CRCA-Related Events

Over the summer CRCA takes a break from public events, so we try to promote activities and public presentations by our researchers. These may take place anywhere throughout the United States or internationally, and some have net components that allow you to view or interact with them remotely. We hope you will check back again for other exciting offerings by CRCA artists and researchers, and drop us a line if you'd like to be placed on our email announcement or event list: crca@ucsd.edu.

Ecce Homology
at SIGGRAPH 2005
Art Gallery and Emerging Technologies program
July 31 - August 4

CRCA researcher, Ruth West, is the project director for Ecce Homology, an innovative, interactive art installation that gives new meaning to the adage “art imitates life.” Ecce Homology has been selected for presentation at this summer’s SIGGRAPH 2005 - the 32nd International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, to be held at the Los Angeles Convention Center, July 31 - August 5.

The installation uses calligraphy to depict genetic sequences as images, or pictographs, and a whole-body computer vision interface and immersive projection to allow visitors to interact with genomic data. Aptly named after Friedrich Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo, a meditation on how one becomes what one is, Ecce Homology explores human evolution by examining similarities—or what scientists call “homology”—between genes from human beings and the rice genome. Central to the exhibit is audience participation. By moving their bodies slowly within the 40-foot wide immersive projection visitors create shimmering light-filled traces that trigger bio-informatic comparisons between human and rice genes using an algorithm called BLAST (Basic Local Alignment Search Tool). The BLAST analyses are made visible in real-time and shown as changes in the genetic pictograms, which are cast onto the walls of the exhibit by five video projectors.

Ecce Homology will also be featured in an article in the August 2005 issue of Leonardo, MIT’s journal for the application of contemporary science and technology to the arts and music. Ecce Homology is supported at UCSD by Sixth College, CRCA, the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) and the National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research (NCMIR).

C5 Landscape Initiative

C5 corporation, whose founding members include CRCA visual arts researcher Brett Stalbaum, exhibited the C5 Landscape Initiative at San Francisco Camerawork in May, 2005 (5/24/05 thru 6/25/05). As Christiane Paul (adjunct curator of new media arts at the Whitney Museum of American Art) describes it "In its multiple manifestations, The C5 Landscape Initiative is positioned in the overlapping zones of conceptual, performance, and land art, as well as research, business, and exploratory adventure, raising questions about the contexts in which we construct meaning and about the status of exploration in art itself."

The exhibition is complimented by a link on the Whitney ArtPortal, where you can explore C5's expedition documentation, project logs and routes. You may also download the Landscape Initiative GPS Media Player through this site.

Check back in early September 2005 for new listings for the Fall, including the official opening of Calit2 and the CRCA/New Media Arts wing.

To be placed on our Events Notification email or snailmail list, send your name and contact info to: crca@ucsd.edu.

Have a great summer!