ImMApp: An immersive database of sound art

The ImMApp (Immersive Mapping Application) thesis addresses contemporary and historical sound art from a position informed by, on one hand, post-structural critical theory, and on the other, a practice-based exploration of contemporary digital technologies (MySQL, XML, XSLT, X3D). It proposes a critical ontological schema derived from Michel Foucault's Archaeology of Knowledge (1972) and applies this to pre-existing information resources dealing with sound art. Firstly an analysis of print-based discourses (Sound by Artists. Lander and Lexier (1990), Noise, Water, Meat. Kahn (2001) and Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art. LaBelle (2006» is carried out according to Foucauldian notions of genealogy, subject positions, the statement, institutional affordances and the productive nature of discursive formation. The discursive field (the archive) presented by these major canonical texts is then contrasted with a formulation derived from Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari: that of a 'minor' history of sound art practices. This is then extended by media theory (McLuhan, Kittler, Manovich) into a critique of two digital sound art resources (The Australian Sound Design Project (Bandt and Paine (2005) and soundtoys.net Stanza (1998). The divergences between the two forms of information technologies (print vs. digital) are discussed. The means by which such digitised methodologies may enhance Foucauldian discourse analysis points onwards towards the two practice-based elements of the thesis. Surface, the first iterative part, is a web-browser based database built on an Apache/MySQIlXML architecture. It is the most extensive mapping of sound art undertaken to date and extends the theoretical framework discussed above into the digital domain. Immersion, the second part, is a re-presentation of this material in an immersive digital environment, following the transformation of the source material via XSL-T into X3D. Immersion is a real-time, large format video, surround sound (5.ln.l) installation and the thesis concludes with a discussion of how this outcome has articulated Foucauldian archaeological method and unframed pre-existing notions of the nature of sound art

Adaptivity of 3D web content in web-based virtual museums : a quality of service and quality of experience perspective

The 3D Web emerged as an agglomeration of technologies that brought the third dimension to the World Wide Web. Its forms spanned from being systems with limited 3D capabilities to complete and complex Web-Based Virtual Worlds. The advent of the 3D Web provided great opportunities to museums by giving them an innovative medium to disseminate collections' information and associated interpretations in the form of digital artefacts, and virtual reconstructions thus leading to a new revolutionary way in cultural heritage curation, preservation and dissemination thereby reaching a wider audience. This audience consumes 3D Web material on a myriad of devices (mobile devices, tablets and personal computers) and network regimes (WiFi, 4G, 3G, etc.). Choreographing and presenting 3D Web components across all these heterogeneous platforms and network regimes present a significant challenge yet to overcome. The challenge is to achieve a good user Quality of Experience (QoE) across all these platforms. This means that different levels of fidelity of media may be appropriate. Therefore, servers hosting those media types need to adapt to the capabilities of a wide range of networks and devices. To achieve this, the research contributes the design and implementation of Hannibal, an adaptive QoS & QoE-aware engine that allows Web-Based Virtual Museums to deliver the best possible user experience across those platforms. In order to ensure effective adaptivity of 3D content, this research furthers the understanding of the 3D web in terms of Quality of Service (QoS) through empirical investigations studying how 3D Web components perform and what are their bottlenecks and in terms of QoE studying the subjective perception of fidelity of 3D Digital Heritage artefacts. Results of these experiments lead to the design and implementation of Hannibal

Assisted Viewpoint Interaction for 3D Visualization

Many three-dimensional visualizations are characterized by the use of a mobile viewpoint that offers multiple perspectives on a set of visual information. To effectively control the viewpoint, the viewer must simultaneously manage the cognitive tasks of understanding the layout of the environment, and knowing where to look to find relevant information, along with mastering the physical interaction required to position the viewpoint in meaningful locations. Numerous systems attempt to address these problems by catering to two extremes: simplified controls or direct presentation. This research attempts to promote hybrid interfaces that offer a supportive, yet unscripted exploration of a virtual environment.Attentive navigation is a specific technique designed to actively redirect viewers' attention while accommodating their independence. User-evaluation shows that this technique effectively facilitates several visualization tasks including landmark recognition, survey knowledge acquisition, and search sensitivity. Unfortunately, it also proves to be excessively intrusive, leading viewers to occasionally struggle for control of the viewpoint. Additional design iterations suggest that formalized coordination protocols between the viewer and the automation can mute the shortcomings and enhance the effectiveness of the initial attentive navigation design.The implications of this research generalize to inform the broader requirements for Human-Automation interaction through the visual channel. Potential applications span a number of fields, including visual representations of abstract information, 3D modeling, virtual environments, and teleoperation experiences