Abstracts

Luísa Ribas Audiovisual Dynamics: An approach to Sound-Image Relations in Digital Interactive Systems

This paper outlines an approach to the study of sound and image relations in digital interactive systems. It starts by addressing these relations and their different conceptions, and then centers its attention on aesthetic artifacts that use software as their medium and propose interactive experiences articulated through image and sound. It discusses the principles behind their creative shaping as possibilities inherent to the digital computational medium, and conceptually frames the nature of sound-image relations as procedurally enacted dynamic articulations of visual and auditory modes subjected to interaction. Finally, it focuses on these systems’ surface analyzing distinctive features of their audiovisual dynamics.

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Andres Wanner & Ruth Beer Found Data: Generating Natural Looking Shapes by Appropriating Scientific Data

The installation Breathe/Live/Speak utilizes oceanic data to generate an organic distribution of screen elements.

This paper describes the installation as part of the Catch and Release research/creation project. We introduce our approach of Found Data, derived from artistic practices of Found Object and Readymade, as an alternative to the widely used Perlin Noise for generating natural looking shapes.

The approach is demonstrated in detail, and some examples are presented. We outline how these are implemented in the installation, and conclude by arguing for the relevance of this method in a time of increasingly available data.

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Monty Adkins & Julio D'Escriván Geometries of Flight: Remix as Nodal Practice

This paper considers the authors’ audiovisual work Geometries of Flight as an example of nodal practice as proposed by Philip Gochenour. The paper outlines Gochenour’s concept and situates the ‘remix’ and the ‘mashup’ within this model. The paper interrogates various models of thought concurrent with Gochenour’s to question the nature of the ‘remix’, appropriation, and originality in creative practice.

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Miguel Carvalhais Traversal Hermeneutics: The Emergence of Narrative in Ergodic Media

Digital technologies are capable of simulating traditional media and to give rise to new media forms that often closely resemble the experience of somatic technologies. Their interactive capabilities are partially responsible for this, but procedural authorship and poïesis are supported by process intensity and generative potential.

Designers, the systems and their human operators have very different and maybe irreconcilable points of view, which profoundly affect their experiences during the dia­ logical construction of the works and of their effusions. From its particular point of view during the traversal, the operator develops a hermeneutic experience during which models and simulations of the system are built. The operator’s actions within the system greatly contribute to this development, but it is their capacity to create theories of the system that is paramount to the success of this effort.

The analysis and critique of these digital artifacts, indeed the procedural pleasures attainable through these systems, are indissociable from their procedural understanding. Although traditional aesthetic studies of surface structures or outputs are still possible, once we regard behaviors and computational processes as an integral part of the system’s content, it becomes essential to understand how the operator relates to these beyond a strictly mechanical relation.

This paper discusses how models and simulations allow the operator to anticipate the behaviors, reactions and configurations of the systems. How they are continuously revised, confirmed or falsified throughout the traversal, and how this process results in a dialectical tension that is the basis for the development of narratives and of dramatic experiences with these, otherwise highly abstract, systems.

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Sofia Figueiredo Space and Time in Ergodic Works

The following paper discusses dimensions of space and time in interactive ergodic works. It starts by presenting four examples of ergodic works, describing how the dimensions of time and space are created and how they are experienced by users. These analyses use concepts and theories developed by Markku Eskelinen, Janet Murray, Lev Manovich and Espen Aarseth, in an attempt to understand space and time in relation to ergodicity.

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Jon McCormack Representation and Mimesis in Generative Art: Creating Fifty Sisters

Fifty Sisters is a generative artwork commissioned for the Ars Electronica Museum in Linz. The work consists of fifty 1m x 1m images of computer-synthesized plant-forms, algorithmically ‘grown’ from computer code using artificial evolution and generative grammars. Each plant-like form is derived from the primitive graphic elements of oil company logos. The title of the work refers to the original ‘Seven Sisters’ — a cartel of seven oil companies that dominated the global petrochemical industry and Middle East oil production from the mid–1940s until the oil crisis of the 1970s.

In this paper I discuss the issue of representation in generative art and how dialogues in mimesis inform the production of a generative artwork, using Fifty Sisters as an example. I also provide information on how these concepts translate into the technical and how issues of representation necessarily pervade all computer-based generative art.

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Alex McLean The Textural X

This paper considers the binding of analogue and digital forms in the context of computer programming. An argument is constructed based upon a knitting metaphor, relating patterning of wool with the functions of code over time. The relation between linear and cyclic time is considered, from the standpoint of the experience of programming, in particular the live coding of dance music. By way of illustration, example code demonstrating the weaving of analogue (continuous) and digital (discrete) pattern is shown, using pure functional code with visual examples.

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Vitor Joaquim & Álvaro Barbosa Are Luminous Devices Helping Musicians to Produce Better Aural Results, or Just Helping Audiences Not To Get Bored?

By the end of the 90’s a new musical instrument entered the stage of all stages and since then, played a key role in the way music is created and produced, both in the studio and performing venues.

The aim of this paper is to discuss what we consider to be fundamental issues on how laptopers, as musicians, are dealing with the fact that they are not providing the ‘usual’ satisfaction of a ‘typical’ performance, where gesture is regarded as a fundamental element. Supported by a survey conducted with the collaboration of 46 artists, mostly professionals, we intend to address and discuss some concerns on the way laptop musicians are dealing with this subject, underlined by the fact that in these performances the absence of gestural information is almost a trademark.

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Arne Eigenfeldt The Human Fingerprint in Machine Generated Music

Machine-learning offers the potential for autonomous generative art creation. Given a corpus, the system can analyse it and provide rules from which to generate new art. The benefit of such a musical system is described, as well as the difficulties in its design and creation. This paper describes such a system, and the unintended heuristic decisions that were continually required.

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Jingyin He & Ajay Kapur Formalization Using Organic Systemization in Musical Applications

This paper presents the application of Conway’s Game of Life within the field of music in a live performance, addressing concerns such as setup, control and aesthetics. A discussion of selected works identifies the limitations in hardware and software, and explains the approach about these constrains to the realization of a system in a recent work.

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Sara Colombo, Sara Bergamaschi & Lucia Rampino What Are You Telling Me? How Objects Communicate Through Dynamic Features

Product sensory features are handled by designers to convey implicit messages to users. However, thanks to technology advances, traditional static product features are becoming dynamic, able to actively change over time. Exploring how these new properties can communicate a different layer of information is the aim of the study presented in this paper. To achieve the goal, a case study analysis was performed, by collecting real products, prototypes and concepts which present dynamic sensory features. The analysis of the selected samples led to the identification of a number of categories of dynamic products, within which it was possible to stress some parameters and criteria useful for designing such artefacts. Relations among the senses activated, the contents of the communication and the source of the information have been identified, and insights have been proposed as results.

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Stephen Barrass Recursive Digital Fabrication of Trans-phenomenal Artifacts

The concept of a trans–phenomenal artifact arose from a project to digitally fabricate a series of bells, where each bell is shaped by the sound of the previous bell. This paper describes the recursive process developed for fabricating the bells in terms of generic stages. The first bells fabricated with this process raised the question of whether the series would converge to a static attractor, traverse a contour of infinite variation, or diverge to an untenable state. Reflection on these early results encourages further development of the recursive fabrication process, and lays groundwork for a theory of trans–phenomenal artifacts.

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Christian Faubel Rhythm Apparatus For the Overhead Projector: a Metaphorical Device

The rhythm apparatus for the overhead projector is a robotic device that can be used to demonstrate core concepts of the theory of embodied cognition. At the same time, it is also an instrument for audiovisual performances. Combining the communication of scientific insight with amusement and entertainment, it stands in the tradition of philosophical toys. Such a device is introduced here and used to illustrate, in a step-by-step manner, principles of embodied cognition: emergence and the interplay of brain, body and environment.

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Pedro Cardoso & Miguel Carvalhais Between Thinking and Actuation in Video Games

Action involves thinking and actuating, processes that respectively rely on cognitive and physical effort. When playing a video game, these processes — that may be seen as two stages of player action — do not need to be strictly ordered (thinking–actuating) and they may not even be, in fact, interdependent. This paper explores three types of player action that result from exploring the interdependences of thinking and actuating: from actions that are the consequence of a thought-out plan, to actions that are the result of embodied or mechanized reflexes, and to actions that are visceral responses of the body to external stimuli and internal mental activities or thoughts.

The dialectical relationship that the player and the game system establish is mediated through these actions, undertaken in response to the challenges that the player needs to overcome, through what we may call a learning process.

This paper pinpoints a new and still under development approach to game design that aims at recognizing the player as a biological entity, and consequently at identifying the need for the game system to interpret and transcode her biological traits. We believe that multidisciplinary studies in affective computing, psychology, neurosciences, biology, and game design are needed in order to raise a better understanding on how these can affect gameplay.

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André Carita Photography in Video Games: the Artistic Potential of Virtual Worlds

Photography has acquired a place and a growing meaning within video games. To this has contributed the abrupt graphic evolution of video games, the spread of a growing number of virtual environments such as Second Life, and the creation of projects that demonstrate the photographic potential of virtual worlds.

In this paper we aim to study the different ways in which photography may exist as an artistic expression of video games. By facing them as imagery mazes containing an undeniable creative potential, we explore the act of photography as gleaning and as a core mechanic that enables gamers and artists to create an original view of their experiences.

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Ricardo Melo & Miguel Carvalhais The Design of Horacle: Inducing Serendipity on the Web

Is Serendipity designable? Are we able to induce it or do we end up destroying it in the attempt? Horacle, a prototype hypothesis of a serendipitous system, is an explo­ ration on digital serendipity accomplished through the facilitation of access to new and uncommon content, presented in a way that allows for the occurrence of processes that can be associated with serendipitous discovery. It is our objective, through this system and the analysis of the concept, to help recover the limitless of the Web by breaking through content bubbles and to assist the creation and discovery of insight through access to meaningful information.

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Jason Reizner Südthüringer-Wald-Institut: Knowledge Sharing for the End of the World

Südthüringer-Wald-Institut is an independent, distributed research organization founded in a cave 200m deep below the Southern Thuringian Forest in the former East Germany. Physically positioned as a default site of refuge from the possibly inevitable collapse of the pervasive technological and social infrastructures that scaffold contemporary existence, the conceptual agenda of the Institute is framed by the present luxury of a world where discourse around mitigating unpleasant contingencies is still unhindered by the profound stress of needing to survive them. Embracing the ethos of “hope for the best, expect the worst,” the work of the Institute locates the creative potential of technocratic doomsday fetishism within the service of a pragmatic functionalism.

At present, while a resident presence in the cave remains unnecessary, the Institute’s member researchers and practitioners throughout Europe, North America and the world collaborate, contribute and share ongoing research through an open, distributed digital architecture, consisting of both an internet-based Archive Platform and a growing number of personal Autonomous Node Devices. Scientific and creative output are maintained online, as well in local archive nodes and replicated to all other members of the institute asynchronously, enabling an organic, cellular propagation of multiple independent archive instances.

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Marianne Markowski Making Online Face-to-Face Interaction Easier for Older People with Constructive Design Research

This paper reports early findings of employing constructive design research in order to make online social interaction easier for older people. In the western world the majority of computer illiterate people are older people. After investigating which forms of online social interaction present the most obvious benefits for communication, it was decided to focus on making online face-to-face communication more accessible and easier for older people. For this the Teletalker, an installation with two online video kiosks connecting two places audio-visually and where a simple hand sensor operates the sound, was built. Field research was conducted with the Teletalker connecting the communal room of Age UK Barnet, London with London’s Middlesex University’s entrance hall. Constructive design research allowed making the idea tangible in order to collect feedback, to assess impact on its environment and to generate a discourse on the preferred state.

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Gabriella Arrigoni Innovation, Collaboration, Education: Histories and Perspectives on Living Labs

This paper suggests a genealogy of Living Laboratories (LL) by comparing similarities in their development with media labs and experimental art schools. These histories all share an interest in concepts of innovation, collaboration, interdisciplinarity, and in the subversion of traditional forms of governance and knowledge production. Originally conceived as a research environment in the field of computer science, and subsequently applied as a curatorial strategy for exhibiting and evaluating interactive art, the idea of the LL can be expanded and enriched with new potential. Looking at the models of media lab and the educational turn in contemporary art can not only add a chapter in media histories, but can also indicate a possible trajectory for LL towards the establishment of temporary communities engaged in forms of knowledge exchange. By ascribing new responsibilities to the public and addressing issues relevant to them, this can bring new perspectives on audience development and offer a context more suitable for the presentation of digital media projects.

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Rainer Guldin On the Notion of Code Convergence in Vilém Flusser’s Work

In the course of the 1970s and 1980s Vilém Flusser formulated the theoretical vision of a general convergence of different diverging aspects of modern society. According to him, this was made possible thanks to the latest technological developments: the invention of technical images, through photography and film, as well as the creation of new calculated digital images emerging from computers monitors. This notion of a final fusion is based on Flusser’s own daily translation and retranslation practice and the theoretical vision he associated with this.

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