![Firefighters reviewing a fire simulation in an immersive cinema Four firefighters viewing a grassland fire simulation in an immersive cinema wearing 3D glasses](/content/dam/zz-drop/single-import/ada/icinema/susanne-thurow/2024-07-susanne-thurow/Hero%203.cropimg.width=335.crop=video.jpg)
The iCinema Centre is focused on the development of AI-based creative visualisation across the Faculties of Arts, Architecture and Design, Australian Defence Force Academy, Engineering and Science. As the world is increasingly disrupted by climate change, visualising unpredictable processes in sensorially compelling ways becomes of paramount concern. Faced with increasingly unanticipated and networked situations such as landscapes riven by wildfires, the academic and industrial sectors are utilising fully immersive and intelligent visualisation systems to explore and prototype these events in order to optimise practical understanding and effective decision making. At the cutting edge of this research is the problem of how to visually model these situations by integrating the way AI rapidly analyses underlying patterns with the human capacity to experientially interpret and respond to such scenarios.
Critical here is the development of a collaborative and visceral experiential framework that facilitates the aesthetic visualisation of unanticipated and multi-located scenarios and their translation across domains and industries. This involves open-ended decision making and situational awareness between users and AI scenarios—an as yet unattained goal in visualisation research. Such a framework involves integrating research into AI aesthetics with advances in cinematic scale 3D environments, so that visualisation operates as a collaborative exploration by networked digital and human agencies in ways that were previously unimaginable.
The iCinema Centre’s four complimentary Research Programs investigate the development of such an aesthetic framework for the art, design, museology and simulation sectors. These programs are:
These programs are articulated to Research Networks developed in collaboration with the Australian Centre for Astrobiology (UNSW Science), UNSW Bushfire (UNSW Canberra), Climate Change Research Centre (UNSW Science) and the School of Minerals and Energy Resources Engineering Advanced Visualisation Lab (UNSW Engineering). These networks are: