I've surfed in Los Angeles and I've surfed in Indonesia, but I never thought I'd be surfing in the heart of the Canadian Rockies. Here at the Banff Centre for the Arts - an institution for advanced professional training in the arts - longtime surfer and videographic animation artist Michael Scroggins has developed Topological Slide, a VR surfboard that shoots through 3-D representations of mathematical equations instead of twenty-foot waves.
Scroggins invites me to step up onto the "surfboard" - a disk equipped with sensors that measure my body movement - and puts the display helmet on my head. In the refrigerated computer room next door, a Silicon Graphics Onyx computer cranks out a Jorge-Meeks Trinoid, which looks like a triple version of a pipeline. I'm surrounded by hundreds of polygons, each of which is a different color to aid in navigation. The wireframe landscape curves away into the 3-D distance.
Interactivity is the key to any reality, so I lean in the direction I want to go. I rush forward. The surface races under my board. I add a bit of sideways lean and arc off diagonally across the polygons. As I approach the inside edge of the structure it rotates up like a wave and I spin around in a barrel-roll maneuver and tumble right over - in actual reality. If Scroggins hadn't caught me, I would have landed flat on my real ass.
By turning abstract mathematical formulas into experienceable VR sculptures, complete with a cool transportation device, Scroggins not only explores new methods of scientific visualization but has a little fun on top of it. Michael Scroggins at California Institute of the Arts: +1 (805) 254 0591, aka@netcom.com.
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