The educational aims of the project were to allow large numbers of elementary and secondary school students and non-experts in the general public to experience interactive simulations of scientific phenomena, as well as to give children permission to "cross-over" into inter-disciplinary exploration.
Journey Into the Living Cell is an interdisciplinary collaboration involving scientists, artists and educators from Carnegie Mellon's Center for Light Microscope Imaging and Biotechnology and STUDIO for Creative Inquiry and Pittsburgh's Carnegie Science Center. Similar persons and organizations within Pittsburgh and across the nation were involved as collaborators, advisors and contributors to the immense set of visual imagery used in the production.
The domed, multimedia space of the planetarium was further augmented by the teams creation of the Group Immersive Visualization Environment. GIVE is a synthesis of new visualization and sound tools with existing planetarium media technology. The central component of the GIVE is the "Cinematrix" audience interactive processor and the system of linked technologies which provide graphics and sound. The system uses this collective audience response (almost like that of a joystick or mouse), to control graphics projected before the audience. Information is also directed to computers which control full-surround sound, so that sound comes from the same place as the graphics within the domed space.
This technology uses retro-reflective "paddles," an infrared light source and camera linked to a proprietary computer and software system displayed through a Silicon Graphics computer via video projection. In this technology, the audience simply raises and/or lowers a small paddle. Their "vote" is registered twenty times per second, the aggregate then influences a graphic display. The behavior of the system is such that the audience of 150 can control the graphics which can be as simple as a game of "pong" or as complex as a cellular maze.
