E-Science, cyberinfrastructure, and modern dance: the Internet's infrastructure is still under construction. What's in place eases collaboration in arts and sciences. and info pros need to know their options

Information Outlook, May, 2008 by Daureen Nesdill

You make it to your seat just as the theater lights dims. The excitement of the audience is palpable. Large projection screens begin to come to life as music invades the space. Colors flash. Dancers appear before you, on the floor and virtually, on the screens. The movements of the dancers intertwine from screen to floor and back again. The strains of music lead the dancers in telling a story. The dancers come together touching hands and then disperse only to come together again. They are coming together--but not in the way we usually expect at a dance concert. Some of these dancers are in Florida. Some of them are in Utah. How do they do this?

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At the University of Utah, modern dance and cyber-technology have come together to develop performances involving dancers working in different geographic locations. The audience is surrounded by performers who are actually in different cities, but appear to perform, interactively. The dance movements of each performer intertwine across the Internet with the movements of collaborating performers. For effect, a little graphic artwork is streamed into the space as the music leads the dancers around you.

This integration of dance and cyber technology is happening because of the collaboration between the University of Utah Department of Modern Dance and the Center for High Performance Computing (www.dance.utah.edu/tech-nology/index.html). Together, they are participating members of ADaPT: the Association for Dance and Performance Telematics (www.dvpg.net/adapt.html). In addition to the University of Utah, ADaPT has five other member universities, Arizona State University; the University of California, Irvine; Ohio State University; University of Wisconsin, Madison; Florida State University, and associates in Europe and Latin America.

New Vocabulary

Cyber-technology is among the new terms competing to enter the controlled vocabulary of information professionals. Other such terms include e-science, cyberscience, e-scholarship, cyberin-frastructure, e-research, virtual science community, and collaboratories. The "e," "virtual," and "cyber" refer to the Internet. The science, research, and laboratories obviously refer to scientific research--working collaboratively over the Internet. Infrastructure refers to the nut and bolts, or more appropriately, the grids, portals and middleware, that have been emerging in support of global, collaborative, scientific research ever since the establishment of the Internet in 1969.

It would appear that cyberinfrastructure has more to do with the sciences than any other discipline. For this article, "science" encompasses medicine, technology, and engineering in addition to the basic sciences. The term e-science emerged in the UK. Researchers there, as elsewhere, were moving away from working independently and increasingly working collaboratively as members of teams. Scientific research was becoming increasingly multi-disciplinary. This shift toward a collaborative, interdisciplinary approach necessitated an increase in the use of Web technology. John Taylor, the Director General of Research Councils, Office of Science and Technology (OST) proposed the term e-science in 1999: "E-Science is about global collaboration in key areas of science and the next generation of infrastructure that will enable it ... e-Science will change the dynamic of the way science is undertaken.'

In 2000, the UK allocated funding to OST to establish the E-Science Core Programme (Hey and Trefethen, 2002).

Across the pond in the U.S., a blueribbon panel led by Daniel E. Atkins, a professer in the school of information and a member of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Michigan, published the 2002 ground-breaking report, Revolutionizing Science and Engineering Research through Cyberinfrastructure. A 2006 press release from the National Science Foundation announced the formation of the Office of Cyberinfrastructure to address support for cyberinfrastructure and named Daniel Atkins its first Director. This report stated: "Cyberinfrastructure refers to infrastructure based upon distributed computer, information, and communication technology. If infrastructure is required for an industrial economy, then we could say that cyberinfrastructure is required for a knowledge economy."

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Government sponsored e-science initiatives are not limited to those of the U.K. and U.S. The government of Japan has funded the National Research Grid Initiative (www.mext.go.jp/english/org/science/37.htm). In Brazil the SINAPAD (www.lncc.br/sinapad/) project and in Malaysia the KnowledgeGRID Malaysia (http://knowledgegrid.net.my/index.jsp) project are organizing a cyberinfrastructure.

Governments, universities, and scholarly organization are building infrastructures worldwide. Communities of researchers, too, are coalescing globally. A quick Google search lists numerous conferences addressing the subject.

And let's not forget industry, where the cyberinfrastructure may be less visible for proprietary reasons. Industry is global and cyberinfrastructure provides a more efficient method of communication and collaboration. Mercedes Benz is partnering with the DAMES project (www.cs.york.ac.uk/dame) to investigate new applications connected with their work (Hey and Trefethen 2002).