| Join the COTI Away Team this year and be humanity's ambassador to the stars! In a return to our roots, this year's COTI workshop welcomes conference attendees to embark upon an expedition to make first contact with an alien intelligence. The talented students from Oroville High School have spent their school year creating a detailed world and |
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| intelligent alien life form. Now, you have the chance to design an expedition to investigate their world and attempt a successful contact mission with their creature. The workshop will be ongoing during this year's conference, and expedition members will present their progress to the audience during daily mission briefings. As is traditional, the finale will be the improv live-action roleplay of the contact moment. Don't miss the boat… reserve your seat on a starship Friday morning at the Registration Desk. |
| MARS
BASE: A Mini-Workshop on Another World |
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| Rick
Sternbach launches a new project at CONTACT. Over the last fifty
years, there have been numerous studies suggesting how to get
humans to Mars and back home again. Some of those studies have
also included the hardware and techniques necessary to sustain
explorers for a number of years between visits by resupply craft.
The MARS BASE workshop is an exercise in designing the habitats,
launch vehicles, and life support systems critical to survival
on
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Mars in the time frame of 2018-2028. The workshop schedule may
be fragmentary, slotted in between conference presentations and
after-hours activities, but it you're interesting in brainstorming,
come prepared with your laptop or pocket calculator, sketch paper
and pens, and whatever knowledge you have about spacecraft and
your new cold, dry home! And be prepared to work within tight
budget and resource constraints. Who knows? We just might come
up with some ballpark answers about whether a base is feasible. |
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Keith
Doyle is an artist and computer programmer currently exploring
simulated evolution as a design tool. Keith will bring an evolutionary
design tool for you to explore. You can construct three dimensional
structures, then mutate, combine, color, animate and interact
with them. The tool can be used to experiment with various types
of biological form and symmetry, discover new forms and explore
their characteristics.
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See
these rolling classrooms and artworks this year at CONTACT.
Randall Schroeder is an elusive traveling educator bringing
his unique works and approach for you to enjoy. Randall brings
science to students at his website, www.scienceisgolden.com.
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| Chuck
Stein’s company, GeoFusion, develops and markets global
visualization software. They are currently putting together an
interactive Mars exhibit for National Geographic to use in their
Washington DC Explorer's hall exhibit starting in January. Chuck
will be bringing a version of this program to CONTACT for you
to explore interactive navigation and 3D visualization of current
Mars data. |
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| As
always, our art show featured work by our presenters, attendees
and others. This year will feature a special exhibit of Mars prints. |
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traverses and vehicles which have been produced with publicly
available mission data. During the event to be presented on-screen
to CONTACT, educators, scientists, students and artists from
around the world will explore a virtual Mars using their avatar
online personae. In AvaMars we will be offering experiences
including special guests speakers and tours of visualizations
of Mars fantastic, past and future with views of Lowell's canals,
and hypothetical Martian oceans from a future (or past) Blue
Mars.
Details
on this event are available at the Contact Consortium pages
at www.ccon.org,
DigitalSpace at www.digitalspace.com,
and on our special event site, www.DriveOnMars.com. |
| AVATARS 2004: AvaMars Design Competition |
| Fantastic 3D Visions of Mars Past and Future |
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| The AVATARS 2004: AvaMars! team is inviting 3D artists to populate the virtual landscapes with their animated rovers at www.DriveOnMars.com with visions of Mars past and future from CONTACT science fiction authors including Greg Bear, Gerald Nordley, Kim Stanley Robinson and others. Did you love reading about Martian oceans and giant diatoms in Greg Bear's "Moving Mars"? Realize it in Cyberspace by designing creatures in Adobe Atmosphere and Viewpoint 3D formats. So you loved Kim Stanley |
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Robinson's Red, Green and Blue Mars books and want to realize some of the human habitation depicted there? Author a great 3D recreation of a settlement and submit it to our competition. Any visions of Martian landscapes, creatures or structures are fair game for the competition (even your own creations).
At the CONTACT conference on March 12-14th, 2004, a VIP team of science fiction authors, space scientists and anthropologists will judge the entries and nominate the ones deemed "most fantastic", "most plausible scientifically", "most true to their fictional counterpart" and "goshdarned most funny". On Saturday March 13th (11:30am US Pacific Time), we will present www.DriveOnMars.com to the CONTACT conference attendees and feature the winning entries which will be placed into those worlds and "discovered" by our dual virtual MER rovers.
Contact Bernard Farkin at be@eden-hms.com to register for the competition and receive any additional guidance. Find more information on the event home page at:
http://www.ccon.org/conf04/AvaMars.html
Deadline for competition: March 8, 2004 |
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