LifeLearn |
||
Project Coordinator
| ||
|
Project Description The BioLearn World is a work-in-progress. It is a companion to LifeLearn, a Bioregional learning center of the North California Coast. The development of this world will include the prototyping of natural, dynamic and efficient navigation of information about the bioregion, biodiversity, and environmental stewardship in the context of the larger biosphere. Through innovative navigation, narrative and automation, this world will ultimately feature galleries and libraries with non-linear fly-through sequences of information visualization and concepts that engage the senses and take advantage of the geospatial referents of a natural 3d environment. Through excellent design and inspiring cross-fertilization of ideas linked to the natural world, BioLearn hopes to become an collaborative, global environment where children and adults can become awe-inspired as they understand large amounts of decentralized, dynamic information in a natural and beautiful virtual setting. The first galleries shown in this small version of Biolearn celebrate the biogregion and the larger biosphere with the Global Simulation Center. This gallery is a portal to high-quality information from all over the world. Here the Global Simulation Center contains information about the local bioregion and its relationship to the biosphere with theme walls covering "Kingdoms & Biodiversity," "Planetary & Landform Geography," "Ocean, Weather & Biospherics," "Local Bioregion Ecosystems and Watersheds," "Human Ecology," and "Systems, Complexity & Interdependence." Local bioregion links can be found in one of six different theme areas of the Global Simulation Center. Here, each image brings up thousands of maps, photos, aerial photos of the biodiversity, watersheds and habitats of the N. California Coast. Visitors to the Global Simulation Center can fly around the 3D satellite globe and link to live webcams from all over the planet. Hotspots on the globe are linked to live cam shots from places such as Mt. Etna, Italy, The Wall in Jerusalem, Cape Town, South Africa, Mt. Shasta, California, Oslo, Norway and others. Visitors may even enter the globe by using their shift key, in order to view the planet from the inside and click onto the webcam hotspots from there. The second domed area celebrates the biodiversity and the burgeoning new field of artificial life with the Lifeform/Cyberlife gallery. Travelling through the five kingdoms of life, Protista, Monera, Fungi, Plantae and Animalia, visitors can bask in the beauty of the micro and macro lifeforms on the planet, from the smallest phytoplankton, ameliania huxleyii to the beautiful ecosystems of the amazon rain forest. All are linked to some of the most exciting websites showing our Tree of Life. These lifeform portals are coupled with experiments from all over the world that combine art, artificial life experiments and biologically inspired synthetic organisms. These examples of cyber-based music and creatures exhibit learned behaviors, self-organization and auto-poeisis. They are developed and generated by genetic algorithms, dynamical systems, complexity, evolution, and physics. And many of them may soon find their way to virtual worlds and the collective consciousness that resides in the realm of "organic cyberspace." The original BioLearn project team is Greg Steltenpohl, Bonnie DeVarco, Penny and Craig Twining, Henrik Gudbrandsen and Anita Roy Dobbs. | ||
| | ||
|
