NCSA RealTime #2

This episode, which originally aired in 1991, features video reports on the burgeoning field of high-performance computing and its applications to science, engineering, education, and the arts and humanities.

- A New Proving Ground: Working with visualization experts at NCSA, Caterpillar, Inc. aims to prototype a new breed of earth-diggers.  3-D animations simulate the operator's field of view and allow engineers to test their designs on-screen before making expensive mock-ups.

- Sounding the Data: Changes of color and motion help us recognize patterns in data.  But how about sound?  According to a team at NCSA, it's a question well worth exploring. The sounds that they are experimenting with, though, are not in the least bit musical but are generated from the same data that drive their scientific visualizations.

- Music by Numbers: At the University of Illinois School of Music, a unique collaboration is taking shape. Here, composers employ a CRAY Y-MP to create entirely new patterns of sound.  Combining randomness and order, the resulting music challenges traditional forms and the clockwork universe they reflect.

- Vision for Learning: Visualization is fast becoming essential to communicating the results of science, particularly computational science.  You wouldn't think so, though, if you had to plow through stacks of research journals.  For David Ruzic, a University of Illinois plasma physicist, it's time to let pictures do more of the talking.  The result:  a video textbook.