So, last week our students submitted their group projects for the CASA ASAV MRes*, following on from successful presentations the week before. This year there were two teams, unimaginatively titled Group A and Group B. Perhaps we could have thought of something better, like Griffindor and Ravenclaw, or Lennon and McCartney. Maybe a lesson for next year.
Group A was made up of Chunrui (Suzy) Bounthong, Robin Edwards, Jack Harrison and Alistair Leak. They produced a flythrough-style movie, all the more impressive for being rendered in 3D (for those viewing online, you can view it in red/cyan form with the aid of old-school 3D glasses):
As a team they’ve drawn in Processing, Lumion, CityEngine, ArcGIS and a host of other tools including Unity and 3dsMax; I like the sense of scale imparted by the global starting point, and some of the little touches like the recursively generated trees at 2:13 and the stairs imported from Processing at 2:27. More general discussions of each the components that went into the vis can found on their project page: http://visualisation.asavhub.co.uk
Group B (Martin Dittus, Mohammed al Masum, Ian Morton and Flora Roumpani) used the concept of dynamically generated space in their “Infinite Museum”. This space is created around the movement and/or preferences of the user, an interesting nexus of physical space, recommender systems and social networks. Their project is the prototyping stage, but they’re nevertheless succeeded in overcoming some of the initial technical barriers, and brought in outputs from 3D and 2D software to a Unity-based interactive space. Technically, this is a pretty impressive feat, and integrating an over-arching theme with individual exhibitis has been well-realised.
You can find details of some of the visualisations presentation in their wonderfully Borgesian space on their individual websites.
The group this year represents a diversity of backgrounds from architecture, geography and GIS, planning, 3D design and software development – the group project is the culmination of several months of these students working together, sharing their skills and professional experiences and really supporting each other in a challenging and multidisciplinary MRes.
Which brings me smoothly onto my next point – if this sounds like the sort of thing you’d enjoy, places are still available for September entry on the course. We’re very keen to encourage people from a built environment or human geography background who want to take their modelling and visualisation skills to the next level, or people with technical backgrounds who want to learn and develop research projects to apply their skills to the CASA research portfolio of cities, sensing, big data, global dynamics, complexity, social media – and all of the other exciting work taking place here. You can find more information at http://www.bartlett.ucl.ac.uk/casa/programmes/postgraduate/mres-advanced-spatial-analysis-visualisation. If you’d like to know more, please contact me: I’m frequently on twitter @sociablephysics, or you can email me at m.austwick@ucl.ac.uk.
*UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis Masters in Research in Advanced Spatial Analysis and Visualisation, to give it its full title
Sociable Physics 