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Sonification and Visualization at a Science Museum: the development of Soundspace, past exhibits and future work

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Friday, April 11, 2014
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm
Todd Berreth & Elizabeth Fleming · Duke MA+S & Museum of Life + Science
Visualization Friday Forum

The Museum of Life + Science in Durham has a long history of designing and creating engaging interactive experiences to encourage children to develop a love of science and technology, and to play in, explore and think about their world. This talk will focus on a collaboration between the Museum, Duke Arts, the Department of Music, and the Media Arts + Sciences/VIS Group ¿ Soundspace. This permanent exhibit was initially developed five years ago, and has recently been significantly redesigned. The installation allows visitors to "hear" their movements as they move around the room, and see a series of visualizations, which encourage active play, exploration and engagement. A grid of network cameras and a computer cluster drives the exhibit, employing computer vision techniques to precisely track movement and relay that data to custom sonification and visualization software. Soundspace features a sound design by Duke professor and composer, Scott Lindroth, and visualization/computer vision design by MA+S research programmer, Todd Berreth.We will talk about the development, design and technical implementation of the Soundspace installation, review some other projects at the Museum which feature computer-based visualization or sonification, and discuss future work in the early stages of development.

Contact: Angela Zoss