UNSW CoFA Engineering
 
iCinema

About iCinema

The iCinema Centre for Interactive Cinema Research, established in 2002, is a joint venture of the College of Fine Arts and Faculty of Engineering at the University of New South Wales. It brings together researchers and postgraduate students in new media, aesthetics, cinematic theory, multimedia design, computer science, cognitive science, software/hardware engineering and mining virtual reality.

The iCinema research program focuses on research into digital interactivity for benchmark applications across the arts, culture and industry. In particular, it is focused on the way the digital can be used to imagine new ways of living in the contemporary world, redefining how we seek recreation and learning, and the way we work and do business.

The Centre has four principal research domains:

Interactive Narrative Systems
The exploration of narrative systems that allow the viewer to interact with a wide range of cinematic materials including autonomous narrative agency.

Immersive Visualisation Systems
The investigation of multi-modal environments that provide settings for the exploration of diverse mixed reality scenarios.

Distributed Interface Systems
The integration of distributed multi-user virtual environments within local and globally networked systems.

Theories of Interactive Narrative Systems
The inquiry into digital experience in the context of the contemporary world.




The iCinema Centre has been conferred the world's leading design award, the Gold IDEA (International Design Excellence Awards) presented by the Industrial Designers Society of America. The award is for iCASTS, iCinema's unique visualisation and interaction systems for art, education, and safety training. The award also recognises Tiller Design, who have designed the user interface consoles for ICASTS


 
News & Highlights


AVIE exhibits in Rome

Two innovative works created specifically for iCinema’s AVIE: Alluvium (2010) by Ulf Langheinrich and La Dispersion du Fils (2008-2010) by Jean Michel Bruyère, designed with Matthew McGinity, will feature at the DigitaLife in La Pelanda, Rome (Italy). The exhibition curated by Richard Castelli for Fondazione Romaeuropa, runs from 2 March till 2 May 2010.

Imagining Media@ZKM



Media art projects of Neil Brown, Dennis Del Favero, Jeffrey Shaw, Matt McGinity and Volker Kuchelmeister, have been selected for a large-scale retrospective at the Media Museum of the ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe for the ZKM's 20th anniversary exhibition 10th October 2009 - 31st December 2010

ARC Linkage grant awarded

Dennis Del Favero, Neil Brown, Paul Compton and Jeffrey Shaw have been awarded an ARC Linkage grant of $628,300 with industry funding of $575, 000  to develop the world’s first immersive 360-degree data browser that enables the creative organisation of data into narrative forms. Projector partners include Peter Weibel, Lev Manovich, Satah Kenderdine, Tim Hart, Horace Ip. Industry partners include the Australia Council, Museum Victoria, ZKM Centre for Arts and Media, City University of Hong Kong and University of California San Diego.

Conference papers

Volker Kuchelmeister, Head of iC Media Lab, presented two papers at the 10th Pacific Rim Conference on Multimedia Bangkok Thailand, December 2009:
Immersive Mixed Media Augmented Reality Application and Technology.
and
Universal capture through stereographic multi-perspective recording and scene reconstruction.