• ARSC Experiments with Art on the Grid
• From the Director
• ARSC Participates in Fairbanks Art Walk
• Center Relocates to New WRRB
• Storage Upgrades at ARSC

ARSC Experiments with Art on the Grid

Collaborative art projects are taking on a whole new meaning at the Arctic Region Supercomputing Center (ARSC) thanks to recent work on the Access Grid Node. Miho Aoki, joint appointee ARSC/University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) Art Department; Scott Deal, UAF Music Professor; and Paul Mercer, ARSC Systems Analyst each took part in a recent series of events through which artists and participants from around the world experimented with art’s potential on the Grid.

The Grid allows for simultaneous communication between remote sites via high-bandwidth networking. Sites equipped with a Grid node can log on to participate in conferences, meetings or other events. Participants can share audio and visual feeds as well as exchange data or present information from their personal computers. Art on the Grid, according to Deal and Multimedia Specialist Jimmy Miklavcic, University of Utah, is an organization of visual and musical artists who are developing productions on the Grid to explore strengths, weaknesses and the inherent potential of this new medium.

The Art on the Grid project reached new heights in March 2004 when Saturday Night Live Band percussionist Valerie Naranjo presented a workshop from UAF over the Grid to 25 national and international sites. Naranjo is a noted singer and drumming expert in African and Native American musical genres. The clinic was an effort to ascertain how effectively the Grid can be used to communicate instrumental and vocal musical techniques and concepts. Naranjo performed for, interacted with and lectured to participants both over the Grid and locally at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

In April 2004, several sites came together to create a musical performance and visual art piece that could be performed in distinct geographic areas, remixed and redistributed over the grid. In the performance, called InterPlay: Hallucinations, Deal performed percussion music while Aoki created computer-generated art. These were sent via audio and video feed to the University of Utah where live performers were being video recorded. Each of the computer, musical and live performances was mixed and sent back over the Grid. Viewers from various sites around the world witnessed the experiment.
ARSC’s Paul Mercer presented a talk to AGN Retreat attendees in Toronto recently. Mercer discussed ARSC achievements and progress with the Grid, as well as the center’s participation in Art on the Grid.

The Grid is still fairly young technology, and experiments like these allow users to test and push the limits higher. ARSC became involved with the Grid project in 2000 when a node was installed at the center. Plans are underway to install Grid technology in several of the meeting rooms in the center’s new office space in the West Ridge Research Building on the UAF campus. [Back to Top]

From the Director

Although summer in Interior Alaska is a paradise for outdoor enthusiasts, at the Arctic Region Supercomputing Center summer is also time for a different kind of excitement. Each year, the season brings a host of visitors to the Center——in particular, the youthful energy of interns from around the country. Watching these students learn and grow is inspiring, and every summer we learn a little from them as well.

During summer 2004, ARSC hosted thirteen undergraduate interns as part of our National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates intern program, the Alaska Research Summer Challenge. In addition, we hosted cadets from the U.S. Naval Academy and the U.S. Air Force Academy. Each of the students worked on a project with a faculty mentor. This year’s mentors included Dr. Thomas Marr, Dr. Uma Bhatt, Dr. Kate Hedstrom, Dr. Boris Bracio, Dr. Greg Newby, Miho Aoki and Dr. Glenn Chappell. Our students included: Jose Luis Lopez, Michael Boudreaux and Bravlio Guzman, University of Texas at El Paso; Jacob Boomgaarden, North Dakota State University; Timothy Morgan, Beloit College, Wisconsin; Patrick Webb and R.J. Stevens, University of Alaska Fairbanks; Mac Cowell, Davidson College, North Carolina; Jarrod Lombardo and William Kwan, New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology; Emily Rehmeyer, University of Vermont; Jordanna Chord, Gonzaga University; Erhardt Graeff, Rochester Institute of Technology; Nathan Brasher, U.S. Naval Academy; and Mike Rose, U.S. Air Force.

These students accomplished a significant amount of work during their stay. By participating in ongoing projects at the center, the interns get a taste of real-world research while contributing valuable time and insight to ARSC. In our next issue of Currents, we will highlight some of these projects and accomplishments. We look forward to hearing of the successes of our interns as they move on in their studies.

As we prepare to send our summer interns back to their home universities, we too prepare for another school year and a fall of settling into our new home and sailing forward in our research efforts. [Back to Top]

ARSC Participates in Fairbanks Art Walk

This spring, ARSC opened the doors of its Discovery Lab to the public as part of the Fairbanks Art Walk. The Art Walk takes place the first Friday of each month at art galleries throughout the Fairbanks area. Galleries open their doors to residents who go from gallery to gallery, viewing works by some of Fairbanks’ best local artists.

Over the year since the Discovery Lab has been open, artists Bill Brody and Miho Aoki have been creating art with the virtual reality technology available in the lab. Aoki has created virtual galleries that allow visitors to view and interact with art as they explore an architectural space. Brody has been creating virtual worlds filled with panoramic scenes of Alaska. A visitor can explore the world and enter rooms, which house different panoramas, giving the visitor the feeling of being inside a completely different environment. The artists decided that the best way to share these creations would be through an event like the Art Walk.

On Friday, May 7, for the better part of three hours, the sound of oooh’s and ahhh’s was heard around the bend of the back door of the Discovery Lab. The event was set up much like any gallery opening. Viewers were able to wander in and out at their leisure. Brody and Aoki continuously demonstrated their virtual art on the Mechdyne Flying Flex system, to what seemed like an endless crowd. By the evening’s end, nearly 200 people had visited the show.

“I saw a very wide range of people from seniors to young children,” said Aoki. “There were so many people who participated in the event that I didn’t have time to talk to the audience. I’d like to know what people thought about our artworks.”
The attendance was so favorable, the center plans to hold the event again during the coming year.

According to Aoki, as computers and other digital technology are now a vital part of everyday life, it is natural that many contemporary artists are working with this kind of technology. Because of this, digital art is becoming an important part of visual art today.

At the same time, knowledge of digital art is fundamental to accurate depictions of scientific data. For this reason, artists are a part of ARSC’s visualization team. These artistic contributions complement science and fuel discovery at the center. [Back to Top]

Center Relocates to New West Ridge Research Building

In early summer 2004, ARSC offices were relocated to the newly-constructed West Ridge Research Building (WRRB). The long-anticipated move provided ARSC with much-needed additional space for a growing number of staff.

“We’ve been looking forward to this move for quite some time,” said director Frank Williams. “Our new facility provides us not only with room to grow, but also with room to serve our users and expand our research interests.”

ARSC’s space in WRRB includes additional offices, a classroom and a new visualization lab. The classroom will host the center’s Faculty Camp, as well as the various courses and training sessions that are held throughout the academic year.
ARSC will share WRRB with the Institute for Arctic Biology, members of the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) Proposal office, and the Remote Sensing Group as soon as construction of the remainder of the building is complete. Construction workers spent the better part of summer 2004 completing labs and office space on the upper floors of the building.

The building’s proximity to the research institutes already located on the west ridge of the UAF campus will encourage the center’s continuing integration with these institutes and support the growth of research across the campus. The ground floor of WRRB connects directly to the Geophysical Institute’s Elvey building, which in turn is connected to the International Arctic Research Center.

Although most of the ARSC staff moved to the new building, a few technical services staff offices remain in the Butrovich building to maintain close proximity to the supercomputing hardware. All of the supercomputers remain in the computing facility located in the basement of the Butrovich building.

The move involves some administrative changes. All of the staff and center phone numbers have changed and a new campus prefix, 450, is used for all of ARSC’s new numbers. The numbers can still be dialed by the last four digits from on-campus phones. For more information or a list of new staff phone numbers, visit www.arsc.edu. [Back to Top]

Storage Upgrades at ARSC

On May 12, 2004, the Seawolf system, using the SAM-QFS software, assumed the storage service functions of Cray’s Data Migration Facility (DMF) on the older Cray systems, Chilkoot and Yukon. Unlike the older Cray systems, Seawolf is dedicated to the storage function. By moving the storage function to Seawolf, ARSC will be able to serve the heterogeneous compute platforms with higher performance than was possible on the older Crays, which served both storage and compute functions. Seawolf is a Sun Microsystems Sun Fire (TM) 6800 with 8, 900Mhz CPUs, 16 gigabytes of memory and 10 terabytes of raw disk. It has access to 10 STK tape drives in the ARSC tape silos. Capacity of the new system is in the petabyte (1000 terabytes) range.

On May 12th, over 5 million files (64 terabytes of data) appeared to the users to have moved from the Crays to the new Sun system. While the files appeared to be on Seawolf, the actual data still resided on the the old Crays. Libraries on Seawolf are managing the actual transfer of all the data from the old Crays. Any user access of the files on Seawolf causes the SAM-QFS software to automatically retrieve the data from the Crays, at which time the data begins permanent residence on Seawolf. Data not accessed directly by the user will be transferred automatically by the migration libraries. The transfer of data will proceed over a several month period and be concurrent with normal operations. We expect this transfer to be complete by the end of September. [Back to Top]