Fall, 2024

The XA USC Research Collaborations Fund Grant culminated in the Grand Opening of the Lowell Astronomy Discovery Center, and the summer residency funded by Lowell Observatory since 2022.  

Daniel Chit mentored Dine'/Navajo Artist Jara Nez a first-time animator who created beautiful animations depicting the first nations mythology and understanding of the universe.

Zeping Sun was responsible for the grand finale in the Universe Theater animating scientific data using the process of sonification - converting data to sound. Zeping is also working on a visualization illustrating how light travels from the sun bounces off the icy surface of Pluto and is then captured by the Lowell Discovery telescope

Sijia Zheng was responsible for designing and animating Percy the AI character that tells the story of the science in the immersive theatre, moving across the screen and interacting with the actors.

XA alum Ros Fiol Lowell summer residency 2022 was responsible for sculptural installation in the Discovery Center lobby featuring Dr Richard Weinberg’s microscopy animations. XA alumna Dina Garatly summer residency 2023 was responsible for the design of the playroom mascots Marzee and Pluie. As well as several other animated science visualizations exploring black holes and star trails, see below in earlier news post.

Fall, 2024

Twenty-two Physics + Astronomy, XA Program, and IMGD Games students and faculty traveled to Arizona. The journey included Lowell Observatory, Grand Canyon, Montezuma's Cave, Sedona and the Meteor Crater as part of the annual USC Research Collaborations Fund Field Trip. 

The students participated in plein-air image making, NeRFs (neural radiance fields) and sonic experiments while enjoying the glorious landscape and nature.

The field trip coincided with the October 10 -13 tour of the new Lowell Astronomy Discovery Center which will feature the work of six XA graduates who have participated in the Lowell Summer Residency program from 2022 - 2024.

Presentations by XA artist in residence Zeping Sun, Sijia Zheng, Daniel Chit and Navajo/Dine artist Jara Nez showcased the summer science visualization animations and the upcoming progress for the Universe Immersive Theatre. 

Spring, 2024

Sophia the Robot chats with SA Daniel Chit and discusses Art + Science in the XA Lobby Gallery. Special thanks to Katharine Yeung and Dr. David Hanson XA Adjunct Professor who is teaching CTXA 588

CTXA 588 Animation for Virtual Characters, Robotics & AI course is designed to explore the illusion of life, sentience and how to create compelling animation, diverse stories and gesture for virtual characters, robotics and AI.

The course is the first of its kind at the School of Cinematic Arts to explore interactive narrative through artificial intelligence animation and gesture. It features Sophia the Robot who interacts, critiques and participates in the course with the students

Spring, 2024

Sophia the Robot chats with SA Daniel Chit and discusses Art + Science in the XA Lobby Gallery. Special thanks to Katharine Yeung and Dr. David Hanson Adjunct Professor who is teaching CTXA 588

Spring, 2024

Professor Kathy Smith, XA Graduate students Zeping Sun, Sijia Zheng, and Viterbi Student Charith Chandra Sai Balne used OpenAI DALL.E 2, MidJourney in collaboration with their personal photos of downtown Los Angeles and the Wrigley Institute to create a vision for a sustainable Los Angeles

Special thanks to Wrigley Art Curator Allison Agsten and Dr. Jessica Dutton for the excellent prompts that helped generate the images. Created with thanks to Dr. Silvia Da Costa, USC Research Collaborations Fund Grant Award and XA AI Dream Lab NVIDIA Hardware Grant

The collaboration was covered here in an LA Times Article by Sammy Roth

Spring, 2024

XA Graduate student Sijia Zheng directed and animated the science visualization animation Coral Banking written and narrated by Dr. Anna C. Vinton USC Presidential Sustainability Fellow. With additional advisement and research from Dr. Carly Kenkel and Dr. Hannah R. Koch of the Mote Lab

Special thanks to Wrigley Art Curator Allison Agsten and Dr. Jessica Dutton. Created with thanks to Dr. Silvia Da Costa, USC Research Collaborations Fund Grant Award and XA AI Dream Lab NVIDIA Hardware Grant

Fall, 2023

Forty-six Physics + Astronomy, XA Program, MAP, Production, Chemistry and Engineering students and faculty traveled to Arizona. The journey included Lowell Observatory, Grand Canyon and the Meteor Crater for the annual USC Research Collaborations Fund Field Trip. 

The field trip coincided with the October 14 solar eclipse at the Grand Canyon.

Presentations by XA artist in residence Dina Garatly and Dr. Kyler Kuehn showcased the summer science visualization animations and the upcoming progress on the Universe Immersive Theatre. 

Summer, 2023

SCA Graduate Student and Alumna Nina Ceklic worked with Dr. Joe Arvai, Director of Wrigley Institute to create a live action and animated science visualization documentary about C02 Capture and recycling technologies

Spring Summer, 2023

XA Graduate Student and XA Alumna Dina Garatly became our second artist in residence with Lowell Observatory working on visualizations of Black Holes with Dr. Kyler Kuehn.

Spring Summer, 2023

XA Graduate Student and XA Alumna Dina Garatly became our second artist in residence with Lowell Observatory working on visualizations of Star Trails with Dr. Kyler Kuehn.

December, 2022

XA Graduate Student/Alumnx and now Assistant Professor at University of South Florida Shengwei Zhou put together a clip of our Fall 2022 field trip to Arizona. It sums up the experience!

November 21 - 23, 2022

Graduate Animation Mentors Victoria Cruell, Aisha Harper, Brittaney Smothers and faculty Kathy Smith participated remotely via Zoom through pre-recorded media with Ruth Katakarinja, Ruby Kunoth Monks and Dr. Judith Lovell at the Batchelor Institute symposium Communication as Creative Skill and Cultural Expertise.

Hanson Robotics Eileen Norris Theatre October 17 2022

Dr. David Hanson PhD featuring Sophia the Robot presents his research AI-Powered Robotic Cinema: Bringing Characters to Life for artistic and other uses - healthcare, education, and  human-AI Interfaces in general. 

Leading Roboticist and AI researcher Dr David Hanson, Sophia the Robot and Robot Animator Mengna Lei conducted an evening of lectures, discussion, and interactive Q&A with Sophia the Robot via Zoom. 

Reflections on the uncanny valley, the singularity, gesture, sentience, and emotion were presented and discussed. Questions by the students raised ethical issues around the implications of artificial intelligence and its impact on humanity, to Sophia’s favorite colors and art. 

Amazingly Sophia was able to interact in real time via Zoom with graduates and demonstrated a high level of vision, motion and voice activated AI. Dr David Hanson gave a compelling and inspiring lecture on Artistically Enhanced Artificial Intelligence and how imagination and aesthetics may lead toward machines who understand and care. Diversity Ethics for AI was also a key subject in David’s lecture. Faculty and graduates from Physics & Astronomy, Neuroscience, Cinematic Arts (including alumnx) and Biological Sciences attended

October 7-9 2022

Forty-five students and faculty attended a spectacular 3-day 2-night collaborative field trip to Arizona with a special series of lectures and viewing of the night sky at the historic Lowell Observatory. 

The DART project had just been completed that week and the scientists were awaiting the results. Lowell played an integral part in this important event.

Graduates and faculty from the Dornsife College and Cinematic Arts bonded on the field trip and opportunities for future collaboration and innovation were discussed and planned, including the CTXA 523 Science Visualization Production course.

Hanson Robotics via Zoom Sunday September 4th 2022

Dr. David Hanson PhD and USC alumna and robot animator Mengna Lei MFA joined faculty and students from School of Cinematic Arts, Kaufman School of Dance and Adobe educators across Zoom to discuss gesture, sentience and AI enabled performance for Sophia the Robot.

Dr. David Hanson discussed the latest innovations for Sophia's digital multiverse and how they are building interactive fiction around her character's evolution.

Mengna discussed her role as robot animator and allowed graduates to interact in real time with Sophia across Zoom.

Hanson Robotics and Sophia the Robot will return for an onsite visit on October 17, 2022 to the Expanded Animation Research + Practice (XA program) School of Cinematic Arts. 

More information soon!

Yia Ilama Making and Telling Stories is a Stop Motion Animation workshop conducted by artist and XA graduate researcher Shengwei Zhou in collaboration with the Batchelor Institute and Dr. Judith Lovell. 

The workshop is being conducted across Zoom in collaboration with graduate researchers students, staff and Arrernte artists at the Batchelor Institute, located outside of Alice Springs in Central Australia. Arrernte culture have developed their unique storytelling methods, rituals, dance and art while also practicing sustainability for over 60,000 years living and working in harmony with the landscape. 

Located in one of the most remote and arid regions of the continent, this unique opportunity is part of our Collaborations grant proposal to give our USC graduates real world teaching experience, to share knowledge and to also learn from the Arrernte artists and scholars, enacting Batchelor's mission concept of 'both ways learning'

Shengwei will demonstrate his original form of storytelling, screen his own animations and demonstrate capturing real world materials and objects to create animated stories, gestures aural and visual rhythms.

Participants will use found objects and record sounds from the surrounding desert to tell their stories in real time while learning the art and science of stop motion animation.

Special thanks to Shengwei Zhou, Dr. Judith Lovell, Dr. Kathryn Gilbey, Ruth Katakarinja and Ruby Kunoth-Monks

Through the ongoing support of our collaborators Dr. Diane Kim and Dr. Jessica Dutton at Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies (WIES), graduate artist (Jessica) Delaney McCallum is working to create animated content with the scientists and undergraduate researchers. 

Delaney is working with Dr. Kim and her undergraduate team researching the microbiome of kelp leaves, specifically in their gametophyte stage. Delaney is creating a science visualization animation to illustrate the microbiome community and the possible benefits of using kelp as biofuel in the future.

In addition Delaney is designing a series of posters and postcards for the Wrigley Science Center

Through the generous support of the Lowell Foundation, Director Kyler Kuehn, colleagues and staff at the Lowell Observatory and our USC Research Collaborations Fund we were able to send our first artist in residence Ros Fiol to Flagstaff.

Ros is working with the scientists, artists and filmmakers to create animated content and interactive installations for the new Universe Theatre while also mentoring a young Navajo artist Faith Begay in animation. Below is a report from Ros.

My 10-week artist residency involves collaboration with award-winning filmmakers Oakley Anderson-Moore and Alex Reinhard on an exciting projection-mapped installation centerpiece for the Lowell Observatory’s new Astronomy Discovery Center (ADC), as well as the opportunity to guide a young rising Navajo artist through an animation/professional development mentorship during my time her in Flagstaff. 

The ADC installation features an exciting audiovisual experience about the beauty of planet Earth, all told through the story of visible light and color. I’m helping Oakley and Alex as a technical animation supervisor, where I reinterpret parts of found-footage by developing custom particle simulations in After Effects using Maxon's various Trapcode plugins. 

The project has me interfacing between After Effects and Touch Designer to run early projection tests against a to-scale model that I crafted with foam core. I'm also writing excerpts of poetry and prose that will screen alongside the installations found footage, all of which draw inspiration from diverse Nature Poetry sources.

When not working on-site from atop Mars Hill at the Observatory, I’m also guiding rising indigenous filmmaker Faith Begay through an art commission for a local documentary that is still in production. We meet weekly to discuss art/animation techniques, client feedback, and how to best produce high-quality deliverables as an upcoming freelance artist and animator. 

My residency is an exciting intersection between stem research and fine arts investigation. I’m grateful to put my XA(expanded animation) learning toward real-world projects that celebrate our world’s beauty in uniquely thoughtful ways. 

Graduate Researcher and animator Victoria Cruell is mentoring Ruby Kunoth-Monks and Ruth Katakarinja two young Arrernte artists at Batchelor Institute in Alice Springs, Central Australia.

The collaboration is part of a long-term plan to exchange pedagogical and cultural knowledge around image making, storytelling, gesture, movement and animation as consciousness. Our Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies colleagues and Physics & Astronomy Department also hope to form a research collaboration with Batchelor Institute in the areas of sustainability and astronomy.

Special thanks to researcher Dr. Judith Lovell and Dr. Kathryn Gilbey for making this collaboration possible!

Graduate Researcher and science visualization artist Dina Garatly originally from Saudi Arabia, creates a meditation journey in VR in collaboration with USC faculty and researchers

Dina completed "Mindful Journey", a 3-minute guided meditation story in Virtual Reality. This is a mindfulness relaxation story that starts with a short body scan. It then guides the user on a journey into the deep ocean. This is to help the user increase physical and mental peace and calm, to relax and be present in time and space.

Dina produced the project in Professor Panushka's CTXA 547 course and Professor Eric Hanson's CTAN 504L course. Dina hopes to explore her VR work with fellow Collaborations Grant Researcher Professor Sook-Lei Liew from the USC Smart VR Center in the coming academic year.

As part of our second Collaborations Grant field trip event, we took an interdisciplinary group of faculty, students and staff to Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies (WIES) for a Science + Art weekend. Thirty-one SCA and College Faculty and graduates from Roski School of Fine Arts, Neuroscience, and SCA met for the weekend collaboration. 

Research presentations were conducted by Biological Sciences and the Cinematic Arts faculty. Students participated in drawing, plein-air digital creation and the weekend culminated in site specific installations exploring sustainability. The works were projected onto the landscape and WIES buildings by students from Professor Lisa Mann’s Cinematic and Media Based Installations CTXA 575 course.

Special thanks to our WIES colleagues, Dr. Diane Kim, Dr. Jessica Dutton and Professor John Heidelberg

Professor Sheila M. Sofian and MFA Animation researcher Shengwei Zhou visited Dr. Myrna Jacobson’s class on BISC 587 Communicating Ocean Science. Professor Sofian was asked to give a presentation on “Applications and Practice: Storytelling and Communication.” Professor Sofian presented a lecture on Science Visualization and included early 2003 - 2008 Wrigley collaboration research projects directed by then chair Professor Kathy Smith, Professor of Practice Eric Hanson, and current projects from Research Professor Emeritus Dr. Richard Weinberg. Sofian also shared information on the Science Visualization minor and screened CTXA 423 capstone projects produced by the students from 2014 – 2022. In addition, Professor Sofian demonstrated how she used science visualization in her own research in documentary animation.

Shengwei Zhou presented his research on uncanny valley and how uncanny valley can affect the viewer’s emotional state. Through the use of motion capture he tested the reactions of viewers when he created different variables using “broken” models. He would remove nodes from the animation model and have the actor perform in various ways. He then engaged the class in a lively discussion on their reactions to these disjointed animated characters and movements. The following week Shengwei gave a hands-on animation workshop to the science students, allowing them to produce their own visualizations of scientific concepts.

Shengwei has been researching the phenomenon of Uncanny Valley through our Collaborations Grant and has been able to work with Professor Margo Apostolos at Kaufman School of Dance:

"I am currently working on the interdisciplinary field between uncanny valley in robotics, negative emotions in psychology, motion capture technology in animation. I am trying to combine these three fields together to explore the cracks and gaps between the human body and consciousness. How and why does our body sometimes can’t be ordered by our consciousness and how our dreams and consciousness affect our body performance. I want to use the data loss and data mismatch in motion capture technology to visualize how these cracks exist in the relationship between body and consciousness and create a certain kind of uncanny dance. In addition, I want to explore the relationship between this uncanny dance and negative emotions expressions, hoping to find a way to allow people who suffer from depression and other mental illnesses release their feelings by watching this uncanny dance. "

Dr. Weinberg PhD Emeritus Research Professor conducted a lecture on his NSF funded Digital Cinema Microscopy utilizing a 4k Red camera and the high-speed computer grid network. As Dr. Weinberg describes: 

The project connected the USC School of Cinematic Arts, in Los Angeles, CA, with STEM High School Chattanooga, TN, to develop and demonstrate a new method of teaching biology classes remotely. Distant students viewed remote microscope images live via a 4k (4 times high-definition TV) digital cinema camera and controlled the remote microscope, some 1800 miles away, while teleconferencing with Biological Sciences Professor Douglas Caron at USC about microorganisms in water samples under the microscope that both groups simultaneously see on 4k flat panel displays. 

Screening of his science visualization animations took place at the Michelle and Kevin Douglas IMAX theatre at SCA and graduates and faculty from Cinematic Arts, Physics & Astronomy and the Biological Sciences attended in person

Dr. David Hanson, Robot Animator Mengna Lei, and Sophia the Robot join USC Expanded Animation Collaborations Grant for a Lecture via Zoom October 18, 2021

USC CTXA 579 Expanded Animation and Physics & Astronomy graduate students ask Sophia the Robot about the singularity, the uncanny valley and the future of robotics and humanity.

Special thanks to Dr. David Hanson, Robot Animator and SCA alumna Mengna Lei and Sophia the Robot for generously sharing their time!

https://www.hansonrobotics.com/

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https://twitter.com/RealSophiaRobot

During the pandemic, we were able to successfully conduct our first Collaborations Field trip. On October 1-3, 2021, we were able to take 38 graduates, 1 research staff and 8 faculty from USC Physics & Astronomy, Price School of Public Policy and the School of Cinematic Arts.

The Field trip traveled to the Sierras, Mono Lake, Bodie State Park and Manzanar Japanese Internment Camp. During the field trip we conducted on site plein air organic and digital creation with real-time motion capture, photogrammetry, light painting, and sound recording directed by cinematic arts faculty and graduates. Field lectures on location during day and evening with State Park staff and stargazing with Physics and Astronomy faculty and PhD students