A Seeing Place – Connecting Physical and Virtual Spaces

In the experience and design of spaces today, we meet both reality and virtuality. But how is the relation between real and virtual construed? How can we as researchers and designers contribute to resolving the physical-virtual divide regarding spaces? This thesis explores the relations between the physical and the virtual and investigates ways of connecting physical and virtual space, both in theory and practice.\ua0The basic concepts of the thesis are Space, Place, and Stage. The central idea is that the stage is a strong conceptual metaphor that has the capacity to work as a unifying concept relating physical and virtual spaces and forming a place for attention, agreements, and experience – A Seeing Place. The concept of seeing place comes from the Greek word theatre, meaning a “place for seeing”, both in the sense of looking at and understanding.\ua0In certain situations, the relations between physical and virtual spaces become important for users’ experience and understanding of these situations. This thesis presents seven cases of physical-virtual spaces, in the field of architectural and exhibition design. The method of these studies is research by design. The discussion then focuses on how each setting works as a stage, and how conceptual metaphors can contribute to the connection between physical and virtual spaces.\ua0Building upon the explorations and experiments in different domains, the thesis contains a collection of seven papers concerning the relations between physical and virtual space in different contexts outside the world of theatre. These papers range from more technical about Virtual Reality (design of networked collaborative spaces) to more conceptual about staging (methods in interaction design) and virtual space (using a transdisciplinary approach).\ua0The results of those studies suggest that the Stage metaphor of a physical-virtual space can contribute to the elucidating of relations between physical and virtual spaces in number of ways. Conceptually, the stage metaphor links together the semiotic and the hermeneutic views of space and place. And, from a practice-based perspective, A Seeing Place view opens up the way to creating contemporary spaces and resolving the physical-virtual divide

Ultrasonic mid-air haptic technology in context of science communication

This dissertation charts opportunities and challenges of engaging people with learning about science through the use of mid-air haptic technology. To that end, research has been carried out at the intersection of three multidisciplinary fields: Science Communication, Haptics, and Human-Computer Interaction. For science communication to be effective, different tools are required for different audiences. For example, when a child pours cold milk into hot tea and sips a warm beverage, we can raise awareness of the haptic experience; triggering interest and facilitating learning about thermal equilibrium. Not every scientific concept may be explained through changing temperature, and not everybody likes tea, but the principle of haptic experience facilitated public engagement with science remains a valid basis to examine. Science communicators seek new technological solutions and innovative modalities of communication, some of which include haptic technology and touch interaction. Ultrasonic mid-air haptic technology is a novel tool, which enables the creation of programable, invisible, cutaneous tactile sensations on an airborne interface between humans and the digital world. Mid-air haptic sensations may bring many benefits when used in science communication, but these have not yet been systematically studied

Ocean Solutions, Earth Solutions

What affects the oceans affects terra firma. Ocean Solutions, Earth Solutions gathers the insights of more than 50 ocean and coastal science researchers exploring ocean components and their relationships, patterns, and trends over time and space. The book's 16 chapters feature geographic information system (GIS) best practices and include additional online resources.The book is edited by oceanographer and Esri Chief Scientist Dawn J. Wright and features a foreword by oceanographer David Gallo, director of special projects for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.Keywords: marine resource management, GIS, mapping, ocean conservation, ocean scienc

Understanding aesthetics in a virtual environment performance. A

The virtual performance is a form of art that simultaneously develops with information technology, as IT provides the flexibility to develop sophisticated design Systems for the artist. Moreover, the intrinsic relationship between art and technology is apparent from the concluding research results. This research aimed to investigate the aesthetical value of VEs performances. The purpose of the study was to confront the location of aesthe tics in VEs. The qualitative method was employed due to the attempt to control the investigated objective. Literature review was employed due to the necessity to understand the VEs aesthetic phenomena in their entirely for developing a complete picture of the research field. Case studies and observation were mainly used because of the type of research conducted. The resulting findings were taken into consideration or rejected through interviews with creators of virtual performances. The research took place in three stages. The first step was to determine the research aims and objectives. The second, was to design the research plan which was divided along three basic axes. The first refers to the historical review and development of visual arts in order to determine the characteristics of the investigated art form. The second axis was the comprehension of the aesthetics that are produced via the determined characteristics. More specifically, these are interactivity, the interrupted flow of information and the audience participation. The third stage was the attempt to identify the elements that characterise a virtual performance. How the artist can handle the interactive element and- create conditions of immersion for his audience. The manifesto of virtual performances was created through the course of research and the analysis of the findings that belong to the third stage, which also includes the data analysis. Another element that also emerged was of the audience's interaction with the performance's development. This element, is in itself a product of aesthetics that has a great influence on the progression pf the thought processes of the audiences that interact with a virtual performance. The creator requires a spectator that is an active participant in order to develop the performance's plot. This does not indicate that the creator can manipulate the audience as a tool because each spectator has his own thoughts and critical evaluations. The spectator simply handles and combines according to his choices the elements that the artist offers so that he can project and co-create the performance's plot. The more the spectator experiences virtual performances through his interaction, the more lie will gain knowledge and freedom which will result in virtual performances to offer a larger selection and more powerful experiences. Besides, this art form is still in its embryonic stage and its maturity promises even greater developments

An aesthetics of touch: investigating the language of design relating to form

How well can designers communicate qualities of touch? This paper presents evidence that they have some capability to do so, much of which appears to have been learned, but at present make limited use of such language. Interviews with graduate designer-makers suggest that they are aware of and value the importance of touch and materiality in their work, but lack a vocabulary to fully relate to their detailed explanations of other aspects such as their intent or selection of materials. We believe that more attention should be paid to the verbal dialogue that happens in the design process, particularly as other researchers show that even making-based learning also has a strong verbal element to it. However, verbal language alone does not appear to be adequate for a comprehensive language of touch. Graduate designers-makers’ descriptive practices combined non-verbal manipulation within verbal accounts. We thus argue that haptic vocabularies do not simply describe material qualities, but rather are situated competences that physically demonstrate the presence of haptic qualities. Such competencies are more important than groups of verbal vocabularies in isolation. Design support for developing and extending haptic competences must take this wide range of considerations into account to comprehensively improve designers’ capabilities

Arte generativa : interfaces comportamentais na mediação entre imagem e som

While attempting to find new ways to create art, artists transgress the traditional notions of creativity and art. Computers start to have creative behaviors in which the artist conducts his work. Both, generative practices and interactivity have a special impact on the creation of Art and in its new relationships. Interactivity and generative processes can create a space for genuine innovative creative practices in art where the artwork is the result of collaborative work between computers and users. Is our goal to express generative practices not as a static creative process, but instead as an iterative communication between system and interface/ interface and user. This collaboration between system, user and artist gains higher relevance through the creation of an interface that is capable of synthesizing these expressions. In the process of identification of a new way of relating generative graphics systems and user/performer, an application for mobile devices was developed where interaction takes into account the need to express the generative processes through the interface, generating a greater connection between the three parties (generative system, interface system and user). This need comes from the generative system itself since it is semi-autonomous and is constantly undergoing modifications exhausted in any type of static and rigid interface . Sliders and buttons take away the freedom of a system that aims to expand connections and collaborations, where the authoritarian act of the user/performer overrides the choices of the system by imposing their own. ALIVEART proposes a new form of communication where the generative graphics interface adapts depending on the characteristics of an artificial living system. Thus, the parameters set by the system are modified on the interface showing only those that the user may interact. Over time these choices cause modification of the a-life as well as the interface. The result is a system that algorithmically, via sound inputs, draws graphics that are modified by an adaptive interface. Rather than change the operation of the interface, we sought to create new interaction paradigms in which the user’s interference is revised by proposing a more conscious way to interact with artificial living systems. Via a survey of three areas of expertise (designers, performers and user interface experts), ALIVEART was assessed. New areas of interest were identified that confirmed the necessity to implement interfaces that adapt to systems and users thus allowing new forms of relationships and creative processes in the creation of digital art.No processo de encontrar novas formas de criar obras de arte, os artistas conseguem transgredir as noções tradicionais de criatividade e arte. Computadores desenvolvem comportamentos criativos em que os artistas decidem exploram capacidades externas a eles para alcançar novas expressões artísticas. Ambos, práticas generativas e a interatividade, têm um impacto especial na criação da arte e nas suas relações. Nesta conjuntura, interatividade e os processos generativos são um espaço de práticas inovadoras, criativas e originais para a arte em que a obra é resultado de um trabalho colaborativo entre artista, computadores e utilizadores. É o nosso objetivo demostrar que as práticas generativas não como um processo criativo estático, mas sim como uma comunicação que se repete entre sistema e interface / interface e usuário. Esta colaboração entre o sistema, usuário e artista, que ganha maior relevância através da criação de uma interface que é capaz de sintetizar todas estas expressões gerando uma nova visão artística que resulta dessa articulação. Através de uma detalhada revisão bibliográfica conseguimos datar as primeiras modificações de paradigma que foram decisivos na criação dos conceitos que trabalhamos nos dias de hoje. Dos 60 em diante, a arte e os aspectos socioculturais sofreram mudanças muito importantes permitindo que os artistas rejeitassem as práticas artísticas tradicionais e que introduzissem novas ideias. Essas ideias mudaram a forma como os artistas produziram arte e até mesmo aquilo que era considerado arte. Artistas dos movimentos artisticos Fluxus e Arte Conceptual foram reesposáveis por criar uma clivagem ainda maior entre antigas e novas práticas através da introdução de ideias que são a base para a arte como a conhecemos hoje. Essas ideias foram essenciais para gerar nos anos 90 o espaço em que os artistas por computador encontraram para explorar novas mídias na produção de arte. Uma das maiores mudanças que ocorreram durante os anos 60 advém da obra de arte deixar de estar relacionada com o artefacto, passando a ser mais relevante as ideias e os processos relacionados com o ato artístico. Artistas conceituais começaram a expor as suas instruções para a construção de uma determinada obra de arte como sendo a própria obra de arte. Este processo de separação das práticas artistas e das técnicas, incentivou novas estratégias de arte e deu um novo significado para o papel do artista. O processo tornou-se o aspecto mais importante das práticas artísticas alterando por completo a relação entre arte e artista. Com o uso do computador essas ideias ganham forma através da introdução de sistemas interativos (resultado directo da arte particiativa) e através da criação de comportamentos semiautónomos que surgiam das regras estabelecidas no computador. Muitos artistas contemporâneos desenvolveram tais obras de arte e foram capazes de criar um novo tipo de criatividade que emerge destas três entidades: o usuário, artista e sistema generativo. Apesar do computador permitir aos utilizadores novas formas de criar, muitas vezes verificamos que as estratégias utilizadas não conseguem desfrutar de forma completa da autonomia de sistemas externos devido a forma como se estabelece a interação. Em resposta, surge a necessidade de buscar uma nova forma de se relacionar sistemas gráficos generativos e utilizador/performer de uma forma que explorasse as capacidades dos sistema de vida articial dandolhe realmente alguma autonomia sobre a sua condição. Optou-se por desenvolver uma aplicação para dispositivos móveis onde a interação toma em consideração a necessidade do sistema de se expressar através do interface, gerando uma maior conexão entre as três partes (sistema generativo, interface e utilizador). Essa necessidade advém dos sistemas generativos serem semiautónomos e estarem constantemente a se modificarem, se esgotado num interface estático e rígido. Sliders e botões esgotam a liberdade de um sistema que pretende ampliar conexões e colaborações, onde o ato autoritário do utilizador/performer aniquila as escolhas do sistema impondo as suas próprias. ALIVEART propõe uma nova forma de comunicação com sistemas de gráficos generativos onde o interface se adapta consoante as características de um sistema de vida artificial. Essa adaptação significa que os parâmetros definidos pelo sistema se modificam no interface mostrando somente aqueles que o utilizador pode interferir. Ao longo do tempo as escolhas do a-life vão modificando assim como o interface. O resultado é um sistema que através do som desenha algoritmicamente gráficos que são modificados através de um interface adaptativo. Esta interface adaptiva apresenta ao performer os elementos visuais que podem ser controlados excluindo os que, naquele momento, são irrelevantes permitindo mais foco no ato performativo e permitindo que o utilizador/ performer seja capaz de uma maior imersão no sistema em si. Mais do que manipular parâmetros buscamos metáforas que sejam capazes de ampliar a comunicação entre mundo virtual e actual permitindo até criar uma ligação simbiótica entre os três elementos envolvidos. Mais do que alterar o funcionamento do interface, buscou-se criar novos paradigmas de interação onde o próprio acto de interferência do utilizador é revisto, sendo proposta uma forma mais consciente de interagir com sistema artificiais vivos e consequentemente explorando mais profundamente as propostas dos sistemas vivos artificiais através de tomam decisões ao definir a informação que é partilhada com o utilizador através do interface. Através de testes realizados com especialista das três áreas que sustenta ALIVEART (design, HCI e performance) foi avaliado a adequação dessa proposta e definidos novas áreas de interesse confirmando a necessidade de implementar interfaces que se adaptam ao sistemas e ao utilizadores para expandir novas formas de relações e processos criativos na criação de arte digital. Concluímos em nossos experimentos que tal tipo de interface Alcançou resultados importantes na promoção da colaboração e do compromisso do utilizador com sistemas generativos, promovendo uma interação mais dinâmica e fluida com um sistema que é, por definição, semiautónomo. Como que se espera das práticas generativas e interativa abordadas na revisão de literatura, ambas características foram muito importantes no processo de definição do conceito de criatividade. No desenvolvimento da interface de ALIVEART notamos que interface adaptável não só torna a tarefa para ambos os sistemas mas fácil como também muda o processo de criatividade em si, permitindo que o usuário defina e implemente num sistema externo à ele habilidades que promovam a criatividade. Apesar dos resultados positivos obtidos com este primeiro protótipo conseguimos apontar novos caminhos de investigação que se desenrolam do trabalho aqui desenvolvido. É nossa proposta que se amplie as possibilidades de escolha do sistema, colaborando ainda mais com o utilizadores apostando nas escolhas do sistema para o desenvolvimento de novas formas criativas de gerar gráficos. Acreditamos também que técnicas como Music Information Retrieval (MIR) são de grande importância para esta linha de trabalho uma vez que permitem que o sistema reconheça e se adapte mais livremente ao estilo musical de cada concerto

Transdisciplinary Creative Ecologies in Contemporary Art within Emergent Processes

This research is composing in the moving with affective speeds and rhythms, instead of unfolding direct and in linear ways. It is important to come across different planes of composition in movement. There are so many planes of voices spinning around in relation. Research-creation seems as forms of relations and an invitation to appreciate the collectivity at the heart of thinking. The many entering-into relation within a differential thought in the making of its own. Emergent properties in non-human interactions, such as those presented in Steven Shaviro ́s Against Self-Organization (2009) and Brain Massumi, are symptomatic of how individualities relate to creative tendencies in relation to the human, non-human dynamism, and emergence as a state or condition. Emergence can be co-joined around the notion of self-organization, “the spontaneous production of a level of reality having its own rules of formation and order of connection” (Massumi, 2002). Self-organization emphasizes on matter-energy which Gilles Deleuze conceives of as the difference or line variation running through all things. Therefore, Deleuze focuses on immanence, how new forms are created, and on the ways in which material bodyings self-organize rather than being forced to do so. Moreover, the research in this dissertation seeks to generate a charged environment where human and non-human emergent processes activate creative encounters that co-create and co-shape each other (Delueze and Guattari, 2003; Stangers, 2017; Manning 2009). This study investigates how complexities and relations expand as an attractor of potentialities, that informs a matrix as movement, and recognizes nodes of the matrix as connections for such movements. My research is transdisciplinary, where experimental work interconnects art, science- zoology, architecture and process philosophy, and conjoins such with non-human emergent processes which are complex systems that activate intermodalities in their doing. These areas of research focus on, thread processes and transdisciplinary art doings.Textiles seen as intensities, transformations, movements, multiplicities of sensations experienced by familiar bodies in resonance with the world in acts of co-composing

Sounding the reef: comparative acoustemologies of underwater noise pollution / Pejling af revet: komparativ akustemologi af undersøisk støjforurening

Matthew Buttacavoli studied the development and detection of the category of underwater noise pollution in the Great Barrier Reef. He examined the phenomenon using a multi-species ethnographic approach. He found that bodily affordances and species’ boundaries that make sensing underwater noise difficult, can be overcome through technology and skilled practice. [Extract from Danish abstract] Denne afhandling vælger en etnografisk strategi til at undersøge, hvordan interesserede lyttere forsøger at opfatte og rekonstruere det akustiske havmiljø. Observation og interviews af deltagere sættes sammen med optagelse og kreative metoder for at kortlægge de (ufuldkomne) måder, hvorpå lyttere (herunder forfatteren) forsøger at forstå havskabningers lydverdener. I fokus er de lyttemetoder, der blev udviklet af dykkere, havforskere, akustikere og interesseorganisationer

Radicle Assemblages

Radicle Assemblages explores aesthetic praxis through an experiential research-creation doctorate in the Interdisciplinary Humanities Fine Arts program. This studio-based project interwove diverse phenomena through speculative narratives inclusive of matter, thinking with techné, and in contemplation with living entities. The artworks that were developed in this study explored aesthetic modes of relational play among natureculture assemblages. The artworks acted as a form of dialogue to contemplate what would become defined as relations of tender curation. Individual gestures were composed for learning care and expanded perception through artistic experiments with domesticated natures such as houseplants, bacteria, algae, gastropods, and yeast (among others). The concept of tender curation emerged where what became a central component of an artwork required daily attendance. These experiences opened to a kind of tending that inspired affection and concern for the living creatures that were assembled within artworks. Another concept that formed was the radicle assemblage as a motif for thinking with differences among beings that are unique yet unfolding together in shared or common space. Comprehending subtle affects through interactions with vegetal life led to concern regarding personal and ethical implications of artworks that were composed with living phenomena. The living beings changed one another in their interactions. As a result, the artworks shifted over the duration of the study increasingly towards co-creative relations with domesticated, urbanized, or shared-territory beings as a way that incrementally expanded the artist-researcher’s ability to respond. Through practice and in the dissemination of multiple artworks, this research-creation doctorate eventually gravitated towards a post-anthropocentric art of response-responsibility. In this sense, the research-creation methodology evolved as a form of contemporary art practice that performed an expansion of possible social relations through generative propositions as incremental research