It must be virtual sleep for the faculty, staff and students who work on a neverending list of projects at UMBC's Imaging Research Center (IRC). Their dedication has paid off -- between recreating the past and steering the future of art and technology, the IRC not only receives recognition but continues to be considered an important resource in Baltimore and beyond.

Baltimore's Favorite Sisters Continue to Make History

In addition to being viewed by thousands of people since its debut, the IRC's virtual tour of the Baltimore apartments owned by the legendary Cone sisters is featured in a BBC documentary. Michael Palen -- best known as one of the original members of Monty Python and an avid art collector -- hosts this travelogue on Etta and Claribel Cone, who collected post-Impressionist and modern art and hung it in every nook and cranny of their modest Bolton Hill home. The show premiered in the UK this fall and hopefully will be televised in the U.S. soon.

The Cone virtual tour, part of a landmark collaboration between the IRC and the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) -- where both the tour and the world-famous Cone Collection reside -- includes five interactive modules and photorealistic lighting. A hit with both museum goers and the arts community, its significance was sealed when it was curated into the art gallery at SIGGRAPH 2002, an annual international conference on contemporary computer graphics attended by over 20,000 people. "SIGGRAPH is a great combination of scientists, artists and members of the entertainment industry," explains Dan Bailey, IRC director. "It is very prestigious to be invited to exhibit in the conference's art gallery."

All of the recent accolades are well deserved for the team of over 30 UMBC graduate and undergraduate students, led by Bailey and Alan Price, former IRC associate director and now a visual arts faculty member, who painstakingly brought the Cone apartment back to life. And thanks to the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation -- which funds the IRC's RWD Post-Graduate Fellowship and IRC projects coordinator -- four of the IRC interns who helped to create the virtual tour were given the opportunity to attend SIGGRAPH 2002. (The University had a major presence at the conference, held this year in San Antonio, Texas. It was also attended by other UMBC computer science and visual arts professors, as well as students and alumni.)

Famous for 15,000 Minutes

The success of the Cone Virtual Tour recently spawned another collaboration, this time with the National Gallery of Art (NGA) in Washington, D.C. In November, the IRC finished a project which involved 15,000 minutes of rendering in order to recreate The Public Gardens (1894) -- a series of large panels considered the grandest and most complex projects of French Impressionist Éduoard Vuillard -- as it originally hung in a private salon.

The nine panels that make up The Public Gardens were dispersed at auction in 1929, and eight of them will be exhibited at the NGA this spring. The museum staff began planning a film documentary about Vuillard and the exhibition, and called on the IRC to create a virtual version of the salon. "They are very happy with the outcome," says Bailey.

The Next Generation

In addition to serving an international clientele, the IRC educates and trains the next generation of artists through internships, post-graduate study, graduate research assistants and the IRC Fellows, a new scholarship program for juniors and seniors.

Sponsored by UMBC, the Department of Visual Arts and the IRC, the IRC Fellows program includes specially designed seminar courses and mentoring. Visiting artists and researchers will be brought to campus each year to work with Fellows. In their final semester, IRC fellows receive support for a capstone project that provides a real-world experience and allows students to complete a major artistic work and present it through an exhibition or conference, or focus on the preparation of a professional portfolio and work in tandem with a corporation or institution. It gives the Fellows a chance to represent themselves and UMBC to the wider regional or national community.

Each semester, students in the program participate in a seminar style project that focuses on emerging technologies, media criticism and related themes. These courses serve as electives within the student's degree requirements. Often, the courses will be developed exclusively for the Fellows.

Taught by Price, this semester's project is Ten Bulls, a virtual forest which cyclically regenerates itself. With each new cycle, the visitor finds himself inside a cabin, invited to play the role of an isolated farmer who has lost one of his or her livestock. The farmer sets out into the forest to find the bull in an interpretation of the ancient Buddhist parable "Ten Bulls," illustrated by Zen master Kakuan (1100-12-CE) and popularized in America by Buddhist scholar D.T. Suzuki (1870-1966). On the journey the farmer experiences transcendence through conflict and resolution in leading the bull home again.

IRC Fellows are excited about the Ten Bulls installation. Leigh Rose, a junior imaging and digital arts major and music minor, says, "This has been a fun and rewarding project. The Fellows program allows us to expand our course research to new areas that would otherwise not be available to us as undergraduate art students."

Katie Hirsch, a junior computer science/imaging and digital arts major (and varsity pole vaulter) adds, "This has been the first semester I've been able to bridge the gap between my two majors, and Ten Bulls has been the most fun, educational and rewarding of all my classes in this respect. It has been great to have the opportunity to work with such an outstanding group of people in the IRC. The Fellows program has had a great impact on my life."

Getting the Boot

The IRC has also added another member to its team -- Visiting Research Scholar Lee Boot, a video artist and respected member of the Baltimore and international arts communities. Boot, who divides his time between the IRC (his position is funded by the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation) and his own media company, InfoCulture, has been exhibited both nationally and internationally at The Contemporary museum in Baltimore, the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts and the Johannesburg Biennial in South Africa. He has influenced countless young artists, having taught secondary school in Baltimore for more than fifteen years.

Boot is committed to addressing broad cultural issues in his work. "The goal of my research is to give society a meaningful way to understand the most important information being discovered in the halls and labs of academia," he explains. "There is no doubt that information alone, not just the resultant drugs and gadgets, is the most important tool people require to benefit from the enormous public funds spent on research in this country."

In 1999, Boot received a major grant from the National Institutes of Health to create Making Euphoria, a short film that presents, to the layperson, pivotal neuroscience that can help them build engaging lives. He is currently creating additional animation for the film, funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Past, Present and Future

Other recent IRC projects include Price's Sun Dagger Interactive with Chicago's Adler Planetarium and Science Museum; an animation for the Central Maryland United Way Campaign; and an ongoing interactive visualization of the UMBC campus.

New IRC projects with organizations in Baltimore and beyond are in the works. Stay tuned.

Photo Captions (top to bottom)
The IRC in action
Dan Bailey and Michael Palen
IRC staff at work on Cone virtual tour
Image from The Public Gardens virtual tour
Image from Ten Bulls
Katie Hirsch and Leigh Rose interact with Ten Bulls on a 6' x 8' immersive display
Lee Boot in Making Euphoria