Advancing Expert Human-Computer Interaction Through Music

One of the most important challenges for computing over the next decade is discovering ways to augment and extend human control over ever more powerful, complex, and numerous devices and software systems. New high-dimensional input devices and control systems provide these affordances, but require extensive practice and learning on the part of the user. This paper describes a system created to leverage existing human expertise with a complex, highly dimensional interface, in the form of a trained violinist and violin. A machine listening model is employed to provide the musician and user with direct control over a complex simulation running on a high-performance computing system

SoundAnchoring: Content-based Exploration of Music Collections With Anchored Self-organized Maps

(Abstract to follow

AXMEDIS 2007 Conference Proceedings

The AXMEDIS International Conference series has been established since 2005 and is focused on the research, developments and applications in the cross-media domain, exploring innovative technologies to meet the challenges of the sector. AXMEDIS2007 deals with all subjects and topics related to cross-media and digital-media content production, processing, management, standards, representation, sharing, interoperability, protection and rights management. It addresses the latest developments and future trends of the technologies and their applications, their impact and exploitation within academic, business and industrial communities

Designing Hybrid Interactions through an Understanding of the Affordances of Physical and Digital Technologies

Two recent technological advances have extended the diversity of domains and social contexts of Human-Computer Interaction: the embedding of computing capabilities into physical hand-held objects, and the emergence of large interactive surfaces, such as tabletops and wall boards. Both interactive surfaces and small computational devices usually allow for direct and space-multiplex input, i.e., for the spatial coincidence of physical action and digital output, in multiple points simultaneously. Such a powerful combination opens novel opportunities for the design of what are considered as hybrid interactions in this work. This thesis explores the affordances of physical interaction as resources for interface design of such hybrid interactions. The hybrid systems that are elaborated in this work are envisioned to support specific social and physical contexts, such as collaborative cooking in a domestic kitchen, or collaborative creativity in a design process. In particular, different aspects of physicality characteristic of those specific domains are explored, with the aim of promoting skill transfer across domains. irst, different approaches to the design of space-multiplex, function-specific interfaces are considered and investigated. Such design approaches build on related work on Graspable User Interfaces and extend the design space to direct touch interfaces such as touch-sensitive surfaces, in different sizes and orientations (i.e., tablets, interactive tabletops, and walls). These approaches are instantiated in the design of several experience prototypes: These are evaluated in different settings to assess the contextual implications of integrating aspects of physicality in the design of the interface. Such implications are observed both at the pragmatic level of interaction (i.e., patterns of users' behaviors on first contact with the interface), as well as on user' subjective response. The results indicate that the context of interaction affects the perception of the affordances of the system, and that some qualities of physicality such as the 3D space of manipulation and relative haptic feedback can affect the feeling of engagement and control. Building on these findings, two controlled studies are conducted to observe more systematically the implications of integrating some of the qualities of physical interaction into the design of hybrid ones. The results indicate that, despite the fact that several aspects of physical interaction are mimicked in the interface, the interaction with digital media is quite different and seems to reveal existing mental models and expectations resulting from previous experience with the WIMP paradigm on the desktop PC

Advances in Human-Robot Interaction

Rapid advances in the field of robotics have made it possible to use robots not just in industrial automation but also in entertainment, rehabilitation, and home service. Since robots will likely affect many aspects of human existence, fundamental questions of human-robot interaction must be formulated and, if at all possible, resolved. Some of these questions are addressed in this collection of papers by leading HRI researchers

LoopJam: turning the dance floor into a

collaborative instrumental ma

Sound Design for Navigation in Topophonies

Presented at the 14th International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD2008) on June 24-27, 2008 in Paris, France.This paper attempts to develop concepts of multimodal objects made out of the interaction between space and sound though motion. The present paper is mostly descriptive and tries to gather experiences in order to delimit a new field of applications, concepts and method. My purpose is to describe some specificities of sound navigation design, starting from everyday life experience and cultural backgrounds towards virtual reality. My point of view will be that of a sound designer. I will examine different methods of implementation related to several sound navigation concepts and metaphors related to this particular approach. For this purpose, I will take different examples mainly in my works to show how some kind of scenarios propose different ways to link motion to sound, what kind of sound behaviours they produce, how they can be created and controlled, what kind of human and artistic experience they offer