It doesn’t take long for the audience to sense that Unconscious in the Sistine Chapel isn’t a typical stage play. For one thing there are no props or scenery pieces. Instead, the backgrounds, including the elaborate artwork of the Sistine Chapel, are created using interactive projected lighting technology. A hologram of sorts. As the play unfolds, the audience realizes that this is a conversation about the power and influence of big data, using big data processes to create the action. David Clark, an Associate Professor of Media Arts at NSCAD University, is one of the creative minds behind the landmark play. “The play is an exploration of big data,” he says. “It asks the question whether we can extract physical data from artifacts in history. Clark is no stranger to this kind of production. His award-winning multimedia projects have appeared at venues including Sundance, the SIGGRAPH Computer Conference, Transmediale in Berlin, and the Museum of Moving Images in New York. But he admits that Unconscious in the Sistine Chapel is unlike anything he’s worked on before. “There are a few things we’re inventing,” he says. “We’re doing things like using interactive props. For example, when an actor picks up a pair of binoculars and starts scanning the horizon with them, the projection of what he is seeing can be seen by the audience.” At the core of the technology is the “holodeck” of the Sistine Chapel, an effect created using a networked eight projector array. The new technology also lights the actors with body position tracking technology. Daniel Oulton is the creative technologist and programmer who is designing the body position tracking technology. The play is a piece of speculative fiction about a chance encounter in 1905 between psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, author James Joyce and their companions in the Sistine Chapel. The action is interspersed with scenes of two modern characters; Phoebe, an archivist with a romantic view of history, and Phil, an investor working on a project that uses virtual reality environments reconstructed by data mining to re-animate history. Through the course of the play, it becomes clear that the interaction between Freud and Joyce is a manifestation of Phil’s project. Michael MacKenzie is the author of Unconscious in the Sistine Chapel. “He’s an early innovator of virtual technology in theater,” says Clark. “My involvement began two summers ago when Michael workshopped the play. We started talking about using a large amount of technology to convey ideas about big data and history.” ACENET is providing support for the project by sponsoring Unconscious in the Sistine Chapel through its Advanced Research Computing Sponsorship Program. The organization is also providing technical consultation to the project. “We were able to connect with the ACENET Data Cave at Saint Mary’s,” says Clark. “They provided a lot of technical advice.” The play will debut at the new Halifax Central Library’s O’Regan Hall. The production has been designed specifically for the library space. “We’ve scaled O’Regan Hall to the dimensions of the Sistine Chapel,” says Clark. “The challenge will be to develop the production for other theatre companies.” Despite the technical innovations, the real purpose behind the play is to get people talking, says Clark. “We’re hoping this will stimulate conversations about the power of big data.”
Showcase Tag: Software Tools
Software Tools for Scientific Researchers
Paul Muir’s research has focused on developing software to help scientists accomplish their goals. Muir is a professor in the Department of Mathematics and Computing Science at Saint Mary’s University. He is the co-author of a number of software packages including MIRKDC, BVP_SOLVER, EPDCOL, BACOL, BACOLR, and the new BACOLI – software that can be applied in analyzing complex systems in a variety of scientific fields. Over his career he has worked with researchers on computer based projects in fields such as fibre optics, genetics, computational finance, and on applications such as blast dynamics, epidemiology and pharmacokinetics. “Computational work is now a major part of what is being done by people in the sciences,” he says. “At the same time they’re collecting a lot of data. My research involves the development of software tools to help scientists solve complex mathematical models that arise in their research. I am also interested in efforts to help scientists better manage computer based workflow in their research.” One of Muir’s most recent investigations involved simulating the growth of brain tumours. The project started out as a test challenge for Muir and his ACENET summer student Alex MacKenzie and the BACOLI solver. “We didn’t develop the model, but we were interested to see how well our software would work in solving the model,” says Muir. One of the challenges is that a brain tumour grows at a different rate in the white and grey matter regions of the brain. “We developed a different representation for the rate of diffusion of the tumour that allowed for a sharp but continuous transition between the regions, and successfully applied our software to this modified model.” Muir says that while some people have the perception that computer simulations are highly accurate, this is not necessarily the case. There are always computational errors and it is important to deal with them using software that provides adaptive error control. It’s a perception that Muir works hard to try to change. “It’s my mantra – for accurate and efficient computations you have to use software that adapts the computation on-the-fly to attempt to control some estimate of the error. This improves both the accuracy and efficiency of the computation.” Muir and MacKenzie also worked with the Saint Mary’s ACENET Data Cave – a powerful three dimensional immersive environment designed for visualizing data. The goal was to make the cave more accessible to scientists who might not be comfortable using complex software. “Alex developed new software tools that sit on top of the cave software already available – software that can make the facility more accessible to scientists who do not have a strong programming background.”, says Muir. Muir is enthusiastic about the efforts of Software Carpentry (http://software-carpentry.org), an organization that teaches computing skills to help researchers in science, engineering, medicine, and related disciplines. He has recently organized two Software Carpentry boot camps at Saint Mary’s; ACENET co-hosted the sessions and also provided resource support to help with the workshops. The boot camps teach researchers how to better manage the computer-based workflow in their lives. “There are great computational tools out there.” he says. “But if scientists don’t know how to use these tools, they’re missing out on a lot of potential scientific advancement.”