ITS-Manning, the Renaissance Computing Institute, Showcase Room (first floor)
Tuesday, 5:00 to 7:00 p.m.
Wednesday, 5:00 to 9:00 p.m.
Thursday, 5:00 to 7:00 p.m.
Friday, 5:00 to 7:00 p.m.
Free and open to the public

Principal Investigator
Joyce Rudinsky, UNC communication studies, RENCI domain scientist for the arts and humanities

Collaborators
Mark Robinson, Communication Studies, UNC
Victoria Szabo, ISIS, Duke University
Eric Knisley, 3-D artist
Jason Coposky, RENCI


Project Description
The modern viewer, having interfaced with the ever-changing imagery of television, computer monitors and screens, has developed new habits of perception. Contemporary perceptual experience differs markedly from the concentrated gaze of the art connoisseur who appreciates traditional works of art.

In Psychasthenia, Rudinsky creates a tension between these two perceptual experiences: Her goal is to create an aesthetically rich virtual environment while simultaneously heightening the user’s self-consciousness through the responsiveness of the computer-to-human interaction. Rudinsky seeks to expand our understanding of how new digital media are transforming human subjectivity. Her goal is to interrupt the viewer’s everyday experience with experiential shifts prompted by technology.

Rudinsky will create a constantly changing perceptual environment, confronting the viewer with converging media, new forms of narrative, attention and associative meaning. She will explore the ways in which virtual avatar selves can expand, even transform, our understanding of our actual experiences and capabilities. In this project, Rudinsky and her team will use game engines originally developed to provide many of the core functions in video games. Game engines, increasingly sophisticated, now have multiple applications including visualization, training and medical and military simulations.

Here, Rudinsky will explore the possibilities of this software as an artistic medium, using the familiar tropes of a 3-D game environment to highlight how traces of our real and avatar selves impact the game-based interactions. Custom-made sensors and input devices will govern how a user interfaces with the game environment. The sensors track and respond to various user inputs, including eye movement, gesture, facial expression, physiological responses and position change. The project itself will be displayed and accessed through the immersive dome at the Renaissance Computing Institute’s (RENCI) Carolina engagement site. The dome is a video projection environment with an ultra-wide field of view (160°) that gives a viewer a sense of total immersion.

Rudinsky’s environment provides many of the attributes of electronic media, interactivity, simulation, generative capabilities and new narrative formation. These attributes allow for the convergence of art, entertainment and information.

Joyce Rudinsky, domain scientist for the arts and humanities at the Renaissance Computing Institute, has facilitated this project in collaboration with RENCI technologists and coordinated the display of the project in the UNC/RENCI Engagement Site Visualization rooms.