Review of three-dimensional human-computer interaction with focus on the leap motion controller

Modern hardware and software development has led to an evolution of user interfaces from command-line to natural user interfaces for virtual immersive environments. Gestures imitating real-world interaction tasks increasingly replace classical two-dimensional interfaces based on Windows/Icons/Menus/Pointers (WIMP) or touch metaphors. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to survey the state-of-the-art Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) techniques with a focus on the special field of three-dimensional interaction. This includes an overview of currently available interaction devices, their applications of usage and underlying methods for gesture design and recognition. Focus is on interfaces based on the Leap Motion Controller (LMC) and corresponding methods of gesture design and recognition. Further, a review of evaluation methods for the proposed natural user interfaces is given

Research through Design of Bendable Interactive Playing Cards

Ph.D

3D Recording and Interpretation for Maritime Archaeology

This open access peer-reviewed volume was inspired by the UNESCO UNITWIN Network for Underwater Archaeology International Workshop held at Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia in November 2016. Content is based on, but not limited to, the work presented at the workshop which was dedicated to 3D recording and interpretation for maritime archaeology. The volume consists of contributions from leading international experts as well as up-and-coming early career researchers from around the globe. The content of the book includes recording and analysis of maritime archaeology through emerging technologies, including both practical and theoretical contributions. Topics include photogrammetric recording, laser scanning, marine geophysical 3D survey techniques, virtual reality, 3D modelling and reconstruction, data integration and Geographic Information Systems. The principal incentive for this publication is the ongoing rapid shift in the methodologies of maritime archaeology within recent years and a marked increase in the use of 3D and digital approaches. This convergence of digital technologies such as underwater photography and photogrammetry, 3D sonar, 3D virtual reality, and 3D printing has highlighted a pressing need for these new methodologies to be considered together, both in terms of defining the state-of-the-art and for consideration of future directions. As a scholarly publication, the audience for the book includes students and researchers, as well as professionals working in various aspects of archaeology, heritage management, education, museums, and public policy. It will be of special interest to those working in the field of coastal cultural resource management and underwater archaeology but will also be of broader interest to anyone interested in archaeology and to those in other disciplines who are now engaging with 3D recording and visualization

Helping people see their place in community immunity : a dynamic web-based visualization

L'immunité collective - parfois appelée immunité de groupe - est un concept important et complexe de la santé publique qui n'est pas toujours bien compris par le grand public. Cette incompréhension est particulièrement prononcée chez les personnes qui hésitent à se faire vacciner. Des recherches antérieures ont suggéré que la décision d'obtenir un vaccin pour soi ou son enfant est principalement motivée par les avantages et les risques individuels, plutôt que par les avantages pour la communauté. Cependant, peu de recherches ont identifié des moyens d'aider les gens à comprendre le fonctionnement de l'immunité collective. Il y a également eu relativement peu de recherches sur le rôle des émotions sur la perception du risque et sur les connaissances et les comportements relatifs à l'immunité collective. La visualisation d'informations est un mécanisme de communication puissant pour transmettre des informations et des données sur les risques, car elle permet de présenter rapidement des concepts complexes de manière claire et attrayante. La visualisation d'informations pourrait également permettre d'influencer les émotions. La première partie de ce travail visait à examiner systématiquement les interventions conçues pour communiquer au grand public ce qu'est l'immunité collective et comment elle fonctionne. Cet examen systématique a montré qu'il existe relativement peu de preuves scientifiques des effets de stratégies de communication sur l'immunité collective. Il existe un certain nombre d'interventions disponibles en ligne pour transmettre le concept d'immunité collective, mais leurs effets ont rarement été évalués et aucune étude n'a évalué les effets des interventions sur les émotions. La deuxième partie de ce travail visait à concevoir une application Web au sujet de l'immunité collective et à optimiser cette application en fonction des réponses cognitives et émotionnelles des utilisateurs. Dans notre application, les utilisateurs sont invités à construire leur communauté en créant un personnage qui les représente (leur avatar) et huit autres personnages qui représentent des personnes de leur entourage, par exemple leur famille ou leurs collègues de travail. L'application intègre ces personnages dans une visualisation animée de deux minutes montrant comment différents paramètres (par exemple, la couverture vaccinale et les contacts au sein des communautés) influencent l'immunité collective. Cette étude a montré que notre animation avec des avatars personnalisés peut aider les gens à comprendre leur rôle dans la santé de la population. Notre application s'est révélée être une méthode de communication prometteuse pour expliquer la relation entre les comportements individuels et la santé de la communauté. Elle offre une stratégie potentielle pour concevoir du matériel de communication sur des sujets complexes tels que la santé ou l'immunité collective. La troisième et dernière partie de ce travail visait à évaluer les effets de notre application Web montrant le fonctionnement de l'immunité collective sur la perception des risques, sur les émotions, sur la confiance dans les informations, sur les connaissances et sur les intentions en matière de vaccination. Dans le cadre d'un vaste essai contrôlé randomisé en ligne et factoriel, notre application a influencé tous les résultats dans le sens souhaité, en particulier chez les personnes ayant une vision du monde plus collectiviste. Cette étude est encore plus pertinente aujourd'hui, alors que les pays du monde entier mènent des campagnes de vaccination contre la COVID-19. Notre application est d'ailleurs présentement utilisée dans un outil d'aide à la décision en ligne, permettant aux gens de prendre une décision éclairée par rapport aux vaccins contre la COVID-19 pour eux-mêmes ou leurs enfants.Community immunity--sometimes referred to as herd immunity--is an important and complex concept in public health that is not always well-understood by members of the general public. This lack of understanding is particularly pronounced among people who are vaccine hesitant. Previous research has suggested that decisions about whether or not to vaccinate oneself or one's child are primarily driven by benefits and risks to the individual, with community-level benefits being less compelling. However, little research has identified ways to help people understand how community immunity works, and there has also been relatively little research investigating the role of emotion in risk perceptions, knowledge, and behavior relevant to community immunity. Visualization is a powerful communication mechanism for communicating information and data, including information and data about risk, because it enables rapid presentation of complex concepts in understandable, compelling ways. Visualization may also influence emotions. The first part of this work was aimed to systematically review interventions designed to communicate what community immunity is and how community immunity works to members of the general public. This systematic review demonstrates that there is relatively little evidence about the effects of communicating about community immunity. There are a number of interventions available online for conveying the concept of community immunity, but very few interventions were evaluated for its effects and no studies evaluated the effects of interventions on emotions. The second part aimed to design a web application about community immunity and optimize it based on users' cognitive and emotional responses. In our application, people build their own community by creating an avatar representing themselves and 8 other avatars representing people around them, for example, their family or coworkers. The application integrates these avatars in a 2-min visualization showing how different parameters (eg, vaccine coverage, and contact within communities) influence community immunity. This study found out that applications with personalized avatars may help people understand their individual role in population health. Our application showed promise as a method of communicating the relationship between individual behaviour and community health. It offers a potential roadmap for designing health communication materials for complex topics such as community immunity. The third and last part of this work aimed to evaluate the effects of our online application showing how community immunity (herd immunity) works on risk perception, emotions, trust in information, knowledge and intentions regarding vaccination. In a large, factorial, online randomized controlled trial, our application influenced all outcomes in the desired directions, particularly among people who have more collectivist worldviews. This work is increasingly relevant as countries around the world carry out COVID-19 vaccination campaigns. Accordingly, our application is currently being used in an online decision aid to support people making evidence-informed decisions about COVID-19 vaccines for themselves or their children

Droplets, splashes and sprays: highly detailed liquids in visual effects production.

An often misunderstood or under-appreciated feature of the visual effects pipeline is the sheer quantity of components and layers that go into a single shot, or even, single effect. Liquids, often combining waves, splashes, droplets and sprays, are a particular example of this. Whilst there has been a huge amount of research on liquid simulation in the last decade or so, little has been successful in reducing the number of layers or elements required to create a plausible final liquid effect. Furthermore, the finer-scale phenomena of droplets and sprays, often introduced in this layered approach and crucial for plausibility, are some of the least well catered-for in the existing toolkit. In lieu of adequate tooling, creation of these elements relies heavily on non-physical methods, bespoke setups and artistic ingenuity. This project explores physically-based methods for creating these phenomena, demonstrat- ing improved levels of detail and plausibility over existing non-physical approaches. These provide an alternative to existing workflows that are heavily reliant on artistic input, allowing artists to focus efforts on creative direction rather than trying to recreate physical plausibility. We explore various approaches to increasing the level of detail captured in physically-based liquid simulations, developing a collection of tools that improve existing workflows. First, we investigate the potential of a re-simulation approach to increasing artist iteration on fluid simulations using previous simulation data. Following this, a novel droplet interaction model for ballistic particle simulations is developed to introduce higher levels of detail in simulations of liquid droplets and sprays. This allows physically-plausible interactions between droplet particles to be modelled efficiently and helps to create realistic droplet and spray behaviours. Then, to maximise the quality of the results of these and other particle-based simulations, we develop a high quality particle surfacing algorithm to handle the varied nature of inputs common in production. Finally, we discuss the development of an expression language to manipulate point and volume data commonly used in creating these simulations, as well as elsewhere throughout visual effects. This research was driven directly by production requirements in partnership with a world- leading visual effects studio, DNEG. Projects have been developed to immediately integrate into production, using efficient, industry-standard, open technologies such as OpenVDB. It is shown that the toolkit for splashing liquids, even at fine-scales, can be improved by incorporating greater physical motivation further demonstrating the importance of physical simulation in visual effects and suggesting effects similarly reliant on artistic input (e.g. character/skin deformation) may benefit from increased physical correctness

A Phenomenological approach to media art environments: The Immersive art experience and the Finnish art scene

This research focuses on immersive art, defined as a multimedia experience where visitors interact with artwork whilst immersed in a range of sensory experiences. In this dissertation, I investigate the immersive art experience from the perspective of art history, social theory, and media studies situated within a phenomenological theoretical framework. I present a comparative analysis of forms of immersive spatiality, including projected moving-image art, spatial environments, participatory installations, video art installations and interactive environments in the international art scene. One of my objectives is to emphasise the role of video art in the development of interactive and immersive art environments. The growing importance of spectators for giving meaning to the artwork allows immersivity to be analysed in relation to the notions of spectacle and spectatorship. I connect disciplines, practices and concepts by adopting principles from Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological writings. Spatiality and motility are pivotal points in immersive experiences. Immersive art, as an embodied mutual experience, materialises the phenomenological concepts of spectatorship, corporeality, motility, porosity, chiasm, and encounter. I have selected a group of relevant Finnish artists from different generations to characterise the development of media art and, particularly, immersive media art in an international context. The group includes Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Lauri Astala, Laura Beloff, Hanna Haaslahti, Tuomas A. Laitinen, Erkka Nissinen, and Marjatta Oja. I examine the historical dissemination of phenomenology in Finland and a renewed interest in the 1990s which coincided with the spatialisation of video art and the emergence of immersivity. I also investigate the opening of Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art and its impact on Finnish culture, and the recent Amos Rex Museum, specifically built for immersive exhibitions. Regarding the unstable nature of media art, I analyse the changes in displaying art collections and exhibitions, the new commitments of art museums and the innovative directions taken by media conservators. My examination of immersive art, with its performativity and transience, reveals environmentally friendly and sustainable aspects.Fenomenologinen tulokulma mediataideympäristöihin. Immersiivinen taidekokemus ja Suomen taidekenttä Tämä tutkimus käsittelee immersiivistä taidetta multimediaalisena kokemuksena. Immersiossa kävijät ovat erilaisten aistimellisten kokemusten ympäröiminä vuorovaikutuksessa taiteen kanssa. Tutkin väitöskirjassani immersiivistä taidekokemusta fenomenologisessa teoriakehyksessä taidehistorian, yhteiskuntateorian ja mediatutkimuksen näkökulmasta. Esitän vertailevan analyysin immersiivisistä tilallisuuden muodoista, joihin sisällytän liikkuvan kuvan projisoinnit, tilateokset, osallistavat installaatiot, videoinstallaatiot ja interaktiiviset ympäristöt kansainvälisen taidekentän ilmiöinä. Yhtenä pyrkimyksenäni on painottaa videotaiteen merkitystä interaktiivisen ja immersiivisen taiteen kehityksessä. Katsojien kasvava rooli taideteoksen merkityksen muodostuksessa tarjoaa perustan immersion analyysille nimenomaan spektaakkelin ja katsojuuden viitekehyksessä. Yhdistän eri tieteenaloja, käytäntöjä ja käsitteitä toisiinsa Maurice Merleau-Pontyn fenomenologisten kirjoitusten avulla. Tilallisuus ja liike ovat immersiivisten kokemusten ytimessä. Jaettuna ruumiillisena kokemuksena immersiivinen taide ilmentää materiaalisesti fenomenologisia katsojuuden, ruumiillisuuden, liikkeessä olemisen, huokoisuuden, kiasman ja kohtaamisen käsitteitä. Olen valinnut joukon eri sukupolvia edustavia suomalaistaiteilijoita hahmot-taakseni mediataiteen ja erityisesti immersiivisen mediataiteen kansainvälisiä kehityskulkuja. Heihin lukeutuvat Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Lauri Astala, Laura Beloff, Hanna Haaslahti, Tuomas A. Laitinen, Erkka Nissinen ja Marjatta Oja. Käsittelen fenomenologian saapumista Suomeen sekä siihen 1990-luvulla videotaiteen tilallistumisen ja immersion esiin nousun yhteydessä uudelleen virinnyttä mielenkiintoa. Tarkastelen myös Nykytaiteen museo Kiasman perustamista ja sen vaikutusta suomalaiseen kulttuuriin, samoin kuin vastikään avattua Amos Rex -taidemuseota, joka on rakennettu erityisesti immersiivisiä näyttelyitä silmällä pitäen. Analysoin muutoksia taidekokoelmien ja näyttelyiden esillepanossa, taidemuseoiden uudenlaisia sitoumuksia ja mediataiteen kuratoinnin uutta luovia suuntia suhteessa mediataiteen nopeasti muuttuvaan luonteeseen. Painottamalla performatiivisuutta ja hetkellisyyttä nostan immersiivisen taiteen analyysissani näkyville sen ympäristöystävällisiä ja kestäviä ulottuvuuksia

Proceedings of EVA London 2024

The Electronic Visualisation and the Arts London 2024 Conference (EVA London 2024) is co-sponsored by the Computer Arts Society (CAS) and BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, of which the CAS is a Specialist Group. As for 2022, the EVA London 2023 Conference is a physical and online “hybrid” conference. We continue with publishing the proceedings, both online, with open access via ScienceOpen, and also in our traditional printed form, in full colour. The main conference presentations run during 10–13 July 2023, with workshops and other activities, especially for students, on 14 July 2023

ICS Materials. Towards a re-Interpretation of material qualities through interactive, connected, and smart materials.

The domain of materials for design is changing under the influence of an increased technological advancement, miniaturization and democratization. Materials are becoming connected, augmented, computational, interactive, active, responsive, and dynamic. These are ICS Materials, an acronym that stands for Interactive, Connected and Smart. While labs around the world are experimenting with these new materials, there is the need to reflect on their potentials and impact on design. This paper is a first step in this direction: to interpret and describe the qualities of ICS materials, considering their experiential pattern, their expressive sensorial dimension, and their aesthetic of interaction. Through case studies, we analyse and classify these emerging ICS Materials and identified common characteristics, and challenges, e.g. the ability to change over time or their programmability by the designers and users. On that basis, we argue there is the need to reframe and redesign existing models to describe ICS materials, making their qualities emerge