Tour the AlloSphere
April 25, 2009 2:53 PM   Subscribe

Tour the AlloSphere, a stunning new way to see scientific data. In this TED talk, composer JoAnn Kuchera-Morin describes some visualizations available at the AlloSphere Research Facility, where researchers stand inside a 3-story sphere and are surrounded by visual and sonic representations of data. Some specific visualizations in the video: fly through a brain, biogenerative algorithms, lattice of atoms, Schrodinger equation, and electron spin.
posted by twoleftfeet (30 comments total) 12 users marked this as a favorite
 
Uh, you seem to be linking to the same video over and over.

Still, incredibly cool and fascinating. I kept thinking "We're lying through a brain, no don't switch to the biogenerative algorithms. Oh wait, that's cool. Wait, don't switch to the lattice of atoms. Oh wait that's so fucking cool..."
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 3:07 PM on April 25, 2009


Her delivery is a bit devoid of punctuation (breathe!), but the project looks as cool as it did in X-Men and Lawnmower Man.

I wish the TED organizers didn't have such a relentless boner for photogenic "science".
posted by migurski at 3:12 PM on April 25, 2009 [2 favorites]


Uh, you seem to be linking to the same video over and over.

That should be deep-linking to the specific content of the same video, for the benefit of people who don't seven or so minutes to watch the whole thing.
posted by twoleftfeet at 3:14 PM on April 25, 2009


The fancy movie theater is cool. Being wasted on science though.
posted by empath at 3:27 PM on April 25, 2009


If you have to explain the visualization, it doesn't communicate. That sounds tautological but it is central to good visualization practice that the interface is intuitive. While the graphics are cool, I don't get that sense, here.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 3:33 PM on April 25, 2009


Being wasted on science though.

Wow.
posted by jjray at 3:43 PM on April 25, 2009


While the graphics are cool, I don't get that sense, here.

It's not surprising that the experience of being completely immersed in a wrap-around surround-sound experience fails to translate to a dinky little YouTube window, is it?
posted by twoleftfeet at 3:45 PM on April 25, 2009


Metafilter: wasted on science.
posted by twoleftfeet at 3:45 PM on April 25, 2009


If you have to explain the visualization, it doesn't communicate. That sounds tautological but it is central to good visualization practice that the interface is intuitive. While the graphics are cool, I don't get that sense, here.


The concepts visualized are pretty complex and intended to be used by researchers with domain expertise, so of course you will have to spend time and energy learning the interface.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 3:51 PM on April 25, 2009


Something about garlic? I'm down with that.
posted by grobstein at 4:00 PM on April 25, 2009


If you want people to invest in this, you should come up with applications for pornography.
posted by Xoebe at 4:04 PM on April 25, 2009


I just realized that the "biogenerative algorithms" link is borked. That should have gone here.
posted by twoleftfeet at 4:20 PM on April 25, 2009


That should be deep-linking to the specific content of the same video, for the benefit of people who don't seven or so minutes to watch the whole thing.

Yeah, thought so, but that doesn't happen if you view it in the inline player. I'll send the mods a note.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 4:28 PM on April 25, 2009


that doesn't happen if you view it in the inline player. I'll send the mods a note.

Oh crap! I didn't think about that. Thanks!
posted by twoleftfeet at 4:32 PM on April 25, 2009


I like how it's described as a "large microscope", as if it could be used to study some real thing in the world, when really it's a fancy cgi theatre for presenting things that we either already know about or have just made up from fresh cloth. It's a postmodern vision of microscopy that allows "narrative" and "interactivity" unfettered by the tyranny of reality. empath is wrong; it's not being wasted on science, it's not being used for science. It could be cool tool for informative entertainment, but I doubt that much actual science content would sink in to the kind of people who wish to be sung to by atomic lattices.
posted by nowonmai at 4:46 PM on April 25, 2009 [3 favorites]


The idiom is "whole cloth" not "fresh cloth". I know that. Keep working on that edit window, guys!
posted by nowonmai at 4:48 PM on April 25, 2009


Oh crap! I didn't think about that. Thanks!
posted by twoleftfeet

Eponysterical!
posted by CynicalKnight at 5:01 PM on April 25, 2009


when really it's a fancy cgi theatre for presenting things that we either already know about

There's what you know on paper, and what you have a gut instinct for. I can teach you the equations for how things fall when the gravity equals 9.8 m/s^2 but will you be able to catch a fly ball?

Closer to home, a while back I did some work with many many Michaelis-Menten models. When I finished my presentation on this stuff, people with with PhDs in biochemistry - people who knew Michaelis-Menten kinetics far better than I did prior to my little sojourn - were looking at me with that "I know what all the words meant, but not when you put them in that order" kind of expression on their faces.

Until you can visualize something, you really don't know it; some things are VERY HARD to visualize.

And I think it would rock to be sung to by atomic latices.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 5:10 PM on April 25, 2009 [2 favorites]


Would you have been able to do a more understandable presentation with an AlloSphere? Would having points on your curves sing the steepness of their gradients whilst the audience admired the curves from different angles have made things easier? You could teach me to catch a fly ball if we went out to a park with a ball, but I could never learn it by watching IMAX videos of baseball games. I'm sure this thing is a fun way to present information and every science museum should have one, but it shouldn't be billed as a research tool when it's an art project. Or rather, it shouldn't be billed as biology, chemistry or physics research; it may be valid research in the fields of cognition or virtual reality, or into whether anything can good can come of forcing Snow's Two Cultures back together.
posted by nowonmai at 5:35 PM on April 25, 2009


Ambition is attempting to three dimensionally map the Schrodinger Equation.

I don't care if you have a supercomputer or a three story hollow sphere proector... good luck with that shit.
posted by clearly at 5:48 PM on April 25, 2009


I disagree about the applications for research, I think it would be extremely helpful to be able to visualize several parts of a complex system at once while the system undergoes change or growth. Particularly if you could use different senses, allowing you to concentrate on different parts of the system at the same time. This would help me a lot because I'm a visual person and I work with dynamic systems (or used to anyway).

A lot of research is slogging away crunching numbers and carrying out controlled experiments but a fair chunk of it is sitting around alone or with others trying to visualize how stuff happens, or will happen and formulating a framework around your results. This beats the hell out of a whiteboard for facilitating that process.
posted by fshgrl at 5:55 PM on April 25, 2009


I wish the TED organizers didn't have such a relentless boner for photogenic "science".

Have you even seen any TED videos? Few of them have more than a set of PowerPoint slides and many don't even have that.

If you have to explain the visualization, it doesn't communicate.

You may have to explain what you are looking at to get "in the picture", though. That's why charts and graphs have to be taught to elementary schoolkids. They aren't intuitive themselves, but once you know them understanding the data is a lot easier.
posted by DU at 5:57 PM on April 25, 2009


How is this 'new'? People have been playing around with VR and visualizations of scientific data for years and years. At least since the 90s.

The fact that it's a sphere they stand in and not a cube?
posted by delmoi at 6:15 PM on April 25, 2009


I spent some time in a CAVE about ten years ago and even though it gave you a 3D VR, you had to wear special goggles and it never felt completely natural. I think the AlloSphere abandons stereovision for an experience that completely surrounds you, which is kinda cool, though not easily reproducible without a huge external structure.
posted by twoleftfeet at 6:27 PM on April 25, 2009


'allo, 'allo! What's all this then?

sorry
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 7:36 PM on April 25, 2009


The Allosphere is pretty good at getting people to think "heeeey, UCSB is cool!" and I think that's why so much money was invested in it. There's a decent article about it in the local weekly (from November 2008) that covers some context and criticism. I went inside of it a couple times when it was half-built and it was OK, kind of like IMAX but rounder.
posted by dreamyshade at 9:27 PM on April 25, 2009 [1 favorite]


How is this 'new'? People have been playing around with VR and visualizations of scientific data for years and years. At least since the 90s.

Or, y'know, planetariums. Since the 1890's.

But that's definitely one heck of a home theatre system.
posted by XMLicious at 10:08 PM on April 25, 2009


I can clearly see the day when the next generation of stoned teenagers will buy overpriced tickets to see AlloSpheric Pink Floyd at their local science museum.
posted by not_on_display at 10:14 PM on April 25, 2009 [1 favorite]


I love visualization of data into graphs and moving pictures. I've been doing it for a very long time, which is why I hoped this project would do something for me. Instead, I'm just looking at it going, "Okay ... it's pretty. What am I looking at?"

I think domain knowledge is important, which is probably why her presentation could have benefited from a starter problem which was relatively simple, whose domain most people understood in some fashion. Satellite orbits, maybe?
posted by adipocere at 5:05 AM on April 26, 2009


Maybe good stuff comes out of it once in a while, but why the fuck is TED so consistently annoying? Aside from that rich nerdy guy who gave everyone herpes with rabid mosquitos, it's just soul-crushingly bad.
posted by trondant at 9:03 PM on April 26, 2009 [1 favorite]


« Older Beautiful, beautiful, just beautiful   |   The guy who actually, you know, WROTE... Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments