Simulation FX: Cinema and the R&D Complex

This study looks at the ongoing development of tools and practices used to animate nonlinear physical phenomena, such as the crash of ocean waves or the movement of human hair, in the visual effect and animation industries. These tools and practices are developed in a nexus between public funding, research universities, the film industry, and various other sectors, such as aerospace and meteorology. This study investigates how technological development became integrated with film production, and in turn how epistemic paradigms were shared between the film industry, scientific research institutions and other industries. At the heart of these animation tools and practices, and the networks of institutions that developed them, is a way of thinking that seeks to make use of unpredictable nonlinear complexity by shaping it toward specific applications. I observe this in the way animation and visual effect studios seek the realistic appearance of nonlinear natural movement through simulation, while also implementing technologies and practices to direct the look of these simulations. I also observe this in a variety of related examples, from the way the concept of research and development unites science and application, to the way management science promotes hands off approaches that preserve the unpredictable nature of creative work. My methods consist of charting the circulation of ideas, technologies, moving images and people through contact zones such as the computer science special interest group ACM SIGGRAPH, using archival research of trade communications, scholarly publications and conference proceedings, as well as interviews with industry workers

All-Women Initiatives in Art and Technology 1986-2020. Atenea: Mentoring and Networking Project in Steam

[ES] La presente tesis doctoral es una exploración sobre las iniciativas auto-organizadas de mujeres que han surgido en la intersección del arte y la tecnología a nivel internacional. Estas iniciativas comunitarias han ido apareciendo en lugares donde existe una escena de arte y nuevos medios, la cual es generalmente de dominación masculina y baja en diversidad. Este trabajo de investigación es un mapeo de este fenómeno tecno-social y artístico, tratando de identificar las primeras prácticas. A través de entrevistas, encuestas y métodos de investigación etnográfica, esta tesis aspira a comprender el contexto que ha dado lugar a semejantes iniciativas a lo largo de tres décadas y media, examinando las diferentes tipologías por los formatos, extensión, espacio y estructura que éstas han adoptado para afrontar la situación de las mujeres en estas áreas. Existe un vació de referencias sobre formas organizativas y de comisariado en las áreas de arte y tecnología. Además, la literatura general señala las subculturas digitales de los noventa, tales como el ciberfeminismo y el movimiento DIY, como los primeros y principales referentes para las alianzas de mujeres y el activismo translocal en la era digital. Sin embargo, las estrategias de colaboración y segregación en áreas de arte y tecnología no han sido analizadas desde los estudios feministas desde una perspectiva histórica en profundidad. Por lo tanto, esta tesis establece la relación entre dichas iniciativas con la historia de los grupos de mujeres artistas y espacios de arte alternativos, la historia de las mujeres en el arte de nuevos medios y la cultura de redes. Las nuevas tecnologías de la información y comunicación han permitido nuevas formas de comunicación y conectividad transfronterizas; sin embargo, este trabajo investiga en qué medida estas iniciativas dependen de las TIC para el establecimiento de su comunidad, comparado con los formatos analógicos. Con los resultados, esta tesis aspira a convertirse en una fuente de referencias que enriquezca la escasa bibliografía de la temática, proporcionando una lista de formas organizativas y de comisariado, así como las practicas más tempranas nunca publicadas, y en conjunto contribuir a la historiografía actual sobre mujeres. Por último, a la vez que se comenta la situación actual de las mujeres en las áreas de arte y tecnología, este trabajo presenta Atenea, un proyecto de mentorización y networking para mujeres en las artes y carreras STEM. Atenea está compuesto de un programa de actividades con diferentes actividades organizativas y de comisariado, así como una plataforma de networking. Adicionalmente, el proyecto tiene un programa enfocado en transmitir conocimientos STEM a niñas a través de prácticas artísticas con tecnología de la mano de mujeres artistas nacionales como mentoras.[CAT] La present tesi doctoral és una exploració sobre les iniciatives autoorganitzades de dones que han sorgit en la intersecció de l'art i la tecnologia a nivell internacional. Aquestes iniciatives comunitàries han anat apareixent en llocs on hi ha una escena d'art i nous mitjans, la qual és generalment de dominació masculina i baixa en diversitat. Aquest treball de recerca és un mapeig d'aquest fenomen tecno-social i artístic, tractant d'identificar les primeres pràctiques. A través d'entrevistes, enquestes i mètodes d'investigació etnogràfica, aquesta tesi aspira a comprendre el context que ha donat lloc a semblants iniciatives al llarg de tres dècades i mig, examinant les diferents tipologies pels formats, extensió, espai i estructura que aquestes han adoptat per afrontar la situació de les dones en aquestes àrees. Hi ha un buit de referències sobre formes organitzatives i de comissariat en les àrees d'art i tecnologia. A més, la literatura general assenyala les subcultures digitals dels noranta, com ara el ciberfeminisme i el moviment DIY, com els primers i principals referents per a les aliances de dones i l'activisme translocal en l'era digital. No obstant això, les estratègies de col·laboració i segregació en àrees d'art i tecnologia no han estat analitzades des dels estudis feministes des d'una perspectiva històrica en profunditat. Per tant, aquesta tesi estableix la relació entre aquestes iniciatives amb la història dels grups de dones artistes i espais d'art alternatius, la història de les dones en l'art de nous mitjans i la cultura de xarxes. Les noves tecnologies de la informació i comunicació han permès noves formes de comunicació i connectivitat transfrontereres; però, aquest treball investiga en quina mesura aquestes iniciatives depenen de les TIC per a l'establiment de la seva comunitat, comparat amb els formats analògics. Amb els resultats, aquesta tesi aspira a convertir-se en una font de referències que enriqueixi l'escassa bibliografia de la temàtica, proporcionant una llista de formes organitzatives i de comissariat, així com les pràctiques més primerenques mai publicades, i en conjunt contribuir a la historiografia actual sobre dones. Finalment, alhora que es comenta la situació actual de les dones en les àrees d'art i tecnologia, aquest treball presenta Atenea, un projecte de mentorització i networking per a dones en les arts i carreres STEM. Atenea està compost d'un programmea d'activitats amb diferents activitats organitzatives i de comissariat, així com una plataforma de networking. Addicionalment, el projecte té un programmea enfocat a transmetre coneixements STEM a nenes a través de pràctiques artístiques amb tecnologia de la mà de dones artistes nacionals com mentores.[EN] This dissertation explores a series of all-women self-organised initiatives that have emerged at the intersection of art and technology internationally. These grassroot initiatives have continued to appear in places where there is a new media arts scene, generally male-dominated and low in diversity. This research work is a mapping of this techno-social and artistic phenomenon, attempting to identify its earliest practices. Through interviews, surveys and ethnographic research, this thesis seeks to comprehend the context that has given rise to such initiatives over three decades and half, examining the different typologies by formats, extension, space and structure that they have adopted to address the situation of women in these fields. There is a void of references on all-women curatorial and organisational forms in art and technology. Moreover, general literature points at digital subcultures of the 1990s such as cyberfeminism and DIY movement as first referents for women's alliance and translocal activism in the digital age. However, collaboration and segregation strategies in new media arts have not been discussed in feminist scholarship from a deeper historical perspective. Therefore, this dissertation elaborates the linkage of such initiatives to early history of all-women art groups and alternative art spaces, history of women in new media arts and to network cultures. New information and communication technologies have enabled new forms of communication and connectivity cross-borders; however, this work investigates in which measure these initiatives are dependent upon ICT for the establishment of a community, compared to analog formats. With the results, this dissertation aims to become a source of references that enriches the scarce bibliography on the topic, providing a list of curatorial and organisational forms with the earliest and unpublished practices that altogether contribute to current women's historiography. Lastly, while discussing the current situation of women in art and technology fields, this works presents Atenea, a mentoring and networking platform for women in Arts and STEM careers. Atenea is comprised of a programme having different organizational, curatorial and networking activities. Additionally, the platform has a project focused on teaching STEM skills to girls through new media arts with female artists as mentors. Keywords: All-women, self-organised, initiatives, new media arts, digital arts, electronic arts, art, technology, activism, mapping, alternative art spaces, collaboration, segregation, ICT, digital age, virtual, community, network cultures, feminism, cyberfeminism, Atenea, STEM, STEAM, girls, organisational, curatorial, networking platform, mentoring,Robles Mateo, E. (2020). All-Women Initiatives in Art and Technology 1986-2020. Atenea: Mentoring and Networking Project in Steam [Tesis doctoral]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/159248TESI

Die Virtuelle Videokamera: ein System zur Blickpunktsynthese in beliebigen, dynamischen Szenen

The Virtual Video Camera project strives to create free viewpoint video from casually captured multi-view data. Multiple video streams of a dynamic scene are captured with off-the-shelf camcorders, and the user can re-render the scene from novel perspectives. In this thesis the algorithmic core of the Virtual Video Camera is presented. This includes the algorithm for image correspondence estimation as well as the image-based renderer. Furthermore, its application in the context of an actual video production is showcased, and the rendering and image processing pipeline is extended to incorporate depth information.Das Virtual Video Camera Projekt dient der Erzeugung von Free Viewpoint Video Ansichten von Multi-View Aufnahmen: Material mehrerer Videoströme wird hierzu mit handelsüblichen Camcordern aufgezeichnet. Im Anschluss kann die Szene aus beliebigen, von den ursprünglichen Kameras nicht abgedeckten Blickwinkeln betrachtet werden. In dieser Dissertation wird der algorithmische Kern der Virtual Video Camera vorgestellt. Dies beinhaltet das Verfahren zur Bildkorrespondenzschätzung sowie den bildbasierten Renderer. Darüber hinaus wird die Anwendung im Kontext einer Videoproduktion beleuchtet. Dazu wird die bildbasierte Erzeugung neuer Blickpunkte um die Erzeugung und Einbindung von Tiefeninformationen erweitert

SimSwap: An Efficient Framework For High Fidelity Face Swapping

We propose an efficient framework, called Simple Swap (SimSwap), aiming for generalized and high fidelity face swapping. In contrast to previous approaches that either lack the ability to generalize to arbitrary identity or fail to preserve attributes like facial expression and gaze direction, our framework is capable of transferring the identity of an arbitrary source face into an arbitrary target face while preserving the attributes of the target face. We overcome the above defects in the following two ways. First, we present the ID Injection Module (IIM) which transfers the identity information of the source face into the target face at feature level. By using this module, we extend the architecture of an identity-specific face swapping algorithm to a framework for arbitrary face swapping. Second, we propose the Weak Feature Matching Loss which efficiently helps our framework to preserve the facial attributes in an implicit way. Extensive experiments on wild faces demonstrate that our SimSwap is able to achieve competitive identity performance while preserving attributes better than previous state-of-the-art methods. The code is already available on github: https://github.com/neuralchen/SimSwap.Comment: Accepted by ACMMM 202

Languages of games and play: A systematic mapping study

Digital games are a powerful means for creating enticing, beautiful, educational, and often highly addictive interactive experiences that impact the lives of billions of players worldwide. We explore what informs the design and construction of good games to learn how to speed-up game development. In particular, we study to what extent languages, notations, patterns, and tools, can offer experts theoretical foundations, systematic techniques, and practical solutions they need to raise their productivity and improve the quality of games and play. Despite the growing number of publications on this topic there is currently no overview describing the state-of-the-art that relates research areas, goals, and applications. As a result, efforts and successes are often one-off, lessons learned go overlooked, language reuse remains minimal, and opportunities for collaboration and synergy are lost. We present a systematic map that identifies relevant publications and gives an overview of research areas and publication venues. In addition, we categorize research perspectives along common objectives, techniques, and approaches, illustrated by summaries of selected languages. Finally, we distill challenges and opportunities for future research and development

Visual-auditory visualisation of dynamic multi-scale heterogeneous objects.

The multi-scale phenomena analysis is an area of active research that is connecting simulations with experiments to get a correct insight into the compound dynamic structure. Visualisation is a challenging task due to a large amount of data and a wide range of complex data representations. The analysis of dynamic multi-scale phenomena requires a combination of geometric modelling and rendering techniques for the analysis of the changes in the internal structure in the case of data coming from different sources of various nature. Moreover, the area often addresses the limitations of solely visual data representation and considers the introduction of other sensory stimuli as a well-known tool to enhance visual analysis. However, there is a lack of software tools allowing perform an advanced real-time analysis of heterogeneous phenomena properties. The hardware-accelerated volume rendering allows getting insight into the internal structure of complex multi-scale phenomena. The technique is convenient for detailed visual analysis and highlights the features of interest in complex structures and is an area of active research. However, the conventional volume visualisation is limited to the use of transfer functions that operate on homogeneous material and, as a result, does not provide flexibility in geometry and material distribution modelling that is crucial for the analysis of heterogeneous objects. Moreover, the extension to visual-auditory analysis emphasises the necessity to review the entire conventional volume visualisation pipeline. The multi-sensory feedback highly depends on the use of modern hardware and software advances for real-time modelling and evaluation. In this work, we explore the aspects of the design of visual-auditory pipelines for the analysis of dynamic multi-scale properties of heterogeneous objects that can allow overcoming well-known problems of complex representations solely visual analysis. We consider the similarities between light and sound propagation as a solution to the problem. The approach benefits from a combination of GPU accelerated ray-casting, geometry, optical and auditory properties modelling. We discuss how the modern GPU techniques application in those areas allows introducing a unified approach to the visual-auditory analysis of dynamic multi-scale heterogeneous objects. Similarly to the conventional volume rendering technique based on light propagation, we model auditory feedback as a result of initial impulse propagation through 3D space and its digital representation as a sampled sound wave obtained with the ray-casting procedure. The auditory stimuli can complement visual ones in the analysis of the dynamic multi-scale heterogeneous object. We propose a framework that facilitates the design of dynamic multi-scale heterogeneous objects visual-auditory pipeline and discuss the framework application for two case studies. The first is a molecular phenomena study that is a result of molecular dynamics simulation and quantum simulation. The second explores microstructures in digital fabrication with an arbitrary irregular lattice structure. For considered case studies, the visual-auditory techniques facilitate the interactive analysis of both spatial structure and internal multi-scale properties of volume nature in complex heterogeneous objects. A GPU-accelerated framework for visual-auditory analysis of heterogeneous objects can be applied and extend beyond this research. Thus, to specify the main direction of such extension from the point of view of the potential users, strengthen the value of this research as well as to evaluate the vision of the application of the techniques described above, we carry out a preliminary evaluation. The user study aims to compare our expectations on the visual-auditory approach with the views of the potential users of this system if it is implemented as a software product. A preliminary evaluation study was carried out with limitations imposed by 2020/2021 restrictions. However, it confirms that the main direction for the visual-auditory analysis of heterogeneous objects has been identified correctly and visual and auditory stimuli can complement each other in the analysis of both volume and spatial distribution properties of heterogeneous phenomena. The user reviews also highlight the necessary enhancements that should be introduced to the approach in terms of the design of more complex user interfaces and consideration of additional application cases. To provide a more detailed picture on evaluation results and recommendations introduced, we also identify the key factors that define the user vision of the approach further enhancement and its possible application areas, such as users experience in the area of complex physical phenomena analysis or multi-sensory area. The discussed in this work aspects of heterogeneous objects analysis task, theoretical and practical solutions allow considering the application, further development and enhancement of the results in multidisciplinary areas of GPU accelerated High-performance visualisation pipelines design and multi-sensory analysis