Artifact-Based Rendering: Harnessing Natural and Traditional Visual Media for More Expressive and Engaging 3D Visualizations

We introduce Artifact-Based Rendering (ABR), a framework of tools, algorithms, and processes that makes it possible to produce real, data-driven 3D scientific visualizations with a visual language derived entirely from colors, lines, textures, and forms created using traditional physical media or found in nature. A theory and process for ABR is presented to address three current needs: (i) designing better visualizations by making it possible for non-programmers to rapidly design and critique many alternative data-to-visual mappings; (ii) expanding the visual vocabulary used in scientific visualizations to depict increasingly complex multivariate data; (iii) bringing a more engaging, natural, and human-relatable handcrafted aesthetic to data visualization. New tools and algorithms to support ABR include front-end applets for constructing artifact-based colormaps, optimizing 3D scanned meshes for use in data visualization, and synthesizing textures from artifacts. These are complemented by an interactive rendering engine with custom algorithms and interfaces that demonstrate multiple new visual styles for depicting point, line, surface, and volume data. A within-the-research-team design study provides early evidence of the shift in visualization design processes that ABR is believed to enable when compared to traditional scientific visualization systems. Qualitative user feedback on applications to climate science and brain imaging support the utility of ABR for scientific discovery and public communication.Comment: Published in IEEE VIS 2019, 9 pages of content with 2 pages of references, 12 figure

Beyond the Tunnels: Advanced 3D graphical modulation

International audienceTunnels are 3D graphical sliders which modify the appearance of, or "modulate", one or several 3D objects simultaneously using these objects as cursors themselves. They rely on a strong visual feedback to provide multiple scales and parameters combinations which makes them appropriate for the use in immersive virtual musical instruments. In this paper we present applications of the Tunnels for collaborative modulation tasks, for avatars and weapons modifications in 3D video games, and for the control of interactive scenarios. We also propose several improvements to the Tunnels such as a method for storing them and a two-dimensional version called Grids

Computational Creativity and Music Generation Systems: An Introduction to the State of the Art

Computational Creativity is a multidisciplinary field that tries to obtain creative behaviors from computers. One of its most prolific subfields is that of Music Generation (also called Algorithmic Composition or Musical Metacreation), that uses computational means to compose music. Due to the multidisciplinary nature of this research field, it is sometimes hard to define precise goals and to keep track of what problems can be considered solved by state-of-the-art systems and what instead needs further developments. With this survey, we try to give a complete introduction to those who wish to explore Computational Creativity and Music Generation. To do so, we first give a picture of the research on the definition and the evaluation of creativity, both human and computational, needed to understand how computational means can be used to obtain creative behaviors and its importance within Artificial Intelligence studies. We then review the state of the art of Music Generation Systems, by citing examples for all the main approaches to music generation, and by listing the open challenges that were identified by previous reviews on the subject. For each of these challenges, we cite works that have proposed solutions, describing what still needs to be done and some possible directions for further research

Czernowitz to Chernivtsi by Cernăuți. A multicultural townscape as heritage of a plural society

Czernowitz, former capital city of the Duchy of Bucovina in the Hapsburg Empire, changed “location” twice: from Austria to Romania in 1918, becoming Cernauți, then from Romania to Ukraine in 1945 (until today), becoming Chernivtsi. Today Chernivtsi is mainly an Ukrainian city, but its architecture shows this historical process thanks to a series of urban landmarks. This paper aims to focus on the interplay among architecture and nationalities, so evident and strong in this case-study. The multicultural society before 1918 is reflected in many heterogeneous religious e public buildings, the effort of “Romanization” after 1918 is mainly reflected – on the contrary - in the “ethnic” Romanian qualities of new buildings. From the second half of the nineteenth century the townscape was progressively enriched by temples of different religions (Catholic, Orthodox, Jewish, Armenian…) and by the specific building types: the “national houses”, seat of the cultural life of each community (German, Jewish, Ruthenian, Polish, Romanian…) , all with their specific architectural features. In this architectural “melting pot” some buildings played a role of super-national, unifying and modern (Art Nouveau) landmarks: the railway station, the Postal Savings Bank and the theatre. The “Romanization” of the city was operated after 1920 building many new Orthodox churches and emphasizing the ethnic decorative details of new buildings (window frames, arches, roofs), related to the Brancoveanu style. The spread of Modernism, in the 30’s stopped this way of shaping a new face to the city, but the huge new Romanian Culture Palace “landed” in the theatre square speaking clearly of Bucovina as a part of Greater Romania. After 1945 the multicultural society vanished, and the Soviet power promoted homologation against the richness of the past. The independence of Ukraine from the former USSR allowed social groups and politicians to rethink about the national and local identity, mainly intended as ukrainian: as usual monuments changed, but the new ones, despite new people to celebrate, followed old ways in representing heroes. On the other hand, but more recently, architectural heritage is considered by Municipality as an ADN of Czernowitz and a value to be restored and protected, both on the Austrian and Romanian side. The website launched in 2008 for celebrating the 600 years of the town, speaks about Chernivtsi city of tolerance

Formalizing Artistic Techniques and Scientific Visualization for Painted Renditions of Complex Information Spaces

This paper describes a new method for visualizing complex information spaces as painted images. Scientific visualization converts data into pictures that allow viewers to “see ” trends, relationships, and patterns. We introduce a formal definition of the correspondence between traditional visualization techniques and painterly styles from the Impressionist art movement. This correspondence allows us to apply perceptual guidelines from visualization to control the presentation of information in a computer-generated painting. The result is an image that is visually engaging, but that also allows viewers to rapidly and accurately explore and analyze the underlying data values. We conclude by applying our technique to a collection of environmental and weather readings, to demonstrate its viability in a practical, real-world visualization environment.

Illustrative Informationsvisualisierung

Mit wachsender Größe von Daten wird es zunehmend schwerer, die in der Informationsvisualisierung erzeugte visuelle Repräsentation zu interpretieren und die relevanten Informationen adäquat darzustellen. Die Illustration beschäftigt sich seit längerem mit der Kommunikation wichtiger Bildinformationen. Das Ziel dieser Dissertation ist es deshalb, illustrative Verfahren in Techniken der Informationsvisualisierung zu integrieren - sowohl konzeptuell als auch in praktischer Anwendung. Als Ergebnis unterstützen die neu entwickelten Lösungsansätze die Kommunikation dargestellter Informationen

Conjuring the Masses: The Figure of the Crowd in Modern Chinese Literature and Visual Culture

This dissertation argues that the figure of the crowd in literature and visual culture constitutes a crucial component in the emergence and construction of the cultural, political, and historical values of modern China. From Lu Xun’s momentous recollection of the lantern slide that compelled him use literature as a means to heal the souls of the Chinese people to Zhang Yimou’s spectacular staging of the crowd at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, the numerous ways the crowd has been written and pictured not only demonstrates its utility as a motif, but also asserts a mode of literary and visual imagination and even critical inquiry. Although the question of how a work of art or literature stands in relation to the masses has long been a preoccupation of writers, artists, critics, and policymakers in China, this dissertation sees crowd representation as a narrative or visual act that compels us to reconsider the conventional categories that would relegate the crowd as strictly synecdochic for the politically reified nation. To that end, I focus on how concepts such as crowd and mass are under constant revision, laying bare the negotiations and struggles entailed in the process of defining China collectively. Chapter One investigates the role of the crowd in the self-construction of the modern intellectual through two themes, the public warning (shizhong) in the case of Lu Xun, and the idea of superfluity (duoyu) in Qu Qiubai. Chapter Two considers the term “massification” (dazhonghua) as a narrative technique of writing the crowd into being, and in particular the volatile means of its manifestation through violence, death, and annihilation. Chapter Three inquires into the reciprocal relationship between crowd and image in two films (Big Road and Prairie Fire) as well as propaganda art from the 1930s and the Cultural Revolution, with a special focus of the technological means of exhibiting the crowd. Chapter Four positions filmmaker Zhang Yimou’s use of the crowd within the context of the “red legacy” of revolutionary history and technological visuality to argue that efforts to define the Chinese masses remain an ongoing concern.East Asian Languages and Civilization

The evolution of architecture faculty organizational culture at the University of Michigan

Understanding and navigating the multiple academic disciplines and administrative subcultures, which operate within higher education institutions, is challenging for both internal and external stakeholders who may be unfamiliar with the disparate normative, regulative, and cultural cognitive systems that guide social behavior of each area. Higher education leaders need to understand the cultures operating within the organizational groups and subgroups in order to coordinate, integrate, and foster collaboration toward organizational and institutional goal attainment activities. This case study, which focused on the emergence and evolution of the organizational culture of the architecture faculty at the University of Michigan, provides insights into this particular organizational unit as well as a conceptual framework and research process from which to examine other faculty subcultures. Findings included explication of historical, societal and technological influences; the sociocultural, norms, roles and structural elements developed by the organizational members to structure their social behavior; a list of norms, roles and statuses used by members; as well as an explication of leadership actions that were accepted or rejected by faculty members as the organizational culture developed

Third International Conference on Technologies for Music Notation and Representation TENOR 2017

The third International Conference on Technologies for Music Notation and Representation seeks to focus on a set of specific research issues associated with Music Notation that were elaborated at the first two editions of TENOR in Paris and Cambridge. The theme of the conference is vocal music, whereas the pre-conference workshops focus on innovative technological approaches to music notation