UMBC’s Imaging Research Center (IRC) has debuted the 3D Scanning Room, featuring new software that allows 3D models to be created by combining dozens of 2D photographs. A ribbon-cutting event and brief remarks from President Freeman Hrabowski and Vice President of Research Karl Steiner were held on Tuesday, December 8.

The 3D Scanning Room features 90 digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) cameras that are set up in a circular formation around a space where people or objects are positioned for 2D photographs. The cameras take simultaneous photos, looking for features like textures and edges that reflect light.

Once the photos are captured, they are processed through special software called Agisoft Photoscan, to create a virtual 3D model of the subject. It takes between four and six hours for the software to render a clear and detailed 3D image from the approximately 900 photos that are taken, but a rough depiction is available within an hour of the photos being snapped.

President Hrabowski said that the technology in the 3D Scanning Room is expanding the possibilities for UMBC researchers, thinkers, and artists. “This technology connects faculty across disciplines, and is fascinating because it goes across all UMBC colleges and departments,” he said.

Steiner described the 3D Scanning Room as a “three-legged stool”—a reliable, stable, easy to use system to create 3D models through the three steps of visualization, scanning and fabrication. Fabrication refers to the actual cutting or layering of the data to create a tangible 3D model.

The subjects being photographed do not need to be stationary. The cameras can capture people or objects in motion, explained Don Engel, assistant vice president for research at UMBC.

Direct Dimensions, Inc., a Maryland-based company specializing in 3D imaging for the medical, consumer and military industries, worked with UMBC’s Marc Olano, associate professor of computer science and electrical engineering (CSEE) and principal investigator (PI), and Dan Bailey, director of the IRC and co-PI, to create the 3D Scanning space. The space was funded through a $180,000 grant from the National Science Foundation.

A second new tool was also introduced during the ribbon-cutting event: a four-foot-by-eight-foot ShopBot, a type of CNC mill, run by Lisa Moren, professor of visual arts, and Amy Hurst, assistant professor of information systems. Different drill bits attach the CNC tool to create various cuts and patterns in materials, including wood and stone.

Read more about the ribbon-cutting event, “A crazy 3D-scanning room was recently delivered to UMBC,” on Technical.ly, and “Immersive, 3D scanner comes to UMBC,” on The Daily Record. 

Images: President Hrabowski and Michael Raphael, CEO of Direct Dimensions, Inc., at the ribbon cutting for UMBC’s new 3D Scanning Room (top); The ShopBot cut its own ribbon during the introduction of the second new tool in the IRC (bottom). Photos by Marlayna Demond ’11.  

3D model linked within text was created by Direct Dimensions, Inc., which used 2D photos taken by the scanning device at UMBC. 

For 125 years, Baltimore’s Sparrows Point Steel Mill employed tens of thousands of steel workers and was a center of community life in the region. At one point the mill was the world’s largest steel producer, but after peaking in the 1960s it began a gradual decline, permanently closing its doors in 2012. Since then, UMBC students and faculty have worked to safeguard the heritage of the mill community and to amplify the voices and stories of Sparrows Point. This work has served as the springboard for a larger, ongoing project to preserve Baltimore history in neighborhoods across the city.

The project started in late 2012 after the mill and its surrounding neighborhoods were honored with a Maryland Traditions award as a vital place of enduring importance in the industrial heritage and story of Maryland. As part of the ongoing project, Michelle Stefano, visiting assistant professor of American studies, Bill Shewbridge, professor of the practice of media and communication studies, and their students have recorded interviews with Sparrows Point workers and community members.

“Through this process, we’re not giving them voice, we’re giving them an opportunity to amplify their voices and to have them heard by a wide audience,” explains Shewbridge. “We don’t talk about empathy being a learning outcome, but it really helps the students see beyond their own selves. They’re having very intimate conversations with people about their lives.”

What started out as a collection of interviews has transformed into a documentary in response to feedback from the community, to contextualize the individual steelworker stories and to build a broader narrative about what life was like at Sparrows Point.

“We realized that we were sitting on this big body of data, and we found there were common stories being told: the women’s rights movement and Civil Rights Movement, unionization,” says Stefano. “All these larger stories were playing out at Sparrows Point. We realized that we were speaking to broader issues of deindustrialization in the United States and the human side of industrial decline.”

The final cut of the documentary Mill Stories: Remembering Sparrows Point premiered at the Creative Alliance in Baltimore in April 2014. In the months that followed, Stefano and Shewbridge screened the film at several international and domestic film festivals, with future screenings planned in Italy (January 2016) and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania (April 2016).

 Baltimore Traces

The Mill Stories documentary is one piece of a much larger, ongoing collaborative project with students and faculty across the humanities at UMBC and the Center for Emerging Media, a Baltimore non-profit founded by radio host Marc Steiner. Baltimore Traces builds on Mill Stories and the Mapping Baybrook project, led by faculty Nicole King, American studies, and Steve Bradley, visual arts. It produces audio and video oral histories focused on Baltimore residents and neighborhoods, and it has continued to expand thanks to a Hrabowski Innovation Fund award and Maryland Humanities Council grant.

As part of the ongoing work, Shewbridge and Stefano are now jointly teaching the humanities seminar “Documenting Culture in Baltimore.” Through the course, first-year Humanities Scholars have learned how to create short digital ethnographies exploring micro-cultures in Baltimore City, focusing on community icons like the Trinacria Italian Deli, Krug Iron Works, and Faidley Seafood.

“It goes beyond anything you can learn by just reading about it,” explains Humanities Scholar Lane Kennedy ’19, American studies and gender and women’s studies. “Getting that face-to-face interaction is a very unique way to learn about the histories of these places, and it gives it that personality that you can only get by talking with people in person.”

Humanities Scholar Alex Armbruster ’19 shares, “It allows me to see patterns of development, how industry changed, and how cultural communities have interacted with each other across time.”

This appreciation for people’s experiences and the cultural history of places is what drives projects like Mill Stories.

“This is at its core a project about culture. It’s a vehicle to talk to these broader social, economic, and political issues. We always separate culture from these other contexts and forces, and yet it is such an integral part,” says Stefano. “Look at the power of focusing on culture and its human impact.”

Image: UMBC students and faculty at Krug Iron Works in Baltimore. Photo by Bill Shewbridge. 

Linda Dusman, Music, and Eric Smallwood, Visual Arts, were interviewed by The Baltimore Sun’s Tim Smith about their app Octava, which is designed to enhance the audience experience at symphony orchestra performances. Read the full article on the Sun’s website here.

“The app, called Octava, is aimed at enhancing the musical experience for listeners by delivering information via Wifi, synced with the music being played in the concert hall,” says Smith. In development for several years and formerly known as Symphony Interactive, the project received a $150,000 Maryland Innovation Initiative (MII) grant in 2014 (read more here).

In the latest essay for his Race Stories column in The New York Times, Maurice Berger, research professor at the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture, examines the work of Charles “Teenie” Harris, an African American staff photographer for the Pittsburgh Courier from the 1930s through the 1970s. Now held in the archives of the Carnegie Museum of Art, a selection of 80,000 images by Harris are now on display in “Teenie Harris Photographs: Cars,” second in a series of exhibitions that began with “Teenie Harris Photographs: Civil Rights Perspectives.” The museum “asked writers — including poets, playwrights and historians — to respond to ‘the social, cultural, and political content’ of Mr. Harris’s photos,” notes Berger.

Read “Past and Present Collide in Pittsburgh” and view the photographs at The New York Times Lens blog.

Berger’s Race Stories column, which appears monthly on The New York Times website, is “a continuing exploration of the relationship of race to photographic portrayals of race.”

Christopher Swan, an associate professor of geography and environmental systems, is leading the Maryland Green Prisons Initiative, which was launched in partnership with the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, Baltimore Office of Sustainability and other local collaborators. As part of the program, Swan works with inmates at the Metropolitan Transition Center in Baltimore to spruce up and test wildflowers and grasses in vacant West Baltimore lots.

Swan was recently interviewed in the Baltimore Sun about the initiative. “One of the goals of the project is to bring nature into the prison,” he said. “Cities all over the place are having a problem with vacant land and what to do with it. The Baltimore Office of Sustainability has goals and we try to help them meet them by having inmates help out as a human resource in order to make that happen.”

Swan also noted the initiative will likely beautify two dozen vacant lots and said about 14,000 vacant lots exist in the city. To view a video about the project, including information on the “Portrait Garden,” by Lynn Cazabon, an associate professor of visual arts, see below. To read more about the project, click here.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8iFFoJPadc&w=560&h=315]

A number of UMBC faculty members and alumni received 2015 Individual Artist Awards from the Maryland State Arts Council. The Maryland State Arts Council awards grants to individual artists and non-profit organizations for arts programming, projects, and assistance.

Timothy Nohe, visual arts, was recognized in the non-classical music composition category, while Susan McCully, theatre, and Mark Squirek ’91, history, were honored in the playwriting category. Ben Marcin ’80, economics, and Jaimes Mayhew ’10 M.F.A., imaging and digital arts, received awards in the photography category.

Click here to see the complete list of winners.

In the latest essay for his Race Stories column in The New York Times, Maurice Berger, research professor at the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture, examines a new exhibition at the Bronx Museum of Art, “Three Photographers From the Bronx: Jules Aarons, Morton Broffman and Joe Conzo,” which opens Thursday, February 26. “Over the past 40 years,” writes Berger, “our collective view of the Bronx has all too often embraced the media-driven myth of its inexorable decline. For many, the blight, addiction and poverty that plagued parts of the South Bronx in the 1970s have come to symbolize the whole borough. But as Mr. Conzo’s photographs suggest, the reality of the Bronx has been far more complicated. They demonstrate the power of courage, cultural expression and political advocacy to sustain even the most endangered neighborhoods.”

Read “Complicating the Picture of Urban Life” and view the photographs at The New York Times Lens blog.

Berger’s Race Stories column, which appears monthly on The New York Times website, is “a continuing exploration of the relationship of race to photographic portrayals of race.”

Eric Dyer, Visual Arts, is featured in Wave & Particle, a group exhibition that celebrates Creative Capital’s fifteenth anniversary, at Ronald Feldman Fine Arts in New York. The exhibition opened on Saturday, February 14 and will continue on display through March 21. More information is available by clicking here.

His work will also be featured in Moving Image New York, a group exhibition on display at the Waterfront Tunnel in Chelsea in New York, from March 5 through 8. Additional information about Moving Image is available by clicking here.

On February 5, 6 and 7, Baltimore Dance Project returns to UMBC for its 31st year, featuring choreography by Dance faculty Carol Hess and Doug Hamby, and performances by Sandra Lacy and the company, with guest artists Adrienne Clancy, Jessie Laurita-Spanglet, and Matthew Cumbie. All performances will be held at 8 pm in the Proscenium Theatre in the Performing Arts and Humanities Building.

Carol Hess presents a new evocative work for five women, and Lightfield, a multimedia event that fuses choreography with a mix of both live and recorded video manipulated by dancers interacting with an onstage Kinect camera.

Doug Hamby presents Red Wings of Desire, in which the dancers’ actions bend Ferdinand Maisel’s sound score using wearable sensors, and a new work for four men.

Time and destiny are contemplated in a humorous and quirky new duet by Adrienne Clancy and Sandra Lacy. Lacy will also perform the silky and mysterious solo Slip, a collaboration with former Trisha Brown dancer Mariah Maloney performed to an original score by Timothy Nohe (Visual Arts).

Guest artists Jessie Laurita-Spanglet and Matthew Cumbie investigate the role and power of ritual in Ritual Cycle #1. How do we deal with change now, and how have those before explored the same question?

$20 general admission, $10 students and seniors, $7 UMBC students. To order tickets in advance by credit card, purchase online through MissionTix. Patrons who prefer to pay cash or check at will call may make a reservation by calling x56240.

Complete information: http://bit.ly/1IhXPLF

On Thursday, February 5 at 8:00 p.m. in the Concert Hall, the Department of Music presents violinist Amadi Azikiwe in concert with pianist Mikael Darmanie. Their program will feature:

• The Stream Flows by Bright Sheng
• Romance in F minor, Op. 11 by Antonín Dvořak
• Deliver My Soul by David Baker
• Zigeunerweisen, Op. 20 by Pablo de Sarasate
• Sonata No. 9 in A Major, Op. 47 by Ludwig van Beethoven

Amadi Azikiwe, violist, violinist and conductor, has been heard in recital in major cities throughout the United States, such as New York, Boston, Cleveland, Chicago, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Houston, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C., including an appearance at the U.S. Supreme Court. Mr. Azikiwe has also been a guest of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center at the Alice Tully Hall in New York, and at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. He has appeared in recital at the Piccolo Spoleto Festival in Charleston, the “Discovery” recital series in La Jolla, the International Viola Congress, and at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Since then, he has performed throughout Israel, Canada, South America, Central America, Switzerland, India, Japan, Hong Kong, and throughout the Caribbean. Mr. Azikiwe’s performances have been broadcast on National Public Radio’s “Performance Today,” “St. Paul Sunday,” on WNYC in New York, WGBH in Boston, WFMT in Chicago, and the BBC, along with television appearances in South America. He is an adjunct instruction in UMBC’s Department of Music.

Pianist Mikael Darmanie has performed throughout the United States, Europe, and the Caribbean playing the role of soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral conductor. Festival appearances include Pianofest in the Hamptons, Art of Piano Festival, and L’Acadèmie de Musique de Sion (Switzerland). As a chamber musician, he won First Prize in the North Carolina MTNA Chamber Music Competition (with the Transverse Trio), has performed at the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music as part of the Apple Hill Fellowship Trio, and, in 2010, he performed in programs of Brazilian and French music for violin and piano at Lincoln Center Institute’s Kenan Fellowship performance series. In 2012, he performed on the Taft Museum of Art Chamber Music Series (Cincinnati) with members of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. Since his debut as a conductor with the Carolina Chamber Symphony in 2008, he has gone on to perform throughout the United States, conducting various piano concerti from the keyboard and symphonic works by Bach, Brahms, Beethoven, Haydn and Liszt.

$15 general admission
$10 seniors
$5 students
Advance tickets via credit card are available online at MissionTix and will also be available at the door (cash or check only).
Admission is free with a UMBC ID (tickets available at the door).

Complete information: http://bit.ly/1Cwmri4