Poly House Project

The LAES Poly House project documented the construction and management of completely revising a home in Nipomo for the family that lives there. Students documented this complex construction project from the very beginning and also pitched in to do a good deal of the physical labor involved in this extremely worthwhile social project. The work was completed and the family was filmed as they were brought to the site to see what the Cal Poly students built for them. LAES students shot over 10 hours of video and will have a documentary film ready for public viewing soon. Join our mailing list to get information on show dates and times. Get more information on Poly House (opens in new window).

Intimate Transactions Project

A team of LAES students built and ran this interactive electronic artwork created by an Australian team of artists and engineers. The Intimate Transactions show with Australia and Beijing went live on June 7 and ran through June 17. LAES students built the system that collaborated with the new media arts festival in Beijing during the Summer Olympics and was responsible for running the "American Node" of the show.

The show was a huge success for the organizers in China. Keith Armstrong (the Australian artist who designed Intimate Transactions) received a number of compliments on the work and he said that everyone he talked with in China was very impressed with the Cal Poly connection. The fact that we were the only open and direct connection to the USA during the entire show (which had over 100 other exhibits and installations) was an intense draw for the work and Keith said they averaged over 1,000 people a day visiting the work, with huge crowds gathered around it when they were directly connected to our station at Cal Poly. And there was a line of over 2,000 people waiting to get in every morning, most of whom were all hoping to get a chance to try out Intimate Transactions.

Read the Cal Poly announcement, view the exciting Mustang Daily interview and get more information on Intimate Transactions (opens in new window).

Corporate Media Visits

Our first group of LAES program students took a field trip to Los Angeles to visit the production studios and workshops for a number of our new commercial partners. On April 24th and 25th students visited the studio and office facilities for Warner Brothers, THX Best Practices Lab, Raleigh Studios, Paramount Studios and one of the major design workshops for Disney Imagineering. As a result of this field trip, this group of LAES students are now lining up a number of internship positions offered just to us and our program from THX Best Practices Lab and with Warner Brothers television production division. Soon, we hope to have a few internships with Disney and with some of our other partners.

Lumiere Ghosting

The Lumiere Ghosting is an interactive 3D cinema theater device connected to other theater devices through a high-speed Internet connection. Participants in each device can see, talk to, and freely interact with other participants from distant locations who are represented as full-scale 3D interactive puppets modeled on the actual images of the live participants.

The video demonstrates what this system might look like and how participants would interact within the space. The space is designed to be portable and easy to assemble, therefore the video demonstrates how the different components of the space come together to form the entire theater, and then takes viewers inside the space to demonstrate how the 3D puppets are created from images of the participants. View the non-audio Lumiere Ghosting Device video (opens in new window) (Quicktime - 4 minutes). Note: If you don't have it, you can get the Quicktime player (opens in new window)