Wireless Internet is no longer an invisible mystery to students who sat near Shafer Tower on Tuesday night, watching the colors and hearing the sounds of interactivity. Students, faculty members and others from all around the country interacted with the multimedia sculpture by logging onto the wireless network and downloading files onto their laptops.
"I think it's a great way to relate to students something that they don't see," Student Government Association President Asher Lisec said.
The multimedia artwork garnered Ball State University some national attention, associate professor of art John Fillwalk said.
"It's going to be on the cover of Campus Technology Review," Fillwalk said. "The IT [Information Technology] people are excited about it."
Despite the promise of notoriety, Fillwalk said he had some pressing concerns about the piece.
As the weather changed Tuesday afternoon, Fillwalk and the project team had to lower and slant the artwork's silver rear projection screens.
"It wasn't going to hold up at the top," he said. "The wind really picked up."
Fillwalk said the project team designed the piece so it would not damage Shafer Tower, but that also left the equipment more susceptible to the weather.
The artwork is a collaboration between scientists and artists, who took abstract ideas and translated them into sounds and images for the general public, Fillwalk said.
"It makes it tangible to users," Fillwalk said. "It's a manifestation of the actual wireless network we have here."
Freshman Sarah Elifritz, a clarinet performance major, sat with friends while they experimented with the new use of technology.
"I think it's pretty amazing that they use a computer program to show what we do on the Internet," she said. "It really kind of brings a new light to the music technology department and shows what they really can do."
The project cost about $6,000 and was funded through a grant from Lilly Endowment, Inc., said Philip Repp, associate vice president of information technology.
University Teleplex director Dan Lutz said images shown on the screens could be seen on the project's Web site. Viewers of the site can also see the crowd's reaction to the bell tower piece through a live camera feed.
"We want to show people what it looks like, what the environment looks like," Lutz said.
Brad Wood, a sophomore computer science major at Taylor University, said he heard about the sculpture through Slashdot.org, a technology news Web site.
"It's an interesting concept having a data server displayed in a different way than you see it," he said. "Sort of having technology and art combined."
Instructor of music theory Jesse Allison said he helped select the audio components for the piece, which are made up of audio blips from online radio stations.
"We sort of went through and found a list of ones that wouldn't time-out," he said.
Allison said Shafer Tower's bells will chime along with synthesized sounds and the audio bites.
Although the piece does not have a clear artistic message it definitely has a purpose, he said.
"We're looking at what's going on in the wireless network," Allison said. "We're interpreting it and seeing what comes of it."
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