Robert Marshall's Geodesic Dome in the UM Natural History Museum Rotunda

UPDATE on 11/19/2013:

This nicely edited version of the video from the shoot by Donald Harrison has just been posted on Vimeo.

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Robert Marshall, a local geek and tinkerer, built this very large rotating geodesic Dome.  He has taken it to several Maker Fares where it has been a great hit.  When he had it in New York City, it was so popular he wore out 2 sets of the turntable it sits on!

People can get inside and get spun around, or just enjoy it from the exterior.

While not, strictly speaking, a UM gig, Amy Harris (Museum Director) and Matt Linke (Planetarium Director and long time DMC friend) were involved in making this happen.  Matt is usually involved in anything physical that is out of the ordinary at the Museum, like the Dance events that I have been involved with.

This is from the evening of Sept. 15th when Robert, Donald Harrison, Amy Nesbitt and I set the Dome up in the rotunda of the UM Exhibit Museum (on N. University at the bus stops).  We had one of Mike Gould's Lumia lasers (also used later on the North Campus) and some normal video lights.

When the finished video is posted I will add a link.
 In the meantime enjoy these couple of clips from that night.

-t

(You can see these movies in HD on YouTube if you choose to do so.)

Final pieces are attached by Robert, 

with assistant (Amy Nesbitt) and documentarian (Donald Harrison) in place.

The dome gets a spin.

2013 Scarlett Middle School Visit

On Thursday July 11th 2013 we had 70 middle school kids and about 15 School of Education graduate students descend on the Digital Media Commons for a tour and activities.

We met the week before with Charles Dershimer and planned how it would all go, deciding to split the group into manageable chunks.   Here's a schematic of the final schedule:

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Things went more or less according to plan, and everyone had a wonderful experience.  I'll be posting more photos when I get some from the Scarlett folks, but this was Kathryn Young's lovely email the next day:

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A couple of photos from Elly Schmitt (more to come!)

Steve Eberle and kids in front of the green screen on the monitor on
the left is the final composited image of them on Mt. Everest.

In the CCA waiting to go to the next activity.

In theVideo Game Archive

The Green Screen in DL1

The chromakey setup for the News

The kids on the News set

Adding their own voices to Toy Story

More Toy Story

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And this all started with a seemingly simple request that arrived in Rob Pettigrew's email.
(feel free to skip along through the emails; I just wanted to keep the record)

-------------- <edited versions of emails> -------------------

On Wed, May 29, 2013 at 9:59 AM, Ralph Dershimer <dersh@umich.edu> wrote:

The School of Education MAC program has our teaching interns working with Ann Arbor Middle school students at Scarlett Middle school in a summer school clinical program this June and July. 

We would like to bring the middle school students, and the teaching interns, (about 100 people total) to visit North Campus on day in July for an enrichment field trip as part of the collaboration between Scarlett and UM. 

Best-

Charles

..........................................................

R. Charles Dershimer, PhD

Clinical Assistant Professor

U-M Director, W. K. Kellogg Foundation’s Woodrow Wilson Michigan Teaching Fellowships

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From: Ralph Dershimer <dersh@umich.edu>

Date: Thu, May 30, 2013 at 6:56 AM

Rob, Glenda, Kathi and Dan-

I really appreciate this- this short event will have long term impacts on the lives of the students who visit. The date we are now focusing on is July 11th with the visit occurring between 12:30 and 2:00. 

I'm also connecting you Kathryn Young and Ari Bartolacci from the SOE who are both far more organized that I am and will likely be organizing the logistics of the tour. 

Best to everyone-

Charles

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On May 30, 2013, at 6:58 AM, Ralph Dershimer <dersh@umich.edu> wrote:

Hey Tom- I hope all is well-

Please see the message trail below - interested in getting involved in any of this on a personal level...?

Charles

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On Jun 12, 2013, at 3:06 PM, Ralph Dershimer <dersh@umich.edu> wrote:

Glenda and Tom- 

Thanks for making time to meet today- I think the ideas we generated are fantastic! The Scarlett students will really enjoy and learn from the experiences you all agreed to provide. 

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On Jul 6, 2013, at 10:52 AM, Tom Bray <tbray@umich.edu> wrote:

Hi Charles-

So I'm writing a script for the video studio groups to use when they are here.  I would like to include things about Scarlett that they would find fun and interesting, like "Principal Smith to serve 2 weeks of detention for chewing gum in the hallway", etc.  If there are particular figures at the school whose mention would be fun, if you can think of some situation to put them in, etc. that would be great.  I was also thinking of shooting some exterior video of the school so we could put one of them 'on the scene' via chromakey.

Any ideas would be great, and thanks.

-t

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Here's the rundown on the activities:

Tom Bray, Jacques Mersereau, Jeff Alder, Dave Greenspan and Ryan Wilcox in the Video Studio:

Students will either be on screen or operating cameras, audio, switching and recording equipment to make a TV newscast.

Steve Eberle in ChromaScreen/DL-1:   

Learn how the magic of greenscreen/bluescreen chromakey technology is used in TV and films. Stand on the surface of Mars!  Climb Mt. Everest!   Deliver a news report on a virtual news set!  It can all be done in front of the Digital Media Commons’ chroma screen.

Rishi Daftuar in the EM Studios:

Learn how the movie studios record the dialog for movies by recording your own voices as the characters in scenes from Toy Story.  Watch the scene as you record your voice along with the original characters.  Play it back and hear you performing the scene!

Dave Carter and the Video Game Archive:

See the evolution of video games first hand as you get to see real games, from early stand-alone consoles to the first “TV” games to some of today’s hardware.  Get a chance to play some of these games while you are there.

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And here's the script I wrote for the Newscast:

<roll news music>

<fade UP Music & Graphic>

<fade Music under as we dissolve to 2 shot of anchors and hear from off-camera...>

ANNC:  Around the world, across the nation and up your street, it's the Scarlett Middle School News…..

<Music out; mics UP>

<cut to CU of A1>

A1: Good morning and welcome to the Scarlett News.  Our top story is a report that Mr. Sobolewski got into trouble this morning during a staff meeting - for passing notes.  We are still waiting for confirmation on this, but it seems he was trying to get Ms. Racine's Pillsbury Bake-off-winning recipe for ice cream sandwiches.  It is not clear whether he actually got the recipe during the meeting or if Ms. Racine gave it to him after class.

<cut to CU of A2>

A2: And now we take you live to Scarlett Middle School, where our field reporter is covering a breaking story.

<roll tape of Scarlett School for chromakey>

<cut to MS of student keyed over footage of Scarlett exterior>

A3:  Thanks, <NAME> . The story here concerns Mr. Vazquez's bullhorn, which has gone missing.

<CU A2>

A2: Do we know what happened to it?

<MS A3>

A3: Nothing has been ruled out yet, but at the moment it appears that he simply misplaced it.

<CU A2>

A2: We understand that the Roadrunner has also gone missing.  Are there any suspicions that he might have run off with the bullhorn?

<MS A3>

A3: They just want the roadrunner for questioning.

<CU A1>

A1: Has anyone actually ever heard him talk without the bullhorn?

<MS A3>

A3: (pause) No.

<CU A2>

A2: Thanks <NAME>. Thats all the time we have for the news for now.  Until next time, have a good time.

<roll news music>

<DISS to news graphic as music comes under and up>

<FADE to BLK>

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-t

DMC Video Studio, University of Michigan

Digital Media Commons Video Studio - a short tour


These few photos and video clip only give a VERY rough idea of what our studi is like.  I'll be adding to it but wanted to put something up here since I was asking you all about your studios.  I hope it gives you some idea of our space.  These are stills taken from various uses of the space that kind of show its scale.  The floor plan has actual measurements.

Finally there is this 3D modeled walk-through of the studio done several years ago by a student.  Not too exciting, but it gives you a better sense of the room, the walls, etc.

PlanetBlue Visit to the A2 MRF

Check out the City of Ann Arbor's 5 minute video on how single stream recycling works:

Single Stream Recycling

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On Friday June 28, a bus full of Planet Blue Ambassadors took a trip to the Materials Recovery Facility  (MRF) out near Platt & Ellsworth.

Looks like the sign had an accident.

 This is where all the sorting of recyclable materials happens, both for the City and for the UM.

The MRF building entrance.

After an orientation, we went in 2 groups for an inside tour after donning safety gear.

One of the things they told us was that they really don't want you to recycle small plastic lids or grocery bags.  The lids tend to get sorted as paper, and the bags tend to gum up the works of the conveyors - as sort of illustrated below.

Bag caught in the machinery.

Here is where the trucks dump the mixed recycles.

These doors stay open all year, whatever the weather!

Here is where the sorted recycles get bailed in preparation for shipping to the factories that use them.

The bailing machine is on the right.

The education center had some useful ways of getting the message across to school kids.

The most important thing we learned was to NOT recycle lids or grocery bags.  Who knew?

-t

Danceworks Projection at the UM Exhibit Museum

UPDATE  9-12-2013

They did a reprise of the show right after school started.  Here's 2 photos.

Here's a stitch of what the rotunda looked like from above.  We got the video almost 2x bigger this time around.

This time we used a large SANYO with 0.8:1 wide lens.  Same mylar mirror.

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earlier posting from June:

Here are some shots with dancers in them.  The first gives a good view of the venue and the second shows how they worked with the projections.  These were taken at a rehearsal.

The photographer is Kirk Donaldson.  The rest of his photos can be found on a June 7th post on the Ann Arbor Dance Works Facebook site:

https://www.facebook.com/kirkhabitat/media_set?set=a.10151900428102741.1073741834.730492740&type=1

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Early in June I worked with Peter Sparling (Dance Faculty) and Matt Linke (UMEM Planetarium Director and all around helpful guy) to devise a way to get the best possible projection onto the center of the rotunda floor from the second story mezzanine.  This was for the Danceworks summer site-specific show. Excerpted from the full site, here are short descriptions of the works presented:

"Four choreographers find inspiration in cutting edge scientific research taking place at the University of Michigan and beyond. 

-a new work by Edisa Weeks, inspired by the spiraling structures of DNA.

-Jessica Fogel premieres a dance inspired by the research of UM Associate Professor of Astronomy Sally Oey, whose focus is the role of massive stars in the evolution of galaxies.

With 'How Autophagy Works",  Peter Sparling offers a dancer’s guide to cell biology that is both spoof and serious interdisciplinary research, freely interpreting the ongoing cellular process of autophagy, or “self-eating”, the body’s method of cleansing, recycling and defending against disease.

-Robin Wilson performs a new solo inspired by the book "The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks", whose cells became one of the most important tools in medicine, vital for developing the polio vaccine, cloning, gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, and more."

Do visit their site for the full story.

Anyway, here's what the resulting projections looked like:

Peter created the circular images in his editing process.  The task was to find a way to make it as big as possible and as square (or round, actually) as possible.  If we had to shoot it at an angle there would be a lot of keystone distortion to try to correct.

The solution was to suspend a mylar mirror (saved from when the CAVE was refitted some years ago for just such possible uses) using 2 C-stands.  A C-stand is a standard film industry useful tripod style stand that holds lighting accessories or just about anything else that needs to be supported.

In this case, we set the poles at the top to be horizontal and attached the mirror to that.

The mirror is almost invisible in this shot, but you can see the projected image reflecting off of it.

This is Matt, the stage manager, and Peter:

Next is Peter and me adjusting the setup, followed by a shot taken just for the artistic merit.  ;^)

Unfortunately, I was at the NMC conference for the shows that weekend, but it was a big success.  If I can track down some photos I'll add them to this post.

-t

Judy Irvine (Michigan) and Liz Gunner (South Africa) at the DMC

This is a shot of Judy Irvine (Edward Sapir Collegiate Professor of Linguistic Anthropology and Professorr of Anthropology) & Liz Gunner (WITS Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Witswatersrand) working with me in the staff multimedia workroom at the DMC:

Liz is holding up her cell phone because they come to me for help in retrieving some audio recordings she had made with it.

I had originally met Liz in July of 2011 at the second Humanities conference sponsored by the UM African Studies Center.  Judy and other colleagues from UM were also at the conference, which was held in Johannesburg.

The two of them have been collaborating in South Africa for a while, and these recordings were from a recent visit to Soweto where they were pursuing a collaborative research project in linguistics.  Liz recorded several conversations using the audio recording function of her cell phone, as that was all she had with her at the time.

I digitized her recordings and tweaked them up to make them much more intelligible so they could better use them in their research.  All told it took about 3 hours, but they went away very satisfied with the resulting audio files.  I also put them up in Google Drive as MP3 files so they could grab them and put those files into their own Google space.

A lovely afternoon of international collaboration.  Liz was delighted that Judy had access to the resources and assistance to get to this next step in their research; she had been saving the recordings for almost a year trying to figure out what to do with them.

-t

2013 New Media Centers Conference

UM wins 2 Awards at the NMC

The UM Team won both the Audience Choice Award and one of the Judge's Awards for their Idea Lab presentation called "Connectedness, Openness and Evolution in a Learning Space", which presented the research they did with Steve Lonn on Design Lab 1

Quoting from John Williams:

"Linda Knox and Matthew Barritt presented some of the CLE/Design Lab 1/GROCS research (under Steve Lonn's direction) at the national NMC conference this week. The presentation included an interactive "create your own connected learning environment" - a somewhat high-risk proposition for this audience. It seems the principles of active peer-to-peer learning works even among the pros. Of course this included Matthew's presentation. Note that the pipe cleaner and cardboard CLE included a second interactive media display - the iPad in the left of the picture.

NMC is one of the most active learning technologies higher-ed groups, has strong pedagogical emphasis, includes many research universities, and does the research that they co-publish with ELI: EduCause as the annual Horizon Report on emerging learning technologies in higher-ed - suggested reading:  http://www.nmc.org/publications/2013-horizon-report-higher-ed"

Herein I include a bit of the inside information of how this came to be.  It should be noted that this model was made almost entirely from the broad array of "sketching tools" available in DL1.  We had to buy more magnets, more alligator clips and a bit of fabric (and only because it was a better loose-weave match than the fabric on hand).

This photo shows the 2 table layout for the NMC setup:
- a laptop on the right screening some of the timelapse footage from DL1 that was part of the research
- the foreground table holding the interactive model of DL1

You can see (from left to right):      - the projection screen ( iPad Mini)
                                                   - the green screen corner
                                                   - the workbench and shelves (just flat photos for the model)
                                                   - the conversation area
                                                   - the glass wall (one panel with the "Welcome to DL1" sign)
                                                   - the timelapse laptop (on second table)
                                                   - and you can also see the 2 prize ribbons in front...

The way it worked was that you could choose a Pipe Cleaner Person, use one of our pre-made faces or draw one yourself, place the face in the head loops, then stick the feet into the styrofoam base/floor of DL1.  If you made the right connections there (an LED person, a battery person, a connector person) your idea (LED) would come to light (light up)!

Here's the Video fly-through of our DL1 model - a video is worth 100,000 words:


Tom showing a step in building the Pipe Cleaner People.

The People Holder made from cable racks, a bookend and lots of tiny binder clips.

Linda lowering the last floor pieces into the suitcase for travel.

Here is Linda showing the model to a couple of the attendees.
Note the shining green LEDs in the model in the photo below.

Matthew talking about the research findings with attendees.
In the photo on the right the attendee is from Case Western University in Ohio, and we discovered that they are embarking on the construction of similar spaces.  We plan to talk further with them about organizing near future collaborations and activities, hopefully including faculty from both institutions.

              

Here's what it looked like most of the time: very busy!

The supply of People & screens that attendees could add to the model, and a happy participant.

                          

Here's a link to a quick stop-frame animation I made on the "set", also below.

And finally a shot of me with my very own pipe-cleaner avatar!

(the sign says "You can make a movie - it's easy!")

It was both fun and a great presentation of the work.  The photos I did not get include:

  - Linda ironing the graphics that had curled
  - me finishing making all the People at the desk in her room
  - putting various panels under a book under the TV in her room to flatten out the wall pieces

-t