Aesthetic choices: Defining the range of aesthetic views in interactive digital media including games and 3D virtual environments (3D VEs)

Defining aesthetic choices for interactive digital media such as games is a challenging task. Objective and subjective factors such as colour, symmetry, order and complexity, and statistical features among others play an important role for defining the aesthetic properties of interactive digital artifacts. Computational approaches developed in this regard also consider objective factors such as statistical image features for the assessment of aesthetic qualities. However, aesthetics for interactive digital media, such as games, requires more nuanced consideration than simple objective and subjective factors, for choosing a range of aesthetic features. From the study it was found that the there is no one single optimum position or viewpoint with a corresponding relationship to the aesthetic considerations that influence interactive digital media. Instead, the incorporation of aesthetic features demonstrates the need to consider each component within interactive digital media as part of a range of possible features, and therefore within a range of possible camera positions. A framework, named as PCAWF, emphasized that combination of features and factors demonstrated the need to define a range of aesthetic viewpoints. This is important for improved user experience. From the framework it has been found that factors including the storyline, user state, gameplay, and application type are critical to defining the reasons associated with making aesthetic choices. The selection of a range of aesthetic features and characteristics is influenced by four main factors and sub-factors associated with the main factors. This study informs the future of interactive digital media interaction by providing clarity and reasoning behind the aesthetic decision-making inclusions that are integrated into automatically generated vision by providing a framework for choosing a range of aesthetic viewpoints in a 3D virtual environment of a game. The study identifies critical juxtapositions between photographic and cinema-based media aesthetics by incorporating qualitative rationales from experts within the interactive digital media field. This research will change the way Artificial Intelligence (AI) generated interactive digital media in the way that it chooses visual outputs in terms of camera positions, field-view, orientation, contextual considerations, and user experiences. It will impact across all automated systems to ensure that human-values, rich variations, and extensive complexity are integrated in the AI-dominated development and design of future interactive digital media production

Temporal Dislocation and Audiovisual Practice

Through the development and analysis of an audiovisual art practice this research explores creative strategies derived from the cultural theory of hauntology that lead to a sensation described as temporal dislocation. I investigate methods that evoke a nostalgia for personal histories, remembered potential futures and perceptions of time being out of joint. Adopting formal strategies when working with sound and film, such as jump cut editing and juxtaposition, my work questions notions of temporality by scrambling distinctions between the past, present, and future. Supported by the writings of Mark Fisher and Darko Suvin’s cognitive estrangement of science fiction, my research reveals that the use of digital technologies to recall memories, can paradoxically both exorcise and reinforce their value. Exploring territories where technology and the paranormal overlap, I consider the possibility of the transference of memory, via architecture and other inanimate materials, known as Stone Tape Theory. Drawing on work by Susan Hiller, John Cage and Mark Leckey, I interrogate notions of temporal dislocation and raise questions about our relationship with digital technologies

Animating Film Theory

Animating Film Theory provides an enriched understanding of the relationship between two of the most unwieldy and unstable organizing concepts in cinema and media studies: animation and film theory. For the most part, animation has been excluded from the purview of film theory. The contributors to this collection consider the reasons for this marginalization while also bringing attention to key historical contributions across a wide range of animation practices, geographic and linguistic terrains, and historical periods. They delve deep into questions of how animation might best be understood, as well as how it relates to concepts such as the still, the moving image, the frame, animism, and utopia. The contributors take on the kinds of theoretical questions that have remained underexplored because, as Karen Beckman argues, scholars of cinema and media studies have allowed themselves to be constrained by too narrow a sense of what cinema is. This collection reanimates and expands film studies by taking the concept of animation seriously. Contributors. Karen Beckman, Suzanne Buchan, Scott Bukatman, Alan Cholodenko, Yuriko Furuhata, Alexander R. Galloway, Oliver Gaycken, Bishnupriya Ghosh, Tom Gunning, Andrew R. Johnston, Hervé Joubert-Laurencin, Gertrud Koch, Thomas LaMarre, Christopher P. Lehman, Esther Leslie, John MacKay, Mihaela Mihailova, Marc Steinberg, Tess Takahash

Film Serials and the American Cinema, 1910-1940: Operational Detection

Before the advent of television, cinema offered serialised films as a source of weekly entertainment. This book traces the history from the days of silent screen heroines to the sound era's daring adventure serials, unearthing a thriving film culture beyond the self-contained feature. Through extensive archival research, Ilka Brasch details the aesthetic appeals of film serials within their context of marketing and exhibition and that they adapt the pleasures of a flourishing crime fiction culture to both serialised visual culture and the affordances of the media-modernity of the early 20th century. The study furthermore traces how film serials brought the broadcast model of radio and television to the big screen and thereby introduced models of serial storytelling that informed popular culture even beyond the serial's demise

Animating Film Theory

Animating Film Theory provides an enriched understanding of the relationship between two of the most unwieldy and unstable organizing concepts in cinema and media studies: animation and film theory. For the most part, animation has been excluded from the purview of film theory. The contributors to this collection consider the reasons for this marginalization while also bringing attention to key historical contributions across a wide range of animation practices, geographic and linguistic terrains, and historical periods. They delve deep into questions of how animation might best be understood, as well as how it relates to concepts such as the still, the moving image, the frame, animism, and utopia. The contributors take on the kinds of theoretical questions that have remained underexplored because, as Karen Beckman argues, scholars of cinema and media studies have allowed themselves to be constrained by too narrow a sense of what cinema is. This collection reanimates and expands film studies by taking the concept of animation seriously. Contributors. Karen Beckman, Suzanne Buchan, Scott Bukatman, Alan Cholodenko, Yuriko Furuhata, Alexander R. Galloway, Oliver Gaycken, Bishnupriya Ghosh, Tom Gunning, Andrew R. Johnston, Hervé Joubert-Laurencin, Gertrud Koch, Thomas LaMarre, Christopher P. Lehman, Esther Leslie, John MacKay, Mihaela Mihailova, Marc Steinberg, Tess Takahash

Interfaces for human-centered production and use of computer graphics assets

L'abstract è presente nell'allegato / the abstract is in the attachmen

Enhancing Free-text Interactions in a Communication Skills Learning Environment

Learning environments frequently use gamification to enhance user interactions.Virtual characters with whom players engage in simulated conversations often employ prescripted dialogues; however, free user inputs enable deeper immersion and higher-order cognition. In our learning environment, experts developed a scripted scenario as a sequence of potential actions, and we explore possibilities for enhancing interactions by enabling users to type free inputs that are matched to the pre-scripted statements using Natural Language Processing techniques. In this paper, we introduce a clustering mechanism that provides recommendations for fine-tuning the pre-scripted answers in order to better match user inputs

The Art of Adaptation in Film and Video Games

This Special Issue of Arts explores the art and practice of adaptation in several different mediums with a focus on film and video games. The topics covered include experimental game design, narrative design, film and trauma, games adapted from literature, video game cinema, film and the pandemic, film and the environment, film and immigration, and film and culture