Digital media’s next generation of technology made its premier appearance this week in a four day long workshop and symposium on the University of California, San Diego campus, beginning on Tuesday with a demonstration of the world’s first international real-time streaming of super high–definition video.

The debut transmission of uncompressed 4K digital video, which offers a resolution 24 times greater then a standard broadcast TV signal was shown live inside SF State’s Administration building to a crowd of onlookers granted the opportunity to view a definitive display of sound and image that linked UCSD to Keio University in Tokyo via roughly 9,000 miles of optical fiber networks.

“This marks the first time ever in humanity that this collaborative production process will be demonstrated between geographically dispersed partners,” said Joaquin Alvarado, director of the Institute for Next Generation Internet at SF State and host of the event.

The demonstration is only the opening feature of the four day long iGrid scientific computing conference in which Yuichiro Anzai, president of Keio and Marye Ann Fox chancellor of the San Diego campus use the fiber networks stretching from Tokyo to Chicago to relay the images through an optical network connection in Seattle at speeds of a billion bits per second according to the New York Times.

With members of Skywalker Sound along with SF State students and members of Berkley’s Youth Radio doing a live mix of audio from a communication center in Oakland, Alvarado made it clear to all in attendance that this symposium carries the potential for creating an unlimited amount of unexplored possibilities.

Although the SF state community only got to see a second hand version of the broadcast without the presence of an actual 4K video projector, which was shown on a full theatre screen in San Diego, SF State guest, Brandon McFarland, a 19-year-old member of Youth Radio supplied the audio track for the video by Dan Sandin entitled “A Study of 4D Julia Sets.”

“I never thought I’d be here,” said McFarland who smiled confidently when people from all the world heard his name announced as the audio engineer. “All these guys are looking for the youth angle - people look for what’s new, that’s me.”

McFarland said he received the cut of Sandin’s abstract moving image of color and texture imploding and shifting upon itself and took to the streets of Berkley with a flash recorder and documented a variety of sounds he encountered on his walk. He then manipulated the sounds and organized them onto the computer program Reason ending up with a hip experimental break beat track that got the heads of faculty members bobbing.

The demonstration arose following a six-week project of intense research and communication, and years of planning, Director of Digital Media at SF State’s College of Extended Learning, Craig Abaya said that without each of the different groups involved in the project spread out through the Bay Area into San Diego and out to the opposite side of the globe, the event could not have reached the SF State community.

“We want to re-ignite the work force in San Francisco for digital media so that it can extend beyond arts and entertainment,” said Abaya.

He said the technology is going to enable people from a wide range of fields all over the world to simultaneously work together on media projects and scientific endeavors such as bio-imaging at a level no one has seen before.

The multimedia studies program located in the downtown extended learning campus was created in 1992 and has consistently been at the forefront of the quickly evolving state of digital media. Founded by Cinema Department faculty as an experimental program, its members are now part of the Bay Areas most progressive community of technological developers and educators.

The event did not go on without a hitch though, it took three attempts to show the video with simultaneous linked audio and McFarland still looked disappointed as he said a few of the sounds on his mix were excluded in the final presentation. But this is to be expected according to Jacob Balsar, network administrator for Skywalker Sound.

“There’s no surprises when there is hiccups,” said Balser.”The rule of iGrid is that if everything works right your not trying hard enough.”