News for and about the Internet2 community

["Ramsey, Douglas" <>]

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO DIVISION OF THE CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE FOR TELECOMMUNICATIONS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

 

MEDIA ADVISORY – for Friday, October 28

Media Contact: Doug Ramsey, 858-822-5825,

 

UCSD Opens Doors on High-Tech Facility at Intersection of Science, Engineering and the Arts

 

Day and Evening Festivities Open to Campus and San Diego Community

From its $27 million clean-room wing for making advanced microchips, to a digital cinema theater that could represent the future of motion-picture distribution, the UCSD headquarters of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) is one of the most wired buildings on any California campus. And on Friday, Oct. 28, UCSD will open the 215-thousand square foot building with a mix of formal ceremony, building tours, research exhibit, and a multimedia art premiere that will involve an expected 1,000 spectators and participants.

 

Print and electronic media are invited to a sneak peek of the building at 9am prior to the 10am start time of the official Dedication Ceremony, which will be followed by an open house reception, self-guided tours, a first look at a new documentary on the future of nanotechnology, and nearly 100 demonstrations of cutting-edge technologies. The festivities will resume in the evening for a series of new media arts events including a computer-music concert and 3-hour interactive, multimedia event incorporating projection on surfaces of the building itself and a performance by Emmy Award-winning Allison Janney [The West Wing].

 

DATE: Friday, Oct. 28

 

TIME:   9AM Press Preview; 10AM Dedication; 11AM Reception and one-on-ones; 12-2PM Demos

 

WHERE: Engineering Courtyard and Calit2 Building, UCSD

 

WHO: Interview availabilities with scheduled speakers including Calit2 Director Larry Smarr; UCSD Division Director Ramesh Rao; UCSD Chancellor Marye Anne Fox; UC President Robert Dynes; QUALCOMM CEO Paul Jacobs; and many of the faculty participating in the dedication and related activities.

 

REGISTRATION: Required for morning dedication only; register at http://www.calit2.net/UCSDCeremony/

DIRECTIONS/PARKING: http://www.calit2.net/UCSDCeremony/logistics.html

 

VISUALS: Scientific visualizations on 100 million pix tiled display; working devices; participation in mass new-media art installation; 1,000 expected attendees with 370,000-pound “Bear” sculpture in courtyard; demonstration of visitors using their cell phones to ‘dial the future’ and officially open the building.

BACKGROUND: The six floors of the Calit2 building will house close to 900 faculty, researchers, staff, and students working on mostly multidisciplinary initiatives —- the hallmark of Calit2’s research mission. Calit2 researchers come from more than 20 campus departments, with bioengineers working alongside computer scientists, visual artists next door to neuroscientists, electrical engineers down the hall from cognitive scientists, and so on. The building contains specialized spaces and labs including a lab to fabricate devices at the nano scale, a wide array of integrated-circuit labs, labs for creating new types of materials, art and visualization studios including a reconfigurable ‘black box’ performance space, research neighborhoods throughout the building, and a rooftop antenna garden.

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The Calit2 celebration will resume in the evening when the Center for Research in Computing & the Arts (CRCA) hosts a series of new media arts installations and events, and the world premiere of a site-specific multimedia "film", SPECFLIC 1.0. CRCA is now headquartered on the first floor of the Calit2 building, and director Sheldon Brown leads Calit2's activities in new media arts. http://crca.ucsd.edu/events/Calit2_Opening/

TIME: 

5-7PM CRCA Reception, Pre-Function Area
5-8PM New Media Arts Installations, New Media Arts Wing
6-6:30PM Respam NetArt Event, Black Box Theater
7PM Computer Music Concert; Auditorium
8PM Prologue of SPECFLIC 1.0; Calit2 Courtyard
9-12PM SPECFLIC 1.0 Premiere

 

LOCATION: Calit2 New Media Arts Wing and the Engineering Courtyard at Calit2
Building, UCSD

OPEN TO THE PUBLIC: No registration required

 

PARKING: Gilman Parking Structure, http://crca.ucsd.edu/information/map.html

Visitors in the courtyard will get a preview of the world in 2030, as envisaged by visual arts professor Adriene Jenik and sci-fi writer (and UCSD alum) Kim Stanley Robinson. Jenik's "SPECFLIC 1.0" is described as "speculative distributed cinema," and uses cutting-edge transmission and display technologies -- including projection on the Calit2 building itself -- to examine the social costs and benefits of those same
technologies. To engage visitors, organizers are inviting audience members to dress up as if it were Halloween 2030, and to bring laptops and camera cell phones to participate in the interactive portions of the evening. For details on CRCA events throughout the day Oct. 28, visit the center’s website at http://crca.ucsd.edu/events/Calit2_Opening/.

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