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 |
| |
| 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 |
|
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 |
| The
NAU Solar System Simulation is an on-line laboratory, a MUD, serving
undergraduate courses in the social and communications sciences.
Students in each class collaborate in building a working model of
a community in a shared future Solar System. Each community must
be scientifically and historically plausible, ethically and aesthetically
desirable, and sustainable. Each instructor brings her own learning
objectives appropriate to that particular course. |
|
| CONTACT
has a strong role in education and development of innovative curricula.
This year our focus is how to use education to move us from CONTACT
to Mars. Former NASA educator, now author of educational works,
Don Scott steers this symposium through topics including Mars education
in the University, high-tech Mars exploration, and COTI Hi's promise
for preparing students to travel to Mars, and other worlds. Don
says we also expect to have the mysterious, oft-promised, STAR CAR
in attendance... |
|
| Cultures
Of The Imagination, CONTACT's award winning world building and culture
creation program is the foundation for an educational curriculum
developed by Oroville High. Two teams of students create two planets,
life forms and cultures, and then explore a contact scenario over
the weekend of the conference. Carol Anderson and Dave Tamori bring
down the Oroville teams again this year to build worlds. Both Carol
and Dave are nationally honored teachers, Carol in the sciences
and Dave in the arts. |
|
| Mars:
Ethics and Extraterrestrial Ecologies |
| |
| A special session with CONTACT founder Jim Funaro and Dennis Rohatyn, professor of philosophy at the University of San Diego. |
|
| Masamichi
Osako, founder of CONTACT's sister organization in Japan, will report
on their activities and plans for 2004. |
|
|
