DM TROJM
Student newspaper of the University of Southern California
TUESDAY
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November 19, 2002
Of interest...
Critics seem reluctant to deviate from consensus on The Soft Boys, but the band’s bassist is not / 5
News Digest	2	Calendar	2
Opinions	4	Lifestyle	5
CD Picks	5	Classifieds	8
Crossword	9	Sports	12
vol. CXLVII, no. 59 www.dailytrojan.com
ICT actualizes sci-fi fantasies
Burning the Devils
The USC defense holds Arizona State to 13 points, sacking quarterback Andrew Walter four times /12
Technology: University's Institute for Creative Technologies is developing advanced ‘holodeck’ programs for the Army
By JULIE KUO
Contributing Writer
USC is working to make “Star Trek” technology a reality a few centuries early.
The U.S. Army contracted USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies, based in Marina del Rey, Calif., to do research for virtual reality technology similar to “Star Trek’s” holodeck.
“The holodeck,” Richard Lindheim, executive director of ICT, said in a CBS report, “is a room that can be transformed instantaneously into any place, and you go into this room and you interact with three-dimensional, holographic, virtual reality characters — real people.”
Founded in 1999, ICT is a university-related research center, Lindheim told the Daily Trojan. There are 12 research centers sponsored by different universities around the country, he added.
USC is receiving $45 million in government funds during a five-year period to conduct the virtual reality research.
This money provides the building, salaries and other expenditures, Lindheim said.
“ICT is trying to design the first computer simulation able to change emotions and to correct trainees’ mistakes,” CBS reported.
By using the programs, the military is able to train its soldiers with real-life sounds, emotions and environments.
“The Army will employee these improved simulation technologies to rehearse for missions, strategic planning through interactive battle scenarios, and combat training, recruitment and equipment acquisition,” according to a USC news release.
“It’s interactive storytelling,” said Jay Douglas, ICT’s research associate. “(We’re) telling a story with a computer where the computer creates
one or more characters in the story.” An example, he said, could be one where the computer simulates Starbucks. The computer creates the people in line and other components of the coffee shop, and the person can interact with the people in line.
The goal is “less and less of preprogrammed and more and more of the computer thinking on its feet," Douglas said.
For example, in a military training session, depending on the situation, a sergeant can change his tone of voice; his “emotional state is affected by what is going on around him,” Douglas said.
Even though the military funded the institute, its research can also be used in the entertainment industry.
The Light Stage, a project of Paul Debevec, ICT’s executive producer for graphic research projects, enables the entertainment industry to simulate real light in an indoor environment Although this effect is possible now, the technology being developed at ICT could make the process less complicated.
“ICT has gotten inquiries from major studios to use this technology,” Debevec said.
“The idea is to composite an actor into a virtual reality environment such as they are illuminated by the light within that environment,” according to a video on his Web site, http://www.debevec.org.
ICT does not produce a material product, however.
“Our goal is to advance the state of the art of modeling and rendering, photo realities, virtual environments populated by photo real characters,” Debevec said. “Our goal is to do research, not to create a product in a sense as a company would.”
ICT does “basic research,” said Craig Cochrane, ICT’s executive manager of collaboration.
I see ICT, page 3 I
Abran Rubiner I Daily Trojan
Helping hands. A student presents food at a mission while participating in one of the many community service efforts supported and staffed by campus religious organizations such as United Ministry and the Catholic Center.
Students put faith to work
By ELIZABETH BROTHERTON
StaffWriter
Campus religious groups, driven by their convictions, have reached out to the local community through service projects.
Perhaps the strongest example of a religious group involved in community service is A Community Place, a program primarily run through the United Ministry at USC.
The ministry is interfaith and began two years ago, the Rev. Dianne Kenney said. Held during the week at St Marks Church, the ministry provides a central place in the community for the homeless and working poor to go to get food, directions to local shelters or job referrals.
More than 50 student volunteers are involved in the program each semester, Kenney said. Many students are driven to participate
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RELIGION & ETHICS
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because when they first come to the university, they encounter a level of poverty in the community that they usually are not used to.
“A Community Place gives students an appropriate way to respond to (poverty),” Kenney said.
Religious beliefs and traditions are often a factor that drives students to participate in the program, Kenney said. In most religious traditions, reaching out to others is a fundamental teaching, and thus students are motivated by these factors, she said.
“All human beings are children
of God, and all deserve to be treated with respect,” Kenney said.
Students must make sure not to push their religious beliefs onto others when they participate, Kenney said.
“We make certain (students) understand their responsibility is to embody what their religious tradition says but not to do evangelicalism,” she said.
While religion might be a factor that drives students to help, it is important that religious traditions work together, Kenney said. A Community Place involves the support of many religious traditions to counteract the problem of poverty, she said.
Fatma Senol, a doctoral student specializing in urban planning with a focus in community organizing and neighborhood development,
I see Religion, page 3 I
Program makes local grade-schoolers burst into song
Teaching: Musical Outreach earns acclaim for bringing music lessons to students
By DIDIER DIELS
Contributing Writer
“Oh, I get it,” said the girl, a sec-ond-grader at Norwood Street Elementary.
She learned to read sheet music the week before and had just grasped how the notes in her book translated to the keyboard in front of her. She looked at the page and began playing “Hickory-Dickory-Dock.”
At the table opposite her, Joshua Hernandez tried to look disinterested, hiding his smile as he played “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” with
his eyes closed.
The class, conducted Friday in the school library, was the seventh meeting of USC's Musical Outreach Program. Through the program, USC students have given music lessons to more than 40 first- through fifth-graders at Norwood, St. Vincent and St Agnes elementary schools, where tight budgets cannot afford music classes.
“Music education has always been cut as funding dropped," said Katherine Chiu, a junior majoring in biomedical engineering and the cofounder of Musical Outreach.
Chiu worked with Sharon Stewart, USC’s community outreach director, and Audrey Yen, a junior majoring in biology, to design a six-week pilot program at the three elementary schools.
Chiu said the USC students involved with Musical Outreach, numbering more than>13, had good results and have applied for grants to continue the program next semester. Frances Goldman, Norwood’s assistant principal, said she hoped the program would offer more lessons than the one hour per week given this semester and teach different grade levels.
“It’s wonderful.” Goldman said. “Our children don’t have access to music lessons. I hope they get a grant and can expand it”
As word of the program spread, many parents asked how their children could gain access, said Dee Dee Lonon, Norwood’s principal. Angie Hernandez, Joshua's mother, said the program not only sparked her son's interest in music but in other classes
as well.
-	“It’s very enriching,” Hernandez said. “Joshua has become more motivated in school than he used to be.”
“I like my teachers a lot," Joshua said.
He was surprised at his own abilities and said the classes have given him new goals.
“I want to be a singer or a piano player," he said, answering sheepishly from behind his mother’s dress.
Joshua was not the only student in the program to improve academically, Lonon said. She noted one student who previously had discipline problems but really enjoyed the class.
"When you talk to them individually, you can see how much they’ve grown,” Chiu said of her students at Norwood.
While the classes at Norwood focused on keyboard, the classes at St Vincent focused on general music and classes at St. Agnes focused on choir.
Wendy White, the coordinator at St Agnes, noted a third-grader who could play piano and accordion but really excelled as a singer. The boy's singing impressed his teachers from the beginning.
“He has such a rich, timbered voice,” Chiu said. “He could definitely go into performing.”	„
Most of the USC students involved with the program were not music performance majors but shared strong backgrounds in music and the desire to teach, Chiu said. She said her mother was a music teacher I see Music, page 3 I