Modelling the underlying principles of human aesthetic preference in evolutionary art

Our understanding of creativity is limited, yet there is substantial research trying to mimic human creativity in artificial systems and in particular to produce systems that automatically evolve art appreciated by humans. We propose here to study human visual preference through observation of nearly 500 user sessions with a simple evolutionary art system. The progress of a set of aesthetic measures throughout each interactive user session is monitored and subsequently mimicked by automatic evolution in an attempt to produce an image to the liking of the human user

Axial Generation: Mixing Colour and Shapes to Automatically Form Diverse Digital Sculptures

Abstract: Automated computer generation of aesthetically pleasing artwork has been the subject of research for several decades. The unsolved problem of interest is how to please any audience without requiring too much of their involvement in the process of creation. Two-dimensional pictures have received a lot of attention; however, 3D artwork has remained relatively unexplored. This paper showcases an extended version of the Axial Generation Process (AGP), a versatile generation algorithm that can create both 2D and 3D items within the Concretism art style. The extensions presented here include calculating colour values for the artwork, increasing the range of forms that can be created through dynamic sizing of shapes and including more primitive shape types, finally, 2D items can be created from multiple viewpoints. Both 2D and 3D items generated through the AGP were evaluated against a set of formal aesthetic measures and compared against two established generation systems, one based on manipulating pixels/voxels and another tracking the path of particles through 2D and 3D space. This initial evaluation shows that the process is capable of generating visually varied items which exhibit a generally diverse range of values across the measures used, in both two and three dimensions. Comparatively, against the established generation processes, the AGP shows a good balance of performance and ability to create complex and visually varied items

Experiential Perspectives on Sound and Music for Virtual Reality Technologies

This thesis examines the intersection of sound, music, and virtuality within current and next-generation virtual reality technologies, with a specific focus on exploring the experiential perspectives of users and participants within virtual experiences. The first half of the thesis constructs a new theoretical model for examining intersections of sound and virtual experience. In Chapter 1, a new framework for virtual experience is constructed consisting of three key elements: virtual hardware (e.g., displays, speakers); virtual software (e.g., rules and systems of interaction); and virtual externalities (i.e., physical spaces used for engaging in virtual experiences). Through using and applying this new model, methodical examinations of complex virtual experiences are possible. Chapter 2 examines the second axis of the thesis through constructing an understanding of how sound is designed, implemented, and received within virtual reality. The concept of soundscapes is explored in the context of experiential perspectives, serving as a useful approach for describing received auditory phenomena. Auditory environments are proposed as a new model for exploring how auditory phenomena can be broadcast to audiences. Chapter 3 explores how inauthenticity within sound can impact users in virtual experience and uses authenticity to critically examine challenges surrounding sound in virtual reality. Constructions of authenticity in music performance are used to illustrate how authenticity is constructed within virtual experience. Chapter 4 integrates music into the understanding of auditory phenomena constructed throughout the thesis: music is rarely part of the created world in a virtual experience. Rather, it is typically something which only the audience – as external observers of the created world – can hear. Therefore, music within immersive virtual reality may be challenging as the audience is placed within the created world.The second half of this thesis uses this theoretical model to consider contemporary and future approaches to virtual experiences. Chapter 5 constructs a series of case studies to demonstrate the use of the framework as a trans-medial and intra/inter-contextual tool of analysis. Through use of the framework, varying approaches to implementation of sound and music in virtual reality technologies are considered, which reveals trans-medial commonalities of immersion and engagement with virtual experiences through sound. Chapter 6 examines near-future technologies, including brain-computer interfaces and other full-immersion technologies, to identify key issues in the design and implementation of future virtual experiences and suggest how interdisciplinary collaboration may help to develop solutions to these issues. Chapter 7 considers how the proposed model for virtuality might allow for methodical examination of similar issues within other fields, such as acoustics and architecture, and examines the ethical considerations that may become relevant as virtual technology develops within the 21st Century.This research explores and rationalises theoretical models of virtuality and sound. This permits designers and developers to improve the implementation of sound and music in virtual experiences for the purpose of improving user outcomes.<br/

Changing Time - Shaping World

A World of Changemakers - how can a hybrid arts lecture series concept in e-learning create attitudes and shape skills as a playful and critical thinking navigator in an uncertain world? To re-create meaning is an interdisciplinary cross-sectional task of our zeitgeist in a civil society. The international contributors represent key roles in relevant philosophical, technical or economic debates, non-university community art & design projects or companies

Changing Time - Shaping World: Changemakers in Arts & Education

A World of Changemakers - how can a hybrid arts lecture series concept in e-learning create attitudes and shape skills as a playful and critical thinking navigator in an uncertain world? To re-create meaning is an interdisciplinary cross-sectional task of our zeitgeist in a civil society. The international contributors represent key roles in relevant philosophical, technical or economic debates, non-university community art & design projects or companies

Changing Time - Shaping World

A World of Changemakers - how can a hybrid arts lecture series concept in e-learning create attitudes and shape skills as a playful and critical thinking navigator in an uncertain world? To re-create meaning is an interdisciplinary cross-sectional task of our zeitgeist in a civil society. The international contributors represent key roles in relevant philosophical, technical or economic debates, non-university community art & design projects or companies

Mixed Reality Images: Trilogy of Synthetic Realities III

The interplay of physical reality and digital media technologies is getting enhanced by new interfaces. The age of hyper-reality turns into the age of hyper-aesthetics and immersive image technologies - like mixed reality - enable a completely novel form of interaction and user relation with the virtual image structures, the different screen technologies, and embedded physical artefacts for interaction. "Mixed Reality Images" contributes to the wide range of the hyper-aesthetic image discourse to connect the concept of mixed reality images with the approaches in modern media theory, philosophy, perceptual theory, aesthetics, computer graphics and art theory as well as the complex range of image science. This volume monitors and discusses the relation of images and technological evolution in the context of mixed reality within the perspective of an autonomous image science

Of Corpse

Laughter, contemporary theory suggests, is often aggressive in some manner and may be prompted by a sudden perception of incongruity combined with memories of past emotional experience. Given this importance of the past to our recognition of the comic, it follows that some ""traditions"" dispose us to ludic responses. The studies in Of Corpse: Death and Humor in Folklore and Popular Culture examine specific interactions of text (jokes, poetry, epitaphs, iconography, film drama) and social context (wakes, festivals, disasters) that shape and generate laughter. Uniquely, however, the essays here peruse a remarkable paradox-the convergence of death and humor.Two studies here focus on joke cycles concerning disasters and celebrities, particularly as spawned or mediated through television and the Internet. One offers an exhaustive look at Internet humor that followed ""September 11,"" and the other interprets the influence of television as especially fertile for the proliferation of humor about mass icons and disasters. Other essays examine the social leveling through laughter at festivals and calendar customs associated with Mexican Day-of-the-Dead traditions, and another highlights the role of the Haitian family of playful, erotic death spirits known as Gedes during Carnival. A chapter on The Grateful Dead shows how the folkloric name and ludic iconography of this rock band nurtured participatory, egalitarian cultural scenes of collective merriment. Another essay inspects Weekend at Bernie's, a film employing the humorous manipulation of a corpse-a time-honored folk motif also explored in chapters on the ""Irish wake"" and the ""merry wake."" In another essay, we saunter through the contemporary American cemetery, noting the instances and import of humor in gravemarker texts.Taken together these essays provide a wide variety of interpretations for complex expressive forms that link death and humor, and that appear to unite groups through their own aesthetics of laughter. By letting down their guard together when encountering communications normally judged as unpleasant, people collectively affirm their own taste and ""sense"" of humor, in the face of official culture and even death itself