2016 (2014)
Virtual Reality/CAVE
Based on research by John Tsukayama. Voices by Richard Garella, Jeffrey Cousar, Laurel Katz , Darin Dunston. Made possible with support from the Electronic Visualization Laboratory of the University of Illinois, Temple University, and the University of Bergen
https://www.evl.uic.edu/entry.php?id=2208
Artists’ Statement:
Hearts and Minds: The Interrogations Project is an immersive digital media project that foregrounds veterans testimonies of US military interrogation practices and human rights abuses during the Iraq War, often by young and ill-trained soldiers who never entered the military expecting to become torturers and who find themselves struggling to reconcile the activities they were asked to do.
Drawing upon extensive interviews with veterans carried out by political scientist John Tsukayama following the Abu Ghraib accounts of abuse, this project is unique in building understanding of how a military with a just vision of its practices might allow the conditions for human rights abuses to occur.
The hybrid project was developed through a unique collaboration between filmmakers, artists, scientists, and researchers from four universities and developed in the immersive 3D CAVE2 at the University of Illinois-Chicago (UIC) for exhibition, educational institutions, museums and libraries, and distribution using tablets/ipads and Oculus Rift.
Hearts and Minds: The Interrogations Project was originally developed at the Electronic Visualization Lab (EVL) at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) for the CAVE2™, the next-generation large-scale virtual-reality 320-degree panoramic environment. The visualization environment serves as a dispositif for enacting individual and cultural memory of an institutionalized atrocity.
Bios:
Roderick Coover is Founding Director of the Documentary Arts and Ethnographic Practice Program. He makes films, interactive cinema, installations and webworks. A pioneer in interactive documentary arts and poetics, his works are distributed through Video Data Bank, DER, Eastgate Systems and featured at venues such as SIGGRAPH, Documenta Madrid, Chemical Heritage Foundation Museum among others. Coover is the recipient of Whiting, Mellon, LEF, and SPIRE awards, among others.
Scott Rettberg is Professor of Digital Culture in the Department of Linguistic, Literary, and Aesthetic studies at the University of Bergen, Norway. Rettberg was the project leader of ELMCIP (Electronic Literature as a Model of Creativity and Innovation in Practice), an EU- and HERA-funded collaborative research project, and a founder of the Electronic Literature Organization. Rettberg is the author or coauthor of novel-length works of electronic literature, combinatory poetry, and films. His creative work has been exhibited at venues such as the Palazzo dell Arti Napoli, Beall Center, the Slought Foundation and The Krannert Art Museum.
Personal URLs: http://roderickcoover.com, http://retts.net, https://www.evl.uic.edu/entry.php?id=188, https://sites.google.com/site/arthurnishimoto/
Daria Tsoupikova is an Associate Professor in the School of Design and the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her research and artwork include development of virtual reality (VR) art projects and networked multi-user exhibitions for VR projection systems, such as the Cave Automatic Virtual Environment theatre (CAVE), as well as the design of interactive educational multimedia for children. Her VR research, publications and artwork explore the relationship between the aesthetics of virtual environments, traditional arts, and the effect of VR aesthetics on the user’s perceptions and emotions. Her work lies at the crossroads of artistic and technological innovation, and explores the potential of new media and interactivity in relation to traditional arts. Her current works are applications of computer graphics art to various research domains such as educational multimedia, cultural heritage and virtual rehabilitation for stroke survivors. Her work was exhibited and published at ACM SIGGRAPH, IEEE VR, ISEA and many other venues.
Arthur Nishimoto is a doctoral student in the Department of Computer Science and Research Assistant at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His research interests include user interaction on large scalable resolution display environments, virtual reality, and video game design. He has previously developed interactive applications on the EVL Cyber-Commons multi-touch wall including the 20-foot Virtual Canvas and Fleet Commander which has been exhibited at SIGGRAPH and Supercomputing. He is currently working on user interface design for large multi-touch walls as well as designing immersive interactive applications for the CAVE2TM Hybrid-Reality Environment.