ATLAS in silico is an interactive installation/virtual environment that provides an aesthetic encounter with metagenomics data (and contextual metadata) from the Global Ocean Survey (GOS). The installation creates a visceral experience of the abstraction of nature in to vast data collections -a practice that connects expeditionary science of the 19th Century with 21st Century expeditions like the GOS. Participants encounter a dream-like, highly abstract, and datadriven virtual world that combines the aesthetics of fine-lined copper engraving and grid-like layouts of 19th Century scientific representation with 21st Century digital aesthetics including wireframes and particle systems. It is resident at the Calit2 Immersive visualization Laboratory on the campus of UC San Diego, where it continues in active development. The installation utilizes a combination of infrared motion tracking, custom computer vision, multi-channel (10.1) spatialized interactive audio, 3D graphics, data sonification, audio design, networking, and the Varrier™ 60 tile, 100-million pixel barrier strip auto-stereoscopic display. Here we describe the physical and audio display systems for the installation and a hybrid strategy for multi-channel spatialized interactive audio rendering in immersive virtual reality that combines amplitude, delay and physical modeling-based, real-time spatialization approaches for enhanced expressivity in the virtual sound environment that was developed in the context of this artwork. The desire to represent a combination of qualitative and quantitative multidimensional, multi-scale data informs the artistic process and overall system design. We discuss the resulting aesthetic experience in relation to the overall system.
This paper describes the first steps in the creation of a new scientific and musical instrument to be released in 2019 for the 400th anniversary of Johannes Kepler's Harmonies of the World, which laid out his three laws of planetary motion and launched the field of modern astronomy. Concordia is a musical instrument that is modularly extensible, with its first software and hardware modules and underlying framework under construction now. The instrument is being designed in an immersive extended-reality (XR) environment with scientifically accurate visualizations and datatransparent sonifications of planetary movements rooted in the musical and mathematical concepts of Johannes Kepler [1], extrapolated into visualizations by Hartmut Warm [2], and sonified. Principles of game design, data sonification/visualization optimization, and digital and analog music synthesis are used in the 3D presentation of information, the user interfaces (UX), and the controls of the instrument, with an optional DIY hardware “cockpit” interface. The instrument hardware and software are both designed to be modular and open source; Concordia can be played virtually without the DIY cockpit on a mobile platform, or users can build or customize their own interfaces, such as traditional keyboards, button grids, or gestural controllers with haptic feedback to interact with the system. It is designed to enable and reward practice and virtuosity through learning levels borrowed from game design, gradually building listening skills for decoding sonified information. The frameworks for uploading, verifying, and accessing the data; programming and verifying hardware and software module builds; tracking of instrument usage; and managing the instrument's economic ecosystem are being built using a combination of distributed computational technologies and peer-to-peer networks, including blockchain and the Interplanetary Filesystem (IPFS). Participants in Concordia fall into three general categories, listed here in decreasing degrees of agency: 1) Contributors; 2) Players; and 3) Observers. This paper lays out the broad structure of Concordia, describes progress on the first software module, and explores the creative, social, economic, and educational potential of Concordia as a new type of creative ecosystem.
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