Developing Virtual Reality Visualizations for Unsteady Flow Analysis of Dinosaur Track Formation using Scientific Sketching

We present the results of a two-year design study to developing virtual reality (VR) flow visualization tools for the analysis of dinosaur track creation in a malleable substrate. Using Scientific Sketching methodology, we combined input from illustration artists, visualization experts, and domain scientists to create novel visualization methods. By iteratively improving visualization concepts at multiple levels of abstraction we helped domain scientists to gain insights into the relationship between dinosaur foot movements and substrate deformations. We involved over 20 art and computer science students from a VR design course in a rapid visualization sketching cycle, guided by our paleontologist collaborators through multiple critique sessions. This allowed us to explore a wide range of potential visualization methods and select the most promising methods for actual implementation. Our resulting visualization methods provide paleontologists with effective tools to analyze their data through particle, pathline and time surface visualizations. We also introduce a set of visual metaphors to compare foot motion in relation to substrate deformation by using pathsurfaces. This is one of the first large-scale projects using Scientific Sketching as a development methodology. We discuss how the research questions of our collaborators have evolved during the sketching and prototyping phases. Finally, we provide lessons learned and usage considerations for Scientific Sketching based on the experiences gathered during this project

Obiter Dicta

"Stitched together over five years of journaling, Obiter Dicta is a commonplace book of freewheeling explorations representing the transcription of a dozen notebooks, since painstakingly reimagined for publication. Organized after Theodor Adorno’s Minima Moralia, this unschooled exercise in aesthetic thought—gleefully dilettantish, oftentimes dangerously close to the epigrammatic—interrogates an array of subject matter (although inescapably circling back to the curiously resemblant histories of Western visual art and instrumental music) through the lens of drive-by speculation. Erick Verran’s approach to philosophical inquiry follows the brute-force literary technique of Jacques Derrida to exhaustively favor the material grammar of a signifier over hand-me-down meaning, juxtaposing outer semblances with their buried systems and our etched-in-stone intuitions about color and illusion, shape and value, with lessons stolen from seemingly unrelatable disciplines. Interlarded with extracts of Ludwig Wittgenstein but also Wallace Stevens, Cormac McCarthy as well as Roland Barthes, this cache of incidental remarks eschews what’s granular for the biggest picture available, leaving below the hyper-specialized fields of academia for a bird’s-eye view of their crop circles. Obiter Dicta is an unapologetic experiment in intellectual dot-connecting that challenges much long-standing wisdom about everything from illuminated manuscripts to Minecraft and the evolution of European music with lyrical brevity; that is, before jumping to the next topic.

Ohio State University Bulletin

Classes available for students to enroll in during the 2003-2004 academic year for The Ohio State University

Ohio State University Bulletin

Classes available for students to enroll in during the 2004-2005 academic year for The Ohio State University

Ohio State University Bulletin

Classes available for students to enroll in during the 2002-2003 academic year for The Ohio State University