About

Zach Duer is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Creative Technologies MFA program at the School of Visual Arts, Virginia Tech. His artistic research intersects sound and visualization, combining careful composition with improvised performance, and exploring intuitive musical spontaneity alongside structured digital systems. His creative work includes fixed-media sound and video collage, improvised multimedia performances, immersive environments, and projection-mapped and 3D-printed sculptures. Duer grew up in Minnesota and has two children. His teaching responsibilities encompass courses such as Introduction to Creative Code, Introduction to Creative Technologies, Visual Programming, Advanced Creative Code, Electronic Performance and Installation, Visual Music, and Senior Studio. His research interests include Visual Music, Creative Coding, Generative Art, Videogame Design, and Live Visualization with Movement Performance. Duer has exhibited and performed internationally, with screenings and installations at festivals and venues such as Oaxaca FilmFest, the 17th Biennial Symposium on Arts and Technology, TANZAHOi International Dance Film Festival, Split Film Festival, San Francisco Dance Film Festival, and SIGGRAPH 2020, among others. He has also hosted the 2022 New Media Caucus Symposium at Virginia Tech and serves on professional boards including the New Media Caucus and a2ru Ground Works.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Political Science
• Computer graphics (images)
• Visual arts
• Simulation
• Multimedia
• Archaeology
• Operations research
• History
• Law
• Human–computer interaction
• Engineering
• Art

Selected publications

• Making the Invisible Visible: Illuminating the Hidden Histories of the World War I Tunnels at Vauquois Through a Hybridized Virtual Reality Exhibition

  IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications · 2020 · 17 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Computer Science
  • Human–computer interaction

  Visualizing History: Tunnels of Vauquois is an educational immersive virtual reality (VR) exhibit that makes the invisible history of World War I soldiers' experiences in the tunnels of Vauquois, France, visible to contemporary audiences. The exhibit presents the visitor with both discrete knowledge and the opportunity for emotional awareness. The virtual environment is recreated from scanned data of the original site. Visitors traverse the tunnel through the use of a head-mounted display, redirected walking, passive haptics, aligned physical and virtual environments, interactive tracked props, and narration. In this article, we describe the motivation and rationale for creating an immersive exhibit for informal learning environments, such as museums, libraries, and school VR laboratories. We also describe how the current exhibit functions and our iterative design process informed by observational feedback from pilot testing.

  PublisherDOI

• If this place could talk ... First World War tunnel warfare through haptic VR

  2020 · 4 citations

  • Political Science
  • Engineering
  • Archaeology

  Our transdisciplinary team performed a comprehensive site survey of the Hill of Vauquois, combining a variety of to create a digital recreation of the above and below ground features of the craters, trenches, tunnels and galleries that allows us to see and explore the destroyed village of Vauquois as it has never been seen before. Vauquois was a small French village before it became critical high ground that was fiercely contested for four years by the French and Germans during World War I, with the Americans finally taking the position during the Meuse-Argonne offensive of 1918. A quiet, agricultural village became a killing ground starting in the streets, moving to trenches, and finally moving underground into a network of miles of tunnels used to set over 500 mine explosions in four horrific years of continuous combat.

  PublisherDOI

• Belle2VR: A Virtual-Reality Visualization of Subatomic Particle Physics in the Belle II Experiment

  IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications · 2018-05-01 · 16 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Belle2VR is an interactive virtual-reality visualization of subatomic particle physics, designed by an interdisciplinary team as an educational tool for learning about and exploring subatomic particle collisions. This article describes the tool, discusses visualization design decisions, and outlines our process for collaborative development.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Scott Fralin

  Virginia Tech

  2 shared

• David Hicks

  Aalborg University

  2 shared

• George E. Glasson

  Virginia Tech

  1 shared

• Todd Ogle

  Virginia Tech

  1 shared

• L. E. Piilonen

  1 shared

• Run Yu

  Virginia Tech

  1 shared

• Thomas J. Tucker

  1 shared

• J. Todd Ogle

  Virginia Tech

  1 shared

Awards & honors

• Hosted the 2022 New Media Caucus Symposium, Future Bodies, a…