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Arts for All

2/23/23

By Maryland Today Staff 

 

 

 

 

Sometimes students need an instructional pick-me-up between violin lessons. Others can’t afford as many lessons as their talent merits, or they live in a place where violin teachers are in short supply.

A new artificial intelligence-powered system under development by a University of Maryland classical violinist and a computer scientist with expertise in robotics and computer vision could fill in those gaps.

“Our project combines the expertise of traditional violin pedagogy with artificial intelligence and machine learning technology,” said Irina Muresanu, an internationally known concert violinist and an associate professor of violin in the School of Music. “Our aim is to ultimately create software that will be able to provide guidance for all string instruments, and even other instruments.”

The system is not designed to replace human expertise, but to augment it, the researchers say.

“Our system will observe the players using vision and audio, and will analyze the playing in order to give the appropriate feedback, and also to give suggestions on what to practice,” said Cornelia Fermüller, a research scientist with the Institute for Advanced Computer Studies and the Computer Vision Laboratory.

The research is funded by a 2021 Maryland Innovation Initiative Award, as well as a Grand Challenges Team Project grant announced last week.

(Video produced by Maria Herd M.A. '19)

Join us for a conversation featuring artist Cy Keener, landscape researcher Justine Holzman, climatologist Ignatius Rigor, and scientist John Woods, who collaborated over a four year period to create the work in our current exhibition Arctic Ice: A Visual Archive (on view through February 15, 2023). Their work is the result of the integration of field data, remote satellite imagery, scientific analysis, and multimedia visual representation and documents Arctic ice that is disappearing due to climate change. What is unique about this art based on scientific data is that Keener and Holzman were involved in the design and construction of the tools that collected the data as well as their placement in the environment. With this work, their goal is to make scientific data tangible, visceral, and experiential. They ask how artistic and creative practices can contribute to scientific endeavors while making scientific research visible to the public.

Agenda:

6:00 – 6:30 p.m. Doors open, audience takes seats in NAS Building Fred Kavli Auditorium

6:30 – 6:50 p.m. Event begins with welcoming remarks and community share, Fred Kavli Auditorium

Anyone in the audience working at the intersection of art and science will have 30 seconds to share their work. Please speak at one of the aisle mics in the room and present your work as a teaser so that those who are interested can seek you out during social time following the event.

6:50 – 7:40 p.m. Panelists presentations (12 minutes each)

Cy Keener, artist and assistant professor of sculpture and emerging technology, University of Maryland, College Park

Justine Holzman, landscape researcher and historian of science PhD student, Princeton University, New Jersey

Ignatius Rigor, climatologist at the Polar Science Center, Applied Physics Laboratory, and an affiliate assistant professor, School of Oceanography, University of Washington, Seattle

John Woods, retired US Navy Meteorology and Oceanography Officer, current Deputy Director for US Navy International Engagements, Washington, D.C.

7:40 – 8:20 p.m. Discussion

8:20 – 9:00 p.m. Reception in the Great Hall and Upstairs Gallery

About DASER

This program is co-sponsored by Cultural Programs of the National Academy of Sciences (CPNAS), Issues in Science and Technology Magazine, and Leonardo, the International Society for the Arts, Sciences, and Technology. DASER fosters community and discussion around the intersection of art and science. The thoughts and opinions expressed in the DASER events are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the positions of the National Academy of Sciences or of Leonardo.

COVID-19 Policy and Operating Status

This is an in-person event with the option to watch the webcast. A government-issued photo ID (such as a driver’s license or passport) and proof of up-to-date vaccination against COVID-19 per CDC guidelines are required. Masks are optional. For more details about the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s operating status and COVID-19 vaccination policy, visit this webpage.

Event image

The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, Dekelboum Concert Hall
Wednesday, February 22, 2023 - 5:30 PM to 7:00 PM

For her first Dean’s Lecture Series as dean of the College of Arts and Humanities, Stephanie Shonekan will be in conversation with legendary singer, activist and philanthropist Dionne Warwick. Shonekan and Warwick share a rich background in music. Shonekan is an esteemed ethnomusicologist, and Warwick is an award-winning, chart-topping musician. They will discuss the connection between music and social justice and how celebrities can catalyze positive change in the world. They will also delve into a timely dialogue around race, culture, identity and history.

Wednesday, March 15, 2023 - 5:00 PM

Arts for All is pleased to announce the second—and expanded—round of ArtsAMPlification collaborative grants. Please note, we now have different kinds of grants for different stakeholders. If you have questions or would like feedback on your project, please contact us at arts@umd.edu.

ArtsAMP Collaborative Grants are designed to support collaboration between faculty in the arts and faculty in other disciplines as they move to advance the goals of Arts for All by creating new artistic work, new scholarship on the arts, and new classes that further the creative experience of students.

Three interdisciplinary teams received funding to support their projects and presented them at the first annual ArtsAMP Symposium

 

  • “Dance2: Interactive Dance Performance through On-body Wearable Robot and Crowd Participation”

  • “Rooting Our Shared Stories in Shared Places: Community-Centered African American Heritage Interpretation”

  • “STEAM Rising: Exploring the Fusion of Art and Technology to Build a More Equitable Society”

Assistant Professor of Art Cy Keener Collaborates on a New Exhibition at the National Academy of Sciences

Date of Publication: 
2022-11-28
11/28/22

By Jessica Weiss ’05

Images of massive chunks of ice collapsing from Greenland’s glaciers into the ocean have become emblematic of a changing climate and the need to drastically reduce global carbon emissions.

University of Maryland Assistant Professor of Art Cy Keener is working to characterize some of these icebergs—capturing their unique identities and the ways they change as they drift in the sea.

His collaborative “Iceberg Portraiture” series is part of an exhibition now on view at the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in Washington, D.C., which Keener created with landscape researcher Justine Holzman, climatologist Ignatius Rigor and scientist John Woods. It’s the result of almost four years of trips to the Arctic in which they placed trackers onto the ice to collect data with the hopes of making that information tangible and visceral.

Cy Keener art exhibition

At NAS, the 7-foot-tall digital ink-and-pastel portraits provide a glimpse into the life of four icebergs with vastly different scales and shapes—some the size of a car and others a third of a mile wide—observed and recorded in August 2021 in western Greenland.

“Each of these [icebergs] is a piece of 10,000- to 40,000-year-old ice coming off the Greenland ice sheet into the ocean,” Keener said. “In this exhibition we understand them as living things, falling apart in front of your eyes, constantly changing. We show their diversity and beauty.”

Keener’s efforts began with the development of a low-cost, open-source buoy to collect meteorological and oceanographic data to use in his work. He first traveled to the Arctic in Spring 2019 with Rigor, a senior principal research scientist at the University of Washington and the coordinator of the International Arctic Buoy Program, whose members maintain a network of buoys across the expanse of the Arctic Ocean.

At VisArts Gallery in Rockville, Maryland, he and Holzman created “Sea Ice 71.348778º N, 156.690918º W,” an installation that used hanging strips of 6-foot-long, blue-green polyester film to reflect the thickness and color of the Arctic ice based on the buoy data.

He also created various versions of “Digital Ice Core,” a sculpture piece that used electronics, data and satellite communication to link a remote field site with a digital light sculpture, made up of 1,000 LED lights. Viewers were then able to see a recreated version of the ambient light in the air, ice and ocean in close to real-time.

In 2020, Keener received a $200,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to continue his work. And in Spring 2021, he spent nine days on a Danish navy ship on the west coast of Greenland.

In addition to the iceberg portraits, the NAS exhibition includes a continuation of Keener’s work to represent the thinning of sea ice. The nearly 8-feet-tall “Sea Ice Daily Drawings,” made of aluminum, acrylic, paper and ink, are based on some 27,000 data points that come from sensors buried meters into the ice. They show subtle temperature and color variation throughout a vertical profile of air, sea ice and ocean.

The drawings, while visually appealing, are yet another stark reminder of the inexorable changes occurring in the Arctic, Keener said: Before the 1980s, the surface of the Arctic Ocean was thoroughly covered with this thick, multi-year ice. Now it’s predicted to vanish by the middle of the century.

“As an artist, I get to go out there, be in this environment and stand on this ice before it disappears, and then try to bring life to that through installation, drawing and sculpture,” Keener said. “I’m using data not to get more statistics, but to make these things that are on their way out physically real—to extend the experience through time and tell a longer story.”

 

11/2/22

By Maria Herd M.A. ’19

 

Fitness trackers and smartwatches are widely used to monitor health, activity and exercise, but they’re pretty sedentary themselves. They stay strapped on your wrist or clipped to your clothing despite the fact it’s more effective to monitor different areas—your upper body for breathing, for example, or your wrist to track typing or writing.

Now, researchers at the University of Maryland are putting wearable sensors on track to do their best work—literally—with a miniature robotics system capable of traversing numerous locations on the human body.

Their device, called Calico, mimics a toy train by traveling on a cloth track that can run up and down users’ limbs and around their torso, operating independently of external guidance through the use of magnets, sensors and connectors. Their paper describing the project was recently published in the ACM Journal on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies and presented at UBICOMP, a conference on ubiquitous computing.

 

closeup of wearable sensor on wrist

“Our device is a fast, reliable and precise personal assistant that lays the groundwork for future systems,” said Anup Sathya M.S. ’21, who led Calico’s development for his master’s thesis in human-computer interaction. Sathya is now a first-year Ph.D. student in computer science at the University of Chicago.

Most wearable workout devices are limited in the type of exercises they can monitor, but Calico is versatile. For example, it can track running on a user's arm, move to the elbow to count push-ups, to the back for planks, and then to the knee to count squats.

And unlike other devices, Calico moves quickly and accurately without getting stuck on clothing or at awkward angles. “For the first time, a wearable can traverse the user’s clothing with no restrictions to their movement,” said Huaishu Peng, an assistant professor of computer science who was Sathya’s adviser at UMD.

Peng, who also has an appointment in the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS), sees a future in which mini wearable devices like Calico will seamlessly integrate with humans for interaction, actuation and sensing.

He recently took Calico in a creative direction by establishing a new collaboration with Jonathan David Martin, a lecturer in Immersive Media Design; and Adriane Fang, an associate professor at the School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies.

The interdisciplinary team is combining dance, music, immersive media, robotics and wearable technology into a novel and compelling series of interactive dance performances that are choreographed in real time through Calico.

First, Peng’s research group programmed Calico to instruct a dancer to execute specific movements using motion and light. Then, using their smartphones, the audience gets to collectively vote on how Calico should instruct the dancer.

The project is being funded with a $15,000 award from the Arts for All initiative, which leverages the combined power of the arts, technology and social justice to make the University of Maryland a leader in addressing grand challenges.

“The idea is to explore the dynamics and connections between human plus robot and performer plus audience,” said Peng. “In this instance, Calico will and act as the ‘mediator’ to broadening art and tech participation and understanding.”

Calico’s original creators include Jiasheng Li, a second-year Ph.D. student in computer science; Ge Gao, an assistant professor in the College of Information Studies with an appointment in UMIACS; and Tauhidur Rahman, an assistant professor in data science at the University of California, San Diego.

VIDEO: Calico: Relocatable On-cloth Wearables with Fast, Reliable, and Precise Locomotion

10/3/22

Click above to view the video of Creative Placemaking in the Community.

 

Idyllic scenes of nature and towering, colorful hands communicating in American Sign Language are more than a pretty backdrop for al fresco diners at The Hall CP in the University of Maryland’s Discovery District. The sweeping mural project led by Assistant Professor of Art Brandon J. Donahue is an example of how a community—in this case, that of the campus—can come together to beautify a place and begin fertile conversations about a shared future.

Donahue is one of the faculty members involved with UMD’s new creative placemaking minor, which started this fall as a collaboration between the School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and the College of Arts and Humanities and is part of the university's Arts for All initiative. It will imbue students with expertise that allows them to support a community’s vision and nurture vibrant, socially responsive and just places.

Student artists creating with Donahue’s guidance are the focus of the latest installment of the new video series, “Enterprise: University of Maryland Research Stories,” which gives a window into how placemaking research translates into enhanced spaces for all.

Video by Bethany Swain

9/8/22

By Jessica Weiss ’05

In the darkened atrium of the Parren J. Mitchell Art-Sociology Building, a towering screen projects vast, striking and occasionally troubling scenes from the snow-drenched, mountainous archipelago of Svalbard, Norway—one of the planet’s northernmost inhabited areas. Along with the images, a woman recites a poem about climate change featuring phrases from thinkers and public figures as wide-ranging as Karl Marx and Donald Trump.

“The People That Is Missing,” an eight-minute video by Spanish artist Cristina Lucas, is the inaugural exhibition in a new public art space in the heavily trafficked building. Video in The Atrium (ViTA) will showcase video art from the UMD Art Gallery’s own collection and new work from national and international artists.

The exhibition opens tonight as part of NextNOW Fest, the campuswide arts festival that features more than 40 free performances, installations and activities.

“We really want people to be able to stumble upon art without having to physically be in a gallery or travel to a museum,” said Taras Matla, director of the UMD Art Gallery. “We want to bring art directly to the many students and visitors who pass through this space, allowing art to be part of their daily lives.”

ViTA has been in the works for over a year. Matla and other gallery personnel readied a large wall for projections and invested in high-tech equipment for crisp visuals and audio. A control panel in the Art Gallery office allows for staff to manage the projections from behind the scenes. And a number of benches invite passersby to stop, watch and gather around the works.

The project is a collaboration between the Art Gallery and the university’s Arts for All initiative, which brings together the arts, technology and social justice to spark innovation and new ways of thinking.

Patrick Warfield, the director of Arts for All, said the inaugural exhibition is a perfect example of the power of the arts to foster social change. The film “interrogates climate change, commerce, history and identity to remind us how art can elevate the voices of those who are too often silenced,” he said.

“The People That is Missing” alternates between sweeping vistas of Svalbard’s natural beauty and its commercial industries such as international shipping, mines and tourist cruises, ultimately calling on viewers to take action to change the course of environmental destruction. The title is an original quote by the 20th-century Swiss artist Paul Klee who suggested that the task of art—especially avant-garde art—is to create a future audience, or “people,” with a collective purpose.

UMD Art Gallery Curatorial Assistant Melanie Woody Nguyen, a Ph.D. candidate in contemporary art and theory, managed all aspects of the exhibition. The wide-open, public display helps reinforce the work’s meaning, she said.

“When I approached Cristina about showing the work here at a university, especially in such a public space, she was excited about the prospect because young people and students could make up the ‘people that is missing,’” Nguyen said—“the next generation who will take on the task of combating the climate crisis.”

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“The People That Is Missing” runs Sept. 8-Dec. 3 at the new Video in The Atrium space in the Parren J. Mitchell Art-Sociology Building.

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