08091 Abstracts Collection -- Logic and Probability for Scene Interpretation

From 25.2.2008 to Friday 29.2.2008, the Dagstuhl Seminar 08091 ``Logic and Probability for Scene Interpretation\u27\u27 was held in the International Conference and Research Center (IBFI), Schloss Dagstuhl. During the seminar, several participants presented their current research, and ongoing work and open problems were discussed. Abstracts of the presentations given during the seminar as well as abstracts of seminar results and ideas are put together in this paper

Skyler and Bliss

Hong Kong remains the backdrop to the science fiction movies of my youth. The city reminds me of my former training in the financial sector. It is a city in which I could have succeeded in finance, but as far as art goes it is a young city, and I am a young artist. A frustration emerges; much like the mould, the artist also had to develop new skills by killing off his former desires and manipulating technology. My new series entitled HONG KONG surface project shows a new direction in my artistic research in which my technique becomes ever simpler, reducing the traces of pixelation until objects appear almost as they were found and photographed. Skyler and Bliss presents tectonic plates based on satellite images of the Arctic. Working in a hot and humid Hong Kong where mushrooms grow ferociously, a city artificially refrigerated by climate control, this series provides a conceptual image of a imaginary typographic map for survival. (Laurent Segretier

Counter strike 1.6 calls to play: a multimodal analysis of the game couver

Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Comunicação e Expressão, Programa de Pós-graduação em Letras/Inglês e Literatura Correspondente, Florianópolis, 2010Vídeo jogos, considerados um fenômeno de entretenimento de massa contemporâneo, vem sendo estudados e utilizados nas mais diversas áreas. Na Educação, cada vez mais docentes se aderem a esta prática como um meio de interação com as tecnologias de informação (Aarseth, 1997, Lemke, 2002) e os utilizam como uma ferramenta potencial para promover pensamento crítico (Frasca, 2001). No Brasil, o uso de vídeo jogos na Educação é ainda uma prática nova e restrita. Contudo, o rico conteúdo semiótico destes jogos e a familiaridade generalizada dos estudantes com este meio fazem com que sejam incluídos entre as fontes de material para o multiletramento (Unsworth, 2007, 2001; Christie, 2005; Gee, 2005; Jenkins & Squire, 2003). Esta situação levanta questões referentes às representações semióticas dos vídeo jogos, como assim também, à criação de aplicativos adequados ao multiletramento. Esta pesquisa tem por objetivo compreender e interpretar a representação multimodal do discurso de guerra como entretenimento, na capa do jogo de tiro Counter Strike 1.6. O estudo, baseado principalmente nos trabalhos de Kress e van Leeuwen (1996), Unsworth (2001; 2006) e Machin e van Leeuwen (2009), revela que: 1) o propósito ou função da capa sugere ter influenciado nas escolhas feitas para a composição da mesma. Nela se dá ênfase à representação glamurizada do soldado da força antiterrorista e são abstraídas possíveis representações explicitas de guerra; 2) as funções Representacional, Interativa e Composicional (GDV) articulam-se através dos modos de representação e realizam o trabalho conjunto de tentar fundir, visualmente falando, as fronteiras entre a representação da guerra na realidade da vida e na realidade do jogo; 3) efeitos de áudio e som contextualizam o jogo em um determinado gênero como assim também, a espacialização dos ambientes criados em mapas locais; 4) o tipo de letra escolhido para facilitar a compreensão de textos enquanto se joga sob pressão de tempo, pode espelhar uma mudança nos hábitos de leitura na era da computação. Concluo o presente trabalho refletindo sobre o uso de vídeo jogos, mesmo quando o tema for controvertido, e, sugiro possíveis atividades que incluam vídeo jogos como material para uma abordagem critica ao letramento multimodal

Inter-Piece Sampling and Convolution: Portfolio of 5.1 Acousmatic and Electronica Compositions, Interactive Diagrams and Text

This practice-based PhD – ‘Inter-piece Sampling and Convolution’ – evolved against the background of composers such as Amon Tobin and Monty Adkins, who use techniques and workflows common to both acousmatic and electronica music. The pieces in this thesis are linked through a sustained commitment to working across these two musical contexts and through their relationships to source materials and pulses. Sound materials have been sampled from within the pieces themselves, and materials from older pieces have been convolved with newer sounds, furthering the connections between pieces. The continual feeding-forward of source material promoted the synchronous development of the conceptual tool: Input, Sculpt, Output, which brought about the evolution of intricate diagrams. All of the pieces are for fixed media, and nine of the ten are in 5.1-format surround sound. The complex web of interrelationships created by the process of sampling and convolving material from previous pieces demanded an innovative means of representation. This representation took on a diagrammatic form in order to facilitate the analysis of a sound’s continuous (re)appropriation, explicated within supporting text. The diagrams indicate the extensive use of sampling and convolution to connect pieces, and include embedded hyperlinks to audio at various stages. As a result, textual analysis of techniques and their implications takes place across multiple pieces, and results in a wider scope for individual commentaries. The hyperlinked nature of the diagrams provides a foundation for further research, and a number of conclusions are posited about the use of sampling and convolution across multiple pieces

Ontology of music performance variation

Performance variation in rhythm determines the extent that humans perceive and feel the effect of rhythmic pulsation and music in general. In many cases, these rhythmic variations can be linked to percussive performance. Such percussive performance variations are often absent in current percussive rhythmic models. The purpose of this thesis is to present an interactive computer model, called the PD-103, that simulates the micro-variations in human percussive performance. This thesis makes three main contributions to existing knowledge: firstly, by formalising a new method for modelling percussive performance; secondly, by developing a new compositional software tool called the PD-103 that models human percussive performance, and finally, by creating a portfolio of different musical styles to demonstrate the capabilities of the software. A large database of recorded samples are classified into zones based upon the vibrational characteristics of the instruments, to model timbral variation in human percussive performance. The degree of timbral variation is governed by principles of biomechanics and human percussive performance. A fuzzy logic algorithm is applied to analyse current and first-order sample selection in order to formulate an ontological description of music performance variation. Asynchrony values were extracted from recorded performances of three different performance skill levels to create \timing fingerprints" which characterise unique features to each percussionist. The PD-103 uses real performance timing data to determine asynchrony values for each synthesised note. The spectral content of the sample database forms a three-dimensional loudness/timbre space, intersecting instrumental behaviour with music composition. The reparameterisation of the sample database, following the analysis of loudness, spectral flatness, and spectral centroid, provides an opportunity to explore the timbral variations inherent in percussion instruments, to creatively explore dimensions of timbre. The PD-103 was used to create a music portfolio exploring different rhythmic possibilities with a focus on meso-periodic rhythms common to parts of West Africa, jazz drumming, and electroacoustic music. The portfolio also includes new timbral percussive works based on spectral features and demonstrates the central aim of this thesis, which is the creation of a new compositional software tool that integrates human percussive performance and subsequently extends this model to different genres of music

The Translocal Event and the Polyrhythmic Diagram

This thesis identifies and analyses the key creative protocols in translocal performance practice, and ends with suggestions for new forms of transversal live and mediated performance practice, informed by theory. It argues that ontologies of emergence in dynamic systems nourish contemporary practice in the digital arts. Feedback in self-organised, recursive systems and organisms elicit change, and change transforms. The arguments trace concepts from chaos and complexity theory to virtual multiplicity, relationality, intuition and individuation (in the work of Bergson, Deleuze, Guattari, Simondon, Massumi, and other process theorists). It then examines the intersection of methodologies in philosophy, science and art and the radical contingencies implicit in the technicity of real-time, collaborative composition. Simultaneous forces or tendencies such as perception/memory, content/ expression and instinct/intellect produce composites (experience, meaning, and intuition- respectively) that affect the sensation of interplay. The translocal event is itself a diagram - an interstice between the forces of the local and the global, between the tendencies of the individual and the collective. The translocal is a point of reference for exploring the distribution of affect, parameters of control and emergent aesthetics. Translocal interplay, enabled by digital technologies and network protocols, is ontogenetic and autopoietic; diagrammatic and synaesthetic; intuitive and transductive. KeyWorx is a software application developed for realtime, distributed, multimodal media processing. As a technological tool created by artists, KeyWorx supports this intuitive type of creative experience: a real-time, translocal “jamming” that transduces the lived experience of a “biogram,” a synaesthetic hinge-dimension. The emerging aesthetics are processual – intuitive, diagrammatic and transversal

Virtual Reality Games for Motor Rehabilitation

This paper presents a fuzzy logic based method to track user satisfaction without the need for devices to monitor users physiological conditions. User satisfaction is the key to any product’s acceptance; computer applications and video games provide a unique opportunity to provide a tailored environment for each user to better suit their needs. We have implemented a non-adaptive fuzzy logic model of emotion, based on the emotional component of the Fuzzy Logic Adaptive Model of Emotion (FLAME) proposed by El-Nasr, to estimate player emotion in UnrealTournament 2004. In this paper we describe the implementation of this system and present the results of one of several play tests. Our research contradicts the current literature that suggests physiological measurements are needed. We show that it is possible to use a software only method to estimate user emotion

Conceptual Representations for Computational Concept Creation

Computational creativity seeks to understand computational mechanisms that can be characterized as creative. The creation of new concepts is a central challenge for any creative system. In this article, we outline different approaches to computational concept creation and then review conceptual representations relevant to concept creation, and therefore to computational creativity. The conceptual representations are organized in accordance with two important perspectives on the distinctions between them. One distinction is between symbolic, spatial and connectionist representations. The other is between descriptive and procedural representations. Additionally, conceptual representations used in particular creative domains, such as language, music, image and emotion, are reviewed separately. For every representation reviewed, we cover the inference it affords, the computational means of building it, and its application in concept creation.Peer reviewe