An Analysis of How Interactive Technology Supports the Appreciation of Traditional Chinese Puppetry: A Review of Case Studies

From the perspective of safeguarding Chinese Cultural Heritage, this paper discusses how to enhance the appreciation of traditional Chinese puppetry through the support of interactive technology. The author analyses extensive, yet current case studies, based on the findings described in the interactive systems for puppetry performances and interactive technology for puppetry appreciation. The author summarises four aspects of how to enhance the appreciation of, and engagement with, traditional Chinese puppetry: (1) maintaining originality is necessary for the design phase; (2) it is crucial to explore how to use interactive technology in order to design a way for adults to appreciate this form of art; (3) it is also necessary to determine ways to support adult audiences in grasping the cultural significance and folk customs of traditional Chinese puppetry; and (4) the study’s further main research goals are to investigate ways to use emotional expressions, digital storytelling and other methods in conjunction with interactive technology to help multi-cultural users comprehend traditional Chinese puppetry

The Shadow Mirror

The shadow mirror project is an interactive art installation which mimics user motions and displays them in the form of a a puppet\u27s shadow. In order to accomplish the shadow effect, a motion capture solution is needed alongside a puppet with a controllable motion system and lighting effects. This piece is open to a wide range of audiences both age-wide and culture-wide, allowing us to achieve our goal of bringing forth a universal bond and introducing a new way of interaction through the blending of technology and art

Computer-Assisted Interactive Documentary and Performance Arts in Illimitable Space

This major component of the research described in this thesis is 3D computer graphics, specifically the realistic physics-based softbody simulation and haptic responsive environments. Minor components include advanced human-computer interaction environments, non-linear documentary storytelling, and theatre performance. The journey of this research has been unusual because it requires a researcher with solid knowledge and background in multiple disciplines; who also has to be creative and sensitive in order to combine the possible areas into a new research direction. [...] It focuses on the advanced computer graphics and emerges from experimental cinematic works and theatrical artistic practices. Some development content and installations are completed to prove and evaluate the described concepts and to be convincing. [...] To summarize, the resulting work involves not only artistic creativity, but solving or combining technological hurdles in motion tracking, pattern recognition, force feedback control, etc., with the available documentary footage on film, video, or images, and text via a variety of devices [....] and programming, and installing all the needed interfaces such that it all works in real-time. Thus, the contribution to the knowledge advancement is in solving these interfacing problems and the real-time aspects of the interaction that have uses in film industry, fashion industry, new age interactive theatre, computer games, and web-based technologies and services for entertainment and education. It also includes building up on this experience to integrate Kinect- and haptic-based interaction, artistic scenery rendering, and other forms of control. This research work connects all the research disciplines, seemingly disjoint fields of research, such as computer graphics, documentary film, interactive media, and theatre performance together.Comment: PhD thesis copy; 272 pages, 83 figures, 6 algorithm

Creative Machine

Curators: William Latham, Atau Tanaka and Frederic Fol Leymarie A major exhibition exploring the twilight world of human/machine creativity, including installations, video and computer art, Artificial Intelligence, robotics and Apps by leading artists from Goldsmiths and international artists by invitation. The vision for organising the Creative Machine Exhibition is to show exciting works by key international artists, Goldsmiths staff and selected students who use original software and hardware development in the creative production of their work. The range of work on show, which could be broadly termed Computer Art, includes mechanical drawing devices, kinetic sculpture driven by fuzzy logic, images produced using machine learning, simulated cellular growth forms and the self-generating works using automated aesthetics, VR, 3D printing, and social telephony networks. Traditionally, Computer Art has held a maverick position on the edge of mainstream contemporary culture with its origins in Russian Constructivist Art, biological systems, “geeky” software conferences, rave / techno music and indie computer games. These artists have defined their own channels for exhibiting their work and organised conferences and at times been entrepreneurial at building collaborations with industry at both a corporate and startup level (with the early computer artists in the 1970s and 1980s needing to work with computer corporations to get access to computers). Alongside this, interactive media art drew upon McLuhan’s notion of technology as extensions of the human to create participatory, interactive artworks by making use of novel interface technology that has been developed since the 1980s. However, with new techniques such as 3D printing, the massive spread of sophisticated sensors in consumer devices like smartphones, and the use of robotics by artists, digital art would appear to have an opportunity to come more to the fore in public consciousness. This exhibition is timely in that it coincides with an apparent wider growth of public interest in digital art, as shown by the Digital Revolution exhibition at the Barbican, London and the recent emergence of commercial galleries such as Bitforms in New York and Carroll / Fletcher in London, which, acquire and show technology-based art. The Creative Machine exhibition is the first event to make use of Goldsmiths’ new Sonics Immersive Media Lab (SIML) Chamber. This advanced surround audiovisual projection space is a key part of the St James-Hatcham refurbishment. The facility was funded by capital funding from the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and Goldsmiths, as well as research funding from the European Research Council (ERC). This is connected respectively to the Intelligent Games/Game Intelligence (IGGI) Centre for Doctoral Training, and Atau Tanaka’s MetaGesture Music (MGM) ERC grant. The space was built by the SONICS, a cross-departmental research special interest group at Goldsmiths that brings together the departments of Computing, Music, Media & Communications, Sociology, Visual Cultures, and Cultural Studies. It was designed in consultation with the San Francisco-based curator, Naut Humon, to be compatible with the Cinechamber system there. During Creative Machines, we shall see, in the SIML space, multiscreen screenings of work by Yoichiro Kawaguchi, Naoko Tosa, and Vesna Petresin, as well as a new immersive media work by IGGI researcher Memo Akten

Let's Resonate! How to Elicit Improvisation and Letting Go in Interactive Digital Art

Participatory art allows for the spectator to be a participant or a viewer able to engage actively with interactive art. Real-time technologies offer new ways to create participative artworks. We hereby investigate how to engage participation through movement in interactive digital art, and what this engagement can awaken, focusing on the ways to elicit improvisation and letting go. We analyze two Virtual Reality installations, ''InterACTE'' and ''Eve, dance is an unplaceable place,'' involving body movement, dance, creativity and the presence of an observing audience. We evaluate the premises, the setup, and the feedback of the spectators in the two installations. We propose a model following three different perspectives of resonance: 1. Inter Resonance between Spectator and Artwork, which involves curiosity, imitation, playfulness and improvisation. 2. Inner Resonance of Spectator him/herself, where embodiment and creativity contribute to the sense of being present and letting go. 3. Collective Resonance between Spectator/Artwork and Audience, which is stimulated by curiosity, and triggers motor contagion, engagement and gathering. The two analyzed examples seek to awaken open-minded communicative possibilities through the use of interactive digital artworks. Moreover, the need to recognize and develop the idea of resonance becomes increasingly important in this time of urgency to communicate, understand and support collectivity

Ijiam: Augmented Reality Technologies for the Adaptation of Ecuadorian Intangible Cultural Heritage

Oral storytelling is a dynamic cultural expression for passing down human knowledge and perceptions of life and nature, building a meaningful bond between the past and the future. Over time, much oral expression has lost most of its unique flexibility and generativity as a result of textualization. This project uses digital technologies to create critical adaptations of ancestral wisdom from the Shuar indigenous community of the Ecuadorian Amazon, transposing relevant concepts of their cosmovision into a new digital storytelling experience. Following a post-colonial ethnographic research approach, this thesis employs decolonizing methods to analyze the complex knowledge system of the Shuar culture, engaging the community through a communication protocol of reciprocity and fair exchange of knowledge. The outcome of this project is an interactive digital installation that allows participants in the Shuar community and elsewhere to embody an audiovisual experience based on Shuar ancestral wisdom

Assimilation, Dissimilation: An inclusive, participant based installation to express Toronto's collective memory

This thesis paper documents the process from ideation to materialization of making this inclusive, and participatory interactive installation at Union Station. This new social media installation intends to encourage participants to reflect and discuss collective memory of this multicultural nation by asking immigrants and/or their descendants “what has changed in you, living in Toronto?” Union Station, as a gateway and starting point for many immigrants arriving here, could entice them to reflect on their transition of moving form their home country to coming to this new environment. People from different cultural backgrounds could express their experiences on being an insider or outsider of the mainstream society, by which people could raise self-awareness, understand each other and get connected

Machine Sensation

Emphasising the alien qualities of anthropomorphic technologies, Machine Sensation makes a conscious effort to increase rather than decrease the tension between nonhuman and human experience. In a series of rigorously executed cases studies, including natural user interfaces, artificial intelligence as well as sex robots, Leach shows how object-oriented ontology enables one to insist upon the unhuman nature of technology while acknowledging its immense power and significance in human life. Machine Sensation meticulously engages OOO, Actor Network Theory, the philosophy of technology, cybernetics and posthumanism in innovative and gripping ways