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The AlloSphere, a 30-foot diameter sphere built inside a 3-story near-to-anechoic cube was invented by composer and digital media pioneer Dr. JoAnn Kuchera-Morin, to facilitate research that intersects arts and science through the immersive, interactive representation and transformation of complex systems. Scientifically, the AlloSphere is an instrument for gaining insight and developing bodily intuition about environments into which the body cannot venture—abstract higher-dimensional information spaces, ideally suited for exploring big and complex data sets. Artistically, it is an instrument for the creation and performance of avant-garde new works and the development of new modes and genres of expression and forms of immersion-based entertainment. The AlloSphere is one of the largest immersive scientific instruments in the world containing unique features such as true 3D, 360-degree projection of visual and aural data, and sensing and camera tracking for interactivity. The instrument is built at its scale and size to facilitate scaling to any computational platform, including mobile devices.

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Dr Roginska will talk about the latest developments in immersive audio and emerging trends in the field of spatial audio. Her talk will touch on ongoing projects at NYU in the field of immersive sound including research in capturing, reproducing, and simulating immersive experiences for Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Reality. 

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Monte Carlo (MC) path-tracing is now the most common rendering algorithm used in industries ranging from architectural visualization to feature film production. MC rendering systems produce photorealistic images by simulating the physical flow of light through paths in the scene. However, if too few light paths are computed, the images are filled with objectionable noise, which made MC rendering unfeasible for over two decades. Today, MC denoising algorithms are the most popular tool for removing this noise, and they have been used in films such as Disney’s “Big Hero 6” and featured in products such Pixar’s Renderman and NVIDIA's Iray. However, it was only a few years ago that these post-process, screen-space denoising approaches were considered unsuitable for tackling even small amounts of MC noise, because it was thought they would either leave noise artifacts or overblur scene detail.

In this talk, we will present a first-hand account of the MC denoising revolution that has unfolded over the past decade and the key innovations that made it possible. We begin in the summer of 2008, when we observed the industrial “best-practices” for dealing with MC noise at Sony Pictures Imageworks, one of the first studios to adopt a path-tracer as the primary renderer. The limitations of the available approaches used in production motivated us to start exploring the possibility of robust MC denoising algorithms.

The first key idea we developed that we could output several features computed at render time (sample positions, surface normals, texture values) to make the denoiser more robust and effectively turn the rendering system into a black box. Since these features often contained MC noise, we realized we had to carefully adjust the manner in which these features were used from pixel to pixel in order to remove the noise but preserve the scene detail. The resulting system was the first to demonstrate that high-quality, post-process general MC denoising was indeed possible.


In subsequent work, we observed that the problem could be modeled as a supervised learning problem that would train a system to reproduce a denoised output from noisy inputs. Since training a full denoiser given a limited number of scenes was difficult, we trained an end-to-end system that would output the parameters of a filter that would produce a result comparable to the ground truth. Later, we extended this idea to work compute the final color directly, allowing the denoiser to work robustly in production environments. Our new system, developed in collaboration with Disney and Pixar, was trained using millions of examples from the Pixar film “Finding Dory” and then applied as a proof-of-concept to denoise the renderings for the upcoming Pixar films Cars 3 and Coco, even though they had completely different artistic styles and color palettes. Although MC denoising has been credited as being one of two key “enabling technologies” that brought path-tracing to feature film production, the journey is far from over. We conclude the talk by discussing future directions for MC denoising, and describe how it fits among the pantheon of tools available for variance reduction.

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In this presentation, we will discuss the potentialities that fieldwork offers to many aspects of the media arts creative research practice. Fieldwork opens exciting and challenging experiences from designing gathering data processes to the implementation of collaboration strategies. The interaction with professionals with expertise in the field such as anthropologists, archaeologists, and biologists has the potential to illuminate and transform our practice because it contributes to the re-elaboration of the limits of what happens inside the laboratory. Examples of practical projects in collaboration with professor George Legrady, Angus Forbes, Jonathan Pagliaro and Gabriel Zea will be presented. On the other hand, considering transmission e information display as a crucial component of sharing knowledge and artistic experiences, some projects on exhibition design will be presented, from the James Bay Cultural Atlas to the Macondo Pavillion, from Visualization History Expo to the preparations of the Siggraph 2018 Art Gallery in Vancouver.

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Magda El Zarki currently holds the position of Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of California, Irvine, where she is involved in various research activities related to telecommunication networks and networked computer games. She is currently the Director of the Institute of Virtual Environments and Computer Games and was the co-creator of the Computer Game Science Degree program which she directed for the first 2 years. Prior to joining UC, Irvine, she was an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia where she also held the position of Director of the Telecommunications Program. She was director of the Networked Systems Graduate Program at UC, Irvine from 2005 – 2007. From 1992 – 1996 she held the position of Professor of Telecommunications at the Technical University of Delft, Delft, The Netherlands. She was the recipient of the Cor Wit Chair in Telecommunications at TU Delft from 2004 – 2006. Ms. El Zarki has served as an editor for several journals in the telecommunications area, and is still actively involved in many international conferences. She was on the board of governors of the IEEE Communications society and was the vice chair of the IEEE Tech. Committee for Computer Communications. She is co-author of the textbook: Mastering Networks – An Internet Lab Manual.

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Scott Ross Bio: Dr. Ross is one of the most notable pioneers in digital media, technology and entertainment. He founded, along with James Cameron, Digital Domain, one of the largest digital production studios in the motion picture and advertising industries. Under Ross’ direction, Digital Domain garnered multiple Academy Award nominations, receiving its first Oscar for the ground breaking visual effects in TITANIC. A second Oscar for WHAT DREAMS MAY COME and a third for THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON followed that success. Under his watch, Digital Domain also developed the compositing software, NUKE, which to this day is still the industry standard. Prior to forming Digital Domain he led George Lucas’ vast entertainment empire, running ILM, Skywalker Sound, LucasFilm Commercial Productions and DroidWorks. Ross has played a significant role in the worldwide advertising industry as well. Having started commercial production companies whilst at LucasFilm (ILM and LCP) as well as Digital Domain’s Commercials Division, he has led two of the largest VFX commercial production companies on the planet.

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Ewen Chardronnet is an author, journalist, curator and artist from France. He has since the early 90s participated in many artistic endeavors (music, performances, films, fanzines, installations, residences, production, group exhibitions) and wrote as an essayist in numerous publications and participated in numerous conferences. He has served on various boards and committees in the field of art and technology, and has worked as a consultant. He co-founded with the collective Bureau d'études The Laboratory Planet journal and write regularly on art&science and maker&hacker cultures in Makery.info magazine. Active in the field of space culture since 1995, he released in 2016 a non-fiction narrative book on the life of the founders of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory between 1935 and 1955 (Mojave Epiphanie, Inculte, march 2016) with the support of the UCIRA. Ewen Chardronnet will introduce his new project for an art&science residency program at the Roscoff Marine Station in Brittany, France ; as well as the recently co-founded Aliens in Green artists group, a tactical theater project where these « Aliens in Green are agents from a planet-turned-laboratory allowing earthlings to identify the numerous collisions between capitalist and xenopolitical forces.