RiverWeb
Description: As one of the world's major natural systems,
the Mississippi River is a rich subject for multi-disciplinary
exploration. The beauty and complexity of ecological principles
and the laws of physics can be discovered in its flow. The
transforming power of technology and engineering can be seen
in human-made structures that regulate and control its movement.
It is now part of a vast commercial network of global proportions.
Reflecting its vast and varied watershed, it is home to a
wealth of biological diversity, despite a highly industrialized
society that has greatly altered it along with its basin.
Stretches of the Upper Mississippi River system will soon
be "contained" within the confines of digital museum
displays. Funded by a major grant from the National Science
Foundation, NCSA, in partnership with three Midwestern science
museums is developing a series of simulations that will employ
state of the art visualization and virtual reality technologies
to demonstrate to adults, families and school students how
the Mississippi behaves as a complex, dynamic, integrated
river system. The interactive displays to be prototyped and
installed during the project will enable visitors to explore
the subtle dynamics of the river basin over varying scales
of time and space, past, present and future.
At NCSA, a team of environmental scientists, visualization
experts, interaction designers, display technologists, programmers
and education researchers are prototyping the Digital River
Basin, a modular software and data architecture that will
support dynamic, extensible visitor explorations of selected
characteristics of the river and its watershed. The NCSA team
is also evaluating a number of interactive display technologies
and input devices through which visitors will interact with
the exhibits individually or as groups. In addition, NCSA
will be collaborating with its museum partners in developing
web-based learning resources to complement the museum exhibits.
My Role: I was the creative architect for the RiverWeb project.
My duties included designing the installation artistically
and technically, prototyping and developing iterations of
each application and installation, creating the dynamic sound
environment using VSS (a virtual sound server/scheduler),
and guide programmers and designers in their individual efforts.
I interacted directly with the grant's principle investigator
(David Curtis, dcurtis@ncsa.uiuc.edu). Previous duties included
lead application designer for the 1997 National Endowment
for Humanities funded CDROM.
Alpha Prototype Mockups describing the museum-based
installation. Presented at the Museum Consortium Meeting,
March 1999.
Concept, images, and composites by Juhan Sonin.
The Alpha Prototype website can be accessed at this address:
http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Cyberia/RiverWeb/Prototype/index.html
Beta Prototype version/iteration 1.0. Entire re-design
of the concept - physical interfaces are moved towards touch
screens, 'water-less' and all digitial interfaces, etc. Presented
to grant partners in October 1999.
Concept, images, and composites by Juhan Sonin
The Beta Prototype Mockups can be accessed at this address:
http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Cyberia/RiverWeb/Prototype_B/
Beta Prototype iteration 1.1. Expanded documentation
and concept development (on Beta v.1.0) which includes three
remote workstations (interfaces into the Digital River Basin),
filter control by users, and basic product breakdown. Presented
at Museum Consortium Meeting in Feb 2000.
Concept, images, and composites by Juhan Sonin.
The Beta Prototype v1.1 website can be accessed at this address:
http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Cyberia/RiverWeb/Prototype_C/index.html
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