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Rensselaer’s online research magazine |
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With an impact reaching across the entire spectrum of the Rensselaer experience, this new focus will provide students, researchers, artists, and audiences with opportunities to link the arts with leading-edge research and performance across disciplines.
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EMPAC, the $142 million new Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center that is scheduled for completion in the fall of 2008, will provide students, artists, researchers, and audiences with opportunities to link the arts with leading-edge research and performance. They will debate questions of art and science that defy conventional answers, find solutions to known and yet unknown challenges, and develop new ways of looking at concepts, images, and sounds. It will become an international center for innovation in the arts set within a university dedicated to groundbreaking discovery and innovation. |
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Led by director Johannes Goebel, EMPAC will inspire experimentation, cross-disciplinary inquiry, and advanced research. In fact, the construction of this extraordinary building has already inspired research that may impact the planning and design of performance venues around the world. |
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New Technology for World-Class Acoustics |
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| Ning Xiang, chair of Rensselaer’s graduate program in architectural acoustics, is using advanced signal theory concepts to develop a multiple sound-source measurement system to better predict the acoustic characteristics of complex rooms such as concert halls. The 1,200-seat main EMPAC performance hall will be the first room to be so characterized. Xiang’s “multiple acoustics measurement technique” greatly streamlines the process of measuring acoustics, gathering the acoustical information of any given space in minutes. |
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His method also can be used to quickly identify and correct acoustic mistakes within an existing performance space or to verify design goals in new building construction. Xiang’s approach enables all speakers in an area to emit a sound to designated receivers simultaneously. To interpret the data of each sound as it travels from speaker to receiver, Xiang’s group has created a new deconvolution algorithm that is loaded onto a computer with data acquisition and digital-to-analog capabilities. The system measures and graphs how well sounds move within the space. |
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Adding the Sense of Touch to Virtual Environments |
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| Suvranu De, assistant professor of mechanical, aerospace, and nuclear engineering, leads a team that is combining the sense of touch with 3-D computer models of organs to create a new approach to training surgeons, a virtual simulator that allows surgeons to touch, feel, and manipulate computer-generated 3-D tissues and organs. De and his collaborators are now turning that expertise in computer haptics (sense of touch) and virtual environments to a new project that could profoundly impact experimental arts presentations. |
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They are developing the foundations for a robust and reliable shared virtual environment in which interactive haptic feedback is added to existing visual and auditory feedback. The project will concentrate on developing methods to overcome current network limitations such as latency and packet loss and then study how humans use the ability to communicate touch over long distances when interacting with other humans or machines. |
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Accurate Recordings of Sounds From Multiple Source |
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| Jonas Braasch, assistant professor of architecture, and his group are developing a new recording system that correctly tracks and reproduces multiple sound-sources and incorporates them into 3-D sound projection systems. This new approach has the potential to significantly improve and refine current sound systems, both for audio and video experiences. Braasch, who received this year’s Lothar Cremer Award from the German Acoustical Society, the highest scientific honor given by the society, investigates various aspects of spatial hearing in complex scenarios, among other subjects. |
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Usable Content in an Interactive World |
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| In a project that can affect experimental media as well as a wide variety of other fields, Rensselaer’s Department of Language, Literature, and Communication has been awarded a major research grant from the Society for Technical Communication. In this project, Rensselaer will develop standards for analyzing, designing, and testing the usability of tech-mediated communications — ranging from graphics, to Web sites and Web gallery interfaces, to wikis and distance education environments. |
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The team is studying “post-documents,” the electronic interfaces that have become increasingly visible as we move toward a paperless society, relying less heavily on traditional, physical documents for informative and educational purposes. The first goal is to identify what factors make post-documents usable. Following their findings, the group will produce and test a “Post-Document Toolkit,” made up of a set of broad characteristics that make electronic content usable and an associated set of metrics for measuring post-document usability. |
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