His title is associate professor of art and he works for a place with "arts" in its name. Yet, when a visitor suggests a current point cloud project is strongly reminiscent of the 19th century master Georges Seurat—he of Sunday Afternoon on the Island of the Grand Jatte fame—John Fillwalk is bemused.

After all, within the cozy confines of the Institute for Digital Intermedia Arts (IDIA), which he directs, there are no easels, no canvas, brushes, or paints. The only palettes are the electronic kind.

"What we're about is the future of learning," informs Fillwalk, flush with excitement about a 2010 initiative with Hawaii-based Avatar Reality, creators of the next generation 3-D virtual world platform Blue Mars.

Already the program is being used to share informational material for the likes of National Geographic and the Smithsonian. With Blue Mars still in its beta phase, IDIA—under Fillwalk, a pioneer in designing virtual environments—is exploring various new ways that the platform might be used, from building and landscape design to gaming.

In fact, a golf game currently live Blue Mars produces virtual scenes with much greater fidelity than earlier programs. That's where designers of the software are driving the technology, Fillwalk believes, beyond their inaugural plans for establishing an online Blue Mars community. IDIA, he says, is looking to seize similar opportunities in emerging media.

Intermedia in the Marketplace

Using blue prints, photographs, laser scanning and measurements, the IDIA Lab employed Blue Mars to simulate an actual museum gallery to a high degree of accuracy for exploration and study by visitors within a live 3D environment. Additional information is provided by touching each canvas or sculpture in the exhibition. Simulations such as this allow curators to spatially archive a show, or prototype layout, lighting, and installation design.

In addition to its work with Blue Mars (including creation of a digital portfolio or demonstration "island" for marketing the platform), IDIA is working with '67 Ball State alumnus Jim Davis' Paws Inc. on several major interactive projects. Fillwalk and his cohort of 10—including three undergraduate students and one graduate assistant—also have held discussions with a leading technology company about a project it is pursuing for one of the world's major toy makers.

"Our directive within IDIA is to develop new technologies and bring them to the marketplace for the expanding range of clients that are interested in engaging next generation design media, to the economic benefit of both the state and the university," Fillwalk says.

Producers of the Othello Bach project, based in Indianapolis, estimate it will create 20 high-skill jobs including artists, animators, and programmers, among other positions.

Virtual Time Travel

Time and space twist and turn at Neil Zehr's fingertips. On the screen in front of him, famed sculptor A.A. Weinman's nude figure of the Rising Day—familiar to many visitors to the David Owsley Museum of Art—appears in the true context of its place atop a soaring column in the middle of an enormous fountain at the 1915 San Francisco Panama-Pacific International Exposition.

With a few clicks of his mouse, the IDIA's virtual world modeler and animator can change perspective, cruising blimp-like above the tall columns of the fair's Court of the Universe. He can make minor adjustments, say, increase or lessen the amount of water splashing in the fountain, or even move the sun, making it late afternoon instead of early morning.

While many developers of multiuser virtual environments (MUVEs) are focused on creating "future" scenes, a substantial part of Fillwalk and company's work with Blue Mars has involved replicating historic buildings and spaces lost long ago. Now, historians, curators, architects, preservationists, students, and others can visit—virtually—the Court of the Universe or Amida Hall (the most famous building in Japan's renowned Byodo-In temple complex, burned to the ground in 1336) or other significant sites such as the Bingling Si series of Buddhist grottoes and caves (circa 420) or Ji Le Temple complex in China.

This has opened the doors to still more opportunities for Fillwalk and team. He was invited to join the international advisory board for the Virtual World Heritage Laboratory. Based at the University of Virginia, the lab's mission is to apply such new 3-D technology not only as interactive illustrations but also as personal instruments of discovery. It currently is using a half-million dollar grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to digitally re-create Roman Emperor Hadrian's second century villa in Tivoli, on the outskirts of Rome.

At other times, the IDIA team also may be found working on its build-a-campus concept, a design solution idea still in its early stages but described by the IDIA director as an enhanced Web portal/virtual environment for firms involved in online education. As for the potential market, Fillwalk points to the Disney Co.'s recent purchase of Club Penguin, an online learning, social, and entertainment site for children, for $370 million.

"Companies including Sony, Microsoft, and Google already are getting into this space," reports Fillwalk. "Those are the types of projects, those are the kinds of partners that we aspire to and want to be involved with through IDIA."