The University of Florida’s Digital Worlds Institute demonstrated its abilities to bridge five continents and cultures by creating an unprecedented real-time global collaboration for the world’s largest computer art and interactivity conference in Los Angeles, CA on August 1-4, 2005.

As a result of its pioneering work first exhibited at the 2001 global SuperComputing Conference, Digital Worlds (DW) was invited to showcase its tools and techniques in the “Emerging Technologies” exhibit at SIGGRAPH, the industry’s premiere venue for digital art and science.

DW showcased a live online distributed collaboration entitled “In Common: TIME” with partners at the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), the Red Universitaria Nacional (REUNA) of Santiago, Chile, the Australian Cooperative Research Centre for Interaction Design (ACID) at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, the Digital Knowledge Exchange (DKE) of Doncaster, England, the New World School of the Arts (NWSA) in Miami and the UF Colleges of Fine Arts and Engineering featuring students from the PK Yonge Laboratory School and the Millhopper Montessori School in Gainesville, Florida.

“In Common: TIME” featured performers ranging in age from 11 to 68, including musical artists from the five diverse world cultures. The purpose of the SIGGRAPH showcase was to illustrate how the emerging technology known as the Access Grid can empower not only international communication but shared collaboration and cultural understanding. The Access Grid allows multiple people in multiple locations to come together in a shared virtual environment in real time, thus creating a truly global team that can assemble for a wide range of activities, ranging from education to research to cross-cultural performances.

To create this living global tapestry, UF Digital Worlds partnered with academic researchers and engineers from Internet2, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), the Access Grid community, Purdue University, Boston University, industrial sponsor InSORS and SIGGRAPH.

Audiences in Gainesville, Florida and Australia observed and participated in the event on the evenings of August 1 - 4.

Press Release (PDF Format)