CaRo 2.0: an interactive system for expressive music rendering

In several application contexts in multimedia field (educational, extreme gaming), the interaction with the user requests that system is able to render music in expressive way. The expressiveness is the added value of a performance and is part of the reason that music is interesting to listen. Understanding and modeling expressive content communication is important for many engineering applications in information technology (e.g., Music Information Retrieval, as well as several applications in the affective computing field). In this paper, we present an original approach to modify the expressive content of a performance in a gradual way, applying a smooth morphing among performances with different expressive content in order to adapt the audio expressive character to the user's desires. The system won the final stage of Rencon 2011. This performance RENdering CONtest is a research project that organizes contests for computer systems generating expressive musical performances

Towards a multi-layer architecture for multi-modal rendering of expressive actions

International audienceExpressive content has multiple facets that can be conveyed by music, gesture, actions. Different application scenarios can require different metaphors for expressiveness control. In order to meet the requirements for flexible representation, we propose a multi-layer architecture structured into three main levels of abstraction. At the top (user level) there is a semantic description, which is adapted to specific user requirements and conceptualization. At the other end are low-level features that describe parameters strictly related to the rendering model. In between these two extremes, we propose an intermediate layer that provides a description shared by the various high-level representations on one side, and that can be instantiated to the various low-level rendering models on the other side. In order to provide a common representation of different expressive semantics and different modalities, we propose a physically-inspired description specifically suited for expressive actions

Design and semantics of form and movement (DeSForM 2006)

Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM) grew from applied research exploring emerging design methods and practices to support new generation product and interface design. The products and interfaces are concerned with: the context of ubiquitous computing and ambient technologies and the need for greater empathy in the pre-programmed behaviour of the ‘machines’ that populate our lives. Such explorative research in the CfDR has been led by Young, supported by Kyffin, Visiting Professor from Philips Design and sponsored by Philips Design over a period of four years (research funding £87k). DeSForM1 was the first of a series of three conferences that enable the presentation and debate of international work within this field: • 1st European conference on Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM1), Baltic, Gateshead, 2005, Feijs L., Kyffin S. & Young R.A. eds. • 2nd European conference on Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM2), Evoluon, Eindhoven, 2006, Feijs L., Kyffin S. & Young R.A. eds. • 3rd European conference on Design and Semantics of Form and Movement (DeSForM3), New Design School Building, Newcastle, 2007, Feijs L., Kyffin S. & Young R.A. eds. Philips sponsorship of practice-based enquiry led to research by three teams of research students over three years and on-going sponsorship of research through the Northumbria University Design and Innovation Laboratory (nuDIL). Young has been invited on the steering panel of the UK Thinking Digital Conference concerning the latest developments in digital and media technologies. Informed by this research is the work of PhD student Yukie Nakano who examines new technologies in relation to eco-design textiles

Handbook of Digital Face Manipulation and Detection

This open access book provides the first comprehensive collection of studies dealing with the hot topic of digital face manipulation such as DeepFakes, Face Morphing, or Reenactment. It combines the research fields of biometrics and media forensics including contributions from academia and industry. Appealing to a broad readership, introductory chapters provide a comprehensive overview of the topic, which address readers wishing to gain a brief overview of the state-of-the-art. Subsequent chapters, which delve deeper into various research challenges, are oriented towards advanced readers. Moreover, the book provides a good starting point for young researchers as well as a reference guide pointing at further literature. Hence, the primary readership is academic institutions and industry currently involved in digital face manipulation and detection. The book could easily be used as a recommended text for courses in image processing, machine learning, media forensics, biometrics, and the general security area

Pathway to Future Symbiotic Creativity

This report presents a comprehensive view of our vision on the development path of the human-machine symbiotic art creation. We propose a classification of the creative system with a hierarchy of 5 classes, showing the pathway of creativity evolving from a mimic-human artist (Turing Artists) to a Machine artist in its own right. We begin with an overview of the limitations of the Turing Artists then focus on the top two-level systems, Machine Artists, emphasizing machine-human communication in art creation. In art creation, it is necessary for machines to understand humans' mental states, including desires, appreciation, and emotions, humans also need to understand machines' creative capabilities and limitations. The rapid development of immersive environment and further evolution into the new concept of metaverse enable symbiotic art creation through unprecedented flexibility of bi-directional communication between artists and art manifestation environments. By examining the latest sensor and XR technologies, we illustrate the novel way for art data collection to constitute the base of a new form of human-machine bidirectional communication and understanding in art creation. Based on such communication and understanding mechanisms, we propose a novel framework for building future Machine artists, which comes with the philosophy that a human-compatible AI system should be based on the "human-in-the-loop" principle rather than the traditional "end-to-end" dogma. By proposing a new form of inverse reinforcement learning model, we outline the platform design of machine artists, demonstrate its functions and showcase some examples of technologies we have developed. We also provide a systematic exposition of the ecosystem for AI-based symbiotic art form and community with an economic model built on NFT technology. Ethical issues for the development of machine artists are also discussed