State-of-the-art IQ-Wall at IU South Bend features 6th Annual Performing Media Festival

“The Performing Media Festival (PMF) is an annual showcase of audio-visual performance works where artists working with emerging technologies cross disciplinary boundaries to create new works of integrated media,” according to the Ernestine M. Raclin School of the Arts blog. The Performing Media Festival includes works by guest artists, students, and faculty of the Raclin School of the Arts. Works from the Performing Media Festival were recently displayed on the innovative IQ-Wall in the IUSB University Center.

Assistant Professor of Music from the Ernestine M. Raclin School of the Arts, Ryan Olivier, says, “The IQ-Wall provides our artists an impressive new platform on which they can showcase their new multimedia performance works. This year, we were able to show seven works throughout the week of our annual Performing Media Festival here at IU South Bend. We hope to have a specific call for works crafted specifically for the full artistic capabilities of this high-definition multichannel video wall for our 2023 festival.”

IUSB’s IQ-Wall is a large format, ultra-high resolution, tiled video display system. It has 16 screens, a powerful desktop, and copious inputs accepting a wide variety of devices. Chris Eller, Senior Technical Lead from the Advanced Visualization Lab (AVL), a group within UITS Research Technologies, worked with Jason Sykes, Senior Manager of Classroom Technology from UITS at IUSB to install the IQ-Wall in late January 2021. While it may seem complicated to use, UITS employees are constantly updating the setup to ensure students, faculty, and staff can easily walk up and begin using the IQ-Wall with minimal assistance from them.

Getting content on the screen is pretty straightforward, according to Phil Mikulak, Executive Director of UITS at IUSB. Mikulak comments, “If a student wants to use the IQ-Wall for an ad-hoc meeting, they can walk up to the computer and pull their content up. The content will stay up as long as the student stays logged in. Once the student logs outs, the content will disappear.” If a student, faculty member, or department wants to display persistent content, they can submit an IQ-Wall promotion request.

Students may use the IQ-Wall not only for educational purposes, but also for entertainment. Sykes and IU South Bend’s Director of Student Life are working on a plan to use the IQ-Wall to host a gaming night. Sykes says, “…the ability to have a huge video game wall going for multi-players would be fantastic.”

The IQ-Wall is at the disposal of any student, faculty, or staff member on IU South Bend’s campus. The possibilities are endless. Thus far, the campus has shown several significant events on the IQ-Wall’s display. The inauguration of President Whitten was one of the first events displayed on IUSB’s IQ-Wall. According to Mikulak, “It was the next best thing to being there.”

For additional information on using the IQ-Wall at the IUSB University Center, IUSB’s UITS has provided several IQ-Wall Tips and Tricks online.

For additional information about the UITS Advanced Visualization Lab and the services provided, see the Knowledge Base document About the UITS Advanced Visualization Lab (AVL).