Illinois Computes Helps Bring a Whale of a Story to Life

Launched in 2023 to connect Illinois researchers with NCSA’s data and computing resources and expertise, Illinois Computes has attracted faculty from all across the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign eager to learn how they can work with NCSA with relatively little fuss and aggravation. Not to mention, at no cost.

Case in point, last fall, Illinois Computes, funded by Illinois and the University of Illinois System, helped bring whales to the University Stock Pavilion. Normally home to animal science laboratories and perhaps some hooved mammals, the pavilion was transformed for CETACEAN (The Whale), a multi-media performance about whales, eco-anxiety in modern times and how species adapt and persevere in a changing environment. CETACEAN was the sixth work produced by Deke Weaver, an artist and professor of new media in the university’s School of Art and Design, that looks at climate change and ecosystems by focusing on an endangered species.

The series, called The Unreliable Bestiary, is co-produced and choreographed by Jennifer Allen and also includes MONKEY, ELEPHANT, WOLF, BEAR and TIGER. Weaver is creating a performance that covers every letter of the alphabet, using endangered and threatened species to connect audiences to the animals that share the planet with humans and, like us, depend on it. CETACEAN was the first of Weaver’s productions to be supported by Illinois Computes.

“We got involved with the Deke Weaver several years ago,” recalled Visualization Designer Jeff Carpenter, part of NCSA’s Advanced Visualization Laboratory (AVL). “I was introduced to Deke during his WOLF performance, where we created some celestial graphics of the Canis constellation and were doing some visualizations. And the relationship has continued from there.”

It was back in 2013 when Weaver worked with Carpenter and Stuart Levy, a senior research programmer in the AVL, on WOLF, and he thought of working with them again on his newest project to create massive high-resolution animations that could tie the various story threads of CETACEAN together.

“I really liked working with Jeff and Stuart, so I got in touch with them,” said Weaver. “I didn’t know about the whole Illinois Computes thing; that was new to me. I just thought the work they do could really help us get our ideas across.”

With their time paid for through Illinois Computes, Carpenter and Levy used GPS data to create visualizations that hop the globe, stopping at locations where the storytelling on the pavilion floor focused on whales in different human cultures. The visualizations, projected onto a supermassive screen located behind and above the performers, transport the audience from the waters near Washington State, up to Alaska, back down around the U.S. West Coast, south past South America and around Cape Horn, up through the Amazon, and finally north and east to Greenland and Ireland. The team also created a starfield map that was projected behind the other videos playing during the performance.

“We put the locations of these points of interest on the globe to create a sense of place for the audience to go with everything else that was going on,” said Carpenter.

Everything else included dance, readings from depositions made in 1817 from people who thought they saw a sea monster off the coast of Massachusetts and an opera singer playing Ahab from Moby Dick singing about the great whale, performed by Phillip W. Phillips, who spends his days as a University of Illinois physics professor and is known internationally for his work in condensed matter physics. All the action took place under a “sea of hope and fear” comprised of more than 1,200 plastic bottles suspended from the ceiling of the Stock Pavilion. Another 1,000 plastic bottles formed beached “trash whales” on the floor of the pavilion.

This is art; this is multimedia performance. It shows that Illinois Computes can help faculty who aren’t engineers or some kind of science researchers.

Jeff Carpenter, Research Visualization Designer

Creating the plastic sea and beached whales was a project in itself. Weaver visited 45 different high school art classes and involved more than 800 students. After talking with the students about whales and how plastics wreak havoc with their ecosystems, health and human health, each student wrote down six things they fear on six different strips of paper. They used another six strips of paper to write down their hopes. The students crumpled up their fears, burned them in a bucket, then mixed their “fear ash” with sand and put it into the plastic bottles. The hope strips became origami stars added to the bottles of fear and sand to create a sea of hope and fear. More bottles of hope and fear were used to create the beached whales.

“We tried to connect the students – and our audiences – to the different things going on around the issue,” said Weaver. “We tried to find emotional, personal stories so it doesn’t feel so abstract, like something you’re reading about in a headline.”

Weaver said he is grateful for the NCSA visualization assistance that helped tie a series of disparate stories together.

“Being able to work with NCSA, just seeing how they were able to call up data sets and work with a 3D model of the Earth, was great,” said Weaver. “To have these animated visuals of traveling around the world before getting into the story and serving as transitions and introductions to these stories hopefully got people to pay attention to the fact that we share a world with these animals, and they are linked to people and places all around the world.”

CETACEAN premiered to the public for five shows between Sept. 28 and Oct. 2, 2023. The performances were well received and well attended. Carpenter said he hopes the collaboration with NCSA illustrates that Illinois Computes can help any faculty project on campus.

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ABOUT ILLINOIS COMPUTES

Illinois Computes offers computing and data storage resources, technical expertise and support services to researchers from all domains across the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus at no cost. Through the campus-funded program, NCSA will learn what additional assets are needed to fulfill the computing demands of the university and adjust the cyberinfrastructure strategy while continuing to make access to systems, interdisciplinary and technical knowledge, and support infrastructure easy to obtain. Illinois Computes removes barriers for all Illinois researchers – especially those typically underserved – to access NCSA’s growing assemblage of research computing tools and world-class staff, furthering their innovative and novel work while ensuring NCSA is a leader in the global research community.

Check out the Illinois Computes website for more information or to get involved.