Gerrard Hall
Tuesday, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.
Wednesday, 3:00 to 4:00 p.m. and 7:00 to 9:00 p.m. (as part of the Art Walk)
Thursday, 4:30 to 6:30 p.m. and 9:30 to 10:30 p.m. (as part of the DJ/VJ Dance Party)
Friday, 5:00 to 7:00 p.m.
Saturday, 7:30 to 9:30 p.m.
Free and open to the public




Principal Investigators
Francesca Talenti, UNC Communication Studies
Greg Welch, Research Associate Professor, Computer Science, UNC

Collaborators:
Audio:
Darryl Dunn, composer
Madison Bullard, UNC undergraduate student

Animation, 3-D:
Marc Russo, principal animator, NC State graduate student
Matt Harris, modeler, UNC undergraduate student
Charlie Hicks, modeler, UNC undergraduate student

Fish simulation:
Chiung-Yi Tseng, UNC Computer Science graduate student

Game Design
Caitlyn Losee UNC Computer Science undergraduate student
Stephen Roller, NC. State University undergraduate student
Zhen Shao, UNC Computer Science graduate student

Motion Capture
Tao Li, UNC Computer Science graduate student

Water Simulation
Mingsong Dou, UNC Computer Science graduate student
Ying Shi, UNC Computer Science graduate student

Logistics and networking
Bill Hays, Infrastructure Manager, department of Computer Science, UNC
John Thomas, Research Associate, department of Computer Science, UNC
Herman Towles, Senior Research Engineer, department of Computer Science, UNC


Project Description
Talenti and Welch are collaborating on a piece titled The Bathysphere, which will run in Gerrard Hall during the CHAT festival, February 16-20.

What is The Bathysphere? It is an underwater opera and an interactive game: a musical narrative in which the audience triggers events.

Imagine: you enter Gerrard Hall; you see an underwater world floating by and hear its gentle sounds. You also see a few real objects around you. Pick up a beach ball, and toss it. An octopus appears! You notice that as you move your beach ball, the octopus moves correspondingly, projected on three of the walls.

It is as if you are inside an aquarium. The octopus also has different musical phrases, depending its situation.  Say that another person in Gerrard Hall picks up a fishing rod. It is re-projected as a school of fish, with its own musical phrases.

Motion capture records movement and translates it to a digital model, usually a 3-D animated model of a human actor. In this project, the researchers aim to translate movement generated by an object (the beach ball, for instance), rather than that of a human in a motion capture suit. Through the captured data, they seek to generate non-human characters. Audience members will generate the movement for the characters.

This project is a chance to use a motion capture system purely for artistic and scholarly computer science exploration. While The Bathysphere has undoubtedly whimsical elements, it has severe technological requirements, ranging from running the motion capture system to networking 6 computers and 4 projectors, and implementing code for communication between all the software and the hardware used. The researchers have recruited six graduate students and five undergraduate students in Computer Science and Communication Studies, without whom the project could not have come to life.