in the present.

http://www.vectorsjournal.org/

It's a very interesting journal. Most of the projects are interactive and some of them are scientific visualization.

Prof. Tony Michaels speech about Visualizing science

Here is a part of Prof. Tony Michaels speech at our group seminar on Sep 05 2007 about Visualizing science and how artists can help scientists to come out of what he calls “invisibility to public”. He is the Director of the Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies and Professor of Biology at USC. Prof. Tony Michaels is very interested in visualizing science using creativity of artists here at USC school of Cinematic arts.

Getting to work with Massive

We are going to use Massive software for several scientific visualization projects here at USC. Massive software was first developed and used in the Lord of The Rings movie and since then it has been used in a number of movies and commercials. While it was used to simulate a large number of crowds of people in the scenes like what we can see in the battles of Lord of the Rings movie, it can also simulate the behavior of mass number of anything from human to animal to plants! Now they have added robotic controllers to massive as well so that it won’t be used only on screen. "Massive is the premier 3D animation system for generating crowd-related visual effects for film and television. Using Massive, an animator or TD designs characters with a set of reactions to what is going on around them. The reactions of the characters determine what they do and how they do it. Their reactions can even simulate emotive qualities such as bravery, weariness, or joy. The agent reactions can control key-framed or motion captured animation clips called actions. Characters that perform on their own in this way are referred to as agents. Massive is a system for designing and running such agents. When scaled up into the hundreds - or hundreds of thousands - the interaction within the crowd that emerges from these individuals is highly realistic. By building variation into an agent, the Massive artist can populate a scene with individuals who are unique in everything from physical appearance to how they respond." More information: http://www.massivesoftware.com/