A Vision of sound: A 3D visualization of pipe organ music

My goal is to create a 3D animation that illustrates the movements and patterns produced in the air when Bach\u27s Chromatic Fugue is played on a pipe organ. By combining the visual element of swirling patterns inspired by pipe organ acoustics simulation with imagery that the music evokes in the mind, I aim to present a surrealistic soundscape that visually depicts the boundless creative energy and freedom of music and mind combined. I hope to create an animation that is aesthetically interesting and to inspire imagination in viewer

Mimesis : Interactive interface for mass-interaction modeling

International audienceWhile 3D graphics software and 3D shapes modeling developed considerably, there is still a need for integrated physics-based tools. This would ideally require an integrated, coherent, usable, generic, physical modeling formalism, and a dedicated software, preferably to a collection of one shot models or animation techniques. This article introduces MIMESIS, a end-user software based on mass-interaction modeling. In MIMESIS, the mass-interaction paradigm (and, more generally, animation) is the core of the creation process at hand. It joins together a comprehensible, user-friendly modeler, various simulators, various coating means for visualizing synthesized movements and a growing set of pedagogical examples and library of models

Animating Talk and Texts: Culturally Relevant Teacher Read-Alouds of Informational Texts

This article describes the classroom interactions surrounding teacher read-alouds of nonfiction texts in the classroom of a teacher who strived for cultural relevancy. Participants in this study were one European American teacher and her upper- elementary students who lived in the surrounding working-class neighborhood; all but two students identified as Latino or African American. Data were collected for two consecutive school years using ethnographic and discourse analytic methods. Analyses showed that the teacher took up three social positions (i.e., cultural advocate, facilitator of classroom interactions, and teacher of reading) by animating texts and students

Real-time Physics Based Simulation for 3D Computer Graphics

Restoration of realistic animation is a critical part in the area of computer graphics. The goal of this sort of simulation is to imitate the behavior of the transformation in real life to the greatest extent. Physics-based simulation provides a solid background and proficient theories that can be applied in the simulation. In this dissertation, I will present real-time simulations which are physics-based in the area of terrain deformation and ship oscillations. When ground vehicles navigate on soft terrains such as sand, snow and mud, they often leave distinctive tracks. The realistic simulation of such vehicle-terrain interaction is important for ground based visual simulations and many video games. However, the existing research in terrain deformation has not addressed this issue effectively. In this dissertation, I present a new terrain deformation algorithm for simulating vehicle-terrain interaction in real time. The algorithm is based on the classic terramechanics theories, and calculates terrain deformation according to the vehicle load, velocity, tire size, and soil concentration. As a result, this algorithm can simulate different vehicle tracks on different types of terrains with different vehicle properties. I demonstrate my algorithm by vehicle tracks on soft terrain. In the field of ship oscillation simulation, I propose a new method for simulating ship motions in waves. Although there have been plenty of previous work on physics based fluid-solid simulation, most of these methods are not suitable for real-time applications. In particular, few methods are designed specifically for simulating ship motion in waves. My method is based on physics theories of ship motion, but with necessary simplifications to ensure real-time performance. My results show that this method is well suited to simulate sophisticated ship motions in real time applications

Animating Unpredictable Effects

Uncanny computer-generated animations of splashing waves, billowing smoke clouds, and characters’ flowing hair have become a ubiquitous presence on screens of all types since the 1980s. This Open Access book charts the history of these digital moving images and the software tools that make them. Unpredictable Visual Effects uncovers an institutional and industrial history that saw media industries conducting more private R&D as Cold War federal funding began to wane in the late 1980s. In this context studios and media software companies took concepts used for studying and managing unpredictable systems like markets, weather, and fluids and turned them into tools for animation. Unpredictable Visual Effects theorizes how these animations are part of a paradigm of control evident across society, while at the same time exploring what they can teach us about the relationship between making and knowing

Animating Material: Exploring Spatial Vitality Through Performative Textile

The scope of my graduate thesis identifies and explores design strategies to consider how the manipulation of textiles can stimulate engagements between humans and the materials they engage within the built environment. The experimental installations of the research seek to encourage interactions between people and textile-based artifacts to contribute to the consideration and formation of dynamic spaces. This research investigates how to provoke gestures of makers and non-makers through interactive designed artifacts that occupy a determined space. The adaptability of the artifacts are created within the installations, simultaneously dynamic in both time and space, which elicit corporeal actions. Through time spent with the materials in a determined space, participants access and align the forms they create with their own narratives and musings. The majority of the material experiments within this research focussed on design within a textile architecture. Structural forms with spatial implications emerged from the experiments. More specifically, the concept of spatial vitality was explored through responsive textile forms and artifacts with lighting. A Material Reflective Research approach was developed in the early stages of the design process, which later shifted from an emphasis on practice-based research to practice-led research. The research described started with a dominant lean towards an internally focussed material exploration of the designer and evolved to an approach that sought to create interactive experiences for people. Throughout this process, a wide range of materials and techniques were explored as means for spatial vitality to occur between the maker and the material. The outcomes of this process took the form of a lighting installation for people to experience a transformation of their imagination within the space of the design. This study not only addressed the significant contemporary design issue of the complex relationship between people and objects, but also aimed to gain a deeper and more meaningful understanding of materiality through design and action in a poetic space of performative interaction. Through the design of a multi-sensorial lighting installation people were invited to engage and to respond through various actions, gestures, and movements, expanding the experience beyond vision. This interrelationship between participants and artifacts intends to enhance an awareness and appreciation of life, both of theirs and artifacts. Animating Material connects people with designed artifacts, such that a passive observer could become an active participant in a dynamic and symbiotic reciprocity, a conversation with performative textiles

Damsels in discourse: Girls consuming and producing identity texts through Disney Princess play

This is the postprint, author's accepted manuscript version of this article after peer review.Drawing upon theories that reconceptualize toys and artifacts as identity texts, this study employs mediated discourse analysis to examine children’s videotaped writing and play interactions with princess dolls and stories in one kindergarten classroom. The study reported here is part of a three-year ethnographic study of literacy play in U.S. early childhood classrooms. The specific focus here is on young girls who are avid Disney Princess fans and how they address the gendered identities and discourses attached to the popular films and franchised toys. The study employs an activity model design that incorporates ethnographic microanalysis of social practices in the classroom, design conventions in toys and drawings, negotiated meanings in play, and identities situated in discourses. The commercially given gendered princess identities of the dolls, consumer expectations about the dolls, the author identities in books and storyboards associated with the dolls, and expectations related to writing production influenced how the girls upheld, challenged, or transformed the meanings they negotiated for princess story lines and their gender expectations, which influenced who participated in play scenarios and who assumed leadership roles in peer and classroom cultures. When the girls played with Disney Princess dolls during writing workshop, they animated identities sedimented into toys and texts. Regular opportunities to play with toys during writing workshop allowed children to improvise and revise character actions, layering new story meanings and identities onto old. Dolls and storyboards facilitated chains of animating and authoring, linking meanings from one event to the next as they played, wrote, replayed, and rewrote. The notion of productive consumption explains how girls enthusiastically took up familiar media narratives, encountered social limitations in princess identities, improvised character actions, and revised story lines to produce counternarratives of their own