By Julieta González

While technology has enteredinto almost every aspect of research and academia, when it comes to the Treistman Fine Arts Center for New Media, Michael Holcomb says that it's still about artists creating.

Holcomb, assistant dean for digital arts, says technology in the arts covers all the disciplines, including music, theatre and visual art, and that creative people across the college are inventing and producing works.

"The nature of this technology, however, is such that it allows and encourages us to reach out to collaborators and partners in other disciplines," says Holcomb. The Center is involved with departments that have technology as the core of their studies, such as computer science, engineering and even parts of social and behavioral sciences. The value of a partnership with Fine Arts expands that core. "Artists are in the business of conceptualizing, so they are more than problem solvers," says Holcomb. "They invent problems to be solved. Artists look at things in a unique and very open way because they are trained to step outside the box and consider things from a number of different vantage points. That's an enormous advantage in difficult, complex conceptualizing around research issues."

Creating art is about creating form. "Artists invent new form and they are very particular about the nature and manifestation of form including the deep relationship and integrity of a work. To them, it has to be as near to perfect as can be achieved," says Holcomb. Therefore, he considers artists excellent people to have involved in various research paths for advice and collaboration.

The Treistman Center is the research and development center for technology in the arts. A number of initiatives are housed within the Center and others are distributed among an array of technology-related projects throughout The University of Arizona campus. Some of these include virtual reality projects, rapid prototyping, an inter-face project for blind musicians, the Entertainment Technologies Institute and work with Internet 2.

Lucy Petrovich, a resident researcher in the Treistman Center, heads up the virtual reality initiative. She also teaches virtual reality in the digital arts Master in Fine Arts program which begins at the UA in fall 2005. Using CAVE virtual reality technologies, Petrovich has created a virtual world that encompasses the deaths of undocumented migrants along the Arizona/Mexico border. "It is a 'smart' environment made up of fragments of actual space and media abstractions where a visitor to the exhibit can virtually travel in that space. Yet, it's more of a work of art than an attempt to replicate what the actual experience is like," says Holcomb.

At this point these technologies can travel in myriad directions. Applications including video games and new software. One possibility, explains Holcomb, is the development of software that can create virtual objects that are distributed over Internet 2 and simultaneously shared at a number of nodes on the planet. "We could be designing an object, say a telephone for instance," says Holcomb. "Design teams can be situated in London, Tokyo and in Tucson. They'd all be in the same virtual space and in real-time work on the same phone design. They can change the shape of it, change the color and so forth. This creates a distributed design environment that can ultimately become a very powerful tool for many applications."

While the next generation Internet is still in the development process, Holcomb says the teaching application has begun in the College of Fine Arts. This has allowed faculty to take on innovative teaching activities such as conducting master class teaching. Music Professor Carrol M. McLaughlin held a master class on performance anxiety with UA students and with students at Carnegie Mellon University. Students and faculty were able to see each other and speak to each other in real time. This model of research, says Holcomb, will continue to expand and be implemented in teaching.

Rapid prototyping and 3-D scanning technologies allow researchers to create actual three-dimensional models. The College of Fine Arts, in partnership with the colleges of Engineering and Architecture and Landscape Architecture presently have three prototype machines. No longer the stuff of science fiction, this technology creates physical 3-D objects from digital data. It uses photo-polymer materials that can be drilled, tapped, sanded, painted and electroplated to replicate the look and feel of the original object.

Engineering design and medicine are potential fields for the widespread use of this technology. Medical applications include bone scans that can generate an accurate 3-D model of a bone for replacement. Ultimately, the use of 3-D prototyping may expand into other disciplines on campus, including anthropology and archaeology.

Additionally, a new technology that has evolved from the principles of 3-D is what is called a "non-contact 3-D scanner." Holcomb says it "looks like an old-fashioned box camera." Its function is to scan for distance through the lense, locating up to 400,000 points of distance in a single pass. The scanner reads the three dimensional contour as well as a complete form. If the object is rotated in front of the camera, it will read it in the round. "Essentially," says Holcomb "it digitizes whatever you put in front of it." Uses for the scanner include the digitalization of building façades, people or artifacts. The objects can be scanned and then output on prototyping machines. According to Holcomb, the scanners are highly accurate.

In the College of Fine Arts, rapid prototyping and scanning are used in sculpture, theatre scenic design and in cinematic design. College of Fine Arts Professor Frank McGuire has created a student collaboration with a parallel, 3-D-modeling course at Bradley University in Illinois. Students exchange and modify 3-D portraits over the Internet, outputting the results with rapid prototyping technologies.

In another College of Fine Arts research initiative, J. Timothy Kolosick, professor of music, and Wiley Ross, recording studio coordinator, are conducting research for the development of a project to assist blind musicians and other blind individuals who aspire to work in the recording industry. "So much of that business is inherently technological," says Holcomb. "The music studio is entirely computerized with all of the interfaces designed for the sighted, especially in sound editing where everything is displayed as visual information." In collaboration with the College of Engineering, College of Fine Arts graduate students and faculty are looking into interfaces that are auditory or tactile and sensory.

Entertainment technologies, robotics, sound and lighting boards are elements now necessary for stage productions, cinema, theme parks, shopping malls and even some restaurants. Holcomb points to Las Vegas as a location where these technologies are in use. "Certainly we're working in the theatre, but the technologies have gone way beyond that. It's places like Las Vegas where the environment is controlled and modified to create an entirely different surrounding. The demands are so exacting for artistic production that if a new software is needed along with the hardware to make the curtain go up on time, it's the most intense kind of laboratory experience anyone can have," says Holcomb. A collaboration between theatre design Professor Peter Beudert, electrical and computer engineering head Jerzy Rosenblit and William Assenmacher, president and CEO of the Tucson-based high tech manufacturing firm T. A. Caid, has resulted in a student-designed multi-unit system of intelligent robotic staging that can reposition itself in any number of configurations while understanding where the actors are in the middle of a performance.

In operation since 1993, the Treistman Center has grown and developed so many projects that Holcomb expects to patent some of that technology, especially that which applies to entertainment and virtual reality. Not only is the research and its applicable results helping a variety of industries, ranging from medicine to entertainment, but solid teaching collaborations across the campus and across the world are being formed. "And," observes Holcomb "it's a lot of fun stuff!"