6 Seconds of Sound and Vision: Creativity in Micro-Videos

The notion of creativity, as opposed to related concepts such as beauty or interestingness, has not been studied from the perspective of automatic analysis of multimedia content. Meanwhile, short online videos shared on social media platforms, or micro-videos, have arisen as a new medium for creative expression. In this paper we study creative micro-videos in an effort to understand the features that make a video creative, and to address the problem of automatic detection of creative content. Defining creative videos as those that are novel and have aesthetic value, we conduct a crowdsourcing experiment to create a dataset of over 3,800 micro-videos labelled as creative and non-creative. We propose a set of computational features that we map to the components of our definition of creativity, and conduct an analysis to determine which of these features correlate most with creative video. Finally, we evaluate a supervised approach to automatically detect creative video, with promising results, showing that it is necessary to model both aesthetic value and novelty to achieve optimal classification accuracy.Comment: 8 pages, 1 figures, conference IEEE CVPR 201

Predicting users' first impressions of website aesthetics with a quantification of perceived visual complexity and colorfulness

Users make lasting judgments about a website's appeal within a split second of seeing it for the first time. This first impression is influential enough to later affect their opinions of a site's usability and trustworthiness. In this paper, we demonstrate a means to predict the initial impression of aesthetics based on perceptual models of a website's colorfulness and visual complexity. In an online study, we collected ratings of colorfulness, visual complexity, and visual appeal of a set of 450 websites from 548 volunteers. Based on these data, we developed computational models that accurately measure the perceived visual complexity and colorfulness of website screenshots. In combination with demographic variables such as a user's education level and age, these models explain approximately half of the variance in the ratings of aesthetic appeal given after viewing a website for 500ms only.Engineering and Applied Science

Exploring the Aesthetic Effects of the Golden Ratio in the Design of Interactive Products

We conducted an experiment to test whether the use of the golden ratio as a design guideline in interactive products has aesthetic value, that is, whether it influences users’ aesthetic evaluation of the product and their preferences for it over other product of the same type. We studied two types of products (mobile phones and web pages), each was wireframed in two design versions and then manipulated systematically to form various width × height proportions, including the golden ratio. Each of ninety-one participants evaluated one design version of each product by means of pairwise comparisons of all proportions. The results support the golden ratio hypothesis regarding the mobile devices but not regarding the web page designs. We discuss possible explanations for these results

Visual Anxiolytics: developing theory and design guidelines for abstract affective visualizations aimed at alleviating episodes of anxiety

Visual Anxiolytics is a novel term proposed to describe affective visualizations of which affective quality is predetermined and designed to alleviate anxiety and anxious pathology. This thesis presents ground theory and visual guidelines to inform the design of screen-based interfaces to give users aspects of a restorative and anxiolytic environment at a time when attention restoration is least likely and anxiety highly probable; during sedentary screen-time. Visual Anxiolytics are introduced as an affective layer of the interface capable of communicating affect through aesthetic, abstract, ambient emotion visualizations existing in the periphery of the screen and users’ vision. Their theory is brought into the field of Visual Communication Design from a number of disciplines; primarily Affective Computing, Human-Computer Interaction, Psychology, and Neuroscience. Visual Anxiolytics attempt to alleviate anxiety through restoration of attentional cognitive resources by rendering the digital environment restorative and by elicitation of positive emotions through affect communication. Design guidelines analyse and describe properties of anxiolytic affective visual attributes color, shape, motion, and visual depth, as well as compositional characteristics of Visual Anxiolytics. Potential implications for future research in emotion visualization and affect communication are discussed

Visual-Related Factors in Mobile Iconic Communication

The purpose of this exploratory, sequential, mixed methods design research was to explore current design trends and patterns in mobile application icons by analyzing existing icon elements and principles of design. The process of data collection and data analyses went through three main phases: (a) identify current characteristics and pattern design of existing icons, (b) compare mobile icons across selected application categories to underline how each category was different from the other regarding elements and principles of design used, and (c) explore users’ perceptions about the elements and principles of design and account for how these elements and principles influenced the mobile application user’s interaction. The results of the three phases concluded that in mobile iconic communication, the most impactful elements of design were color and graphics. It was also concluded that the icon’s visual design had a significant impact on mobile usability, interaction, and communication whereby mobile developers were encouraged to design attractive, appealing and easy to recognize icons. The outcomes of this study emphasized the importance of graphic visual-design as a visual representative of the content and category of the application. Further studies are needed to explore the impact of other senses involved in mobile communication

Investigating Effects of Screen Layout Elements on Interface and Screen Design Aesthetics

A recent study suggested the use of the screen layout elements of balance, unity, and sequence as a part of a computational model of interface aesthetics. It is argued that these three elements are the most contributed terms in the model. In the current study, a controlled experiment was designed and conducted to systematically investigate effects of these three elements (balance, unity, and sequence) on the perceived interface aesthetics. Results showed that the three elements have significant effects on the perceived interface aesthetics. Significant interactions were also found among the three elements. A regression model relating the perceived visual aesthetics to the three elements was constructed. When validating the model using standard questionnaire scores of real web pages, high correlations were found between the values computed by the model and scores of questionnaire items related to visual layout of the web pages, indicating that layout-based measures are good at assessing the classical dimension of website aesthetics

Three Etudes for Symmetrical Cuboctahedral Speaker Array: An Exploration of Aural Space-Time Symmetry

Strategies of musical symmetry can partition an aural space in a manner similar to the way that scales partition an octave. In an exploration of a 12-channel diffusion system, I will compose three musical pieces expressing various methods of designing symmetrical based aural spatial premises with the goal of creating an experienceable spatial harmony. To achieve this, I will first design a cuboctahedral speaker array capable of representing multiple spatial harmonies. Second, I will develop a notation system that symmetrically visually represents the spatial harmonies for compositional intentionality. Finally, I will program a Max MSP software patch capable of integrating the array and notation for playback experiences and compositional interpretations. After these processes are outlined and described, I will then compose three etudes to demonstrate diverse methods of compositional strategies; they are dedicated to, and inspired by the works of Terrence McKenna, Nicola Tesla, and Carl Sagan

Plays of proximity and distance: Gesture-based interaction and visual music

This thesis presents the relations between gestural interfaces and artworks which deal with real- time and simultaneous performance of dynamic imagery and sound, the so called visual music practices. Those relation extend from a historical, practical and theoretical viewpoint, which this study aims to cover, at least partially, all of them. Such relations are exemplified by two artistic projects developed by the author of this thesis, which work as a starting point for analysing the issues around the two main topics. The principles, patterns, challenges and concepts which struc- tured the two artworks are extracted, analysed and discussed, providing elements for comparison and evaluation, which may be useful for future researches on the topic

The Translocal Event and the Polyrhythmic Diagram

This thesis identifies and analyses the key creative protocols in translocal performance practice, and ends with suggestions for new forms of transversal live and mediated performance practice, informed by theory. It argues that ontologies of emergence in dynamic systems nourish contemporary practice in the digital arts. Feedback in self-organised, recursive systems and organisms elicit change, and change transforms. The arguments trace concepts from chaos and complexity theory to virtual multiplicity, relationality, intuition and individuation (in the work of Bergson, Deleuze, Guattari, Simondon, Massumi, and other process theorists). It then examines the intersection of methodologies in philosophy, science and art and the radical contingencies implicit in the technicity of real-time, collaborative composition. Simultaneous forces or tendencies such as perception/memory, content/ expression and instinct/intellect produce composites (experience, meaning, and intuition- respectively) that affect the sensation of interplay. The translocal event is itself a diagram - an interstice between the forces of the local and the global, between the tendencies of the individual and the collective. The translocal is a point of reference for exploring the distribution of affect, parameters of control and emergent aesthetics. Translocal interplay, enabled by digital technologies and network protocols, is ontogenetic and autopoietic; diagrammatic and synaesthetic; intuitive and transductive. KeyWorx is a software application developed for realtime, distributed, multimodal media processing. As a technological tool created by artists, KeyWorx supports this intuitive type of creative experience: a real-time, translocal “jamming” that transduces the lived experience of a “biogram,” a synaesthetic hinge-dimension. The emerging aesthetics are processual – intuitive, diagrammatic and transversal

ASSESSING THE IMPACT OF ARTISTIC ARCHITECTURE ON PERCEIVED USABILITY AND WILLINGNESS TO USE MOBILE COMMERCE APPLICATIONS

Creating a useful portable browser or program is a demanding challenge for organisations due to the size constraints of the display area, which additionally is contingent on usability, internet connectivity, efficient backup power and mobility. Users also expect performance equivalent to that of microcomputers. Portable display programmers need to surmount these challenges without compromising users’ concerns for safety and confidentiality. Various works in the past couple of years revealed the ability of a strongly perceived artistic architecture of a mobile website as a push to overcome clients’ reduced  skill. The investigation conducted in this report sought to determine the distinct impact of eight artistic display  on the  of a mobile website or program and the corresponding clients’ . Organisations may thus take advantage of this knowledge to improve usage, trust, frequency of adoption and consequently financial rewards on m-commerce applications. This study uses a  with a screening objective. Data for the experiment was sourced through a web-based questionnaire program, . At the same time, social network sites were used to disseminate the questionnaires to enable gathering a good number of respondents. The data collection instrument had  statements with  threshold for  Ninety-six  participants took part in the inquiry. In contrast, seventy-six  participants completed the exercise, signifying an estimated.  was used in the study of the association concerning the .  package was utilised in the evaluation of the . Findings revealed that artistic architecture bears a substantial impact on  of portable websites and programs as well as influences  artefacts on such platforms. , as well as the  of an application, turned out as two features with the highest impact on the two  factors. That the orientation of their effects is a reverse of the conjectured outcome suggests that future work should explore this issue