Where we go from here

Today we are submitting our final report to the NSF to indicate completion of the initial Major Research Instrumentation grant that set this entire process in motion.

What was supposed to be a two-year process has ballooned into a six year epic journey with a myriad of unexpected twists and turns on both a personal and global scale! Telling that full story is for another time, suffice to say I am energized and thrilled to be getting some closure on this project. But it will undoubtedly seem odd to be starting this site with an end rather than a beginning, and that is what I want to explain in this post.

The NSF provided these funds as an equipment grant meaning that is was primarily to be used to acquire, configure, and maintain a piece of equipment and not to support projects and research done with that equipment. While it is still expected that said research is happening (possibly with other funding sources) and the outcomes from that research are important to this grant, it does not end when this grant ends. For us, we have only had limited success so far in utilizing PARSEC to generate data and pursue publications. Much of the work it has produced so far has been synergistic; related to the people involved in PARSEC and the lessons we are learning as we assemble and configure it, but not directly captured with this equipment.

We feel proud of the students we have inspired with this work. Their exposure to photogrammetry and its uses in game design and digital humanities has expanded our own visions for this equipment moving forward. And that is the new path! We want to continue to support courses and curriculum here at Stout and eventually even wider throughout western Wisconsin. PARSEC represents the removal of a significant barrier to access this type of work and to generate this type of data. It empowers creators and researchers to think beyond traditional scanning and content creation techniques and to envision new use cases for this technology.

UW Stout is uniquely positioned to explore this with its interdisciplinary approach to all instruction and research. I have never been at a school that is as good at working across artificial administrative barriers as Stout and this has already lead me to new ideas for areas that can benefit from what PARSEC provides. And today, as we start to launch this work to a wider audience, we ask the question, what do we still have to discover? Where can we find new ideas and expertise that will help us think differently and expose us to new perspectives. PARSEC gives us 120 ways to view a single object, and 156 ways to shine light on this field, but it is the countless other perspectives that I look forward to inviting to PARSEC that will show me things I have never seen before. I hope I can share those with everyone, everywhere and change the way we access everything!